View From The Edge

HUNDREDS OF IMAGES from Andy Summers’ private archives, as he snapped his way through three years of rock’n’roll mania as The Police hit the big time, make fascinating copy. What sets this book aside from other hands-on Rock memoirs are two critical factors. The first is that Summers is a professional standard lensman who takes photography as seriously as he regards playing the guitar. Indeed, his first job was as a beachfront snapper of holidaymakers in his hometown of Bournemouth, on England’s south coast. The second is that Summers’ is a natural and talented writer, ably demonstrated by his recent autobiographical One Train Later (Piatkus/St Martins Press) in which he combines a droll and often acerbic wit, with acute observational skills and a humanity not often found at the top of the rock’n’roll hierarchy - not least in his treatment of musicians less gifted than himself.

It is a fact of history that, as The Police went from a standing start to global celebrity in the first years of the 1980s, frictions between the three players (Sting, Stewart Copeland & Summers) went from bad to worse and back again. Physical fights were not unknown. These artistic tensions and the tedium of repetitious concerts and soulless hotel rooms - punctuated only by new things to see and nights when things on stage zoned out – are succinctly recorded in words and in pictures from the guitarist’s Nikon FE. Summers’ innate honesty even goes so far as to note his distress that, as they recorded new material in Montserrat, his wife demanded a divorce (happily, they re-married later).

For fans of The Police this is a must-have book of course, almost every shot is an intimate, insider look at one or more of our three heroes. For others, it is a fascinating view from the other side of security barrier. And for anyone contemplating a life on the road with a top end rock band, Andy’s shots of the rabid audiences heaving forward, only feet away from the lens cap, might make you want to think it through. It’s a mighty work and if pictures do tell a thousand words, it is of biblical proportions. Mixed in with the serious reportage images, the larky snapshots and comedic set-ups, are some lasting photographs with classic status. A book with hypnotic qualities for those around at the time.