Second-album slump’ is one of the most dreaded phrases you can foist upon a new rock artist, as it can often equate to another unpleasant label – ‘career killer’. But this didn’t seem to cross the minds of The Police trio of singer/bassist Sting, guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland when they began thinking about a follow-up to the band’s hit debut album Outlandos d’Amour (which had spawned hit singles including Roxanne and Can’t Stand Losing You).
“What was interesting about Sting as a songwriter was he actually had a lot of these songs [already],” Summers recalls, “and he had a whole book full of lyrics. He had this giant book – a big, thick, hardbound book – with pages that had lyrics all the way through it. He didn’t come into The Police and start writing songs – he had been writing them for years. And I think he would just keep going back into this giant book of lyrics and keep pulling them out. So we never really ran out of material. He’d go: ‘Well, I’ve got this other one.’ ‘Another one?!’”
