“It’s a piano chord, but I played it with my arse. I was singing and I just wanted a rest, and the piano lid was open. So I sat and I played that chord”: The Police’s classic breakthrough hit – with the ultimate bum note

The Police.

First time around it flopped, but when The Police’s single Roxanne was re-released in 1979 it was the hit that set the band on the road to superstardom.

The song was written by singer/bassist Sting after walking around the Parisian red-light district close to the band’s hotel in October 1977, when they were performing at the nearby Nashville Club. An old poster of the play Cyrano De Bergerac was hanging in the hotel foyer and the song’s name was inspired by one of its main characters.