By his own judgement, Andy Summers does not like to be idle. Isn’t suited to a life of leisure. The late-March morning when we talk is a case in point. Only just returned to his home in Los Angeles from playing a run of shows in Brazil with his Police tribute band Call The Police, he was up early editing the file of photographs he took on the trip. Photography is Summers’s other great passion, seriously so. His black-and-white portraits are handsome and enigmatic. Rumpled hotel rooms and nocturnal ephemera are a speciality, the locations the exotic preserve of the globe-trotting rock superstar.
Now a spry 80-year-old, Summers has been famous for six decades as one third of The Police alongside Sting and Stewart Copeland. The band have sold 80 million records and counting, their run of hits beginning with Roxanne in April 1979. They’ve broken up twice, in 1985 and then again in 2008, rancorously on both occasions. Ten years older than both of his erstwhile bandmates, Summers was well-established as a guitarist before The Police and has continued to plough his own furrow apart from the band.
Born in the Lancashire market town of Poulton-le-Fylde on New Year’s Eve, 1942, he grew up in Bournemouth, and took piano lessons before picking up the guitar. At 19 he relocated to London with his friend Zoot Money. Operating as Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band, they gained a foothold on the capital’s then blossoming R&B club scene. By London’s Summer of Love in 1967, he and Money were garbed in white robes and kaftans and playing psychedelic rock with the short-lived Dantalian’s Chariot. Afterwards, Summers passed through the line-ups of Soft
Denne historien er fra June 2023-utgaven av Classic Rock.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra June 2023-utgaven av Classic Rock.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Bright Sparks - Undertakers, band managers and museum workers by day, pop-charged rockers by night, The Hot Damn! are a gang you'd want to join.
Gill Montgomery has come straight from the mortuary. Her mortuary, to be precise. Some rockers wait tables, others teach music or pick up temp work. The Hot Damn! frontwoman looks after dead people.“It’s interesting,” she muses, of her day job running a funeral home in South East London. “It’s very hands-on. I think you’re either for it or you’re not.”
Motörhead
“Once we'd cracked the formula of how to work together on Overkill,\" said Eddie Clarke, that's when we really started to take off.” And it was all thanks to Phil Taylor's new drum kit.
LET'S DANCE
Dialling back on the aggressive approach that has helped bring Idles this far, and putting swing to the stomp, their new album is intended to make you shake a leg rather than a fist
Steve Hackett
The former Genesis guitarist’s latest themed’ tour enables him to visit the best of both worlds”.
Monster Magnet
“It's all-energy. It's rock excitement, psychedelic glory and space-rock hooks.” Sounds good to us!
MADE FRIENDS.INFLUENCED PEOPLE
In the 90s they were high flyers, then the fall hit them hard. Having picked themselves up, Terrorvision are back with their first new album in more than a decade, and it’s full of top tunes.
DON'T FENCE US IN
Embracing their roots on record for the first time, Don't call us southern” band The Cold Stares’ seventh album is both a love letter to Kentucky and a Call for unity in volatile times.
"I JUST WANTED TO BE RESPECTED FOR BEING IN A KICKASS BAND."
1976 was a pivotal year for Thin Lizzy. Guitarist Scott Gorham, one half of the band's classic twin-guitar sound, takes a trip down memory lane to the year that was...
Jerry Cantrell
The Alice In Chains guitarist on his forthcoming album and its guests, songwriting, AT, algorithm bots, AIC’s legacy...
THROUGH THICK AND THIN
In 1976, Thin Lizzy were touring Jailbreak in the US and were breaking big. Then disaster struck. Band manager Chris O'Donnell details the roller-coaster year in which they were cruelly robbed of their American dream.