Andy Summers was at the height of his powers and fame when he took a sharp, unexpected sidestep to collaborate with King Crimson maverick Robert Fripp in the early ‘80s — and that was exactly the point.
By his admission, he felt he was stagnating, his talents “musically hemmed” in by a band that had proven a production line for simple, catchy hit singles. He wanted a fresh, far more experimental challenge. So the two records they would write together, he tells Prog, were “the ultimate 'fuck you' to the record company,” when they proved an improbable success.
Summer says he wasn’t even a fan of King Crimson’s musical, but he felt he and Fripp — who both hail from similar circles in Southern England — had a “cosmic connection.”
Indeed, Fripp’s polyrhythmic guitar playing were perfectly counterbalanced by Summers’ more tasteful interjections. Their debut release, 1982’s all-instrumental I Advance Masked, spent 11 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart.
Yet A&M, the Police’s label, thought such a release would do the band’s reputation more harm than good.
“A&M, who the Police were selling trillions of records for, didn't want me to do it at all,” Summers says. “But they didn't want to piss me off, because I had too much power at that point.
"Robert and I were both famous players in our respective groups, so I thought there'd be a lot of interest in it. Then it went into the Top 60 in the charts. It was a real sort of 'fuck you' to the record company.”
The guitarists had just two weeks in the studio together, due to Fripp's obligations on King Crimson's Three of a Perfect Pair album. But Fripp says the window of opportunity came at the ideal moment in his career.
“Working within King Crimson, my musical focus became increasingly defined and specialized,” he explains to Prog. “So what made Summers and Fripp work is that Andy was more able to move to me than I was to him.”
Summers, however, didn’t feel the project was about blending into one another’s foliage. He liked the idea of polarity.
“Robert and I are very disparate players," he says. "He ain't gonna play the blues with you. He's really good at playing these polyrhythmic lines. I'd never heard anybody else play quite like that. So I regarded his multi-rhythmic lines as the bones of the skeleton, and my function was to put on the flesh. We were figuring it out as we went along.
“Robert and I had no idea what we were going to play,” he continues. “We just sat with our guitars and various bits of equipment and started to discover what could be made between us.”
Although used sparingly, their mutual adoration for embracing strange things was epitomized by the record's employment of the Roland guitar synthesizer. Summers had already experimented with one on "Don't Stand So Close to Me," from the Police album Zenyatta Mondatta, while Fripp and Adrian Belew had brought the hot new technology into Crimson's world.
A&M didn't want me to do it at all. Then it went into the Top 60 in the charts. It was a real sort of fuck-you to the record company
Andy Summers
“It allowed you to move into a whole other sphere," Summers adds. "And I took the Police pedalboard into the studio with Robert, so instead of having two straight electric guitars going into two Fender Twin amps, we were able to bring more sonic color to the situation.”
Earlier this month, Robert Fripp revealed he had suffered a heart attack in April and received emergency treatment, but is on the road to recovery. He turned 70 last week.
Meanwhile, footage of Summers teaching John Mayer how to play the Police's most challenging song has emerged online, while the guitarist has spoken about another expectation-defying release and how Police bass guitar player Sting went to extreme measures to stop it in its tracks.
