One of my favourite riffs from one of my favourite guitar players, the rarely revered Andy Summers, he has a long, long history dating back to the psychedelia of the 1960s (Soft Machine and many others, much of it LSD fuelled according to his autobiography). Summers is best known for his time with The Police of course, alongside Sting (who hails from my hometown near Newcastle and was given his nickname by my sister’s friend’s Dad!) and drummer Stewart Copeland.
Anyway, this is me doubling vocals (one at the original song pitch, falsetto in the background and the melody again an octave down on the verses). Played the Telecaster parts, and bass guitar but used a downloaded MIDI drumtrack to keep better time than any drummer, even Copeland (Sting joke from Ghost in the Machine era Montserrat recordings).
Posting here as preview sample while licencing on Loudr FM goes through for posting cover to iTunes etc.
The original song was in the UK charts in 1979. It was based on that video I mentioned actually composed in Dm not C#m and I reckon they notched it down a semitone in the studio to give Sting’s high voice a little more headroom…for me I’d need to notch it down another couple of semitones to get the full high without screeching.
Bottle on the beach photo CC licence via Flickr adapted c/o Jenni C
