Police drummer Stewart Copeland promises a dynamite show in Ottawa this week. But as he tells Lynn Saxberg, there's a limit to looking back and new projects beckon.

By now you've probably heard that the British rock trio the Police are planning to call it quits after a final swing through North America this summer. It's true. Singer-bassist Sting, guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland will return to their separate lives when their hugely successful reunion tour winds down in August. The final leg starts at Scotiabank Place on Thursday.

"We will have completed our mission," said Copeland in a phone interview, "and we feel very strongly that we want to get back to the other aspects of our lives as creative artists, and the Police is not about being creative artists."

Huh? Is he dismissing the force of the band, and how songs like 'Message in a Bottle' and 'Roxanne' infiltrated our consciousness and blazed a path for eclectic and innovative sounds in modern rock?

Of course not. He's witnessed the power of the catalogue first-hand for more than a year. The band reformed last year after 23 years, made a splash with a performance on the 2007 Grammys, and sailed through a busy tour schedule, ending as the year's top money-making touring act.

But it wasn't all about the money. "It's about re-enacting a canon of material, a ceremony, and there's a lot of value and a lot of drama to that, and it's very powerful," Copeland says. "We feel the power of a Police concert, which is about these songs, which have 20 years of people's lives infused in them. There's a real dramatic impact playing these songs, and we feel the return energy from people hearing them. And we see them reacting to them, and it's very powerful and that's why we're doing it."

But with "creative drive," in mind, he says of the reunion: "It's not about making anything new, and as artists, we gotta make new stuff.

"So come August, when this tour is finished, we will resume our former lives."

Sometimes, when bands reunite after an extended period, they rediscover the old magic between them and are inspired to write new material. It doesn't sound like it happened to the Police. The three musicians are reknowned for their egos, and have clashed in the past.

"It's been hell and it's been heaven," Copeland says, in describing the past year of reunion life.

"Although we figured we would be more Zen-like and patient, in fact we've been more cantankerous. Each of the three of us has been president for life in their own world for the last two decades, and having to collaborate on an equal basis with two other guys takes social skills that have languished, and so we have had to relearn how to be part of something bigger than ourselves."

Another thing they've learned is just how far they can go with changing the arrangements of songs that are sacred to a generation. Audiences generally don't like a lot of change in hit songs. But to keep it interesting for themselves, the

Police have been experimenting with jazzy rearrangements of their songs.

"As a rule of thumb, it basically is the record but then in the third verse, there will be something that is completely different," Copeland says.

Police drummer Stewart Copeland promises a dynamite show in Ottawa this week. But as he tells Lynn Saxberg, there's a limit to looking back and new projects beckon.

"It's important to us to be close enough to the songs so people get that feeling, wake up that memory that goes with that song. It has to be that song, but we are living, breathing visceral players and we just can't help ourselves."

Police concert dates are booked until early August. After that, Copeland is looking forward to life getting back to normal.

He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three daughters. He has four older children from a previous

"I really enjoyed my job and my life before the Police came along and I hope to return to it pretty much exactly as it was before. I'll get back into my Jeep Cherokee, and keep on dropping my kids off at school and writing music like I was before," he says.

In addition to composing film soundtracks, Copeland writes orchestral rock music. One piece, 'Celeste', named after his youngest daughter, premiered at a music festival in Savannah, Georgia last month.

"The room lit up," he says. "There were only 1,200 people rather than 80,000, but the spirit in the room was such that I can't wait to do more of that."

He's also working on a book, tentatively titled Afterglow, about his post-Police adventures.

"It just happens that after being in a band, life doesn't stop, life goes on," Copeland says. "And if it's been a particularly successful one, the life afterwards can be interesting. Strange things happen that don't happen to normal people.

As he heads into the home stretch of an ambitious world tour, he'll be gathering material for the final chapter.

"This is going to be the best part of the tour," the musician says.

"The expectations that people had in the beginning, the weirdness about re-accommodating each other, is all done now. We are just looking at gigging out these last few months and burning it up. This will totally be the best touring shows ever."

© The Ottawa Citizen by Lynn Saxberg

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