Former The Police, Curved Air and Gizmodrome drummer Stewart Copeland has shared a rare demo of a sing that featured heavily in The Police live sets in 1977. You can listen to Clown's Revenge in full below.
Copeland has also announced that he will launch a new illustrated hardback book, Stewart Copeland's The Police Diaries, which tells the story – as it happened in his original diaries – of the formation of one of The Police, accompanied by classic and previously unseen photos and unreleased demo tapes of home recordings.
"Clown's Revenge was recorded on July 14, 1976 at Florian’s [Curved Air drummer Florian Pilkington-Miksa] house in Barnes," explains Copeland. "Sonja Kristina, my brother Ian and I were living there and used a store-room to set up our gear and write/record songs.
"From Curved Air I had a left-over Yamaha Leslie cabinet with reverb and recorded onto Florian’s Revox A77 tape machine – that I eventually bought from him. I soon discovered that I could play lightening guitar licks and be Eric Clapton by recording my solo with the tape at half-speed.
"When we moved to Mayfair and the punk thing broke out, Ian wrote this lyric and sang it into my trusty Shure m57 microphone. The song was long gone from The Police set list by the time Andy joined but the miracle is that when Sting first arrived in London, this and other crude renderings were the material that I played him as persuasion to join my band. And he joined!”
Stewart Copeland's The Police Diaries will be published by Rocket 88 Books in the Autumn, 2023. Fans can register now to gain access to pre-order discounts, and have the chance to have their name printed in the book.
More information is available at policebooks.com.
