Sting entranced fans of the Police at Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre in Atlanta last month with many of that band’s biggest hits.
Now his former Police bandmate guitarist Andy Summers is coming to town and he will do the same, though stylistically, the Nov. 9 concert at Variety Playhouse will feel and sound entirely different. Tickets are available starting at $39.50 at axs.com.
Summers for the past 16 months has been on a worldwide tour dubbed “The Cracked Lens + a Missing String” with a concert that melds some of his favorite photos he has taken over the years with his guitar skills.
“It’s a one-man show but multimedia,” said Summers in a Zoom call with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I talk quite a lot. I have great stories. I play to a set of different photography we show on a cinematic screen. It’s been extremely successful. It goes down really well.”
His show, he added, “has set pieces but I’ve never rehearsed them. It’s improvised. I’m pretty loose with it. I don’t have a problem talking to the audience.”
For instance, “Bones of Chuang Tzu” is a solo piece, he said, “with a real sonic guitar sound” that is a soundtrack for a series of photos he took from trips to different parts of China. “It’s a completely different culture,” he said. “The people look different. They dress different, especially once you get out of Beijing or Shanghai. … I got plenty of shots of wonderful old Chinese people’s faces in their 70s and 80s. Got some great stuff.”
When told that Sting just performed in Atlanta, Summers said, “You’re going to see a better show!” He then added, “No, I shouldn’t say that. Good luck to him!”
Credit: AJC
Credit: AJC
Although the Police only reunited once after their 1984 breakup for a tour in 2007-08 that included a stop at Philips Arena, he harbors no ill will toward his former band mates Sting and Stewart Copeland. Unlike many peer bands like Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles, they have largely avoided the siren call of reunion money and have instead focused on their own solo projects.
Another reunion, Summers said, is not likely in the offing. “I’d be shocked if we did another one,” he said. “But you never know. Life is strange.”
Indeed, he carries plenty of warm memories from that crazy 1977-1984 time period when rock was dominant and MTV turned music into a true visual medium.
“You couldn’t get bigger than we were,” Summers mused. “It was a great time. It was the height of the recording industry when it was most golden.”
Summers had trained in bossa nova and Sting had comparable interests in reggae and jazz. “We found this whole language together,” he said. “We still had to make rock songs, but the information to build those songs came from a different place than most bands. Stewart was the foil against that. It was a once in a lifetime combination.”
Summers on this tour only overlaps with Sting on two songs from Sting’s Atlanta set list: “Roxanne” and “Message in a Bottle.”
He didn’t choose his Police songs based on the visuals (though he did use shots he took in the Sahara Desert for “Tea in the Sahara.”)
“I think I just picked the ones I thought I could pull off on stage and enjoy playing the most,” Summers said. “I don’t play ‘Every Breath You Take’ because it’s too simple.”
Summers in 2017 actually created a Police tribute band dubbed Call the Police with two Brazilian artists well known in that country. But that band only tours in South America.
“I’m scared to bring it to the States,” he said. “I don’t want to get slagged off by ratty critics. It’s true. But it’s a great show. It’s all hit songs. It’s a mob scene from the minute we get on stage to the end.”
IF YOU GO
Andy Summers
8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 9 $39.50-$60. Variety Playhouse, 1099 Euclid Ave. NE, Atlanta. variety-playhouse.com.
