‘Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving The Police’ On Prime Video Shows Life After Rock Stardom

My buddy Tony once said the greatest qualitative differential in rock n’ roll was between The Police at their best and Sting at his worst… Though on the surface this sounds like a vicious dig against the group’s unbearably handsome and insufferably self-important, rain-forest-loving, lute-playing former lead singer. I think what he was really getting at was how great The Police were when they were at their peak. And while a big part of that was, indeed, the songwriting and distinctive vocal style of the man born Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, just as important were Stewart Copeland’s virtuosic drumming and the multi-layered and inventive playing of guitarist Andy Summers.

Along with The Pretenders James Honeyman-Scott and Scottish musician John McGeoch, Summers helped create a style of guitar playing that defined the sound of rock music in the early ‘80s. He relied heavily on texture and finesse, utilizing an array of at-the-time cutting edge guitar effects pedals, and came up with memorable lines and chord voicings which revealed a deeper knowledge of guitar playing than your average post-punker. In 2006, Summers penned the autobiography One Train Later: A Memoir, which formed the basis for the 2012 documentary Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving The Police, which is currently streaming on Prime Video.

With a mix of archival clips and footage filmed during the band’s 2007 – 2008 reunion tour, Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving The Police jumps back in forth in time. As Summers recounts his life story, pre and post-Police, we see him once again working out music and clowning around with the famously contentious three-piece. While the hyperactive drummer and haughty singing bassist often battled for attention, Summers exerted influence as the band’s senior member. He was 10 years older than his bandmates and had a career stretching back to the heyday of “Swinging London,” even if fame eluded him until his 30s.

Like many British musicians his age, Summers was born during World War 2 and came from humble beginnings. Music came into his life early, with piano lessons starting at 6, but after receiving a guitar for his 11th birthday he soon spent every waking hour practicing. In 1965, Summers joined Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band and moved to London, where they became a club sensation but never had a hit, later changing their name to Dantalian’s Chariot for a psychedelic makeover. Summers relocated to Los Angeles in 1968 following an invitation to join Eric Burdon & The Animals, but after one album the group broke up. He stayed in L.A. for the next five years, often struggling to pay the rent, but met the love of his life, future wife Kate Lunken, with whom he returned to Britain in 1975.

Now in his early 30s, old by rock n’ roll standards, Andy Summers played with various acts before hooking up with Copeland and Sumner in 1977. They asked him to join their new punk band, The Police, which he agreed to, so long as they booted founding guitarist Henry Padovani. The group made a pretty piss-poor punk band, since, as Summers says, “We could really play.” The early Sting composition “Roxanne” was their first hit, and its reggae-influenced groove gave the band a new artistic avenue to explore. Their first album was released in 1978, and the band began concentrating on breaking in America, their inaugural U.S tour starting when Summers wife was 8 months pregnant. He made it home three hours before she gave birth, but the pull between home life and rock life would have its price.

The Police toured relentlessly through their early years, with each album more successful than the last. By 1980, Summers already thought the band was becoming “a machine” and felt constricted by having to play the hits night after night.  Making things more complicated was the fact that the press tended to focus on Sting, which only enabled his desire to control the group’s songwriting. To be fair, he was writing multiple hit songs per record; however, the musical voice of The Police was the combination of Sting’s songs and singing with the accomplished and utterly original playing of his bandmates.

During the recording of the fourth Police album, Summers’ wife Kate asked for a divorce. The band was now traveling in separate limos to shows. To fill time, Summers began photographing the world around him: empty highway stops, lonely back-stages and naked groupies in an endless rotation of anonymous hotel rooms. He says he had become “a rock n’ roll asshole, an emaciated millionaire prick.” Their fifth album, 1983’s Synchronicity, was their most successful to date. It was also their last. The band would play their last live shows in 1986 before disbanding.

Early on in Can’t Stand Losing You, Summers says he hopes the reunion tour will bring a sense of closure to The Police’s ugly breakup at the height of their popularity. Ironically, closure is one thing greatly missing from the documentary. The juxtaposition between Summers’ account or what went down and footage from reunion tour seem out of synch, like a funeral where nobody talks about the dead or Christmas dinner with divorced parents. If there’s a happy ending in finding out Summers and his wife reconciled and remarried after the end of the band, you still want to know how the group got from hating each other’s guts to deciding to spend a year on the road together. The film ends with Summers heading out on stage for the group’s “last ever” London performance. “It is now. It is forever. I strike the first chord,” he says before picking out the ringing arpeggios which begin their 1979 hit “Message In A Bottle.” It’s the kind of guitar part only a guitar player could come up with and the songs’ major hook, though Summers doesn’t have a songwriting credit on the song. Nevertheless, they’re very good chords.

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter: @BHSmithNYC.

Stream Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving The Police on Prime Video