The Police Zenyatta Mondatta: …why must I be a man in a suitcase?
Written: Feb 03 '05
Product Rating:
Pros: Sting wrote several great songs after the first leg of The Police's 1980 world tour
Cons: What if they'd had more time in the studio before the tour's next leg?
The Bottom Line: These are some really great songs, but I have to wonder what could have been if The Police had more than three weeks in the studio to develop them…
bob_tomato's Full Review: Zenyatta Mondatta [Remaster] by The Police
**1980 was the year that The Police became worldwide superstars. Embarking on an unprecedented tour of nineteen different countries, including first ever visits to India and Egypt by a touring Western rock band, the band packed up their curious blend of punk, reggae, jazz and pop and took it to the world - everywhere they went, people couldn't get enough of The Police. Demand for the band was massive, and their immense international fame finally began to make them stars in the American market. The time was right for the band to hit it big in the world's biggest musical market.
But the band had very little time in which to make it happen… Stewart, Sting and Andy took a couple months off in the summer of 1980, giving them the opportunity to go off and write new songs for a new album. Though they were scheduled into a studio in Holland for a month, even this was interrupted for a week due to the band's commitment to play two outdoor festivals in England and Ireland. The band had been living out of a suitcase for months with very little rest, and though their experiences while on the road were a huge source of lyrical inspiration, another leg of their world tour loomed large in August. Did they have enough time to craft an album worthy of The Police?
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…you make the best of what's still around
My answer: yes and no. The songs Sting wrote in the two off months were quite solid really, and gave the band something significant to work with. They were used to playing with little or no rehearsal – they were just that good, and they fed off performing under pressure. They quickly laid down the tracks and put as much effort as they could into recreating their unique regatta de blanc style that had blossomed on their previous recording. The songs all have a fresh urgency, that palpable presence that illustrates how tight they had become as a live band. What is missing from Zenyatta Mondatta is the natural progression of inventiveness that can be seen between the first two albums and between the final two albums. Zenyatta is what it is – a marvelously monolithic totem describing 1980's best touring band, and the beginning of the end for The Police.
"We had bitten off more than we could chew. We finished the album at 4 am the day we were starting our next world tour. We went to bed for a few hours, then traveled down to Belgium for our first gig. It was cutting it very fine."
- Stewart Copeland
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Bombs away, but we're okay
I know that several of my fellow reviewers are getting ready to make me the canary in a coal mine, but I am firmly convinced that Zenyatta Mondatta is not much more than Regatta de Blanc, Part Deux, recorded this time in a much better studio. And honestly, that's not a bad thing – you could do worse than follow up a great record like Regatta with another that emulates the same pop-friendly songs with intelligent lyrics and futuristic guitar work that no other band on the planet can replicate. That's a good thing.
Ultimately, it's like carpet bombing the music industry – rush out a bunch of songs using The Police's proven regatta sound and see what the public embraces. The band was bound to get a few hits using this method. In their first two recordings, the band was scraping to get by, driven to prove something, and they took everything they learned and improved upon it constantly. They learned as they went and so their first two recordings are snapshots of the state of the band when they went into the studio to record what they hoped would be THE record, rather than just another, or worse yet, their last record. In their final two recordings, the band had the luxury of taking as much time as they wanted to create ingenious, atmospheric groundbreaking material. They could afford to be wrong, and still have time to fix it. They could afford to experiment until finding the right sound, instead of producing more of the same sounds.
What seems to save the album is the very desperation and exhaustion that drives it. With a deadline looming, the band ripped through each song, returning to some of the speed witnessed in Outlandos D'Amour, while the reggae fashions of Regatta De Blanc remain at the fore in the band's overall sound. The band is obviously tighter than ever – the long world tour increased their competence as a band while wearing them down at the same time. When the time came for Zenyatta to be recorded, they were barely recovered from the last leg of the tour, and already gearing up for the next. The result is a record that sounds similar in approach much like Regatta De Blanc, but has just enough energy and interest to maintain the band's high standard.
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Voices Inside my Head
"I couldn't have written "Driven to Tears" or "When the World is Running Down" three years ago. I hadn't seen the world for a start. And I was too interested in me."
- Sting
Regardless of Sting's interests at any point during his tenure with The Police, it is apparent that the band's success was due in large part to his skills as a songwriter. The outwardly focused songs on Zenyatta Mondatta discussed events like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (Bombs Away) and third-world famine and poverty (Driven To Tears). Sting would write other lyrically serious songs later in his solo career, most notably Russians, They Dance Alone, and Fragile, and each of these songs would be musically serious in tone to match the somber words. The songs on Zenyatta Mondatta may have serious undertones, but they all sport overtly fun overtones – they are all pleasant to listen to.
Who can resist the infectious fun of songs like Don't Stand So Close to Me and De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da? - two songs hardwired to the manic joy capacitor ;) of many a listener like myself. Fun, fun, fun, and yet full of heady ethical and moral dilemmas and biting social commentary…
Young teacher, the subject
Of schoolgirl fantasy
She wants him, so badly
Knows what she wants to be
Inside him, their's longing
This girl's an open page
Book marking, so close now
This girl is half his age
-excerpted from Don't Stand So Close to Me
Poets, priests and politicians
Have words to thank for their positions
Words that scream for your submission
But no one's jamming their transmission
When their eloquence escapes you
Their logic ties you up and rapes you
- excerpted from De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da
The upbeat, catchy sounds of The Police in full regatta mode makes the serious lyrics stand out in sharp relief – this is perhaps where Zenyatta Mondatta truly exceeds it's predecessor. Sting's lyric craft continued to improve with each album and would continue to do so with future albums Ghost in the Machine and Synchronicity.
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Zenyatta Mondatta stands firmly in the middle of The Police's catalog, the transitional album between the scrapping trio fighting for any gig they could get, and the superstardom they would find in later years. Zenyatta served to extend the regatta sound that had proved popular worldwide into the American market, and it's supercatchy sounds framed more serious lyrics than the band had ever performed to date. It was the last album The Police needed to make, and the rush to produce it might have prevented the obviously strong material from becoming even greater – I really do enjoy Zenyatta Mondatta, but I am not as thrilled with it overall as others may be.
Go ahead – claim I suffer from delusion. I'm still confident I'm sane…
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The Police - Zenyatta Mondatta
Originally released in October, 1980 by A&M Records.
All quoted song lyrics are the copyrighted property of their owners
**Biographical information and personal quotes in this review drawn from The Police's box set Message in a Bottle: The Complete Recordings
Track Listing
Don't Stand So Close to Me / Driven to Tears / When the World is Running Down, You Make The Best of What's Still Around / Canary in A Coalmine / Voices Inside My Head / Bombs Away / De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da / Behind My Camel / Man In a Suitcase / Shadows in The Rain / The Other Way of Stopping
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