The Police : When The World Is Running Down...
On October 3, 1980 The Police released Zenyatta Mondatta, an album that would sell millions of copies cementing the trio's reputation as the most popular rock band in the world. If you haven't listened to it in a while you might be surprised by how good it is, thanks in large part to Stewart Copeland's drumming. You might also be thinking why is there so much filler on this album? ( What Police album doesn't have filler, though?)
The band takes a bit of a dim view of Zenyatta Mondatta, claiming the recording in The Netherlands was a rush job, knocked out in fewer than four weeks. Sting would call it the band's weakest album. Short of material, Andy Summers offered up an instrumental he'd written called "Behind My Camel". He recalls the reaction in his memoir One Train Later:
There is some resistance to this. Granted, it's not A-list pop song material, but it's interesting. Sting refuses to play on it, which is a drag, but Stewart is willing, so I put down the backing track with me playing bass and later I add the guitar parts. Somewhere in the middle of this action Sting-half joking, half serious- hide the tape in the garden at the back of the studio . I get what's going on and a day later manage to dig up the tape, and the song ends up on the album
"We had bitten off more than we could chew" Copeland recalled. " ... we finished the album at 4 a.m. on the day we were starting our next world tour. We went to bed for a few hours and then traveled down to Belgium for the first gig. It was cutting it very fine."
Like "Don't Stand So Close To Me", the single that preceded it, the album enters the UK charts at #1. Most of the reviews are good. Leonard Bernstein writes a letter to the New York Times claiming The Police are better than The Beatles. David Fricke of Rolling Stone favorably described its offering of "near-perfect pop by a band that bends all the rules and sometimes makes musical mountains out of molehill-size ideas" and complimented the band's "elastic" interplay. Robert Christgau says "Stewart Copeland's rhythms skank plenty while looting the whole wide world. Andy Summers's guitar harmonies are blatantly off-color, his melodic effects blatantly exotic. And Sting's words are about stuff--itchy general, teacher not petting with teacher's pet, plus, ahem, the perils of stardom. Summing it all up is their first true hit and only true masterpiece: "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da."
The Police are kind enough to put both good reviews and bad on their webpage for Zenyatta Mondatta. Among the bad, there's Julie Burchill of NME who wrote Zenyatta Mondatta is the third in an unbroken line of stupid titles that attempt to clothe plain fare in mystery, like the menu in a greasy French Bayswater cafe....The Police's 'Metal Machine Music'? It sounds like something some shyster would dredge up from the vaults - out-takes and such to milk the nostalgia market should The Police meet their maker in an aeroplane disaster. "
It's odd how the album's reputation keeps bouncing back and forth.
The 1992 edition of The Rolling Stone Album Guide gives Zenyatta Mondatta five stars, its highest score. But the last time Rolling Stone put out its 500 Greatest albums list in 2012 , it was the only Police album left off. ( The 2020 list only has one Police album, Synchronicity, at #159). Spin's Alternative Record Guide gave the album 4 /10, adding "Docked a point for the butt-ugly orange cover".
You've pulled out some interesting views here. I never realized this was such a disliked album until about a dozen years ago when I started reading blogs. As usual, I'm going against the grain by saying this is the only Police album I like from beginning to end.
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