Yes, Virginia–You Really Did See The Police Live

Today marks the first anniversary of a day that completely changed my life.

On July 14, 2007, I saw The Police live at Churchill Downs in Louisville, KY (that’s The Police as in the band and not the po-po, for anyone who’s confused).

I’ll be the first person to admit that I’m a little overdramatic when it comes to music, and live music in particular. Many people have had to live through my “this concert changed my life” stories. But in the case of this particular live show, I’m totally not bullshitting that this concert changed my life (and I’m usually not bullshitting regardless) because it righted one of the great wrongs of my childhood.

When the The Police’s Synchonicity tour came to St. Louis, I was twelve years old and had never been to a concert before (unless one counts seeing Tanya Tucker at Six Flags when I was six. And I don’t). The Police had ascended to the level of My Favorite Band on the strength of “Every Breath You Take,” which was not only a great song but also featured a video in which Sting looked so hot he managed to single-handedly trigger my entrance into puberty. Seriously. I pinpoint the moment at which Sting looks directly into the camera, the light switches from one side of his face to the other, and he pleads “Oh, can’t you seeeeee/You belong to meeeeee” as the instant I started down the road to becoming a woman. Honest to God.

So not seeing Sting live (oh, and Stewart and Andy, too) was simply not an option as far as I was concerned. By the time the St. Louis show was announced, I was well on my way to wearing out my cassette copy of Synchronicity and had purchased and was regularly listening to the rest of their back catalogue. I was fired up and ready to go.

All that stood in my way were my parents.

The arguments came in waves. You’re too young to go to a concert, they said. And, no, we don’t want to take you, they said. Too loud, too awful, they said. And, yes, we realize that you love them, they said, but the answer is simply no.

And then came the remark that was supposed to make me feel better–”The next time they tour, you’ll be older. You can go then.”

Well, we all know how that ended up.

After the demise of The Police, I comforted myself with Sting’s solo projects and concert tours, mixed in with a light dusting of Stewart Copeland’s and Andy Summers’ post-Police ventures (and just in case anyone thinks I’m slighting them, let me recommend two Stewart Copeland bands–Animal Logic and Oysterhead. And Andy’s One Train Later is not just one of the best rock memoirs I’ve ever read–it’s one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read, period.). Ironically, most of the times I’ve seen Sting live I’ve been with my dad, who decided that the music wasn’t so bad after all. And Sting has a penchant for taking off his shirt in concert, so I always left shows satisfied and happy on several levels. 

But, still, a void existed in my heart. I had missed my shot at seeing The Police live. And over the years, despite hundreds of other decidedly crappier bands getting back together and doing the reunion tour thing (seriously–how many times is a band like Poison allowed to get back together before people stop caring?), the members of The Police indicated in interview after interview that a redux was unlikely.

But then, last year, magic happened. First, the boys gave us that moment of togetherness at the Grammys (and then they left, subjecting viewers to nearly three non-stop hours of Mary J. Blige and Justin Timberlake). Then the reunion tour was announced, followed closely by my announcement to my husband that I didn’t care if we had to take out another mortgage on our newly-purchased house and sell every vital organ we had between us, we were going to see The Police. And as he has great affection for both our house and our vital organs, he agreed.

So one year ago tonight, we sat seventh row left at the second concert ever at Churchill Downs. When people ask me what it felt like to see Sting, Stewart, and Andy walk out on stage together after so many years, I liken the experience to having grown up to find out that Santa Claus really does exist. All those years, you’d let yourself be convinced that he was just a myth, just a sweet silly memory from your childhood, and then, suddenly, you’re in your (ahem!) late thirties and there he is, big as life, standing right in front of you when you never thought he would be.

But The Police were better than Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy all rolled into one. Halfway through the opening song, “Message in a Bottle,” I was totally overcome and got tears in my eyes. I shit you not.

The show was a parade of hits, which I expected, having heard tapes of previous shows. So the setlist didn’t change my life, and I didn’t get to hear some of the album cuts I might have back in 1983 or earlier. But the setlist wasn’t the point. The point was finally getting to watch The Police–Sting, Stewart, and Andy–plow through those songs. Together. The point was dancing and smiling and screaming along to every last word. The point was meeting a guy who drove all over the Midwest to see them three times in one week back in 1983. The point was that, while he didn’t take his shirt off, Sting walked over in front of my section and blew me a kiss (yes, me–and apparently every other woman sitting in my section, if what I read on The Police fan boards in the following days was true).

So, in the end, the concert was every bit as wonderful as I’d hoped the Synchronicity show would have been when I was twelve (and possibly better, seeing as how now I’m old enough to drink beer). And when it was over, as much as I wanted to run to a computer to buy tickets to another show in order to live it all again, I restrained myself (I refer you to the mentions of my husband and our new home above for at least two reasons why I exercised restraint). While I could certainly have gone to every remaining show on the reunion tour and been perfectly happy, I also knew I could be perfectly happy with just one–just that one perfect show. That one perfect show that went back and erased years of moping around, filled with gloom and doom that I’d blown my only shot to see my favorite band. That one perfect show that made the twelve year old inside of me very, very happy.