ON THIS DATE (33 YEARS AGO) October 2, 1981 – The Police: Ghost in the Machine is released. Ghost in the Machine is the fourth album by The Police, released on October 2, 1981. It reached #2 on the Billboard 200 Top LPs chart, and features the single, Every Little Thing She Does is Magic, which reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and #1 on the UK Singles chart. In 2003, the album was ranked #322 on Rolling Stone magazines list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, the bands highest ranking on the list. Much of the material in this album was inspired by Arthur Koestlers The Ghost in the Machine, which also provided the title. In his younger days, Sting was an avid reader of Koestler. Another of The Polices albums Synchronicity was inspired by Koestlers The Roots of Coincidence, which mentions Carl Jungs theory of synchronicity. The album was the first Police record to feature heavy use of keyboards and horns. Spirits in the Material World has a rhythmic string synthesizer part, Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic uses piano arpeggios and Invisible Sun has a background of synthesizer chords. The following twenty minutes of the record (Hungry for You (Jaurais Toujours Faim de Toi) through One World (Not Three)) include many saxophone harmonies while the opening to Secret Journey showcases the Roland Guitar Synthesizer. Sting included all the synthesizer parts in his demos for the songs, and brought in Jean Roussel for the piano parts on Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic. The demo for Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic was such a high budget recording that the group could not best it with the equipment available at AIR studios, and ended up using it as the backing track for the official recording, with Copeland and Summers dubbing their parts on. Sting also played all the saxophone parts on the album. Andy Summers recollects: I have to say I was getting disappointed with the musical direction around the time of Ghost in the Machine. With the horns and synth coming in, the fantastic raw-trio feel—all the really creative and dynamic stuff—was being lost. We were ending up backing a singer doing his pop songs. In the wake of Zenyatta Mondattas massive success, the Police edged even further away from their earlier reggae leanings, but instead of moving into the mainstream, they continued experimenting with sophisticated textures and exotic rhythms. Sure, theres the archetypal hummable pop hit, which Sting manages to throw in with virtually every album (here its the romantic, frothy Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,) but theres more darkness here, both musical and lyrical, than on any previous Police recording. Sting picks up on the social-consciousness thread of Zenyattas Driven to Tears on several tunes here. From the bleak Invisible Sun to the rage-against-the-machine sentiments of Too Much Information and Rehumanize Yourself, the lyrics speak of the souls inability to keep pace with advancing technology and all its pitfalls. Its not all gloom and doom, though, as the propulsive, funky Demolition Man and Hungry for You attest. ORIGINAL ROLLING STONE REVIEW Esperanto, like the League of Nations, was one of those good ideas that just didnt work. Intended as an international language not native to anyone but foreign to no one — an answer to divisiveness dating back to the Tower of Babel — it failed because its design gave a sop to every culture while capturing the passion of none. The same is often true of pop music that attempts to meld the resources of various countries. Native idioms, when taken out of context, can lose their indigenous spark or be reproduced so painstakingly that they become ridiculous in a pop context. The bridge that many groups try to build to the Third World sometimes uses condescension for its supports. By their second and best LP, Reggatta de Blanc, however, the Police had managed to devise a musical Esperanto that succeeded. Bathed in the watercolor wash of guitarist Andy Summers chording, the bands rhythms and inflections merged into a homogenized yet utterly distinctive sound that didnt revere its components as much as recontextualize them, creating new passion in fresh places. The groups approach was relentlessly, calculatedly middlebrow: never identify, never overexplain, flatter your audience into thinking they appreciate cross-rhythms when whats really hooking them is some of the snappiest songwriting since Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Buttressed by the bands earnestly liberal message, this approach clicked. Zenyatta Mondatta, the third Police album, made the Top Ten. In a strange way, its sound was so familiar as to be formulaic: Stings high, lilting singing, Summers shivery harmonics and, most of all, the musics spare, sculptural quality — the way each number had a core of space in which rhythms changed and grew and echoed. Ghost in the Machine downplays most of these elements — or, rather, augments them. Chords dont reverberate in a shaft of silence but find response in overdubs. Stings thin vocals have harmonizing partners. The multitrack singing eliminates the attractive tinge of aloneness thats always been integral to the subtext of Police compositions, while the extra instrumentation — keyboards, guitar parts, Stings overdubbed one-man horn section — fills up the open spaces in their music. Ghost in the Machine feels unsettlingly crowded. Which is as it should be, since thats what the album is about: overload, media explosion, the global village, the behavioral sink. The Polices platform, a spinoff from Marshall McLuhan, Alvin Toffler, et al., is hardly news (sure, Ghost in the Machine is a smart, track-it-down title, but author Arthur Koestler hasnt been in vogue for quite a while), yet its strongly stated, consistent and compelling. The thrashing, denatured funk of Too Much Information, the whirlpool riff that punctuates Omegaman and the oppressive, hymnlike aspects of Invisible Sun all bespeak claustrophobia and frustration, and the lyrics bear them out. The Police skillfully manipulate musical details to underscore their points. Sting brays information as if to demonstrate how words, when repeated often enough, can disassemble into meaninglessness. In Rehumanize Yourself, the singsong circus-calliope mood of the music works as a taunt to the raw seriousness of the lyrics: Billy joined the National Front/He always was a little runt/Got his hand in the air with the other cunts.... Theyre still not the Clash — neither the National Front nor the situation in Belfast (broodingly addressed in Invisible Sun) is an especially risky target — but the Police display more commitment, more real anger, on Ghost in the Machine than ever before. Its as if their roles as self-anointed pop ambassadors have shown them the difficulty of healing gestures. For example, the heart-rending joyous-ness with which Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic bursts from the grooves proves its discontinuity with all of the other songs. Its a moment of liberation, of tossed-off shackles, whereas the rest of the record (even, to some extent, the obsessive Hungry for You) emphasizes constraints — if not those imposed by society, then those accepted as responsibility, like the toll that talent exacts in Stewart Copelands Darkness or the promise to continue to seek knowledge in Secret Journey. Even One World (Not Three), a sort of reggae march thats the closest the LP comes to an anthem, is a kind of trial: by attacking the concept of such categorizations as the Third World, the tune turns inward to interrogate the Police themselves, implicitly questioning the attitudes involved in their rock-around-the-world crusades. Not so incidentally, the number is also a virtuosic instrumental display, particularly by Copeland, whose drumming captures both reggae nuances and rock & roll dynamics. On Ghost in the Machine, not even genius exempts you from tough questions. The Polices smarts have always been greatest when they didnt show — in making unorthodox career decisions or disguising the subtlety of their songwriting as simplicity. Now that the group has been rewarded with success, its time to change, to challenge old assumptions. Having seen the world, these guys are starting to look more closely at themselves. ~ Debra Cohen (December 10, 1981) TRACKS: All songs written by Sting except as noted. Side one Spirits in the Material World – 2:59 Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic – 4:22 Invisible Sun – 3:44 Hungry for You (Jaurais Toujours Faim de Toi) – 2:52 Demolition Man – 5:57 Side two Too Much Information – 3:43 Rehumanize Yourself (Sting, Stewart Copeland) – 3:10 One World (Not Three) – 4:47 Ωmegaman (Andy Summers) – 2:48 Secret Journey– 3:34 Darkness (Copeland) – 3:14 The Police Sting https://youtube/watch?v=W4KtVSCzw7c
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 09:00:49 +0000
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