Noticed no-one has discussed the Police's Andy Summers before.
One of my all-time favourites. His style IMO was the real texture augmenting Sting's compositions, and Sting's (admittedly great) post- Police Mk 1 solo work showed the difference. Andy was clearly the most schooled musician in the Police. IMO their magic was Sting's songcraft and voice, Andy's musical knowledge and virtuoso 'less is more' guitarlines and Stewart Copeland's incredible (!!!!) snare sound and behind (or ahead??) of the beat playing. PS, what an incredible drummer Copeland is IMHO. I think a great injustice is the trite perception that Sting = Police and vice versa. I look at it as Sting having placed the colours on the palette, and Summers as having applied the brush strokes (although that metaphor would have suited the drummer more!!!!). Andy did this by having a distinct philosophy or approach to the role of the guitar and voicings that would convey the texture he was looking for. Here's an Andy quote from the first site mentioned below's lessons section:
[i]"If you want room for more complex emotions, you leave traditional triadic harmony behind. That stuff has a certain emotionality built into it - major chords are "happy," minor chords are "sad". Again it's telling you what to feel. One way to lose that was to remove the major or minor thirds from the chords and put in it's place the added second or ninth (same note as the 2nd but 7 notes higher), which creates a much cooler and more open space."
The add9 shape is the classic Police sound; the stacking of parallel fifths across the lowest three strings, where the top note is the ninth. That basic shape is used in Message in a Bottle, in Invisible Sun and of course in Every Breath You Take.[/i]
Andy plays a number of different guitars, and this also changed during the Police and post-Police eras. His collection was reported during the mid-80's as numbering around 100, and he has since then, "cut down to about 70." His main studio guitar during the Police-era was, however, a 1963 Telecaster Custom (played through "modified" 100-watt Marshall half-stack amps. Excerpt from the gear section on the Andatta-site linked below:
[i]Andy has been so closely identified with this Telecaster that entire articles in books have been devoted to it. He recorded mostly all of his studio tracks up to the "Synchronicity" album with it. It has a very interesting background . . . Eric Clapton was, in fact, the previous owner! As Andy explained to Vic Gabriani in the December '97 issue of Guitar World, "Clapton was a contemporary of mine back in the Sixties, and we'd share guitar information. He was very seriously into the blues, trying to play like B.B. King, and particularly Buddy Guy. He was playing a Telecaster at the time, and I convinced him to try my Les Paul, which he wanted to buy. So I brought it to this session he was doing, and he immediately started using it. That turned out to be the Fresh Cream album. So then I wound up with the Telecaster, which I played all through the Police and still use today. We were all playing variations on Black American music, and we'd jam with each other all the time at this club called the Flamingo, in London, which became the matrix for the whole British guitar scene at the time. I'd share a bill with Eric, Jeff Beck would come and go, Jimmy Page would drop in. That's where it all started..."
This guitar has a Gibson PAF humbucker in the neck, and a stock Fender pickup in the bridge. When Andy was in Los Angeles during the early seventies he had it customized to include a preamp (sellotaped into the back, removed around 1997) and an out-of-phase switch (which helps Andy obtain some awesome, "crispy" rhythm tones.) I believe he also had a new bridge fitted on at this time, since it looks too "modern" to be a '63 Telecaster bridge.
Andy's elusive tone has alot to do with this guitar. The mere fact that the normally accepted positions of the pickups are reversed- from single neck, humbucker bridge to humbucker neck, single bridge- does alot. Alot of people who try to cop Andy's tone on a guitar with a humbucker in the bridge area are wasting their time; the bridge position will always be "too warm and not bright enough", and the single coil will always be "not loud or warm enough", no matter how much tweaking you do. Sorry, guys . . . As Andy's guitar collection grew he began using this guitar less and less for recording. However, he offered a reasonable explanation to Vic Gabriani in the January '94 issue of Guitar World: "I did use that Tele almost exclusively on stage and in the studio pretty much up until the Ghost album. The Tele was a great live guitar, but it was a little bit lacking in highs for recording. But every time I pick it up I remember why it was so great."[/i]
It concludes with what is IMO a stunningly eloquent articulation of what I imagine (as someone who doesn't own guitars in the upper brackets) some guitars being able to be like:
[i]"I had it customized years ago in Los Angeles when I first got it. I'm amazed that it keeps going on because the pre-amp is just sellotaped in the back. I'm always afraid the guitar's going to fall to pieces but it keeps going year after year. It beats every other guitar I've heard or had hands down. I have other guitars but I'm so used to playing the Police set with this guitar that to change would be very difficult. I'm sure it's true for most guitarists, that you get one guitar you really like and you always play it. It just has a great sound, and you can try to analyze it but l think it's beyond analysis. Some guitars are like that. It just is."[/i]
Anyway, for those interested in more, check out the following links:
Fan-site billed as follows: "[i]Welcome to Zenyatta Andatta! This is the most in-depth and comprehensive analysis of Andy Summers' guitars, songs, gear, and techniques around![/i]". Be sure to check out the lesson wrt "harp harmonics" (harmonics beyond the 12th, 7th, 9th, and 5th frets) based on Andy's body of work. Quoting Andy: [i]"That's not an effect- those are "chime harmonics." It's a technique I learned from [late American jazz guitarist] Lenny Breau that involves holding down a chord grip and alternately fingerpicking regular notes and sounding artificial harmonics by lightly touching the string 12 frets above the fretted note with your right index finger as you pluck the string with your thumb. If you play certain chords like that in sequence it sounds like church bells. It creates a highlight right at the top of the chord, and creates an aura, or a kind of halo around it."[/i]
http://web.tiscali.it/andatta/
His official site (click on the audio tab for some greatsamples of post-Police stuff):
http://www.andysummers.com/#
Nice Andy & Police resources/links page:
http://guitar.about.com/od/guitaristsptot/p/andy_summers.htm
A brilliant, huge collection of Police interviews spanning their career, including the 2007/2008 reunion tour.
http://www.sting.com/news/interview.php
Gonna try and post a pic or two of that 63 Tele,but my track record with uploading pix is dismal! Here goes nothing ...
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Hope this post will lead to some of the younger guys wanting to investigate Andy Summers a bit more.
Cheers
Riaan C
