Stewart Copeland Discusses The Police’s ‘Starving Years’

Stewart Copeland recently spoke with Ultimate Classic Rock about his forthcoming book about The Police’s early era – or what he calls the “starving years.”

He told the outlet what he found while reviewing his diaries for the memoir, saying, “I look back and there’s this kind of desperation. At the time, I remember being full of angst and driven but optimistic – assuming, ‘I know I’m going to make it. We’re going to make it. I know we’re going to make it.'”

The drummer added, “It was just this pace, day after day after day, the grind of it. At one point, I wrote in the diaries, ‘I’ve got 70 quid – I owe 70 of it for rent. I’ve got two quid in my pocket, until my next lucky break.'”

However, despite the early financial struggles, he admits they did manage to “make a living as a band.”

Copeland recalled, “We paid ourselves. We played a show and our expenses were such, we get paid 20 quid, we spent this on the truck, that on the PA and so on. One roadie, mostly? Actually, we didn’t have a roadie. The PA came with its own guy. We carried our own gear in and set our own gear up. We’d go home that night with five or 10 quid in our pocket.”

The diary-based book is set for release in early 2022.