Klark Kent (album)

Background

Stewart Copeland first wanted the Police to record "Don't Care," but Sting couldn't connect with the lyrics and thought he couldn't perform them well. Believing the song had promise, Copeland handled all the instruments and vocals himself. To keep from hurting the Police's rising career, he released it under the fake name Klark Kent. A&M put out the single in 1978, and it hit number 48 on the UK chart. When the act got invited to Top of the Pops, Copeland showed up with Sting, Andy Summers, Kim Turner, Florian Pilkington-Miksa, and his brother Miles, all wearing masks. The mask muffled Copeland's voice and scared the producers, so he switched to heavy makeup and sunglasses, which made his true identity obvious.

The single's success led Copeland to put out three more: "Too Kool to Kalypso," "Away from Home," and "Ritch in a Ditch." He made videos for the first two. Eventually these tracks became an eight-song album, with the "t" dropped from "Ritch in a Ditch" on the record. Like the Police's first two albums, it was made cheaply at Surrey Sound Studios with engineer Nigel Gray. The music often matches Copeland's Police writing, with fast tempos and sarcastic takes on suburban life and Third World politics. "Guerrilla" uses Arabic words Copeland picked up growing up in Beirut. The main riff from "Excess" later turned up in the film Rumble Fish. "Theme from Kinetic Ritual" became the opening for MTV's The Cutting Edge, a show produced by I.R.S. Records, run by Miles Copeland.

Copeland left clues about his identity in the album's design. The inner sleeve has a collage with a photo of the Police playing with Henry Padovani. In every picture, Copeland wears a black-and-yellow hooped-stripe sweater, a nod to how Sting got his nickname.

Reception

In a retrospective review, Paul Collins of Allmusic panned the Klark Kent album, arguing that Copeland recorded it only for ego-driven reasons and that his vocals make the songs unbearable, concluding "the album only really succeeds when Copeland sticks to instrumentals". Despite this, Allmusic made Kollected Works an album pick and published a review by Richard Foss declaring it to be "inventive new wave pop of the highest order" and "a record that combined the musical sensibilities of the Police and the lyrical concerns of Weird Al Yankovic", applauding its humor and eccentricity while contending the tracks have musical depth that holds up to repeated listens.

Kollected Works

Kollected Works, a 1995 CD compilation, gathers songs Stewart Copeland recorded under his Klark Kent alias. It features every track from the original Klark Kent release, plus four non-album singles: "Too Kool to Kalypso," "Office Girls," "Thrills," and "Office Talk." Also included is a new version of "Love Lessons," a song Copeland first cut with Derek Holt as the Colts in 1986, and two previously unheard tracks, "Strange Things Happen" and "Stay Ready."

Copeland recorded "Strange Things Happen" around the time he traveled to Africa before making his album and film The Rhythmatist in 1985. It did not make that album, but a slightly longer alternate mix appeared on the 1986 soundtrack for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. Both "Stay Ready" and the new "Love Lessons" rely on a drum machine rather than live drums. These two unreleased songs were recorded at The Worried Rabbit Studio in Assyria.

Another Klark Kent track, "Yo Ho Ho," came out on the I.R.S. Records holiday compilation Just in Time for Christmas in 1990. "Too Kool to Kalypso" later turned up on Copeland's The Stewart Copeland Anthology, marking the first time a song originally done as Klark Kent was released under his real name. In the Police's 1993 box set Message in a Box: The Complete Recordings, Sting explained for the first time why he chose not to sing "Don't Care," saying the song suited Copeland better.

He added, "Stewart is good at being arrogant in a funny way. As in the Klark Kent's line 'If you don't like my arrogance, you can suck my socks'."