Live! (The Police album)

Contents

According to Andy Summers, the Police first considered releasing a live album as early as 1982. Before that, only a handful of live tracks had appeared on B-sides or compilations like Urgh! A Music War from 1980. The initial plan was for a live record to serve as a bridge between the studio albums Ghost in the Machine (1981) and Synchronicity (1983). That project was mixed and mastered in Canada but never saw release. A similar idea came up again in 1984, after the Synchronicity tour ended, but it was shelved once more in favor of the greatest hits collection Every Breath You Take: The Singles. The concept regained traction in 1995, when the greater capacity and technical capabilities of the CD format made it feasible, and Summers was brought on to produce.

The final album captures the band at two very different points in its career. The first disc presents nearly the entire concert from November 27, 1979, at Boston’s Orpheum Theatre, which was broadcast by radio station WBCN. This set draws heavily from the first two albums, Outlandos d’Amour and Reggatta de Blanc, and includes songs that had only been released as singles or B-sides, such as “Fall Out” and “Landlord.” The second disc features excerpts from two shows on November 2 and 3, 1983, at The Omni in Atlanta, Georgia, during the Synchronicity tour. For these performances, the band was joined by three backing vocalists. Both 1983 concerts had been circulating among fans as bootlegs for years. They also appeared on the 1984 Synchronicity Concert VHS and the 2005 DVD, and a live version of “Tea in the Sahara” from these shows had already been released as the B-side to “King of Pain” in 1984.

Live! helped revive interest in the Police roughly a decade after they had broken up. It also highlighted the band’s live energy and their habit of reworking and stretching out familiar songs like “Roxanne” and “Walking on the Moon.” An edited version of “Can’t Stand Losing You” from the Boston concert was issued as a single, reaching number 27 on the UK charts, while the album itself peaked at number 25.

Reception

Critics responded positively to Live! David Sinclair of Q magazine said the record gave an important new layer to the band’s catalog, serving as a strong reminder that The Police were one of the great live acts of their era. Paul Colbert of Encore Magazine called the two CDs worth the decade-long wait, describing them as capturing two essential periods and two indispensable sets of material. Andrew Abrahams pointed out the contrast between the shows: the Boston performance shows a hungry rock band climbing the ladder, while the Atlanta set feels more predictable, reflecting a super-group that had grown comfortable with fame and commercial success. Sting seemed to share that view in a November 1993 Q interview, saying he remembered the small gigs far better than the stadium shows. He recalled details from the first tour like tricky stairs for the gear, conversations in the dressing room, and which encores they played, but noted that a stadium just looks like a stadium.