All about The Police - "Outlandos d'Amour" album (1978)
Содержание
A new wave of post-punk! The Police - "Love Criminals" are taking over the world! "Criminals of Love" is the first album by Englishmen "The Police", which was released in 1978.
An excursion into the history of the group
This band was formed a year earlier, in 1977, and the drummer Stuart Copeland, an American by birth, is at its origin. When his progressive rock band Curved Air broke up, the musician was keen to find new members to bring them to an appreciative punk rock audience.
First records
Singer and bassist Sting and guitarist Henry Padovani began to try their hand at rehearsing with Copeland in early 1977, and within a few weeks they managed to create the opening track "Fall Out"/"Nothing Achieving". This was the start of a tour as the opening act for more famous punk bands.
In the spring of the same year, Mike Howlett, a member of another defunct rock band, Gong, decided to release a project similar to the previous one, and for this purpose he found Sting and Andy Summers, formerly guitarist Eric Burdon. And Sting, for his part, called in drummer Copeland as well. Calling themselves "Strontium 90", the musicians recorded a number of test versions at Virtual Earth Studios and performed in England and France.
For a while the newly formed band consisted of four members (Copeland, Sting, Padovani, Summers), but later Padovani was dropped due to his limited potential. The other three would remain in the band forever.
The first album was recorded in more than modest conditions, with a strictly limited budget. There was no producer and no contractual relations. It helped that Copeland's brother Miles, who was actively involved in media projects at the time, heard the song "Roxanne" and immediately brought the band to A&M Records.
Success and "unloved songs"
At first, the album had no success. It was an unknown band with an unremarkable label. The BBC was not so favourable to the first two singles - "Can't Stand Losing You" and "Roxanne". Sting later recalled that musicians organised a campaign against the performance of "Roxanne" (this composition is about a girl of easy behaviour). There were difficulties with another song because the cover artwork showed one of the band members standing on a block of ice with a noose around his neck, as if waiting for it to melt.
It took at least a year until the album tracks started to be played on the radio and gain popularity. The low-budget American tour also influenced the promotion. The main hit was still "Roxanne", and from the beginning of '79 it was played on almost every station in the States and Britain. "A&M" issued an additional single release, which was honoured with a 12th position in the UK charts, and "Can't Stand Losing You" - 2nd at all. The album reached number 6, and it was a success.
Miles Copeland III, who acted as producer, wanted to name the album "Police Brutality", but after "Roxanne" he softened the name to "Outlandos d'Amour". In French, it is "Criminals of Love".
Album Accomplishments
In 2003, the album was ranked 434th in Rolling Stone's ranking of the 500 most famous albums in all of music history.
