The Police

By the time The Police Greatest Hits was conceived, it was impossible to arrange to have the band together in one place. I shot the portrait of Andy Summers in my studio in New York, Stewart was photographed... read more at his country house in the English countryside. I was finally called to photograph Sting at his Hampstead home. He was pumped from working out in his gym in the basement and looked great, confident and at ease in his physicality. Every shot was amazing.

They were supporting Cherry Vanilla at The Marquee and grateful for the gig. Sting had this to say when he looked at this image in 1990: " I can pinpoint when it is, which is bizarre because it seems... read more like another life. What is funny about this photograph is that we look so young and innocent, at the time we felt older than everybody else. I was 26, but then everyone tended to be 19. We look incredibly young, like babies." (extract from Jill's book, ’The Moment’)

In the late 1960s, while at Millfield School in Somerset, I was fortunate to attend the English classes of a lovely lady called Miss Kenyon. Here I met a lanky, irrepressible American who, as I soon discovered,... read more shared my enthusiasm for the music of Jimi Hendrix, The Cream and the other heroes of the age. Stewart and I would later spend much of our half-terms in the basement of his parents’ orange residence in leafy St Johns’ Wood, listening to as many records as we could lay our hands on. After leaving school we remained in touch and when Stewart entered the music business I was the obvious choice for photography, some for publicity shots for his first role as a professional musician in Curved Air, others for the cover of his solo project as Klark Kent. When I produced the images seen here, I had already taken some photographs of The Police (Sting, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers) but due to a change in lineup Stewart wanted a reshoot. My previous session with the band had been outdoors, taking place on the roof of a flat in Mayfair, but this time I lugged my ancient flash kit round to Sting’s basement in Bayswater. As usual, the band were pulling faces, fighting and jumping about all over the place and I shot many reels of HP5. It was fun, as photo sessions should be.

I was asked to shoot the record cover of a new punk group, called The Police (Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland). My first LP cover. The shoot took place in a grimy tunnel south of the Thames near... read more Waterloo. The group wanted to wear US parachute suits but only had two so I lent them mine which I had brought back from a recent trip to NYC. It was a small budget shoot.

In the late 1960s, while at Millfield School in Somerset, I was fortunate to attend the English classes of a lovely lady called Miss Kenyon. Here I met a lanky, irrepressible American who, as I soon discovered,... read more shared my enthusiasm for the music of Jimi Hendrix, The Cream and the other heroes of the age. Stewart and I would later spend much of our half-terms in the basement of his parents’ orange residence in leafy St Johns’ Wood, listening to as many records as we could lay our hands on. After leaving school we remained in touch and when Stewart entered the music business I was the obvious choice for photography, some for publicity shots for his first ro le as a professional musician in Curved Air, others for the cover of his solo project as Klark Kent. When I produced the images seen here, I had already taken some photographs of The Police but due to a change in lineup Stewart wanted a reshoot. My previous session with the band had been outdoors, taking place on the roof of a flat in Mayfair, but this time I lugged my ancient flash kit round to Sting’s basement in Bayswater. As usual, the band were pulling faces, fighting and jumping about all over the place and I shot many reels of HP5. It was fun, as photo sessions should be.

Relaxing before a gig, Sting, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers were in high spirits. They had already cracked America and were now claiming Britain with much glee. The music press had trashed the The... read more Police a year earlier by accusing them of jumping on the punk bandwagon.