Ghost In The Machine
"On that album, whoever wrote the song would show the others the chords. In my case, I don’t know the names of ‘em so I just play ‘em. Andy looks at my fingers and says, ‘You moron, that can’t be done,’ or why have you done that?’ and everybody figures out whatever they can. In Montserrat, Andy was in the studio, Sting in the mixing room playing through the board and I was in the dining room in the next building. We all have our cans [headphones] on; while they get the chords I fiddle with the rhythms. Then we run through it once. Usually, somebody plays too many times around the chorus or something that’s not right, and we do it once more. If we haven’t got it then, it starts to get lost. Usually we have, though; One World (Not Three) was right the very first
time, for instance."
Trouser Press, 4/82
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
"Sting had this demo tape which everyone said sounded like a number one hit single. That was the most castrating effect - every time we recorded a take somebody’d say, ‘That doesn’t sound like a number one hit song, but the demo does.’ We went around and around trying everything. Sting had this keyboard player [Jean Roussel] on the demo, so we flew him in. That didn’t work so we threw that out. Then we had another go at doing it with the band. It took five days and 30 or 40 takes and still wasn’t working. By the fifth day we’d given up on everything. I was feeling stiff and pissed off: ‘Not another day on this - what the hell are we gonna do?’ The first thing that morning I overdubbed drums on Sting’s demo. We overdubbed everything on top of his demo, gradually replacing everything on his tape with us. That was what worked."
Trouser Press, 5/82
"We tried to make the song a Police song - which meant undoing all of Sting's arrangement. That was our basic policy anyway. Always has been. Throw out Sting's arrangement, keep his lyrics and the song. So we tried playing it slower than the demos, we tried my "rama-lama" punk version. Andy tried turning the chords upside down. We spent more time on this song than on all the other songs put together. One morning, in a state of extreme grumpiness, I remember saying, 'Okay put up Sting's original demo and I'll show you how crummy it is.' So Sting stood over me and waved me through all the changes. I did just one take, and that became the record. Then Andy did the same thing on the guitar. We just faced the music, but the bullet, and used Sting's arrangements and demo. Damn."
Revolver, 4/00
"There was only one inevitable single choice, Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic. Sting had a demo of it and people from the record company listened to it before we'd even recorded it and said, 'Oh, that's a number one single.' So it had Massive Hit stamped across it before we'd even done it. Which is probably why that song took us about five days to do - it had us stubbing our toes on it, because it had the taint of the industry on it."
Creem, 4/82
"I remember Sting for years trying to think of a rhyme for "magic", as in Every Little Things She Does Is Magic. I think the only word he could come up with, apart from 'tragic', was 'pelagic', which means 'ocean going'. There I was in my leather pants and punk hairdo, pondering the distinction between ocean-going and river-going fish."
Revolver, 4/00
Invisible Sun
"For me, the song was about Beirut, where I'd grown up, which at that point was going up in flames. My hometown was being vilified by the media as a terrorist stronghold, and it was being blasted by bombs and napalm. Twenty thousand Lebanese were killed that year. And the Lebanese must have been feeling some heat from the invisible sun, because they were keeping their peckers up."
Revolver, 4/00
"We wanted Invisible Sun out in England because we felt it was obviously pertinent to the country. It's also a good tune, and if anyone can inflict the airwaves with something a little bit different, then we can. In fact, Invisible Sun is not necessarily about Belfast, but about the human ability to survive in a crisis. It could be about Calcutta or Kabul as much as anywhere else."
Creem, 4/82
One World (Not Three)
"It was done in one take; we sussed the chords out and there's basically just two things that go back and forth, back and forth. Sting sort of shouted some lyrics and we just banged away at it and got it the first time. Usually we learn the chords, go in and play it and then come back and listen to it and go and play it again. That's usually the take and if it's not that one, it's the next take or sometimes three takes, but that's when it starts to go downhill. This one was the first take. We talked about the chords and I went to the drums, which are in a different building, and the guitar was in the recording room and Sting was in the mixing room. We each went to our posts and played it and that's what is on the record."
Modern Drummer, 10/82
Darkness
"The alternative title is "I Would Rather Be A Slug!" Whenever you think of a brilliant idea that's always terrific, then the next stage is to go out and do it."
Press Release, Ghost In The Machine, /81
