Police launch reunion tour in Canada

May 29, 2007

Vancouver, Canada - Reunited 80's group The Police have begun a five-month world tour in Vancouver, Canada, 21 years after their last concert.

Singer Sting, drummer Stewart Copeland and guitarist Andy Summers drifted apart in the mid-1980s but have been rehearsing together since March.

"I'd like to introduce the band. Andy, this is Stewart," Sting joked to the crowd, including actress Penelope Cruz.

The release of a 30-track greatest hits album - available globally in the week of June 11th - has also been confirmed.

Many of those classic singles - including Message in a Bottle, Roxanne and Spirits In The Material World - were aired at Monday's concert.

They were greeted with thunderous applause by the 20,000 fans who attended the gig in Vancouver's GM Place.

The stage was left simple and uncluttered, perhaps to counterpoint the complexity of the band's songs.

Earlier Summers had promised fans that a lot of consideration had gone into ensuring that their live sets would sound fresh.

"We've got all these famous songs, but we look at them like new pieces of material," he told the Vancouver Sun.

"To a point, we've reworked them, but obviously all the famous riffs are still there - you can't play Every Breath You Take without me playing that guitar, obviously.

"We constantly fiddle with them, but because they're alive, they're living, they're not dead. We spent the last two months rearranging and fiddling around until we felt it was good."

He also predicted "some intensity in the songs that may transcend the original recorded versions".

Meanwhile Copeland has revealed that there was still tension between the band members at times, with their strong personalities leading to arguments as they developed their musical ideas.

"We play nicely for two or three days, and then we start to get on each others' nerves," he told Reuters.

"Then we have a screaming match, and then we hug and kiss, and then we play even better."

The group never officially split up in the 1980s but huge creative tensions meant that relations were difficult between the trio for many years.

"It's not the most comfortable place in the world being in The Police," Copeland conceded.

"It's a bed of roses, all right - including the thorns."

The world tour, which runs until 2008, will touch down in North America, Europe, Latin America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

The string of concerts unofficially kicked off the night before when the band played a dress rehearsal for about 4,000 members of its fan club.