A renowned composer and rock and roll hall of famer is currently at SMU. Stewart Copeland, the drummer and founding member of The Police is currently doing a mini residence.
Copeland came on Wednesday to attend the Meadows Percussion Ensemble Spring Concert in Caruth Auditorium. The former Police band member came to see the performance of his work “The Gene Pool.”
He was here to meet the performers and to thank them.
“I’ll thank them all for honoring me by playing my work,” he said. He came to Dallas for two reasons.
“They were going to play my tunes and I always like that. Also, Dallas, I’ve had some good times in Dallas and Fort Worth. I like going to Dallas. I’ve got friends there.”
On Friday afternoon, the famous rocker will give a lecture in the O’Donnell Auditorium. He will speak about his life, his time with The Police and his career after the band parted ways.
“I’ve done a lot of things with my life. The Police were eight years of my 60. All kinds of strange stuff happened in those other 52 years,” he said. He enjoys talking about his time with The Police.
“That’s the easiest thing to talk about. That’s what most people are interested in and those are some pretty wild adventures,” he said.
“I’m real proud of The Police because it contrasts with the work I do now. “
Since his time with The Police, Copeland has composed pieces for film, TV, orchestras, ballets and has even appeared on the popular television show “Storage Wars.”
He mostly enjoys making music for the sake of making music.
“They [orchestra and TV/ film composing] both have their joys. But nothing beats art for arts sake,” he said. “Any time you get to follow your instincts and do something just because it’s cool is way better than doing something just because they’r paying you for it.”
He does, however, recommend aspiring composers take work composing for television.
“I recommend that any composer, serious or otherwise, start off with doing a television series,” he said. “That is the boot camp of composing. You got a show every week.”
About his time with The Police, he said, “Both of the guys in the police have very large musical vocabularies. There’s a lot that I learned from those cats – much as I wanted to strangle them. The success of The Police, not just the commercial success but the feeling of having audiences respond so powerfully, definitely is a vitamin.”
Fame and the impact of awards do diminish overtime, however.
“Exponentially, the fizz dissipates and it’s just a piece of metal on the shelf. It’s still great,” he said. “But there are other things in life that can be uplifting – such as children and family, awards aren’t really one of those things. A lot of the mystique of fame might distract people from what everybody knows and that is, every famous person, no matter how spectacular they are, still just put their pants on one leg at a time. You live and breathe just like everybody else.”
The former Police drummer will be at SMU until Friday.