In response to Copeland’s new memoir, Strange Things Happen, Playboy’s Scott Smith discusses with him in-depth everything from his latest project, composing Ben-Hur Live, to the challenges of the Police, to his belief that a rock star is just a “figment of imagination.”
PLAYBOY: There are quite a few people who consider their personal lives and their professional lives to be one in the same in terms of how they present themselves.
COPELAND: They’re absolutely not the same. The figure in the public eye is an avatar, a figment of imagination, and not in the imagination of the creator, but in the imagination of the consumer. They impose their own fantasies upon that personage, particularly with music because there is that same strange shamanistic quality in musicians. People attach significance to the deeds of the artist but really they have no meaning…
PLAYBOY: Is there something most people get wrong when they’re writing about the Police?
COPELAND: Yes, that it’s about ego. All three of us are diligently selfless and we care about something that we really do believe is a higher calling, which is that we blow that fucking audience out of their seats. But we have different ideas of what that is and how to achieve it. Sting and I are competitive, of course, but only at a friendly level. The true conception is that there is conflict, but the reasons behind it I have hoped to illuminate with the book.
The entire interview is available at:
