On Thursday, August 7, 2008, at Madison Square Garden in New York, the Police—singer-bassist Sting, guitarist Andy Summers, and drummer Stewart Copeland—took the stage one last time to celebrate the finale of their thirtieth anniversary reunion tour.

There was music. Laughter. Tears. Stripping. The proverbial Fat Lady—production manager Charlie Hernandez decked out in a stacked wig, mustache, and precarious red dress over exposed plastic breasts—emoted a few lines of Verdi's “Ritorna Vincitor” before Porky Pig stuttered that that was all, folks. Friends, family, and fans had traveled from all over the world to attend.

In the middle of the celebration hung a small green flag.

It wasn't much to look at. Its corners were soiled, its face cracked. Its emblem, the silhouette of a horse and rider, held no significance for the Police. To tens of thousands of witnesses that night, it was a mystery.

But to a small group of fans, just a couple of hundred or so scattered around the arena and globe, it was a message.

By the last concert of their last tour in Melbourne in 1984, the Police had become an institution. They had produced more than a dozen Top 20 hits (including the ubiquitous “Every Breath You Take”), had earned five Grammy Awards, and had stolen bragging rights to Shea Stadium from the Beatles. In just seven years, the golden-haired threesome had reached the zenith of artistic and popular success.

But the more massive the star, the hotter it burns, and the faster it burns out. The 48,000 in the audience at the band's finale in Melbourne that night had no idea that when the Police had left the building, the Police had Left the Building. For years rumors and speculations waxed and waned, but the band had gone supernova, and as the years turned to decades, so did many fans' hopes for a reunion.

In its wake the band had left a rich musical legacy, five albums whose unconventional approach to the conventional pop format had made much of its catalog timeless. But at its best the Police was a live band. What no album could capture—what had eluded fans as a result of the band's demise—was the tense, raw power created by this unlikely marriage of musicians whose diverse backgrounds, talents, and personalities had made their sound so unique and their dynamic so volatile.

So when Sting kick-started the 49th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2007 proclaiming, “We are the Police, and we're back,” fans' hearts skipped a collective beat. The next day's press conference announcing the band's reunion tour seemed almost a formality: the wide arms and smile of Police fan and founder Copeland at the Grammys that night said it all.

For Copeland's fans in particular, the tour held additional significance.

After the demise of the Police, Sting and Summers had continued to tour in support of their solo careers, but Copeland had changed tracks, turning his focus from drums and performance to composition and production. Two decades of scores and soundtracks followed, but with them few and fleeting opportunities to see the man perform. Copeland had become, in his own words, “a tax-paying, property-owning, investment-holding, lotus-eater,” a successful and prolific composer but a professional drummer who, save for the occasional high-energy tumble with a band or orchestra, had effectively hung up his sticks.

Copeland’s drumming, however, had remained legendary. His fluid syncopation, knotty polyrhythms, and signature blend of subtlety and snap had continued to influence musicians for decades. But despite his renown, many of Copeland’s fans had never had the chance to see him play, let alone play with the band that he had so famously created. With the Police’s reunion tour, Copeland would perform around the world for the first time in 20 years, affording audiences the chance to catch not just a rare band but also a rare musician.

Online forums buzzed as fans fought to contain their excitement. Gods were invoked, bladders steeled, savings accounts tapped. Hopped up on adrenaline and nostalgia, Police and Copeland fans alike scrambled for tickets, some grabbing seats for early dates for fear that the band would dissolve before reaching the tour's end; others buying seats for multiple concerts, guided by the principle that “if it's drivable, it's doable.” In extreme cases, jobs and families were put at risk in the name of a resurrected band.

Out of this mania, a small green flag was born.



The plan was a simple one: volunteers from the forum at stewartcopeland.net would show their support for the site's namesake by carrying to as many reunion concerts as possible a kelly green flag emblazoned with Copeland’s personal logo of himself on a horse in silhouette.

The flag had not been built for such a journey. Assembled from thin cotton broadcloth, white paint, and glue, the flag was made to last for only three days, a sign created to help a few of Copeland's fans traveling to the opening nights of the Police tour find each other in airports and restaurants. It was not designed for durability or aesthetics; the flag's sole goal was visibility: to be bright, distinct, and easy to spot in a crowd. But sparked by an impulsive suggestion and fueled by a heady cocktail of reunion-tour frenzy and fan appreciation, members of stewartcopeland.net recommissioned the flag to attend Police concerts around the globe, collecting fans' signatures and showing to Copeland that wherever in the world he might find himself, someone in the audience was there to cheer him on.

The stewartcopeland.net community was a small one: even at the forum's most active, regular posters numbered in the dozens rather than the hundreds. Most of these fans had never met; they lived in different countries on different continents and spoke different native languages. Their one common bond was an artist and his music.

But practicality took a backseat to enthusiasm, and soon fans were emailing across the globe, coordinating with strangers and rearranging their travel plans in order to accommodate the developing itinerary of a small green flag. Within 24 hours, more than a dozen fans had volunteered to carry the flag to 20 concerts in six different countries.

The flag's first official public appearance was in June 2007 at the Bonnaroo Music And Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. A volunteer for the festival—a musician, teacher, and member of the stewartcopeland.net forum—was able to sneak the flag to a secure location in the backstage area. After an hour of waiting, the Police caravan arrived, and thanks to the fan's patience and a little luck, Copeland caught sight of the flag as his van pulled in. Upon spotting the flag for the first time, the fan later reported, Copeland “got a big smile on his face, raised his arms, and in a jolting body motion gave me the double thumbs up.”

The flag had made contact. What no one could have predicted was that Copeland himself would be next to volunteer.



Although opportunities to catch Copeland perform over the past 20 years had been limited, he had maintained a reputation as a fan-friendly celebrity. Though he posts rarely, Copeland is himself a member of the stewartcopeland.net forum, and many a fan's story of an autograph or sidewalk encounter ends with the image of a handler pulling Copeland away from the throng. Even on stage, though confronted by thousands of admirers, his eyes seem to search each face as if he is trying to acknowledge his audience one by one. He also has a grin nearly as tall as it is wide.

Two weeks after making contact backstage at Bonnaroo, the flag appeared at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas. Carried by a fan seated in the eighth row, the flag for the first time was close enough to the stage to be seen during the performance. Three-quarters of the way through the set, Copeland did indeed catch sight of the flag, and in the middle of “Can't Stand Losing You,” he did the unexpected: he pointed. A couple of songs later, he did it again. Mid-performance, without explanation or missing a beat, Copeland aimed an unmistakable gesture at this flag with the familiar logo.

At the end of the show, after taking his final bow, Copeland—in front of 16,000 screaming admirers—stepped down to the edge of the stage to give this one fan with a flag a wide smile and an enthusiastic thumbs up. The fan's recount of the event on the forum is peppered with exclamation points and smiling emoticons. When Copeland made contact, this 30-year-old drummer and professional—for whom Stewart Copeland was his biggest inspiration and who was less than two weeks shy of becoming a father for the second time—“screamed like a little girl.”

Over the next few weeks, as the band and the flag traveled, similar scenarios were repeated again and again. During the course of each concert at which the flag was present, Copeland gestured toward it in ways both small and exaggerated, his antics ranging from a smile and nod of the head to contorted faces and arms flailing like a windmill. Some nights he counted his sightings on his fingers; other nights he opened his arms wide as if preparing to embrace a cluster of children. If a volunteer had mistakenly held the flag upside-down or backside-front, he would assist by tilting his head with an inquisitive squint or spinning a gloved index finger in the air. Copeland was not just happening to see the flag: he was searching for it, and his animated gestures each night grew to resemble a language of signs understood only between friends.

He had never communicated his desires or intentions to the fans involved with the project; his participation was neither arranged nor fully understood. He had simply jumped in. With a nod, a smile, and the flick of a stick, Copeland transformed a few fans' show of appreciation into—as he once called it—“our little flag game,” an unconventional variation on Where's Waldo? operating on a global scale in front of tens of thousands of unknowing witnesses each night.



From the beginning fan enthusiasm for the flag project had been high, but Copeland's impromptu involvement intensified it. Word of the flag spread to other forums, and soon it was commemorated in various mediums. An artist in Philadelphia penned a pledge to the flag, which an office manager from Allentown immortalized on a series of t-shirts. A teacher in Toronto turned the flag into the star of an eighth-grade French lesson, while a nearby musician composed a pair of flag anthems, one of which Copeland joked would be worked into the Police's set list. The flag launched a fundraiser for melanoma and inspired avatars, party favors, and baked goods. Copeland even mentioned it in his holiday greeting on the website's home page.

Behind the scenes, the flag project was managed as an international relay conducted by plane, train, bus, car, and high-speed postal carrier. Although much of the flag's schedule sounded like the setup to a bar joke, each maneuver was vital. A Frenchman handed the flag to a German in Paris, who handed it to an Italian to give to another Italian to carry to Ireland. An American couple from opposite coasts carried the flag to New Zealand to mail it to an Australian who sent it to Japan to be carried to Hawaii. A Mexican woman mailed the flag to Argentina, where a fan drove two-and-a-half hours to convince a delivery company to release it so that it could appear in Buenos Aires and be transported to Chile to be waved by a Peruvian. As a fan from Vancouver wrote, “It's not just the flag being there. It's also the flag getting there,” and from Ottawa to Osaka, Hamburg to Hollywood, the project hinged on each volunteer's willingness to do whatever was necessary to get the flag to its next destination in time.

Like the band that it trailed, the flag had its ups and downs, and like the drummer who spawned it, it was not without its controversies. At times personalities and opinions clashed over the nature and handling of the project. Disagreements and jealousies arose at stewartcopeland.net and neighboring forums over the project's exclusivity and limitations and over the attentions paid by Copeland to his fans. Tempers flared in response to a flag-related photo request made by the Police fan club and to an unscheduled meeting of the flag with Copeland before the tour's end. Though rare, such strife was intense, and fans' fervor at such times often revealed their devotion to and investment in the project and its purpose.

But true to its nickname, the Little Flag That Could soldiered on, and as the months passed, cities became countries became continents. With each new concert announcement came eager new volunteers. Friends and occasionally strangers were drawn in as they witnessed and sometimes assisted the flag in action. And for the many fans who would otherwise have been just one in a sea of thousands—especially those unable to meet Copeland or sit within spitting distance of the stage or even meet the flag in person themselves—it provided a means, though a modest one, for them to interact and feel a fellowship with this celebrated musician whose work was an active part of their lives.



In the mid-1980s the Police had left the public stage with neither word nor warning. More than 20 years later, the trio’s finale concert on August 7, 2008, afforded fans one last chance to witness the culmination of a band that many thought they would never see and the coda that many had waited decades to hear. Police and Copeland fans alike traveled from all over the world to attend. Tickets for 100 of those fans had been supplied gratis by Copeland himself.

In honor of the band and the flag's final show, green paper replicas of the flag were distributed to fans around the arena. On one side was printed the white Copeland logo; on the other, two words written in capital letters: thank you. The cloth flag was shared among fans standing in the front row. In response to these many flags, Copeland’s arms darted in every direction, even pointing over, under, and around a wall of burly N.Y.P.D. drum corpsmen during the band’s thunderous last rendition of “Message In A Bottle.” But Copeland had one more gesture left to make.

As per prior arrangement, the original flag was retrieved from the audience toward the end of the Police’s main set. A little after 10:30 p.m., just before launching into the band's first encore, Copeland appeared onstage. In his hands he waved a small green flag. He offered no explanation and presented it with little fanfare. As Summers noodled on the guitar, a crewmember mounted the flag next to the drum kit; Copeland pointed, saluted, pointed again, then continued on with the show.

It wasn't much to look at. Its corners were soiled, its face cracked. Its emblem, the silhouette of a horse and rider, held no significance for the Police. To tens of thousands of witnesses, the flag was a mystery.

But to a small group of fans, just a couple of hundred or so scattered around the arena and globe, it was validation. According to Copeland,

Finally, after I had been waving at the flag in show after show in cities around the globe, the green woven image is delivered to the stage. We had to mount it on a stand so that the flag itself could wave to the folks who brought it here and everywhere. As the green banner was unfurled, it was suddenly springtime in Police world as a green foliage of paper flag clones sprouted around the arena. THANK YOU was what the little flaglets said, and that’s what I was saying too.

This flag built to last a long weekend concluded a world tour onstage for the last six songs of the Police’s historic finale. It had traveled more than 100,000 miles to attend 91 concerts and one television taping on five continents. It had been carried by more than 75 volunteers, signed by hundreds of fans, and supported by countless people both in person and online. The flag’s image was broadcast to fans around the world via a live webcast of the concert's encores and would later appear on the Police's official DVDs, in a number of stock-image libraries, and as a hazy background element in a photo published by Rolling Stone.

What had begun as a unidirectional show of fan support had burgeoned into a strange tradition of the reunion tour, an organic and spontaneous exchange between stage and audience conducted against the backdrop of the multimillion dollar machine of the Police. Most concertgoers never even knew it.

Signs and banners at concerts are nothing new, nor is a display of gratitude by fans for an artist. But while many artists keep their fans at arm's length, Copeland had reached out to his, and by doing so, he transformed his fans from witnesses to the Police tour into participants. For those able to recognize the language in Copeland’s frantic gesticulations, seats in the nosebleeds felt a little less distant, the space inside the stadium a little more intimate, the massive rock spectacle a little more personal.

Over 14 months, Copeland’s flag had grown into a symbol of community; one member of that community just happened to be one of the guys onstage.

Halfway through the encores at the Garden that night, Copeland caught the eye of some of his fans, cocked his head toward the flag a couple of times, and smiled, flashing a grin nearly as tall as it is wide. Months later he remarked to a French journalist that “I'm not very sentimental, and I'm certainly not superstitious. But somehow that flag has got something that I cannot shrug off.”

The flag now resides in the studio of Copeland's home.