Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Stewart Copeland — Fear< with Tim Ferriss

In this live 'Fearless with Tim Ferriss' conversation, Stewart Copeland traces his path from a globe-trotting childhood as the son of a jazz-musician CIA officer to founding The Police and reinventing himself as a film composer. He shares theories on what music is actually for, the creative conflicts that fueled and eventually fractured The Police, and how saying 'yes' to unexpected opportunities shaped his career. He reflects candidly on anger, success, and the joy of throwing yourself off a creative cliff. The episode is bookended by his only two drum solos ever performed, one on Letterman and one in a cage surrounded by lions in Africa.

• Copeland says he doesn't really believe in drum solos and has only ever performed two in his life: one on Letterman and one in the wilds of Africa playing for lions.
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• During the Africa shoot, crew built a chicken-wire cage and draped meat on it to keep the lions interested while he drummed, with a lion reaching its arm under the cage near him.
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• His father was both a jazz trumpet player and a CIA officer; Copeland was born in Virginia and raised in Cairo and Beirut, not returning to America until age 18.
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• One of his father's best friends was Kim Philby, the famous British double agent who defected to Moscow; their families were close, with Copeland friends with Philby's son Harry.
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• While drumming for Curved Air, Copeland wrote fake fan letters to music magazines in different handwriting, styles, and stationery to praise 'the new drummer' and get his name in print.
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• He describes The Police as 'hell,' likening it to 'a Prada suit made out of barbed wire,' as creative differences with Sting became increasingly hard to resolve.
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• Francis Ford Coppola unexpectedly launched his roughly 20-year film-composing career by giving him his first shot scoring Rumble Fish (1983).
  00:36:14

• Copeland theorizes music evolved for two main purposes: social cohesion that bonds a community, and as a key to sex and body language, especially for teenagers and young adults.
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• In indigenous communities he visited, there is no specialization in music; everyone makes it together, unlike the specialized performer-and-audience model of modern society.
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• The Arabic 'baladi' rhythms he grew up with share the same mechanical building blocks as reggae, emphasizing the three of the bar and the absence of the one.
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• Andy Summers was a top triple-scale session guitarist in London who told Copeland and Sting they 'need me in the band' after they met getting off the Underground.
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• When The Police came to America, the label airbrushed their first album to remove the hostile punk leather-jacket imagery, making them 'look 12.'
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• Copeland adopted pre-show stretching rituals, giving each finger 'love and attention,' after realizing warmed-up muscles are why musicians play better a few songs in.
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• He describes anger as 'dope,' a pleasant warm glow, especially when it derives from imaginary arguments he always wins, and finds he often has a serene day afterward.
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• Copeland measures success only by happiness, noting a Grammy thrills you for days then becomes invisible on the shelf, while family and relationships endure.
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• His favorite musical input is an eclectic iTunes radio station called Shirley and Spinoza that mixes Beach Boys, Armenian chants, country, and odd vintage commercials.
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• Driving his 16-year-old to school forced him to admit Kanye West is a genius and to appreciate Kendrick Lamar, artists who threw away the guitar-bass-drums building blocks he grew up with.
  00:45:33

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