ON BIG-STYLE FAME

The Police's steady rise on the fringes of the London punk scene soon became a stratospheric hurtle towards global stardom, as the band's relentless touring of America and Europe paid off at the beginning of the 1980s. Hit singles and albums ensued. Drummer Stewart Copeland got to see it all from behind his drum kit.

At the height of fame, it was kind of scary at times: Copeland managed to stay sane by keeping film footage of the experience, editing it into a documentary (Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out) that he released in 2006.

According to Copeland, the aim of the film was more than just documenting The Police on tour; he wanted to show "what the world is like, if you're a rockstar. The camera was inside the group pointing out, with the fans screaming into the lens. At that point, 20 years ago, it was very claustrophobic."

He fixes on a metaphor to explain his feelings at that point: "When you are the beans inside the can, you don't belong to yourself anymore."

At the point he's talking about, The Police were the biggest band in the world, and a constant presence in the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. When the band played a sold-out show at New York's Shea Stadium in the summer of 1983, Sting thanked "The Beatles for lending us their stadium" . The Liverpool band had famously played there nearly 30 years before.

That landmark gig was effectively as good as it got. Their new album Synchronicity was at the top of the charts, they had a single at No 1.

It should have been the beginning of something greater — instead it was the end.

ON TENSIONS WITHIN THE BAND

The strength of the personalities within the band was good for the music, but bad for the mental health of the members: "We realise we're good for each other like Cod Liver Oil," Copeland says.

The friction between band members gave their performances intensity, but also meant their interpersonal relationships frequently moved from edginess to unpleasantness. The recording of Synchronicity was the lowest point.

"It was awful, it was murder," Copeland says. "We don't make music to hurt ourselves and to be miserable. The concept of making music for the last 20 years [after The Police] has been fun; in the context of The Police, it was hell. Not because it was bad. In fact, that's almost what makes it good. But that doesn't make it cheerful and easy and fun."

ON THE LOWEST POINT: THE RECORDING OF SYNCHRONICITY

In his memoir, guitarist Andy Summers wrote that the album, made on the Caribbean island of Monserrat, had been recorded in separate rooms of a house they had rented.

This was merely a recording technique, Copeland says, as certain instruments sounded better in certain rooms. But it's tempting to see the dislocation as a sign of how distant from each other the band had become.

"The best sound to record the drums was in a dining room upstairs ... actually in a separate building. Andy got the main recording room, and Sting was just plugging in a bass, and he was in the control room.

"That was actually great for the sound, but bad for the band, looking back on it. I had a TV monitor and a camera pointing down at them, and I could see Sting and Andy."

Stewart would always record his drum track first, and as he played he could see the other band members in the TV monitor. "There was a kind of impatient, sullen body language that I could see, and I couldn't hear anything. It destroys any repartee, any camaraderie."

Had recording with the band been like that for a while? "It had evolved more and more into that. We were into getting the best sound, and we forgot how to get the best vibe." It was to be the band's final album.

In spite of the pain involved, the sessions produced the perennial classic Every Breath You Take. You get the feeling that hearing it repeatedly on the radio, and, especially, playing it live, must be a bittersweet experience for Copeland.

ON THE REFORMATION

Years later now, and back on stage with The Police again, Copeland admits " I never expected to be back here again," but says he returned because " there was unfinished business." And he is enjoying the concerts. " The whole experience of a Police concert is unlike any other musical experience that I've ever had. It's not just music, it's a ceremony as well.

"Everybody comes loaded with expectations and loaded with memories and every audience member there is a powder keg, with a fuse just waiting to get lit. And the minute we kick into one of those songs that is so familiar to everybody it explodes, and it affects us very profoundly."

ON HIS SOLO CAREER

After The Police stopped touring, Copeland carved out a successful career as a composer for film (writing the score for Oliver Stone's Wall Street, amongst others), and he is keen, once the comeback tour is finished, to return to that job.

He says of the band: "The Police is an all-consuming behemoth, and that's why its days are numbered.

"We're all living, breathing musicians with music to write and things to do. The Police renders all of that irrelevant, so the only way to make that relevant again is to get rid of The Police."

Talking about the joys of composing for film, Copeland points out that he gets to say how to tell musicians how certain things should be played, and he gets to arrange how the piece sounds overall. Unlike in The Police, for example, where these things used to be a constant bone of contention between the members.

"It's a different kind of freedom," he sighs. "It's a preferable kind of freedom."

The Police play Stormont tonight.