Now playing in select theaters, Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving The Police is guitarist Andy Summer’s candid and insightful account on the rise and inevitable break up of one of music’s most iconic rock groups. Based on Summer’s memoir One Train Later, the documentary also gives fans an in-depth look at The Police’s successful 2007 Reunion tour.
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Even with his remarkable success with The Police, Andy Summers continues to strive as an artist and refuses to rest on his creative laurels. During a Los Angeles press conference to promote Can’t Stand Losing You, Summers was asked if The Police have finally found “closure” to move on and continue their respective solo careers.
It all sounds really comfortable, but I don’t think it’s true. I think the word ‘closure’ is sort of a terrible word, really. Why would you want to close down on something that is so magnificent as the career of The Police? It would be not a good thing. But also I’m not into doing smaller gigs – I’m into bigger ones! Let’s keep it up there! I’m sort of joking – and the truth is – a gig is a gig.
A substantial part of Summers’ creative journey exists after his run with The Police, and his lifelong love for jazz has led him to festivals and venues all around the world (he even released albums that tackled the expansive music of Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus).
Summers still plays “all the time” (last November he performed in Brazil), and he continues to hone and explore his craft at his Los Angeles based recording studio (“I’m in there virtually every day writing new music”).
At the press conference, I asked Andy Summers if his approach to music has profoundly changed over the years. He explains, in the following audio clip below, why being “mutable” and having a “musical curiosity” as an artist is an integral parts of the process.
The track Summers was referencing is “Qualia.” Listen below:
