#372 - The Police - Reggatta de Blanc (1979)

MUSIC HISTORY WRITTEN BY HEAD WRITER DJ MORTY COYLE:

Released on October 2nd of 1979 on A&M Records and produced by the band with Nigel Gray this is the second album by the British/American, Post-Punk, New Wave, Rock, Jazz, and Reggae-influenced power trio.

For anyone who still may not know, The Police are Stewart Copeland on drums, percussion, and vocals, Andy Summers on guitar and vocals, and Sting on bass and lead vocals.

You’ll remember we’ve done both their last album, “Synchronicity” and their first album, “Outlandos d’Amour” so let me just catch you up with where the fellas were at for this album.

Only three months after their debut was released the band was already working on the follow up.

They had had a couple modest hits with “Roxanne” and “Can’t Stand Losing You” and a tour of America and they had really found their sound and tightened up as a band.

As with their debut they convinced their record company to let them again record at the small studio Surrey Sound with Nigel Gray engineering and co-producing to keep costs down and give them complete artistic control but also to stick with the formula of their successful first record.

In fact they paid for this record themselves with the profits from their first album.

And as that debut took about six months to piece together they felt confident enough to only book five weeks to record this one.

The band was ready but almost all of the songs were new so they were brought in by whoever wrote them, worked on, and recorded.

While Sting had really come into his own as a songwriter and four of his five solo compositions on here were the singles he wasn’t as prolific as needed so Stewart also wrote three and two are credited to the whole band.

It would be the last time Sting would come up short in that department.

Although they had a few interruptions to go play some gigs and tour they ended up recording it all in about three non-consecutive weeks’ time and cancelled the last two weeks.

And like their first album, their manager, Stewart’s brother Miles Copeland, came up with this title as a tongue-in-cheek, mock-French translation, this time for “White Reggae”, the music they integrated into their sound… although a regatta is actually a boat-race.

It became the first of their remaining four albums that all went to #1 in the U.K. and allowed them to go on their first world tour that included concerts in unlikely places like Egypt, Greece, India, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mexico.

Although they only put out five studio albums in their career they remain one of the most successful, popular, and influential bands and have sold over 75 million records.