Roxanne

They were sort of new wave before, before everyone else got there.

I mean, I could remember hearing Roxanne early when, when I was, like, in the ninth grade or something, and thinking, "That is a different song than any other song I've ever heard before." Did, did you guys know you were onto something different? And was the plan to do something different?

No, the plan was to completely, uh, do something the same.

Uh, our brief was to be a punk band, uh, because that's the only work available in those days.

And so we were a fake punk band when we started until, uh, Andy joined and, uh, Sting started writing actual songs.

And then we kind of morphed into a not punk band.

And I guess Roxanne was a step away from our origins.

Yeah, but, you know, one of my favorite Police songs, uh, So Lonely, is kind of a punk song.

no

So the police had a song called Roxanne and she wears a red light.

Well, in this, he sings, he's the bloke who got Roxanne to take off her red light.

Oh, no, I didn't notice

that.

I'm gonna wrestle, I'm gonna wrestle.

The Police, of course, with Roxanne.

That was the original 12-inch extended version, which is actually really hard to find these days, unless you have the old 12-inch single.

Roxanne is, of course, the song that launched The Police on the path from complete obscurity to global domination.

They'd only just recently formed as a band, and they were scratching a living playing live in dingy little pubs.

In October 1977, they managed to secure a gig in Paris, supporting The Damned, already by then one of Britain's best-known punk bands.

I had a tune going around in my head and I imagined being in love with one of those girls.

The name came from a poster that was hanging in the foyer of their seedy little hotel for a production of the classic French play Cyrano de Bergerac.