Interview: Alina Ferraro

Copywriting: Agnese Torres

Andy Summers has gone through his whole life with a guitar in one hand, and a camera in the other. Music and photography: two artistic disciplines differing in so many ways, but so well entangled in his long and successful career. He states that his photography might be affected by his musical activity, becoming over the years a sort of visual counterpart to his music. Besides being a renowned composer and musician, primarily known as the guitarist of The Police, he has been active in photography since 1979, documenting his numerous trips around the world and his band’s tours. His pictures have been exhibited in international galleries and published on magazines and photographic books. In 2007, in occasion of The Police’s 2007/8 reunion, I’ll Be Watching You-Inside The Police 1980-83  was released by Taschen. It contains over six hundred photographs from Summers’ Police days as well as some insights and journal entries, creating a sort of travel diary of the band. The volume allows The Police fans to access some behind the scenes moments of one of the most successful bands of all times. 

Before forming The Police along with Stewart Copeland and Sting, he played with various bands in the London scene including the Soft Machine, Kevin Coyne and also Kevin Ayers. “I was born in Lancashire, in North of England, when I was about two we moved to Bournemouth. I was playing since I was thirteen years old, always in bands. Then I went to London to live with some pals from my home town. We were a very successful rhythm and blues band and we made a very good living for a few years“. After moving to California he realized he had enough of that lifestyle and decided to take a new direction signing up for college where he attended a first-class guitar program. Back in London in the early 70’s, the punk scene was taking hold and by a strange - and lucky - strings of event Summers met up with Sting and Copeland. “It was like I threw everything I knew out of the window to join this absolutely unknown punk band, so called “fake punk band”, and there was nothing: no money, no gigs, nothing!”. By the time The Police became famous with their debut LP Outlandos D’Amour (1978), the Police’s guitarist was already 30 years old and was an accomplished musician. The band's most famous songs bear all the hallmarks of his guitar style: sophisticated chord voices, intelligent solo pieces, rhythmic percussive work and an original use of sound through the employment of sound effects. His echo-chorus-flanging combination has become one of the most imitated by countless guitarists to come.

The style of the group was influenced by the punk culture in vogue at the time, without however skimping on more refined influences deriving from reggae and jazz music. Summers himself had the opportunity throughout his long career to engage in different musical styles and genres. He started with jazz guitar working up to copy Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell, Jimmy Raney, Grant Green. He learned almost everything he knows by ear by slowing down the record until he found the note he was looking for.

His background provided him with improvisation skills, which came in handy during the Police years. Since the dissolution of The Police, he has had a long and fruitful solo career with a catalog full of explorations of ambient, fusion, world music and more. Regarding the huge success The Police achieved and how it might have affected his creativity, the guitarist says: “I think it is important to just keep your head straight and not getting crazy with it. There are so many paths you could take. But one of the things about our lot was that we were really good musicians and we played very well together. It is the creative process itself that is healing. It’s a labor of love and I really enjoy doing it”. 

His latest hypnotic album and third of a trilogy following on from Metal Dog and Triboluminescence, Harmonics of the Night, was influenced by his own passion for photography stemming from a real-life situation: a retrospective dedicated to his photography at the Pavillon Populaire in Montpellier. Summers was able to visit the exhibition prior to the opening and he realized that he wanted to give another distinctive feature to his art show creating a music installation to accompany the visitors along the visual journey and provide them with a continual musical counterpoint. He thusmade a twenty-minute single guitar improvisation, A Certain Strangeness, which led him to the production of eleven more pieces varying from minimalist approaches to African influenced dance pieces, which he considers the sonic parallels to the photography.

A Certain Strangeness is also the title of an audio-visual presentation he did in 2019 at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art's, coinciding with the museum's Play It Loud exhibition, which showcased numerous instruments performed by the musicians of the rock and roll era. The one-hour event consisted in a solo performance in which the musician played guitar instrumental pieces. On a large screen, a slideshow of his well-known black and white photographs accompanied the eclectic sounds of the former Police guitarist’s music. Among the pictures projected, the public could admire those he shot in Brazil, New York City and Bali. His evocative shots usually portray people from various countries, from Asia to Latin America, who continue to preserve their traditional habits. Summers’ 2022 tour will get to numerous European cities where he will present a multi-media solo evening with music from his solo albums and The Police accompanied by a photographic journey through time and space, from Africa to India, from Japan to USA. “I have been practicing photography all my life, and of course the guitar. And I am very happy to pull it all together in one performance. I am having great fun with this”, he claims. The music played will be a cutting-edge guitar music, ranging from several different genres, such as jazz, bossa nova and ballads. For the most nostalgic fans, the show has in store a special rendition of one of the greatest Police hits.

One of Summer’s most popular series is the one he shot in China, collected in a book and showcased in the exhibition The Bones of Chuang Tzu (2018) at Gallery at Leica in San Francisco. The series takes inspiration from the life of the fourth century poet-philosopher Chuang Tzu, subsequently considered one of the founders of Daoism, and illustrates the elements and traditions of Chinese culture which are rapidly disappearing. Also in this case, the musical element is present thanks to the shots of the Naxi Orchestra, a group of old musicians living in Western China. In these striking shots, most of the cultural references captured by Summers’ camera are just tiny details - the texture of traditional garments, a hand playing a guitar string or the creased pages of an old book - revealing the authenticity, complexity and diversity of Chinese traditions. Regarding his photographic series he states: “I spent a lot of time travelling to China and this is the kind of stuff that I am looking for, stuff that Chinese people do. I guess travelling is my life, I’ve always been moving and I’ve taken pictures of every place that I went to. It’s all in the narrative, I like to tell stories”. During his hectic work life, he was also able to capture the most intimate, quiet and private moments of the world surrounding him. In a sort of visual contrast with his self-paced routine, the Desirer Walks the Street series (2009) portrays night dwellers and nocturnal situations he encountered during his international tours between 1983 and 2008, whose atmospheres are enhanced by his wise use of black and white and keen eye for detail. 

Moving across several different disciplines – music, photography, writing – and music genres, Summers proved to be one of the most multidisciplinary and versatile artist of the last decades, paving the road for a new generation of creatives willing to take on many arts: “I can understand why it’s happening, it must have a lot to do with the technology. I can see why many people have now the opportunity to express themselves and try on different arts and I think it’s wonderful”.