The Police Turns the Arena Upside Down...

The Police turned the Amsterdam Arena upside down on Thursday evening during the first of two concerts the band is giving there. The British band is currently on a reunion tour, which kicked off four months ago in Vancouver.

Fifty thousand fans came to Amsterdam for the concert by the band, which "went on hiatus" in 1985 after disagreements and never reunited. The enthusiastic audience immediately sang along at the top of their lungs when the band launched into the first notes of "Message In A Bottle."

All the band's well-known and lesser-known hits were then played, including "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic," "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da," "Roxanne," "Walking On The Moon," "Can't Stand Losing You," and "Every Breath You Take."

Bassist and vocalist Sting (55), guitarist Andy Summers (64) and drummer Stewart Copeland (55) showed that they haven't lost much of their quality. Copeland, in particular, dressed in a cycling jersey, sweatband and gloves, clearly enjoyed the performance in Amsterdam.

The opening act was the British band Fiction Plane. The band is fronted by Joe Sumner, Sting's son. His resemblance to his father is striking. In terms of voice and appearance, the 30-year-old Sumner is the spitting image of his father.

The Police will give a second concert at the Amsterdam Arena on Friday evening.

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(c) De Pers

The Police have spent months on the road...

"In 1979, we played at Pinkpop," muses Sting, briefly serving as Chief Commissioner of The Police again this year. Indeed, that was a memorable performance. Not The Police's last in the Netherlands, but certainly their most famous. Back then, in Geleen, about 50,000 people stood before him. Now they're back again (and this time just for The Police), at the Amsterdam ArenA.

So, The Police explained. Here they finally are, seven months after the reunion tour was announced and almost four months after it kicked off in Vancouver. From that Canadian city, we received enthusiastic reports. Since then, we've been eagerly counting down the days, and an increasingly colourful array of figures have been allowed to go on radio and TV to explain how incredibly important The Police were between 1979 and 1984.

It was bound to be a sobering experience at the Amsterdam ArenA, and in many ways it was, however refreshing it was to welcome a rock band other than the Stones or U2 to one of the two major Dutch football stadiums.

Not that it was a bad evening. The crunching opening chords of "Message In A Bottle," unleashed by Andy Summers at precisely a quarter to nine, gave you goosebumps and made you conclude after ten seconds that you hadn't come for nothing. And there was more to be enthusiastic about, such as Sting's superb voice, the remarkably good sound, and the sympathetic, no-nonsense approach: a simple decor, no nonsense, and honest music, played in a basic trio formation.

Yet, it must have been better in Vancouver. Firstly, after four months of touring, the edge seems to have worn off somewhat and the almost old-fashioned energy of the first few weeks has somewhat evaporated. While we occasionally saw a wildly jumping Sting during the North American concerts, in Amsterdam the gentlemen performed their work statically.

That's not a bad thing in itself, but the performances of the songs also seem to have lost some of their explosiveness and, above all, compactness as the tour progressed. Sting is probably the main culprit: he, in particular, has a knack for needlessly dragging out songs, for example, through long, woo-woo games with the audience.

In Amsterdam, the opening, featuring not only "Message In A Bottle" but also "Walking On The Moon," was nice and fast, but what should have been the fiery finale of the regular set ("Can't Stand Losing You" and "Roxanne") became a rather tedious exercise, and the choruses just wouldn't quite explode, as they do on the album.

The same applied to "So Lonely" in the encore: where the chorus of the studio version is full of vicious breaks, Stewart Copeland now drummed at a single tempo, thus taking the sting out of one of the most intense Police singles. Copeland, incidentally, is the band member who seems most in need of a holiday after four months of touring. He really did hit a lot harder in the first few weeks.

Speaking of truly intense Police hits: how many does the band actually have, on closer inspection? In the Netherlands, The Police scored twelve chart entries in just over four years, and even more in England, but they weren't all unforgettable melodies with the allure of Roxanne. During "Invisible Sun" (with pictures of sad children in the background) and "Walking In Your Footsteps," which was introduced by a rather cheesy Nescafé tune, things got a bit dull.

The Police's artistic heyday lasted only about four years. After that (Stewart Copeland noted this in a 2006 interview in de Volkskrant) the band was "forgotten" until well into the new century. The reunion tour is worthy and enjoyable, and some of their hits are indestructible, but perhaps we've simply made The Police, and this reunion in particular, a little too important lately.

(c) De Volkskrant