Post-Police, Guitarist Andy Summers Follows Unique Musical Path

LOS ANGELES, CA — As the guitarist for The Police, Andy Summers has left an indelible mark on the history of rock and pop music. With songs like "Every Breath You Take," "Roxanne" and "Don't Stand So Close To Me," the British trio is one of the top-selling acts of all time, and the group's iconoclastic post-punk sound that blended everything from jazz to reggae continues to influence musicians of all stripes.

But to get a truly accurate, unadulterated picture of Summers, the artist, you need to listen to his solo albums. Like "Triboluminescence," his 14th such effort, an instrumental affair that he'll release March 24.

"It's very much a corny comparison, but it's like a painter alone in his studio," Summers, who makes his home in the Los Angeles area, said in a recent phone interview with Patch.

After years of working in a band format alongside fellow alphas Sting and drummer Stewart Copeland, Summers now realizes that he simply prefers working in solitude.

"Yeah, I have come to that," he said. "To be honest, I really think I like working alone. Here's the reality of it: When you bring other musicians into it, I have the perception of the piece in my head, but they tend to play what they know. It's sort of turning out that I can find a really enjoyable experience by myself and with the engineer."

Summers exercised his penchant for experimental music even during The Police's commercial heyday; he released albums in 1982 ("I Advance Masked") and 1984 ("Bewitched") with inscrutable King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp while The Police were putting out the platinum albums "Ghost In The Machine" and "Synchronicity."

Summers was asked if he feels free to be more "open" in his solo career, as opposed to working as a member of a band.

"I think that’s true. I think using the word 'open' is good. There's no formula for this," he shared. "Maybe 'avant garde' and a pushing-the-edge kind of style. I try to create a new style — not a new genre — but it's not generic. It's my own music."

The new album's title, "Triboluminescence," might sound like a made-up word, but according to Wikipedia, it's "an optical phenomenon in which light is generated through the breaking of chemical bonds in a material when it is pulled apart, ripped, scratched, crushed, or rubbed."

Summers said he liked the term as a metaphor for "creating light from dark." The title track is a lengthy, hypnotic exploration.

"Following on from [previous album] 'Metal Dog,' I got these loops of these Gamelan Indonesian songs; I've been there quite a bit. My whole lifetime I've been absorbing music.

"To be completely honest with you, it took a while to put a melody on it," he said. "I pictured myself in a Balinese village when the groove starts, and I wasn't sure where to go with it. After this improvisation, I did this peculiar thing on guitar, but the groove was so strong. It's just one solo; that's not 100 solos. I was just completely grooving in one modality, not going through a lot of chord changes, but stretching it on the guitar made it really work. There's a small Gamelan orchestra in the background and this jazzy guitar wailing all over the top."

After Summers heard how it all came together, he didn't have the heart to edit out any of the guitar.

"I couldn't give up the way the solo winds through the rest of the song," he said. "It's sort of a daring move. But I'm a guitar player, and that's what I do."

In advance of the album's release, Summers will appear Thursday night at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles for a sold-out event, "A Special Evening With Andy Summers," where he will be interviewed, perform material from the record and present some of his photography. You can watch a live stream of the event via Facebook Live here.

Summers has been an avid photographer since the '80s — "The Police were surrounded by photographers, so I got interested in it and started asking questions" — and later this year German publisher will print his latest photography book, "The Bones of Chuang Tzu."

"Everything was shot in China, and it's very abstract and dark," he said of the upcoming volume. "It's the result of many trips. It's not showing a bunch of Chinese tourists and workers. It's making abstract art out of China, if you like."

Also this year, Leica Camera AG will release the Andy Summers Signature camera, and Fender will release a special-edition guitar designed by him.

"The guitar is a Strat based on the Strat I used with The Police, and the whole body will be my photographs. That’s fantastic," he said. "It's a black-and-white guitar, and when you get close, you see all these images. I have to say, I'm really excited."

Summers, who has also recently recruited some Brazilian musicians to perform the music of The Police — "like your own tribute band," he said with a laugh — said before the band's 2007 reunion tour, the trio's first time working together in more than 20 years, that the concerts would provide closure.

So, in the end, did they?

"Not really, no. I think I don't actually want closure," he said, laughing, "because that means the end. Closure sort of implies a finality to everything, and The Police live on, and we're in touch, so who knows.

"But it probably won't ever happen again."

Photos by Mo Summers/Courtesy of ABC PR