Biography

After rising to international stardom as the drummer for the Police, Stewart Copeland parlayed his success into a career as a composer, authoring a prolific series of film and television scores, video game soundtracks, and even delving into opera and ballet. Despite his origins in rock and pop, Copeland's solo career has been reliably eclectic. After his acclaimed soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish and an African-inspired solo album, The Rhythmatist, he continued to branch out both as a composer and collaborator, playing in projects like the jazzy Animal Logic and the funk-fusion supergroup Oysterhead. A high-profile reunion tour with the Police in 2007 returned him more firmly into the rock world, as did the 2017 project Gizmodrome. In 2022, Copeland earned a Grammy Award for Divine Tides, a collaboration with new age composer Ricky Kej. Born July 16, 1952 in Alexandria, Virginia, Copeland -- the son of a CIA agent -- spent his formative years in the Middle East but attended college in California before settling in England in 1975. He joined the progressive rock outfit Curved Air, working first as their road manager then as their drummer. In early 1977, following Curved Air's dissolution, he founded the Police with singer/bassist Sting and guitarist Henri Padovani (the latter was soon replaced by Andy Summers). Beginning with their first hit, 1979's "Roxanne," the trio emerged as one of the most popular and innovative bands of the post-punk era, drawing upon reggae, funk, and world music to create a uniquely infectious yet cerebral brand of pop which generated a series of smash singles including "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic," "Every Breath You Take," and "King of Pain." While with the Police, Copeland -- who in 1980 issued a solo record, Music Madness from the Kinetic Kid under the alias Klark Kent -- not only earned wide critical acclaim for his intricate, textured drum work, but contributed many of the group's songs as well. Among his better-known efforts are 1979's "On Any Other Day" (on which he sang lead vocals) and "Contact," as well as "Miss Gradenko" from their blockbuster 1983 hit Synchronicity. When they officially disbanded in 1986, the Police were still more or less at their commercial peak. By that time, however, Copeland was already established as a film composer, earning a Golden Globe nomination for his score to Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of S.E. Hinton's novel Rumble Fish. He had also released 1985's The Rhythmatist, the product of his musical pilgrimage to Africa. Despite a few forays into pop-oriented work -- he guested on Peter Gabriel's 1986 album So and formed the late-'80s jazz-rock fusion band Animal Logic -- Copeland devoted the bulk of his time to an ever-increasing number of film scores. Among them were a pair of Oliver Stone features, Wall Street and Talk Radio, in addition to acclaimed projects like Ken Loach's Raining Stones, Four Days in September, and West Beirut, as well as many more mainstream Hollywood productions. Copeland also authored the San Francisco Ballet's King Lear, the Cleveland Opera's Holy Blood and Crescent Moon, and Ballet Oklahoma's Prey. He was hired in 1998 to compose the score for the hit PlayStation video game Spyro the Dragon and has remained with the franchise, composing all of its sequels. In 2002, Copeland began touring with former Doors members Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger, and the Cult's Ian Astbury in a short-lived revival project called the Doors of the 21st Century. Copeland's departure from the project midway through the tour resulted in him filing a lawsuit that was eventually settled out of court. Meanwhile, his soundtrack work remained steady and included the 2003 Showtime series Dead Like Me and Hollywood films like Deuces Wild and I Am David. He also formed a new rock-oriented project, Oysterhead, a power trio supergroup that included Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio and Primus bassist Les Claypool. A 2002 tour in Italy with the percussion quartet Ensemble Bash and a small orchestra was later documented on the CD/DVD package Orchestralli, released in 2005. A year later he produced and directed Everyone Stares, a documentary film about his time in the Police. In 2007, just a year after his documentary's premier, Copeland reunited with his former bandmates Sting and Andy Summers. Celebrating their 30th anniversary, the Police underwent a massive world tour that stretched into 2008 and concluded with a concert at New York's Madison Square Garden. After this, Copeland resumed his solo work as a composer, creating music for a variety of interesting applications including smart phones, video games, classical ensembles, and a commission by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra to compose a piece entirely for Indonesian instrumentation. He also scored a theatrical version of Ben-Hur which debuted O2 Arena. Copeland's memoir, Strange Things Happen: A Life with The Police, Polo, and Pygmies, was published by Harper Collins in 2009. While maintaining a popular video channel that featured himself performing with artists as diverse as Jeff Lynne and Snoop Dogg, he composed an opera based on Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart which premiered in 2013. A 2017 project, Gizmodrome, saw Copeland returning to rock music and featured guitar hero Adrian Belew, Level 42 bassist Mark King, and keyboardist Vittorio Cosma. They released their eponymous debut later that year. He also returned to the Spyro the Dragon video game franchise, scoring its 2018 game Spyro Reignited Trilogy. In 2021, Copeland and fellow composer Ricky Kej collaborated on the instrumental Divine Tides. The album won the 2022 Grammy Award for Best New Age Album, giving Copeland his first Grammy win outside of the five he earned as a member of the Police. ~ Timothy Monger & Jason Ankeny, Rovi