Strange Things Happen

The drummer from The Police tells stories from before, during, and after the band’s heyday.

When Stewart Copeland gets dressed, he has an identity crisis. Should he put on “leather pants, hostile shirts and pointy shoes?” Or wear something more appropriate to the “tax-paying, property-owning, investment-holding lotus eater” his success has allowed him to become?

This dilemma is at the heart of Copeland’s vastly entertaining memoir-in-stories-that-could-be-told-over-a-meal, Strange Things Happen. The world knows Copeland as the drummer for The Police, one of the most successful bands in rock history. But they may not know much about his childhood growing in the Middle East as the son of a CIA agent. Or his film-making adventures with the Pygmies in the deepest Congo. Or his passion for polo (“Brideshead Revisited on horses”). Strange Things Happen moves from Copeland’s remarkable childhood through the formation of The Police and their rise to stardom to the aristocratic life that followed, and finally behind the scenes of The Police’s extraordinarily successful reunion tour. It’s a book of amazing anecdotes, all completely true, that take us backstage of a life fully lived. (And yes, there are chapters about Sting, too.)