Former Police Members Keeping Busy With New Projects

Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland, two-thirds of the once-iconic Police, are looking to the past with their respective new projects while continuing to broaden their post-Sting horizons.

Summers is about to share his five decades of music industry experience in an autobiography titled One Train Later, which is due to hit shelves on October 3 via St. Martin's Press. A second book filled with Police photos will arrive next spring.

"I've had a fairly amazing life and I've been very lucky," the 63-year-old Summers recently told Billboard.com. "I've been in on all the amazing moments and I've lived through very colourful decades."

The former Police guitarist has also just completed a guitar duo album with Ben Verdery, with whom he performed last year at New York's Carnegie Hall. "It's all original, although we did do [The Police's] 'Bring On The Night'," Summers said.

"We're not playing jazz. It's improvisational, but very pretty. It's very ethereal, but it has some really gnarly moments as well. There's even a sort of surf tune on it as well."

Summers said he's entertaining offers from several labels that wish to release the album, but he's also considering issuing it via his website next year.

Summers is also working on the score to the upcoming Danny DeVito flick, One Part Sugar, and he's going to Brazil in November to record and play shows with guitarist Roberto Menescal.

Not to be outdone, Copeland was hard at work creating his documentary, Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out.

The DVD, which is due in stores on September 11 via Universal, chronicles the band's rise to fame and the relationships between Copeland, Summers and Sting. Copeland assembled, digitized and remastered the footage from Super-8 home movies that he had filmed over the years.

"We enjoyed each other's company — at least I did," Copeland told Billboard.com. "We had each other to hang on to when the world got weird. Like any siblings, we engaged in gratuitous emotional violence, but mostly we chuckled together."

Included in the film are what Copeland refers to as Police "derangements" — including a mix of the vocal from "Can't Stand Losing You" with the riff from "Regatta De Blanc." The DVD will also feature bonus footage filmed while the band were making their final studio album, Synchronicity. A soundtrack album for the film could come out somewhere farther down the line.

Copeland is keeping busy these days scoring films and performing with his new group, Gizmo. He also continues to work sporadically with friends Les Claypool and Trey Anastasio in Oysterhead.