Andy Summers

Andy sat down to talk with TheCelebrityCafe.com about music, his new book, and redefining success after The Police. The Police parted ways in 1986, but were reunited for the 47th Annual Grammy Awards. Now, the band is announcing a 2007 tour and will also play the Live Earth concert this July.


DM) Now I was looking over your bio recently, and there was an article that led off, and what struck me for a first question was that the article seemed to refer to your jazz and classical knowledge almost in surprise. Almost as though Andy Summers, the heavy rock guitarist from The Police, believe it or not, he also plays jazz. It surprised me because I was saying to myself, "Well he has ten albums out of jazz. This is what he is." But did that happen, that people would lump you into The Police? Even still, when you have done so much?

AS) Oh yeah, it's really sort of a blanket conception. It's something I deal with all the time. You know, if you get really well-known for one thing, you get sort of typecast. It's really hard for people to get past it, when the fact is that you might have done much more interesting work or really developed yourself. It's just something to deal with all the time.

DM) Yeah, it's always right there for you. Now, if I understand, it looks like you wrote two books recently.

AS) Yeah, I had one out about a year and a half ago. I did a collaboration with Ralph Gibson, it was called Light Strings. It featured extremely unusual and beautiful pictures of guitars, and a 13,000 word piece that I wrote to go with it.

DM) And what did you learn from the recent book experience, One Train Later? Usually I find whenever I talk with people who wrote something, they always find that they learned something about themselves.

AS) I didn't learn anything about myself really, I think. It's more the challenge of writing. With a book of that length, I think what I learned is about writing