Stewart Copeland Shares What The Police Has Ripped Off

The Police drummer Stewart Copeland recently appeared on the ‘How Long Gone’ podcast to chat about jamming, punk music, his old bands, and more. At one point in the chat, the drummer revealed what the band stole from other punk bands.

Copeland explained what punk had that they didn’t:

“Punk had very, very strict rules. We had chops. It was more of [punk bands] copying licks from us than the other way around.”

He then revealed what The Police stole from a well-known punk band and how it was immediately spotted:

“What we did cop from them, what we stole from the [Sex] Pistols, and the rest was the look, the attitude, the scene; that set of clubs, that set of fanzines…We jumped in there. We had our own way of using our instruments, which was immediately spotted by the London critics.”

Copeland reflected on The Police’s music and its punk beginnings in an earlier interview as well. In the interview, he stated that punk helped people open their minds up and helped The Police change their music and re-release some of their records, making them more popular than when they first released their albums.

Listen to the podcast below.