More than 40 years after its original release, the Police are readying deluxe versions of their fifth and final studio album, Synchronicity.
Due July 26, the deluxe reissue will be released in multiple formats, including a six-CD box set that will contain 55 previously unreleased tracks, as well as new liner notes, unseen photos and rare memorabilia.
The collection, which will be available for streaming, will also be released as a two-CD set, a four-LP Super Deluxe vinyl set, a two-LP colored vinyl version, and a single LP picture disc.
Among the unreleased material is an early version of guitarist Andy Summers' 1982 track "Goodbye Tomorrow" (later renamed "Someone To Talk To"); a demo of the Stewart Copeland-penned song "I'm Blind," which later resurfaced as the renamed "Brothers on Wheels" for Copeland's acclaimed soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola's Rumblefish; an unreleased first take of "Truth Hits Everybody" (originally from the trio's 1978 debut album Outlandos d'Amour); and rare covers of Eddie Cochran's "Three Steps to Heaven" and "Rock and Roll Music" by Chuck Berry.
The six-CD version will also include 19 songs recorded live at the band's Sept. 10, 1983, show at the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum.
In an interview for The Billboard Book of Number One Albums, Copeland talked about the challenges the band faced leading up to Synchronicity.
"The trick was to try to keep the happening ingredients, add to them, and take them into new places," he said. "All the ingredients that were in the first album - a high-energy approach, the reggae thing, and emotional lyrics - were still there on Synchronicity."
"The more we learned about how to use a studio and how to make records," Copeland added, "the more we wanted to push the parameters. We put ourselves into more challenging places creatively. Also, we were getting along less and less well."
Although Copeland said the Police's squabbles weren't "nearly as exotic as a lot of other groups'," he joked that "in those days, Sting thought he was the devil. It was my job in life to persuade him that he wasn't the devil, he was just an asshole."
Synchronicity features the Police classic "Every Breath You Take," which Sting reportedly wrote in five minutes. Copeland said it "was one of our simplest-sounding recordings, but the most complicated to record. We knew we had a killer song and we didn't want to f--- it up. To present the simple elements of that song in a really important way, without just being trite or cliché, took a lot of head-scratching."
At one point, the band tried the song with a Hammond organ. "Finally, Andy came up with that guitar figure, then we had an idea about how to do the song," Copeland said.
Unfortunately, Synchronicity ended up being the Police's swan song. "We just scraped a whole bunch of new areas that would have been damned interesting to build on," Copeland said. "I'm very disappointed that we didn't go on to make three more albums."
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