Sting leads the Police last night at the Garden. (Robert E. Klein for the Boston Globe)
Email|Print| Text size – + By Jonathan Perry Globe Correspondent / November 12, 2007
The last time the Police played Boston Garden, on April 12, 1982, Larry Bird was in his third season with the Celtics. Michael Dukakis was about to win re-election as governor, and Ronald Reagan was in the White House.
The vision of the Police – three bleached-blonde virtuosos darting though their polyglot mix of New Wave pop hooks and skittering, reggae-accented grooves – was something even their most hopeful fans were convinced they might never again witness after the band broke up in 1984. (The trio did play a June 10, 1983, show at Sullivan Stadium in Foxborough). But the Police have reunited – for now – and they’re in the midst of a world tour.
For those who swore they’d never see it, last night’s trenchant, sold-out performance at TD Banknorth Garden marked the group’s third Boston concert in four months, following a pair of robust summer shows at Fenway Park, where improbable, and once-impossible, dreams apparently do come true.
One hundred minutes, nearly two dozen tunes, and two encores began with a kinetic “Message in a Bottle” that was a transportive reminder of the days when the Police were a brash young band with as much promise as peroxide. They’re older now (singer-bassist Sting is 56, guitarist Andy Summers is 64, and drummer Stewart Copeland is 55) but the music remained fresh – as lean and sinewy as Sting’s T-shirted torso.
The frantic “Can’t Stand Losing You” and “So Lonely” rode Summers’ spiky guitar hooks with racing, libidinous urgency. (Summers, playing with workmanlike understatement, nevertheless turned in a blustery, blistering solo on “Driven to Tears,” his best of the night). Copeland was a picture of fierce focus throughout, a syncopated shopkeeper of all manner of percussion; surrounded by cymbals, deftly tapping out the “thousand rainy days” of “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” in double-time with marvelous efficacy.
Sting, a supremely confident, relaxed presence onstage, was in fine, flexible voice – his preening, choked sob and killer reggae record collection intact. The only concession he made to not hitting his once-preternaturally high registers – jarringly lowering the key of the chorus of the oddly muddled, tepid “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” – cost the song. But coming back to the Garden after 25 years, anyone’s bound to be a bit rusty. Even Larry Bird might miss an occasional three-pointer after all this time.