‘It’s not resentment’: Andy Summers’ new documentary shows Sting, the Police — warts and all

Police guitarist Andy Summers says he was careful not to paint too rosy a picture of the band’s often-tumultuous rise to fame in his new documentary “Can’t Stand Losing You,” but that doesn’t mean he was trying to take frontman Sting to task.

The film, based on Summers’ memoir One Train Later from 2006, examines the Police through their earliest days through to their long-awaited reunion tour in 2007-08 — warts and all.

But the guitarist stresses, in a talk with the BCC, that none of that was personal with regard to Sting.

“It’s not resentment. The story is the story. He’s a gifted, talented person,” Summers says. “My more overriding idea about the writing of the book and the film was that it not be sanitized in any way. I don’t want to put out (something that says): ‘Oh, you know, we all got along really well.’ It’s not like that. In all of these success stories, there’s always a shadowed side, and I think it’s very important to show that — because it’s much more gripping as a story. It’s much more human. Everything has a price, you know?”

Summers, Sting and drummer Stewart Copeland formed the Police in 1977, selling more than 50 million albums in a recording career that lasted through 1986. Their 1983 studio finale Synchronicity topped the charts in both America and in the UK, selling more than 8 million copies.

The Police earned six Grammys along the way, and were — thanks to that reunion tour — the world’s top-earning musicians in 2008.

“Can’t Stand Losing You,” which recently made its world premiere in New York, was directed by Andy Grieve and produced by Brett Morgen.

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