INTERVIEW STREAM: guitarist/author Andy Summers
The legendary guitarist dishes on his new short story collection, The Police, fame, the USA and more.
Click below to stream. The show is now up on Spotify, Apple, Podomatic, Audacy, Deezer, Amazon, and Mixcloud with more platforms on the way.
Right up to the moment that this interview started, I was very preoccupied with finishing another piece that had absorbed my full attention for days on end. Questions-wise, I was totally prepared for Summers, but I didn’t have time to take stock of how meaningful his guitar playing has been for most of my life.
The Police are one of my all-time favorite bands, and though I’d felt VERY excited when I landed the interview weeks earlier, I didn’t feel connected to that excitement at all in the moment, or to the magnitude of what I was about to do. It wasn’t like “Oh, this is one of my bucket-list interview subjects,” but more like the sensation of being rushed from one meeting to the next.
This all proved to be a good thing as my mood going in was basically all business, and it really benefited the interview. I don’t typically get nervous before interviews, and I almost never feel awed by other people — but I can still psyche myself out if I’m too aware that “Oh, this could be a MOMENT here.” So there was none of that extra pressure or anticipation.
I love how the interview starts with Summers being kind of annoyed at my first question, and with me not being phased by that at all. That probabely would’ve been a lot more difficult to navigate had I been all amped up and THINKING about who I was talking to.
I’m at my most fulfilled when I have to go from one subject to a whole other universe during my day — as I did here transitioning from former Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris’s collaboration with rapper and beloved eccentric Kool Keith to Summers.
You can hear that I’m stuffed-up, the mic quality is pretty poor, and you can also hear the fan on my laptop. I did put a lot of attention into smooth-out the sound quality in post-production, but I used a fairly aggressive noisegate setting so that the fan noise cuts in and out when I’m talking sometimes, which is probably worse than if I’d just let it hum along. Summers does most of the talking, however, and the substance of his comments shines through.
Special thanks to Kim Estlund and Keren Poznansky for their invaluable assistance (and apologies to them for not thanking them on the recording).
The clip includes sections of the songs “Haunted Dolls” and “Shadyland” from the Andy Summers album Triboluminescence (2017) and “Contact” by The Police, from Regatta de Blanc (1979).
Thanks for listening!
An edited transcript of the interview ran in Paste in August of 2021:
Read an excerpt from Fretted And Moaning here.
Order the book in classic, signature, ultimate editions from Rocket 88 books.
Some tunes that exemplify Summers’ style:
And this interview from ‘87 is both hilarious and informative:
Classic! That’s a face that says “Stay tuned. The FeedbackDef interview pipeline is endless…”
All the best, Saby