Nothing Achieving

Before the bleached hair, before the stadiums, before a song about a castaway in a bottle took over the radio, The Police were three guys in a tiny Islington room trying to get a single out on a label they had to invent. "Nothing Achieving" is the flip side of that story. It sits second on the first disc of Message In A Box, the 1993 A&M box that finally put the whole catalog, B-sides and all, in one place. Clocking in at just under two minutes, it is the sound of a band that did not yet have a name worth knowing outside a handful of London clubs, and it is meaner than anything they put on the radio later.

The single was Fall Out, backed with Nothing Achieving, pressed on Illegal Records in the spring of 1977. Illegal was Miles Copeland's little operation, set up with Paul Mulligan specifically to get this record into shops. The session itself was a one-day affair at Pathway Studios in Islington, the same cramped room that had already hosted the Damned and Elvis Costello and a string of Stiff Records jobs. On February 12, 1977, Stewart Copeland, Sting, and original guitarist Henri Padovani walked in, cut both sides in a single stretch, and mixed them the following day. The studio bill, by Copeland's own diary, came to about a hundred and three pounds. The whole adventure, depending on who is telling it, ran somewhere around a hundred and fifty, borrowed from a friend. The first pressing was two thousand copies. That is the entire origin myth, and it fits on a seven-inch.

Copeland produced the session with engineer Barry Farmer, known around the room as Bazza. And here is the part that still surprises people who only know the later trio: Stewart played the main guitar tracks. He said so himself in the Message In A Box notes. Padovani, the Corsican who had answered the original ad and became the first Police guitarist, took the solo in the middle. Sting held down the bass and the lead vocal. Andy Summers was not in the building. He would not join until later in 1977, after Padovani was eased out and the lineup that conquered the world locked in. So if you are hearing a guitar figure on Nothing Achieving and assuming it is the man who later wrote the chords for Every Breath You Take, you are hearing the drummer.

The writing credit is another family affair. Stewart wrote the music. The words came mostly from his brother Ian Copeland, the booking agent who would later help build the American college circuit that carried this band out of the clubs. Stewart's note in the box set is characteristically blunt. Ian wrote the words, he said, with changes by Sting and by Stewart himself. Very dark, very hostile. And then the kicker: it was a major step forward when Sting started writing the songs. That is a drummer telling you, in public, that the real engine had not started yet. The lyric sits in that hostility. Dreams are deceiving. Achievement is a setup. The refrain lands less like a slogan and more like a verdict handed down by somebody who has already decided the game is rigged. For a B-side cut by a band that had not released an album, it is a cold little document.

Message In A Box arrived on September 28, 1993, four CDs and a thick booklet, compiled as the complete recordings and almost living up to the claim. Fall Out and Nothing Achieving open the first disc, both of them making their CD debut for a lot of listeners who had never hunted down the Illegal single. The box runs from that indie seven-inch through the five studio albums, the live cuts, the odd B-sides, and the 1986 remake of Don't Stand So Close To Me. It is not literally every tape they ever rolled. A few official sides got left off, and the unissued demos stayed in the vault. What it does give you is the arc, and Nothing Achieving is the bottom of that arc, the raw post-punk scrap before the reggae lilt, the jazz chords, and the platinum hair took over.

A short history, then, because the song only makes sense if you know who walked into Pathway. The Police formed in London in 1977 around Stewart Copeland, the American drummer who had already done time in the progressive band Curved Air, and Gordon Sumner, the Newcastle schoolteacher and jazz bassist who had picked up the nickname Sting. Copeland came from a loud family. His father, Miles Copeland Jr., had been a CIA officer. His older brother Miles III managed the band and ran Illegal. Ian booked the dates. Henri Padovani was the first guitarist, gone before the debut album. Andy Summers, a decade older and already a session veteran who had played with Soft Machine and Kevin Ayers, replaced him and gave the group its harmonic signature. Five albums followed between 1978 and 1983: Outlandos d'Amour, Reggatta de Blanc, Zenyatta Mondatta, Ghost in the Machine, and Synchronicity. They sold in the tens of millions, scored a run of worldwide hits, and split in 1984 at the height of it, the classic case of three strong writers who could not share a room. The 2007 and 2008 reunion tour proved the songs still filled stadiums. The chemistry did not get any simpler.

What you hear on Nothing Achieving is the version of the band that still thought punk was the door. Fast, thin, hostile, no space for the white-reggae swing that would make So Lonely and Roxanne unmistakable a year later. Sting's voice is already there, that high, slightly theatrical edge, but the arrangement does not give him room to float. Copeland's drums push like a man who had spent years in a progressive group and wanted out. Padovani's solo is a short, sharp interruption, not a statement. Put it next to Message in a Bottle and you can hear the distance they traveled in about twenty-four months. Put it next to Synchronicity and the distance is absurd. That is the fun of the box set. The same three personalities, or two of them plus a guitarist who would not stay, caught before the marketing machine, before the videos, before anybody at a record company sat on a couch and grinned.

Collectors still chase the original Illegal seven-inch, catalog IL 001, because the first pressings are the only way to hear the session the way it left Pathway. Later reissues and the box-set master are cleaner, but they cannot fake the circumstance. Two thousand copies. A borrowed hundred and fifty pounds. A drummer playing guitar because that was who was in the room. A lyric from the booking-agent brother, dark enough that the man who would write Every Breath You Take only tinkered with it. If you want the Police at their most famous, you know where to go. If you want them at their most cornered, Nothing Achieving is the cut.

We keep the deep ones in rotation over at THE ZOO, the listener-supported, commercial-free stream reviving the old KZEW spirit, album rock and the flipside that never got the airplay. The band's own home on the web is thepolice.com, with the store and the anniversary editions living under the same roof. They keep an official page at Facebook, post the archival clips at Instagram, and run the current account at X. For the crate-diggers, PoliceWiki is the fan-built archive, tens of thousands of pages on the band, the solo work, and Henri Padovani too. Sting's own site, still the long-running home for the singer's catalog and the old reunion history, is sting.com. Spin the B-side. The hit records can wait.