Driven To Tears, the Genius of Stewart Copland

2022 Year of Aesthetics Series №27

Ernest Boehm
2 min readMay 17, 2022

This morning driving in I listed to the Police’s Zenyatta Mondatta , and I kept skipping back to the beginning lead in to Stewart Copland’s Drums on Driven To Tears. I love (adore, am in Awe & am amazed) his lead in and how the drums frame and contain and surrounds all the music of the other instruments. His use of cymbals is sophisticated and he uses his drums to weave in between the base and guitar. In the lead he establishes the heavy drum beat then, the rhythm line cymbal heavy followed by a heavy tom punctuation. He is in complete control of this song, his rhythms shift subtly and are thematic with variation.

The Police are such a complete band, they have such good overall balance as a trio and they have a huge range of songs. Copland’s interplay with Sting’s Base line is magical, and Summers’ Guitar can interchange fills and melodies as Copland’s drum can play piano like lines that can cover both rhythms and melody.

The beginning of Driven to Tears rivals Honky Tonk Woman’s sophisticated and beauty of a drum driven lead in to a song.

Copland's drums come up all the time when I talk with drummers. Always in hushed tones of the dirty little secret that everyone loves the drums on all the police record, this should not be a dirty little secret

DISCLAIMER Ernest Boehm is completely self-patronized and will not incur any financial benefit from any Medium article, this is personal choice and he is not against for profit endeavors but does not want to make his writing for profit. He is not financially affiliated with any links included in this article.

--

--