Strange Things Happen

When Stewart Copeland gets dressed, he has an identity crisis. Should he put on leather pants, hostile shirts, and pointy shoes? Or wear something more appropriate to the tax-paying, property-owning, investment-holding lotus eater his success has allowed him to become? This dilemma is at the heart of Copeland’s vastly entertaining memoirin- stories, Strange Things Happen. Most people know Copeland as the drummer for The Police, one of the most successful bands in rock history. But they may not know as much about his childhood in the Middle East as the son of a CIA agent. Or be aware of his filmmaking adventures with the Pygmies in the deepest reaches of the Congo, and his passion for polo (Brideshead Revisited on horses). In Strange Things Happen we move from Copeland’s remarkable childhood to the formation of The Police and their rise to stardom, to the settled-down life that followed. It’s a book of amazing anecdotes, all completely true, that take us backstage in a life that is fully lived.