Stewart Copeland, a legend beyond The Police: “It’s sexier to be Bruce Springsteen than to play Batman.”

Stewart Copeland 's mother was an archaeologist, and on one of her visits to Isfahan, in what we now call Iran , she took the opportunity to purchase several rugs that graced the floors of the family home for years. This may seem irrelevant, but the man destined to become the drummer for The Police —among a handful of other notable achievements—likes to think that those oriental carpets were largely responsible for his musical instinct. This is a conviction, not mere poetic license, he clarifies with his always cordial yet vehement delivery: "I'm the youngest of four children, and I spent the first two years of my life crawling on those Persian rugs. And one day, when I was quite grown up, I noticed their combination of shapes, that mix of color, geometry, order, and chaos. That's exactly what my music is. That's exactly what's in my head."

The anecdote about the carpets is just the first touch of distinction in the absolutely novelistic life of Stewart Armstrong Copeland, a boy born 73 years ago in Alexandria, Virginia, who at two months old emigrated to Egypt and then to Beirut with his entire family on a matter of high state, literally: his father was a CIA agent. In the Lebanese capital, he would receive his first percussion lessons from an Armenian drummer who was in charge of livening up the nights at a strip club in the city. "No one ever taught me how to undress, luckily, but that man was brilliant. I will always be grateful to him," says the always assertive Copeland in a private room of the Pedro I Hotel in Huesca, which is a hive of activity this Saturday afternoon. Although the expectation does not come from the presence of one of the best drummers in the history of rock (the second, after Keith Moon , of The Who, according to a survey by the British magazine Q ), but from another type of contemporary deities: the footballers of the first women's team of Barça, who hours later would win the Queen's Cup against Atlético de Madrid.

In reality, the septuagenarian who looks at us with a lively expression never seemed to care much about the trappings of fame, perhaps due to the pragmatic side of someone who has had to raise a brood of seven children! ("to which we must now add four grandchildren and four pets," he adds). But when a couple of years ago a young and, to him, unknown Aragonese filmmaker proposed he make a biographical documentary, he decided to give his approval "as a concession to vanity." The result, Copeland , written by Pablo Aragüés (Zaragoza, 1982), is already on the shortlist of titles preselected for the upcoming edition of Sundance , and had its world premiere this weekend at the Huesca International Film Festival , now in its 53rd edition.

Aragüés, another restless ass who alternates short films, music videos, advertising and feature films ( Novas , Para entrar a vivir ), and who at the age of 12 was already doing tricks with a Super 8 camera, fell in love forever with the figure of Copeland the day a copy of Outlandos d'amour fell into his hands. (1978), The Police's debut album, and heard the dry, urgent, and rumbling drums that raise the curtain on Next to You , the first cut on side A. “Stewart's life is so fascinating that I approached the feature film as a cinematic drum solo,” he argues. “That's why, rather than accumulating dozens of testimonies, it's the protagonist himself who unravels his main biographical episodes with such a pleasant and passionate delivery.”

In this way, we unravel facets that not all music lovers will be as familiar with as with that celebrated alliance of "three blond heads" that he maintained until 1984 with Sting and Andy Summers. Did you know that the man who calls himself "a mere bludgeoner of inanimate objects" is currently completing his eighth opera, has been reinventing traditional southern Italian tarantellas for over 20 years from his home in the Salento region, has been or is a member of the superbands Animal Logic, Oysterhead , and Gizmodrome, and boasts that the best score he has ever created is the music he tirelessly developed between 1998 and 2002 for Spyro, the Dragon , the Playstation video game?

Well, you haven't heard everything, because we still have to hear about his extraordinary career as a soundtrack composer or, as prosaic as it may seem, his long list of advertising jingles . "Man, there were a lot of mouths to feed, and it made money!" he exclaims spontaneously, surprised that this seemingly less glamorous side of his career has also ended up making waves. "Advertising is a very difficult art," he warns, "because in just 30 or 60 seconds, they have to tell a complete story in three acts, with its introduction, development, and resolution. But it's the music that provides, beyond the facts, the emotional information. And human instinct believes its ears before its eyes. You can hire Tom Cruise himself to star in your commercial ; if the music generates a bad vibe, your product will fail."

The curious thing is that this gentleman, who in his twenties conceived and developed one of the most successful post-punk and new wave bands of all time, has become over the years a scholar of overwhelming wisdom in the fields of musicology and even anthropology. The documentary places some emphasis on The Rhythmatist (1985), the album for which Stewart explored the heart of Africa, from Kinshasa to Nairobi, “in search of the roots of American music.” He’s proud to think that this work came a year before Graceland , the Paul Simon album often (erroneously) considered a pioneer in African explorations by Western artists. But today, 40 years later, it has something to tell us: both Simon and he himself were completely confused by their investigations.

“We couldn't find the roots of Yankee music in Africa because its decisive element, the rhythmic backbeats, were discovered by former Black slaves on American soil,” he announces with a triumphant gesture. And he alludes to Dee Dee Chandler, a drummer in late 19th-century New Orleans, as the man who should “enjoy the status of a national hero,” although only the most erudite will have ever heard his name. “Dee Dee was the one who invented the bass drum pedal, in 1898 to be exact, and that was a true revolution,” he emphasizes. “It was one man doing three things at once, something incredible. From that moment on, music became the most distinctive cultural element of my country, surpassing literature or Hollywood cinema . You have Goya in Spain, and the French can boast the best cuisine, but we Americans have found our true superpower in contemporary music.”

As you might guess, the exploits, glories, fights, and troubles surrounding The Police have long since ceased to be a priority for Copeland, although his host of projects in development include an LP and a tour, Police Deranged for Orchestra , featuring symphonic versions of the band's hits and three soul singers reinventing Sting's celebrated melodies. But the group that left Roxanne , Every Breath You Take , and Message in a Bottle for posterity takes up less than a third of the footage in Copeland , where not a single one of its songs is played. "One reason for this was to save on the rights, which were very expensive for an independent, self-produced film," admits Aragüés, "but Stewart was the first to endorse this decision as the best way to symbolize that the documentary was about him, not his most famous band."

In return, the film does include glimpses from the invaluable collection of home videos that Copeland himself filmed on Super 8 between 1979 and 1983, fifty-odd hours of footage from the band's very epicenter. The Zaragoza-born director, who viewed and digitized the entire footage, couldn't believe it. "There's footage of Sting shaving in his underwear in a hotel, of the three of them fooling around on the street during the 1980 Japanese tour, of Andy Summers trying on wigs, or of them all joking around and fighting, like good twenty-somethings, during their train rides."

To top it all off, Miles Copeland, Stewart's older brother, was the band's manager and had just founded IRS Records, the label that would introduce the world to REM, The Go-Go's, Wall of Voodoo, and Fine Young Cannibals, so the youngest member of the family could sneak into almost any pit or dressing room in London's nightlife. The previously unseen scenes from Bob Marley , AC/DC, The Clash , The Specials, and UB40 concerts from the side of the stage could easily feed into a future documentary.

Both Stewart Copeland and Pablo Aragüés are aware that Copeland 's 75 restrained minutes don't allow for a full look at the work of this rock renaissance man (and Stakhanovite). There isn't, for example, a single allusion to Stewart's own few but curious contributions to The Police's repertoire, some as valuable as Mrs. Grandenko , On Any Other Day , or Bombs Away . "If we'd only had my songs, obviously we would have still been starving," laughs the author. "But all these years later, I still like them. I've even re-recorded them on my own and in my own way, even though the great God didn't grant me good vocal cords and the sound of my voice is horrible." A sigh and a confidence: "I wish I'd had a voice like Sting's. It's the only thing I truly envy about him."

The documentary also avoids the spectacular clashes of egos that derailed the trio despite the enormous success of their last album, Synchronicity . (1983), which in some cases resulted in physical assaults. Aragüés argues that those episodes “are well known and well documented,” while Copeland appeals to the cautious cordiality that now reigns among the three. “The internal struggles themselves led us to become very good,” he notes without rancor, “but it was very painful to make music solely from drama and conflict. Disbanding the band was a blessing, because we could have ended up wringing our necks at any moment.”

The percussionist is eternally grateful to Francis Ford Coppola , who, in that successful and tragic year of 1983 , entrusted him with the soundtrack for Rumble Fish , despite his then-inexperience in the audiovisual field. “It was an act of faith on his part that still amazes me today. It allowed me to escape the pigeonholing of rock and discover completely different worlds, from science fiction to horror, romantic scenes to medieval scenes.” And he adds, with another of his emphatic pauses: “By the way, I never really understood that film… although I think I did capture its sentiment.”

The agreed-upon interview time has long since passed, and the planned nap threatens to become a pipe dream, but Stewart Armstrong's passion in the heat of a musical conversation far outweighs any hint of fatigue. While researching his new album, Wild Concerto —released this spring and featuring hyenas, birds, and wolves as "guest voices"—the former drummer for The Police was told about the discovery of a rudimentary three-hole flute made in the era of Homo sapiens from a vulture bone. And at that moment, like when he realized the deeper meaning of Persian rugs, Copeland felt that all the pieces of his artistic imagination finally fell into place. "Those flutes would allow us to play pentatonic [five-note] scales and gave Sapiens a bond and a force that allowed them to expel the Neanderthals. All of this happened about 30,000 years ago, or, in other words, 20,000 years before agriculture existed!

–And what does all this ultimately mean?

–Something very important. It means that music is in our blood and regulates our bodily functions: sex, romance, adrenaline. That's why musicians possess an incomparable magic. It may be very sexy to play Batman in a big movie, but it's incomparably sexier to be Bruce Springsteen. And all of this can only mean one thing: it's obvious that God loves music.

And in such an advantageous position, being able to talk about God, sex and Springsteen , who would want to retire for a nap?