When adoration turns into obligation

Sting (left) and Stewart Copeland

Sting may have ended up as the breakout star of the British rock band The Police. But drummer Stewart Copeland didn’t mind being relegated to the background. It actually had its perks, he said—like being able to enter hotels unscathed by fans.

“It was to our benefit that we had one member of the band who was just drop-dead gorgeous,” said Stewart, who scoured his personal archive of home videos for the 2006 documentary, “Everyone Stares The Police Inside Out,” which will be digitally released for the first time later this month.

“Then in fact a car pulls up, there’s a mob, and we throw Sting out the door first. While the piranhas are going after him, we get out the other side and sneak into the hotel,” he told World Entertainment News Network in an interview.

Success, Stewart realized, can be “anxiety-inducing.”

“We never feared for our lives. It was more anxious than scary. It was what we always dreamed of. We paid our dues, and yet, it wasn’t entirely pleasurable,” admitted Stewart, who found out later on that there’s such a thing as “too much love and affection.”

“As I say in the documentary, adoration turns into obligation. It wasn’t all roses,” he stressed. “I pulled out the camera when fun things were happening; not so much when they weren’t. There was a strange, unsettling feeling from it all that was unexpected.” —ALLAN POLICARPIO