Photo By Jeffrey Mayer
Andy Summers is, to put in a sense, a true guitar hero. Over a period spanning four decades, he has worked in numerous bands with many different styles. Andy Summers has the unmatched experience of having witnessed rock 'n' roll evolve from r & b, to the psychedelic, to the progressive, to the punk, to the new wave era. Summers' meteoric rise to fame with the Police was well deserved, having belied many years spent as a session/journeyman guitarist with many important bands, such as Soft Machine, The Animals, David Essex, Neil Sekada, Kevin Coyne, Zoot Money, and Kevin Ayers. Summers described The Police as a "challenge to do something new with a three-piece rock band." Following the principle that less is more, he and the Police turned to reggae among other styles as an aid to give space and life to the music. Rather than create three separate lines upwards, the Police created a fabric with their music. Andy's interlocking rainbow waves of sound helped give the face of the Police's music. He applies what he knows at the right time; mounds of information known by someone who truly gives their life to the guitar, as well as knowledge gathered from studying jazz and classical guitar composition and theory at the California State University of Northridge for four years in the early 70's. His use of tone and effect are unmatched and judicial. His note choices remain legendary, his "disinterested" composing style has helped shape some of the most well known songs in the last millennium with The Police.
Andy Summers throws out superficial solos and other forms of six-string flash for subtle rhythms, rich tones, and short fills. He is the master of understatement and expression. Andy's never-ending search for emotional feel from a spirit and feeling, rather than a string of notes or a chord, has helped define textural guitar along with the likes of The Edge, David Torn and Robert Fripp. He has been friends with some of the other most prolific and influential musicians of all time, such as Lenny Breau, John Etheridge, Chas Chandler, Robert Fripp, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, John Lord (of Deep Purple), Mike Oldfield, Ted Green and Jimi Hendrix. He has left a mark so big upon rock guitar playing, that it is unnoticeable to many players and musicians. Andy's playing with and without the Police is praised over and over again- he picked up a Grammy nomination in 1989 for his album "The Golden Wire", and modern bands such as Third Eye Blind as well as EVERY ska-band you can think of have proclaimed him and The Police as major influences. Producers to this day still ask their session guitarists to give them "an Andy Summers-type of sound."
Anyone who has listened to his work will be familiar with the formidable range of sounds and textures that Andy Summers creates from a skillful blend of technique, nuance, as well as sophisticated electronic effects. Then again, if you were awarded the Orville Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award, and were voted five times #1 Guitar Player by a major guitar magazine, you'd be a legend as well.
By Greg Danielak - 2000
