An intense live version culled from a Paris show on that album’s supporting tour was also included on the acclaimed Bring On The Night live collection. “Demolition Man” went on to become a hallmark of The Police’s live shows across 1981-82 and Sting reintroduced it to his live set during the widely-acclaimed tour in support of his first solo album, The Dream Of The Blue Turtles. I can also be creative, but that is half of me.” “‘Demolition Man’ is the beast – he can’t help himself, he has to destroy. “In the record, I have ideas put very simply which are parallel to the ideas put very coherently over hundreds of pages,” Sting revealed in a 1981 NME interview.

In addition to supplying The Police with their album title, Koestler’s 1967 tome examined the human mind and society’s apparent appetite for self-destruction. It was one of several tracks Sting wrote after delving into Arthur Koestler’s book Ghost In The Machine. It was just what we needed.”Īside from its vivid arrangement, “Demolition Man” features an especially memorable lyric, with lines such as “I’m a walking nightmare/An arsenal of doom/I kill conversation/As I walk into the room” being typical of the song’s portentous imagery. It got us off to a good beginning, because everyone was really up from that. “To me, our version is much more ballsy and it was a one-take job,” Summers explained.

Vamping around Sting’s insistent, cyclical bassline, Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland also excelled on the track, which turned into an urgent, six-minute tour de force performed with a similar intensity to Regatta De Blanc’s “Death Wish.” The Police significantly broadened their sonic palette on Ghost In The Machine, adding keyboards and horns to a number of the tracks, and their beefy take of “Demolition Man” featured Sting riffing the song’s counter-melody on tenor saxophone.

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