Stewart Copeland
Live at Bruce Mason Centre
21 January 2025
Live Review by Music Journalist: Paul Marshall
Accidental Genius: Stewart Copeland Turns Chaos Into Confession in Auckland.
On an utterly sodden Auckland night, the kind where the rain seems to arrive sideways and the road snakes fight back, the pilgrimage to the Bruce Mason Centre felt strangely appropriate. After all, this was an evening with Stewart Copeland, a man who made an art form out of friction, tension, and beautifully controlled chaos.
Inside, the crowd told its own story. A sea of ageing rockers, overwhelmingly male, peppered with musicians who had clocked the wrists of those around them before the lights even dimmed. There were drummers everywhere. You could feel it. This wasn’t a gig, it was an audience of apprentices coming to hear from the master.
Copeland’s Have I Said Too Much? tour arrives in New Zealand fresh from a highly successful UK run, and from the opening moments it’s clear why. The evening begins with a video montage that functions less like a career retrospective and more like a fever dream: Copeland racing a giraffe on horseback, globe-trotting escapades, absurdist humour baked deep into the DNA. If you’re expecting solemn reverence, you’re already on the wrong ride.
When Copeland strides onstage, the audience erupts, loudly enough that he immediately dares them to throw things. “You can throw popcorn,” he says. Someone obliges. It falls embarrassingly short. He loves it. He praises the crowd for braving the weather, “Fuck the rain!” before adding, with mock gravitas, “The heavens have delivered unto us,” as he introduces his evening co-conspirator: Australian broadcaster Sarah Tout.
Tout plays the essential role of raconteur wrangler, gently steering Copeland back whenever his mind, brilliant, restless, and gloriously undisciplined, threatens to shoot off into low orbit. It’s a necessary partnership, because Copeland is powered by stories the way most drummers are powered by caffeine.
As he takes his seat, Copeland notices a pair of drumsticks on the floor beside him. He eyes them suspiciously. “Where the hell did these come from? I’m not using these tonight.” The room laughs. The sticks remain beside him a perfect metaphor for an evening that’s far more about mind than muscle.
We’re soon deep into formative territory: his CIA father, a childhood spent in Cairo, and the profound influence of Middle Eastern rhythms on his sense of time and groove. Copeland doesn’t just explain this, he illustrates it, connecting geography to feel, culture to syncopation. It’s fascinating, and it reframes everything you thought you knew about those Police records.
The story sharpens when he moves to London at 18, arriving just as punk detonates. Copeland recounts from his own unapologetically biased vantage point how he cajoled Andy Summers and Sting into his band, while also acknowledging the immense influence of his brothers, all serious players behind the music industry curtain.
For me, personally, this section landed hard. I’ve been a lifelong Copeland fan not just as a listener, but as a drummer shaped by his philosophy. That obsession ultimately led me to a professional career and a Tama Drum endorsement, all tracing back to that early Copeland influence not only for his hardware but the restraint over flash, the power of what you don’t play, and the intoxicating groove of absence. He didn’t just change how drums were played, he changed how musicians thought and I was one of these disciples.
Copeland proves throughout that he’s as entertaining off the kit as he ever was behind it. He delights in tales of ingenious, borderline Machiavellian schemes, blagging his way into Curved Air, manufacturing early hype by writing his own fan letters to the UK music press (which worked, earning him his first ever Melody Maker review — RIP), and the surreal moment where he somehow ended up giving Buddy Rich an autograph. Rock history bends around Copeland in strange ways.
The show is neatly split in two. The first half charts his rise, his post-Police evolution, and a pivotal creative breather offered by Francis Ford Coppola that pushes him into film scoring. True to form, Copeland doesn’t stop there, operas beckon, and this is where much of his creative energy now lives.
After interval, the focus shifts outward. Audience questions, submitted on paper during the break, become the engine of the second half. Copeland reclines into a comfy armchair, plucking questions at random. And then it happens: my question gets read out.
“When you see modern drummers studying your Police grooves, are you proud… or quietly amused that your ‘accidents’ became curriculum material?”
Big laugh. Copeland grins. “Nailed it.”
He continues: “When I’m feeling down, I cheer myself up by getting on the YouTube machine and typing in ‘Stewart Copeland’s most amazing drum fills.’ I see them earnestly analysing my bullshit. But as we know, I just made that shit up on the spot.”
And there it is. The thesis. The accidental genius. The anti-academic who became mandatory study.
Stewart Copeland at the Bruce Mason Centre wasn’t a concert in the traditional sense, but it was something better. A masterclass, a confessional, a comedy set, and a living footnote to modern music history, delivered by one of rock’s most restless minds. Rain-soaked Auckland turned up. Copeland delivered. The heavens, indeed, had obliged.
Reviewer: Paul Marshall
Photo credit: Stella Gardiner