Written during the band's second tour and recorded in four weeks (minus several days for concerts in the U.K.-Milton Keynes festival- and Ireland). The band members have often expressed disappointment over it, going so far as to re-record two songs during a brief, unsuccessful reunion. Drummer Stewart Copeland, who contributed the songs "Bombs Away" and "The Other Way of Stopping", said about the time pressures:
| “ | We had bitten off more than we could chew. We finished the album at 4 a.m. on the day we were starting our next world tour... It was cutting it very fine. | ” |
Zenyattà Mondatta went to #5 in the U.S.[1] and #1 in the UK and Australia, spurred by the success of the Sting-penned singles "Don't Stand So Close to Me" and "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da". It would later receive glowing reviews from re-assessments in Rolling Stone and Q Magazine, among others, in spite of the fact that this is the least well-received of the five albums by The Police - so much so, it was the only one of their five albums not to obtain a spot on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
As mentioned by Copeland, the Police embarked on a tour of the world the day of the album's completion, beginning in Belgium and reaching places such as India and Egypt.
The album itself is the last of the Police's early era, influenced by reggae and punk and featuring few musical elements on top of the core guitar, bass, and drums. Perhaps due to the lack of time for writing lyrics, the record has two instrumentals, "The Other Way of Stopping", and the Grammy-winning "Behind My Camel" (a third song, "Voices Inside My Head", is mostly an instrumental except for the words "Voices inside my head/ Echoes of things that you said", which are repeated a couple of times in the middle of the song). "Behind My Camel" was guitarist Andy Summers' first entirely self-penned composition, and it was not popular with the other members of the band. According to Sting, "I hated that song so much that, one day when I was in the studio, I found the tape lying on the table. So I took it around the back of the studio and actually buried it in the garden." Allegedly, Sting was so uninterested in the piece that he refused to play it. Andy Summers managed to coax Stewart Copeland into recording the bit as a duo, and then overdubbed the bass line himself.
In Chris Campion's Police biography "Walking On The Moon", Police producer Nigel Gray believes that the title was an in-joke by Andy Summers: "He didn't tell me this himself but I'm 98% sure the reason is this: what would you find behind a camel? A monumental pile of shit." The song would go on to win the 1982 Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.
Zenyattà Mondatta is also notable for containing the band's first lyrics ever referring to political events, with Sting's "Driven To Tears" commenting on poverty and Copeland's "Bombs Away" referring to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. These themes would become more prevalent in the Police's next album, Ghost in the Machine.
Six years later the band re-recorded "Don't Stand So Close To Me" and "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da". The first song was released on Every Breath You Take: The Singles, while the other remains unreleased.
Copeland has claimed that the group arrived at the album's title after deciding it should roll off the tongue. Rejected titles included Caprido Von Renislam (referring to the street, Catharina van Renneslaan, where the studio was located) and Trimondo Blondomina (suggesting three blonds dominating the world). Zenyattà Mondatta are invented portmanteau words, hinting atZen, at Jomo Kenyatta, at the French word for the world ("le monde") and at Reggatta, from the previous album's name, Reggatta de Blanc.
| “ | "It means everything," [Copeland] yelled back. "It's the same explanation that applies to the last two. It doesn’t have a specific meaning like ‘Police Brutality’ or ‘Police Arrest’, or anything predictable like that. Being vague it says a lot more. You can interpret it in a lot of different ways. It’s not an attempt to be mysterious, just syllables that sound good together, like the sound of a melody that has no words at all has a meaning." ... Stewart listed some of the rejected titles they had come up with. "Miles (Stewart’s brother and group manager) came up with "Trimondo Blondomina". Very subtle. Geddit? Like three blondes and the world. Then somebody thought of "Caprido Von Renislam". That rolls off the tongue. It was the address of the studio. That lasted until next morning."[ |
