Strange Things Happen: A Life With The Police, Polo, And Pygmies

Strange Things Happen: A Life with The Police, Polo, and Pygmies
the cover of the advance copy
Author:	Stewart Copeland
Country:	United States of America
Language:	English
Publisher:	HarperStudio (US) The Friday Project (UK)
Publication date:	2009-09-29 (US) 2009-10-01 (UK), but actually occurred earlier
ISBN:	9780061791499

UK cover of Strange Things Happen

Introduction

Strange Things Happen: A Life with the Police, Polo, and Pygmies is a memoir by Stewart Copeland. Written as a series of anecdotes, Strange Things Happen relays stories from throughout Copeland's personal and professional life, from his childhood in the Middle East through the 2007-2008 Reunion Tour of The Police.

The project was originally announced in April 2008 under the working title of Afterglow. At that time, the book was described as focusing solely on Stewart's post-Police years.[1] On 2008-10-07 the book was announced by HarperStudio as Dinner Tales, a title harkening back to the "Stewart's Dinner Tales" forum on which a number of the stories inspiring the book were originally published.[2]

In winter 2009 HarperStudio posted a new author section on their website, this time including the book's final title of Strange Things Happen, named after a song Stewart released as Klark Kent.[3]

First publication of the book was scheduled to occur in the U.S. on 2009-09-29, with a U.K. release by HarperCollins imprint The Friday Project scheduled for 2009-10-01. However, the U.K. release was, in fact, rushed to press in order to take advantage of Stewart's presence in London for the opening of Ben Hur Live.[4][5] Although the HarperCollins website retains this original October release date for the U.K.[6], the printed books were already being sold there in early-to-mid-September.[7][8][9][10]

The official U.S. release date remained 2009-09-29.[11]

Quotations and trivia

• In a brief blog Q & A in November 2009, Stewart commented on the absence of material in the book about the early days of The Police as follows:

So what about The Police Round One? The official excuse is that the story has been told by all three of us already with two books [Sting’s Broken Music and Summers’ One Train Later] and a movie. But really the truth is that I did try to write some Police Tales from back in the day, but the pen just would not move across the page. I was grumpy for too much of that time, and the poisons began to re-circulate whenever I tried to conjure up the scenes. The reunion tour fixed all that, and I just didn’t want to go back to status quo ante. And there are those two books and a movie.[12]

• The book's Afterword is titled The Green Flag.

Editions

This section needs more information.

See also

• Stewart's Dinner Tales

External links and reviews

• Book description by publisher HarperStudio
• Books: 'War stories' told around drummer Stewart Copeland's table (The Salt Lake Tribune)
• Four new books by musicians challenge stereotypes (The Buffalo News)
• Review: Strange Things Happen (sockii)
• Review: The year's best Police procedural (Matt Beynon Recs)
• Stewart's Dinner Tales at stewartcopeland.net
• Stewart Copeland's Dinner Tales
• Stewart Copeland writing memoir (Boston Herald)
• Strange Things Happen (Amazon.com)
• 'Strange Things Happen' by Stewart Copeland (L.A. Times)
• Q & A with Stewart Copeland: On writing, his memoir, and why the early days of the Police didn’t make the cut (WordWebbing)
• BOOK REVIEW : STRANGE THINGS HAPPEN by STEWART COPELAND (The Vinyl Villain)

References

• Copeland, Stewart. Strange Things Happen: A Life With The Police, Polo, And Pygmies. New York: HarperStudio, 2009; London: Friday Project, 2009.