Stewart Copeland reflects on Police legacy and Sting tensions

Stewart Copeland has taken The Police story back on the road, and the timing is hard to miss. His North American spoken-word run, Have I Said Too Much? The Police, Hollywood and Other Adventures, began June 3, 2026 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and keeps him in front of crowds while the band’s legacy and its business disputes keep resurfacing.

That split between art and litigation sits at the center of the latest Copeland conversation. The royalty fight involves Copeland and Andy Summers on one side, and Sting and Magnetic Publishing Ltd. on the other, with the dispute tied especially to royalties and songwriting credit around Every Breath You Take. One filing placed the case in London’s High Court, a preliminary hearing took place in January 2026, and one report said Sting paid nearly £650,000 as the row moved through High Court proceedings.

What makes Copeland’s comments land for drummers is that he does not frame Sting as a vanished adversary. He says the two still talk like people who have shared a lifetime in music, swapping ordinary updates about family life, memes and other everyday subjects. That keeps the story out of the usual tabloid rut, where band tensions get flattened into a simple breakup narrative and the actual working relationship disappears behind the lawsuit.

The Police’s catalog gives the fight its weight. The band formed in London in 1977, released five studio albums and sold more than 75 million records worldwide. Every Breath You Take was their only US No. 1 single, and it has remained one of the most lucrative songs in the post-punk era, long after the trio stopped making new records together.

Its afterlife has stayed visible in public culture, too. In 2023, Sean Combs joked that he paid Sting $5,000 a day for sampling Every Breath You Take on I’ll Be Missing You, a line that stuck because it pointed straight back to how much money and recognition that one Police song still generates. Copeland’s spoken-word show, and the way he talks about Sting, suggests that the legal side can stay cold while the human side of the band still has a pulse.