Police Pursuits

What to do when you’re the guitarist for a globally dominant pop band that comes to an end? That was the question faced by Andy Summers 10 years ago, when the New Wave-cum-mega-pop trio the Police came to its logical conclusion. Lead singer/songwriter Sting continued his high profile career in pop. Drummer Stewart Copeland has been involved in assorted projects, including film scoring.

And, for Summers, who had played jazz and classical music before joining the British group in the mid-’70s, it was a ripe time to pick up where he left off. Over the past several years, Summers has released several solo, mostly instrumental, projects that split the difference between rock and jazz.

“I was trying to listen to the voice that was coming to me,” Summers said on the phone from his home in Los Angeles. “The Police was a hard act to follow, particularly if you want to do more of the same. What do you do?”

When he shows up at the Ventura Theater on Wednesday, Summers will be on the heels of “The Last Dance of Mr. X,” his eighth album and the first for the RCA label. Most importantly, this is the first album in Summers’ solo career where he most openly appeals to his jazz muse. Even though his playing style still shows more of a rock player’s sensibility, his jazz instincts are ever more obvious.

“I wanted to embrace more of [the jazz direction] in my own live show,” he said. “I figured that I couldn’t keep playing the same tunes from my records. It was time to start adding more and more. Actually, I do know a lot of tunes from the jazz literature, but we don’t always have time to rehearse it with guys. In a sense, this comes partly out of doing that.”

On the new album, Summers covers a lot of familiar ground in the jazz repertoire, with his own twists along the way. He performs the classic “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” the angular blues tune, covered by such guitarists as John McLaughlin and Jeff Beck. He also pulls off a dazzling version of “The Three Marias,” written by Wayne Shorter for his “Atlantis” album. Along the way, we also hear a percolating version of “Afro Blue” and a relatively obscure tune from the Thelonious Monk songbook, “We See.”

Jazz love is no late-blooming lark. Summers was a jazz fanatic, among other things, growing up in Bournemouth, England--also the hometown of guitarist Robert Fripp, with whom Summers recorded a couple of experimental albums. He studied classical music, jazz and also rock, which gave him the versatility to form a happy partnership with Gordon Sumner, a.k.a. Sting.

It wasn’t that Summers was a die-hard rocker. “Basically, rock music, harmonically, is very boring. It’s 19th century, straight triadic harmony, and once you start going beyond that, it’s very hard to go back and play that kind of stuff. With some of the grunge bands, like Nirvana, through distortion and different movements, they created a more late-20th century sound.

“I like all that. The guitar bands in recent years have been fairly exciting. It all came of age, I thought. Whereas punk, in the mid- to late ‘70s in London was very crude. It was basically loud and distorted. It really came of age with the Seattle movement. A promise was kept. It seems to have dissipated a bit now.”’

In its time, the Police carved out a niche by being a mega-group with its musical credentials in order. For his part, Summers helped to reinvent the role of the rock guitarist, with a style built on minimalist arpeggios and extended harmony.

“There was no one like us,” Summers said. “We started off, for five minutes, as a punk band, but it didn’t last long, because none of us were that. It was all pseudo. It was either be that or get a day job. It was a unique chemistry that made that music--never to be repeated, probably. It was the three of us, and one guy different would have made it a different thing, but we transcended the genres, I suppose. We were just the Police.”

It’s a mistake to assume that Summers shelved his jazz interests during the hurly-burly of the Police era. “Right through the Police, I was listening to nothing but ECM records--Ralph Towner and John Abercrombie and all those guys. I was really into it.”

Partly, the recent jazz turn came out of his finding a place to play and work out ideas. Summers’ local workshop situation was at the Baked Potato in North Hollywood, a somewhat legendary, if modest, club frequented by Larry Carlton, Lee Ritenour and countless other L.A.-area jazz players.

That club’s cozy neighborhood vibe is in stark contrast to the reaction he gets elsewhere in the world, such as during a recent tour as part of a guitar duo with Brazilian Victor Baglione. “It was like the pope arriving, with national television. You get onstage and get a gigantic roar from the audience,” he said. “Then they’re very hushed while we’re playing. I did the thing with the two guitars and we were basically playing jazz and improvising. It’s not pop music. They go nuts for it. They don’t think, ‘Oh, I wish he was playing ‘Message in a Bottle.’ ”

BE THERE

Andy Summers, Dec. 17 at 8 p.m. the Ventura Theatre, 26 Chestnut St. Ventura. Tickets are $15; (805) 653-0118.