“I’ve never played a barre chord in my life. I hate them. You don’t need more than two or three notes to express a chord”: Andy Summers on his “abstracted instrumental” collabs with Robert Fripp, his dream pedalboard, and what he learned from Béla Bartók

Andy Summers and Robert Fripp Looking at their Hands
(Image credit: Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)

With their fourth album, 1981’s Ghost in the Machine, British new wave rockers the Police had laid the groundwork for their eventual domination of the global music scene, one that would see the group secure their status as the biggest band on the planet with 1983’s Synchronicity.

Inside the platinum-haired trio’s musical bubble, though, Andy Summers, their Tele-wielding guitarist, had a yearning to establish an identity in his own right outside of the confines of the Police.

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Joe Matera

Joe Matera is an Australian guitarist and music journalist who has spent the past two decades interviewing a who's who of the rock and metal world and written for Guitar World, Total Guitar, Rolling Stone, Goldmine, Sound On Sound, Classic Rock, Metal Hammer and many others. He is also a recording and performing musician and solo artist who has toured Europe on a regular basis and released several well-received albums including instrumental guitar rock outings through various European labels. Roxy Music's Phil Manzanera has called him, "... a great guitarist who knows what an electric guitar should sound like and plays a fluid pleasing style of rock." He's the author of Backstage Pass: The Grit and the Glamour.