The Police: There's excuses and then 'there's excuses'.

June 15th – Pretty well nothing more crushing than having a band or artist that you've followed for years, a band or artist that you've saved up your pennies to buy a ticket for to see one of their all-too-infrequent gigs on an all-too infrequent tour, cancel their gig at the last minute. I know these things happen and, in the rock ‘n’ roll world, where the plethora of extra-curricular activities can unseat a fellow, in truth the surprise is often that the band can function at all; certainly in the case of Motley Crue. In these cases and others that circulate around folk in the public eye, euphemisms are used to cover a multitude of sins and save embarrassment all round. Take the married, U.S. Ambassador to Belgium for instance.

Accused of using prostitutes, in some cases under aged ones, he stated he was;

‘shocked and horrified’,

 by these;

‘baseless accusations’, then added, and I quote verbatim;

“I live on a beautiful park in Brussels that you walk through to get to many locations and at no point have I ever engaged in any improper activity.”

So, the fact you regularly ditched your bodyguard when crossing this park, a park that’s a known hot-spot for soliciting by under age hookers and rent-boys, that’s just a coincidence, is it?

Bands do this kind of crassness all the time to get themselves out of a hole;

“There’s an illness in the family.” i.e. the drummer’s OD’d again.

“The singer had a family crisis to attend.” i.e. his wife found out he’d been shagging the girl who’d been seen on the front row of the last three concerts.

These cancellation excuses are all allowed because, after all, it’s a hard business, the rock business and there are casualties along the way. However, to cancel a recording session and tour, as Stewart Copeland of The Police did on this day in 1986, because of an injury incurred whilst playing polo? How terribly un-rock ‘n’ roll.