The Book

SECRET POLICE MAN
by HENRY PADOVANI

Henry Padovani charts a lifetime
on the international music scene from punk
and his time with The Police to the present day…

LISTEN TO HENRY: click arrow below left…

© Peter Baylis, Rex Features

A fascinating insight into his world, Henry recalls

How, newly arrived in London, he met Stewart Copeland and jammed with him at his squat in Mayfair

The fateful day that together, dressed in leather drainpipes and dark glasses, they “put on a show and adopted the pose of dangerous rockers” to impress Sting who had just arrived from Newcastle in his dungarees with baby Joe in a travel cot

Stories of the early days touring with The Police in Europe and at the legendary Mont-de-Marsan punk festival

© Peter Baylis, Rex Features

How he came to be on probation at Clerkenwell police station and was given special dispensation to turn up late to sign the register on the day The Police were recording their first single, Fall Out

And how, after the arrival of Andy Summers, Sting had to break the news to Henry that they wanted to carry on as a three-piece without him.

It could all have ended right there, but this was just the beginning…

Being voted “Ligger of the Year” by City Limits magazine, and his detailed descriptions of life from within the inner circle of the London punk scene where he would be out every night watching bands such as The Damned and Generation X at clubs such as The Roxy

Bizarre escapades during the three years he spent touring with Wayne County and The Electric Chairs whilst Wayne was in full transformation into “Jayne”

press shot courtesy of safari records

Forming his own band The Flying Padovanis, including the infamous cream-cake fight backstage in Paris with the Pretenders.

Touring with Kim Wilde where she confesses to having suicidal thoughts

His close friendships with the doomed Pete Farndon of the Pretenders and with Topper Headon of the Clash during their descents to drugs hell

Memories of Paris and Amsterdam as vice president of the IRS record label where he launched REM, The Cramps and Lords of the New Church, amongst many others

The fortnight spent at Miles Copeland’s chateau in the Perigord where Cher eventually let her hair down and shared the story of her “first time”…

Treating Sting and Trudie, and Bono and Ali, to join him in a box at the Stade de France for the World Cup Final where after the match they bump into Henry’s heroes, the whole of the Brazilian football team, who forget for a second the loss of the match to the French, and are star-struck in Bono’s presence.

Coaxing a cantankerous Luciano Pavarotti away from his house where he insists on having a long lunch followed by a siesta, back to a local hotel where a stressed out producer is tearing her hair out and a large TV crew is threatening to walk out after waiting to film him singing and presenting an award to Zinedine Zidane

Reforming the original Police lineup with Sting and Stewart to play with him on his single Welcome Home: a “rapprochement” which many have seen as a precursor of the reforming of The Police…

Performing “Next to You” alongside The Police in front of 80,000 people at the Stade de France, where he is given a dressing room in the anti doping control room

All these stories, and many more, can be found in Henry’s book:
“Secret Police Man”

CLICK TO PREVIEW

OR

*** BUY NOW ***