The Police’s Stewart Copeland says he thinks it’s cool that a “punk rock drummer [won a] New Age Grammy”

Earlier this month, Police drummer Stewart Copeland was honored with a Grammy for Best New Age Album for Divine Tides, a 2021 collaborative project he recorded with Indian-music composer Ricky Kej.

It was Copeland’s sixth career Grammy, but his first for a recording project not involving his famous band.

“I am the boss of New Age!” the 69-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer jokingly boasts to ABC Audio.

“I can finally tick that box,” he declares. “I mean, how many rock drummers…in fact, technically, it could be argued that I am a punk rock drummer, since that story started out in ’77…[So,] punk rock drummer wins New Age Grammy…That’s cool.”

Copeland notes that he’d first worked with Kej a few years ago on another project, and Ricky then reached out and asked if he’d like to play percussion on his new album.

“[H]e started sending me these…tracks that he was…assembling,” Stewart recalls. “And I just was immediately inflamed by the beauty of his melodies and the mix that he was creating, so I started miking up all my crotales, timbales, whatchamacallits and thingamajigs, and started aggressing upon inanimate objects here [in my studio]…and kind of created a rhythmic envelope for all of the beautiful melodies that he was assembling.”

Divine Tides is just one of Copeland’s many recent non-rock projects. This Saturday, Satan’s Fall, an oratorio Stewart composed based on John Milton‘s Paradise Lost that first debuted in 2020, will get its West Coast premiere at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California.

A Satan’s Fall also is scheduled for May 8 in Minneapolis with VocalEssence, which, Copeland notes, are “one of the premier choirs in the nation.”

Visit StewartCopeland.net to check out what else is on Copeland’s upcoming schedule.