DISCLAIMER: This video was taken of the Police playing Madison Square Garden last year. But it's still probably pretty close to what their rendition of "Roxanne" sounded like tonight at MSG in what was hailed as the band's last live performance...ever.
Whether Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland really are ready to call it a career or not, they can return to their separate corners for now knowing that they played one hell of a 151-show reunion tour. (Plus they've got $358.8 million, minus costs, to split between them, having just put on the third-highest grossing tour of all time.)
"It's been a huge honor to get back with my good friends," Sting, who at one point in the night was shown via video screen getting a shave and a mani-pedi backstage, told the audience tonight. "The real triumph of this tour is that we haven't strangled each other—that doesn't mean it hadn't crossed my mind."
Among the time-tested hits—"Roxanne," "Every Breath You Take," "Message in a Bottle," "So Lonely"—were a few surprises, including covers of Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love," which opened the show, and Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze," which the Police saved for an encore.
Finally, they capped it all (in the truest sense of the word) off with the fierce "Next to You," after which Sting, Copeland and Summers—who started jamming together in 1977 and had their first world tour in 1980—hugged, bowed and trotted off the stage.
The Looney Tunes' "That's all folks!" theme accompanied their exit.