He brought The Police to the United States for their big break, he produced The Bangles, The Go-Go’s, and R.E.M., and his work gave a platform to the punk and new wave scene. Now, Miles A. Copeland III ’66 is publishing a selection of his best and most defining stories – from his childhood in the Middle East to his introduction to the music business to the numerous record hits and world tours.

Copeland’s first book, “Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: My Life in the Music Business,” releases in the United States on July 27 and records his life and career as the music and entertainment executive who managed The Police and Sting’s music and acting career and co-founded I.R.S. Records, the label for some of the most popular bands of the 1980s. Copeland describes the book as part personal history and part informative, motivational lessons.

“I like to think of it as something more than a memoir,” Copeland says. “Anyone who’s interested in music or starting their own business can learn a lot from it. I wanted to make it something that anyone could read and learn something.”

He first began writing the book with a focus on marketing, drawing strictly from the business side of things. It wasn’t until the pandemic forced him into lockdown that he picked the writing project back up and began to intertwine personal anecdotes from all parts of his life with key lessons he wants to impart.

He covers moments in his childhood moving between Washington, D.C., and Middle Eastern placements in Damascus, Syria, Cairo, Egypt, and Beirut, Lebanon, with his parents. His father was Miles A. Copeland, Jr. ’44, a CIA officer known best for his close relationship with Egyptian revolutionary Gamal Abdel Nasser, and his mother was Lorraine Copeland, British Intelligence secret agent and archeologist. This leads to Copeland’s account of attending Birmingham-Southern, his father’s alma mater, where he studied history and political science, and his graduate work at the American University of Beirut, all preparing him for a life in politics.

Sting and Copeland. Photo by Daniel Quatrochi.

“Two Steps Forward, One Step Back” explores how Copeland “fell into music” in 1967. At the time, his brother, Stewart – who would eventually rise to fame as the drummer for The Police – was playing with Wichita Vortex Sutra, a local band in Beirut. Known for his wild parties, Copeland was brought on to create the psychedelic atmosphere for one of their shows at the university, which he did with black lights and fluorescent paint that quickly covered the band, their girlfriends, and all the students in the crowd.

“I’d always been a big fan of music, but I never imagined anyone in my family being in music,” Copeland says. “Then, I saw my brother up there drumming. My brain opened up to the idea.”

Eventually, his work in the music business snowballed: He relocated to London with his family, connected with musicians at clubs, soon managed his first group, Wishbone Ash, made record deals, and partnered with agencies. This work then led to Startruckin’ 75, the festival that Copeland calls, “an unmitigated, pull-the-rug-from-under-you, clean-out-the-bank-account disaster.”

But – as Copeland makes clear in the preface of the book as well as throughout the other chapters – the low points and the crises put him in a place where he could be successful as a manager willing to take risks, especially as new wave began to take form.

“I found myself befriending the punks because they didn’t care if I had any money,” he says. “It was in a time when the mainstream business figured this whole new wave punk thing was a fad that would disappear, yet it was really a new generation perking up saying, ‘We want our heroes, and we want to do it our way.’ I recognized that and was one of the first to actually pay attention.”

When he brought The Police to New York, he saw “people begin to wake up” to their music. They recorded their first album in 1978 and all four together – the Copelands, Sting, and Andy Summers – offered something no one had ever experienced before, in sound and in presence. The Police brought a fusion of punk, jazz, and reggae, and Copeland booked world tours to places no one else was going and developed their iconic mystique.

“Instinct and gut feeling works,” he says. “You can have an idea and do it on your own. Some of the strangest stuff I did was some of the most successful.”

There are all kinds of lessons that Copeland shares in the book – that people are the same everywhere, that risk-taking pays off, that you can never be too proud. But the most central and universal is that you’ll always have successes and failures, but those failures could set you up for something greater and even more innovative – “Roxanne”-level great.

“My real story starts with a disaster,” Copeland writes in the preface, “But had it not happened, The Police would never have risen to become the biggest rock band in the world; Jools Holland would not have ended up on TV; The Bangles, The Go-Go’s, R.E.M., and many other music stars might never have made it either. It’s strange how a fluke, a disaster, an unlikely event can lead to incredible results. But that is in essence what happened to me.”

For the lessons and stories in between, you’ll have to read the book.