Before Miles Axe Copeland III ’66 produced some of the biggest names of the new wave scene – The Police, The Bangles, The Go-Go’s, and R.E.M. – he was a political science student at Birmingham-Southern, a world away from where he grew up.

The son of CIA officer Miles Axe Copeland, Jr.,’41, and Lorraine Adie, a British secret intelligence agent and archaeologist, Copeland and his young siblings spent his childhood in Damascus, Cairo, and Beirut. But when the time came to choose a college, he traveled across the world to his father’s alma mater and hometown, where many family members still lived.

“My father wanted me to know what real America was,” Copeland says.

He covers the Birmingham years near the beginning of his memoir, “Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: My Life in the Music Business,” released in July 2021. The book chronicles his failures and successes as the music and entertainment executive who managed The Police, guided 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.

An American Education

Arriving in the American South during the Civil Rights Movement, Copeland says he was shocked to witness discrimination he thought he had left in Beirut – only this was fueled by race rather than religion. Copeland says his experience in Birmingham both disrupted and informed his identity.

Having seen so much of the world through his family’s moves around the Middle East and his father’s role in covert operations, including coups d’etat in Syria, Egypt, and Iran, he remembers being shocked to meet Alabamians who had rarely or never left the South. Most, he recalls, were unfamiliar with the places he called home.

BSC prepared Copeland for graduate work at the American University of Beirut and was an important introduction to the United States, the place where punk and new wave music would later be embraced with open arms, and which helped shape his career.

The Family Business

In 1967, Copeland “fell into music.” 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. Miles was known for throwing parties, so Stewart brought him on to create a psychedelic atmosphere for one of their shows, completed with black lights and fluorescent paint that covered everyone 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 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 throughout his memoir, the low points and frequent crises shaped him into a manager willing to take risks, especially as “new wave” music 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. The group recorded their first album in 1978 and together – the Copelands, Sting, and guitarist 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 tours to places no one else was going and developed their iconic mystique.

“The show that did change our lives was to four people in northern New York,” Copeland says, “because one of the four happened to be a DJ, who fell in love with the group and started banging the single on the radio.”

In the world of music and business, Copeland says instinct and gut feeling work.

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

Returning to the Hilltop

With his success, Birmingham was never completely forgotten. He still has family in the area, including his cousin, Diane Copeland North ’65, and has visited since his graduation from BSC.

During a trip to Alabama in the ’80s, Copeland visited his uncle Hunter Copeland and his wife, whose daughter from a previous marriage was a Mountain Brook High School graduate named Courteney Cox. Copeland connected Cox with his brother Ian – also a music promoter, booking agent, and the third Copeland on the new wave scene – who hired her as his secretary in New York. Cox went on to sign with Ford Modeling Agency and eventually rose to stardom on the hit sitcom “Friends.”

Another time on tour, Copeland swung by campus to visit his old fraternity. “When The Police were really big, we did a show in Birmingham, and I went to the SAE house and gave out free tickets,” he says. “It was my opportunity to go back home and show how I made it.”

Lessons Learned

Between the music industry and his proximity to huge international events during his childhood, Copeland had a rich bank of colorful stories to pull from for his book, which is part personal history and part motivational lessons.

He writes that people are the same everywhere, that risk-taking pays off, and that you can never be too proud. The most central and universal lesson 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, referencing the aforementioned Startruckin’ 75 festival-turned-fiasco. “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.”

This story was published in the Fall/Winter 2021 issue of ’Southern, BSC’s alumni magazine.

If you have ideas for our next issue of ’Southern, please email [email protected]. We always welcome stories about outstanding people from the BSC community.

Listen to these playlists showcasing Copeland’s legacy on Spofity: The Best of Sting and The Police and The History of I.R.S. Records.