For Police fans and tour industry, reunion is sweet synchronicity

There weren't a lot of these reunions left.

It's all but a done deal: an upcoming tour for venerated rock trio the Police, more than two decades after the band bowed out at the height of its fame. Buzz has been percolating for weeks, and things should start flying next month. The band is penciled in to play the Grammy Awards on Feb. 11, with an international tour announcement to follow.

If so, this is about as massive as it gets. The Police were the world's biggest band, selling out stadiums and dominating the global pop charts, upon their 1984 split. The trio's long refusal to bite the reunion bait has only made appetite grow.

At first glance, the payoff seems great all around. Longtime fans get entertained again, young fans get their first glimpse, the band makes its cash, the tour industry gets a boost.

But just how wise is the act of the rock 'n' roll reunion? Old hands know it's fraught with a less visible peril: When you step back out to dust off your legacy, you risk getting it dirty in new ways. After years of letting things lie, that's apparently a chance the Police are willing to take.

One thing is certain: The band's reappearance means we're running out of untapped blockbuster comebacks.

Beyond Pink Floyd — abandoned by Roger Waters in 1983 — the Police were the most significant holdouts still prowling the hallowed halls of rock mythology. Or at least right near the top: Billboard reported last week that Van Halen — with original vocalist David Lee Roth — will also be heading out for a summer tour.

The year of the reunion

In the world of rock, 2007 is shaping up as Year of the Reunion. It's not just the quantity that stands out; remobilized old bands have dominated the summer concert circuit for years. It's the star power.

Beyond the Police and Van Halen, major reunion projects are on the way from such names as Rage Against the Machine, Genesis, Smashing Pumpkins and the Stooges.

The attendant hype for such comeback blitzes could be chalked up as another sign of contemporary rock's troubled times. Sure, a Police or Van Halen reunion would have been big news at any point the past two decades.

But in 2007, their likely domination of the pop-music conversation will starkly reveal a modern scene that can't match such wide-scale excitement.

Rock reunions have become rollicking business. The 1990s were the decade that turned rock nostalgia into an industry, with hell-froze-over reunions of bands ranging from the Eagles to Kiss. Even the surviving Beatles got together to make music.

The summer season became the go-to stomping grounds for reconvened bands both major and medium, and VH1 joined the game with the popular "Bands Reunited," mustering the original lineups of new-wave hit makers like Berlin and A Flock of Seagulls.

In an age of entertainment-on-demand, summoning old favorites back into action has become just another public expectation.

"At the moment, we're looking at a very healthy year," says Gary Bongiovanni, editor of concert trade magazine Pollstar. "The fact that we'll have new things to sell — even if they're old new things — is nice."

Still, Bongiovanni says he won't make predictions about specific tours: "The public often looks at these reunion tours as a one-shot opportunity, and they'll pay a premium to see that.

"But anytime an artist disappears from the scene for a while, there's always a question. You never really know until you ask people to open their wallets."

The music annals are teeming, of course, with the magical reunions that can never happen in full: groups such as Led Zeppelin, the Allman Brothers and Nirvana, whose classic lineups have been splintered by death.

That's what makes the Police a special case — one of the few larger-than-life bands whose members aren't just alive and kicking, but remain creatively active.

Continued chemistry?

There aren't a whole lot of candidates left. On the pop side are ABBA and the '60s-era Supremes. Alternative rock has the Smiths and the Talking Heads. In classic rock are the Kinks, maybe Journey with Steve Perry.

Recurring rumors of a Police reunion had become a standard feature in recent years, getting extra fuel when the three appeared together for their 2003 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

For years we'd heard of the lingering animosity among Sting, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers. They had seemed intent on sticking to their guns, letting history be history after the breakup that made the Police one of those pop-culture rarities: an act that went out on top.

And that gets right to that dim danger lurking at the core of the rock reunion: screwing up the legacy.

The trio's defiance in the face of what had surely been tremendous temptation — financial and otherwise — is one reason the band's credibility held up strong over time. Hitting the road means taking that reputation out for a spin, too.