Sting

Born 2 October 1951, in Wallsend, north-east England, Gordon Sumner's life started to change the evening a fellow musician in the Phoenix Jazzmen caught sight of his black and yellow striped sweater and decided to re-christen him Sting. Sting paid his early dues playing bass with local outfits The Newcastle Big Band, The Phoenix Jazzmen, Earthrise and Last Exit, the latter of which featured his first efforts at song writing. Last Exit were big in the North East, but their jazz fusion was doomed to fail when punk rock exploded onto the music scene in 1976. Stewart Copeland, drummer with Curved Air, saw Last Exit on a visit to Newcastle and while the music did nothing for him he did recognise the potential and charisma of the bass player. The two hooked up shortly afterwards and within months, Sting had left his teaching job and moved to London.

Seeing punk as flag of convenience, Copeland and Sting - together with Corsican guitarist Henri Padovani - started rehearsing and looking for gigs. Ever the businessman, Copeland took the name The Police figuring it would be good publicity, and the three started gigging round landmark punk venues like The Roxy, Marquee, Vortex and Nashville in London. Replacing Padovani with the virtuoso talents of Andy Summers the band also enrolled Stewart's elder brother Miles as manager, wowing him with a Sting song called 'Roxanne'. Within days Copeland Senior had them a record deal. But the hip London music press saw through The Police's punk camouflage and did little to disguise their contempt, and the band's early releases had no chart success. So The Police did the unthinkable - they went to America.

During this period Sting took the lead role in Richard Loncraine's big-screen version of Dennis Potter's controversial play "Brimstone and Treacle" as well as in the BBC production "Artemis '81". In the late 70's he had appeared in a couple of movies - a minor part in Chris Petit's "Radio On" and an excellent cameo in Franc Roddam's "Quadrophenia" but "Brimstone and Treacle" was a major role and Sting took up a good deal of screen time opposite Joan Plowright and Denholm Elliot. The Police also contributed music to the movie's soundtrack and indeed Sting had a surprise solo hit with the track 'Spread A Little Happiness'. Also during this period he made his first solo appearances at 'The Secret Policeman Ball' benefits in aid of Amnesty International demonstrating a burgeoning interest in humanitarian causes.

In June 1985, Sting released his first solo album 'The Dream Of The Blue Turtles' and it was a revelation. Featuring the cream of America's young, black jazz musicians - Branford Marsalis, Kenny Kirkland, Omar Hakim and Darryl Jones - the album showed that Sting had lost none of his songwriting ability by being outside of the Police camp. The new material had a more political stance - 'We Work The Black Seam' dealt with the miner's strike, 'Children's Crusade' with drugs, and 'Russians' with the West's demonisation of communism. He even wrote what he termed "an antidote song" to 'Every Breath You Take' in the shape of 'If You Love Somebody Set Them Free'. The album was premiered in a series of shows at Paris's Mogador Theatre - a period captured in Michael Apted's rockumentary "Bring On The Night" - and the band were magnificent. The success of the album, a solo appearance at Live Aid, and a well received world tour were proof that Sting had no need for the safety net of The Police - he had not only a retained a fan base he had started to build another one.

During 1995 Sting was writing and recording songs for a new album, 'Mercury Falling' (Mar 1996) a release which showed an increasing tendency for him to risk commercial success by writing primarily to please himself and his band. Foregoing standard pop and rock fare, he was now writing country tunes such as 'I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying', bossa nova such as 'La Belle Dame Sans Regrets', gospel tinged material such as 'Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot' and songs in devilishly difficult time signatures like 'I Hung My Head'.

The subsequent tour was a staggering success with Sting playing his longest ever tour - close to 300 shows in 45 countries to just under 3 million people. As the tour finished in July with two celebratory show at London's Hyde Park, Sting was already planning his next project. He would take the 'Brand New Day' songs back to their birthplace - Italy - where he would record a live album in front of an audience of fan club members and friends that would see the material reworked and remodelled. Plans for a simultaneous webcast of the concert on September 11 were postponed as a mark of respect for the victims of the heinous terrorist acts in the USA, but the show went ahead and the results can be heard on the compelling 'All This Time' album/DVD. The powerful emotions of that evening can be heard throughout the performance from band and audience alike. Sting not only kept his promise to rework the songs from the 'Brand New Day' album but he also delved deep into his back catalogue producing magical versions of solo favourites like 'All This Time' and 'When We Dance', as well as reworkings of Police classics like 'Roxanne' and 'Don't Stand So Close To Me'.

Spring 2006 saw Sting return to his home town where he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Music by Newcastle University, and the summer months saw him take the 'Broken Music' tour to Europe where he played in 27 countries in two months with a slightly revised line up of Dominic Miller and Lyle Workman on guitars and Abe Laboriel Jr. on drums. These shows proved as successful with fans and critics alike as the previous Spring's jaunt around the States had done.

As unpredictable as ever, October 2006 saw Sting turn his attentions to a long-standing interest in the work of acclaimed Elizabethan songwriter John Dowland, with the release of 'Songs From The Labyrinth', an album featuring the talents of virtuoso Bosnian lutenist Edin Karamazov. Sting explained, "I'm not a trained singer for this repertoire, but I'm hoping that I can bring some freshness to these songs that perhaps a more experienced singer wouldn't give. For me they are pop songs written around 1600 and I relate to them in that way; beautiful melodies, fantastic lyrics, and great accompaniments." The album was a critical and commercial success topping classical charts across the world with the album outselling all previous Dowland releases in its first week of release. Indeed, despite its release late in the year, the album was the best selling classical album of both 2006 and 2007 on the Billboard end of year chart.

In February 2007, Sting stunned everyone when together with Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers The Police reformed for a performance at the annual Grammy awards, where he announced, "We're The Police and we're back!" At a press conference in Los Angeles' Whisky A Go-Go club the following day the band performed again and confirmed what was now the world's worst kept secret: that they would be starting a world tour. After rehearsals in Italy and Canada the band opened their tour with a final rehearsal performance for fan club members and two further shows at Vancouver's GM Place in May 2007. A heady combination of nostalgia from older fans who saw the band first time round and intrigue from younger ones who only knew the band from their recordings was supported by ecstatic press reviews and shows sold out around the world in record time as more than 2.5 million tickets were sold.