"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.
The early tours are the stuff of legend - bargain flights to the USA courtesy of Freddie Laker's pioneering Skytrain; driving their own van and humping their own equipment from gig to gig; and playing to miniscule audiences at the likes of CBGB's in New York and The Rat Club in Boston. Their tenacity paid off though as they slowly built a loyal following, got some all important air-play, and won over their audiences with a combination of new wave toughness and reggae rhythms.
They certainly made an odd trio: guitarist Summers had a career dating back to the mid-60s, the hyper-kinetic Copeland was a former prog-rocker, and Sting's background was in trad jazz and fusion. The sound the trio made was unique though, and Sting's pin-up looks did them no harm at all. The band returned to the UK to find the reissued 'Roxanne' single charting, and played a sell-out tour of mid-size venues. The momentum had started. The debut album 'Outlandos d'Amour' (Oct 78) delivered three sizeable hits with 'Roxanne', 'Can't Stand Losing You' and 'So Lonely' which in turn led to a headlining slot at the '79 Reading Festival which won the band some fine reviews, but it was with 'Reggatta de Blanc' (Oct 79) that the band stepped up a gear.
Regatta de BlancReggatta's first single, 'Message In A Bottle', streaked to number one and the album's success was consolidated further when 'Walking On The Moon' also hit the top slot. The band was big, but about to get even bigger. 1980 saw them undertake a world tour with stops on all continents - including the first rock concerts in Bombay - and the band eventually returned to the UK exhausted, for two shows in Sting's hometown of Newcastle.
Zenyatta MondattaWithin weeks of the tour finishing, the band were back in a studio in Holland to record new tracks but Sting's stock of pre-Police songs and ideas were starting to wear out. When 'Zenyatta Mondatta' was released (Oct 80) although it sold well and produced another number one single in 'Don't Stand So Close To Me' and a top five hit with 'De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da' a rethink was required.
Ghost In The MachineChanges materialised on 1981's 'Ghost In The Machine', a rich, multilayered album which was augmented not only by Jean Roussel's keyboards and Sting's self taught saxophone playing, but by particularly strong writing contributions from both Copeland and Summers. The album still had the now expected clutch of hit singles with 'Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic' making number one, the bleak 'Invisible Sun' reaching number two (despite a BBC ban being slapped on its video) and 'Spirits In The Material World' also charting, but it was a much darker and complex album than its predecessors and, to many, more satisfying.
A handful of concert appearances in mid 2009 disguised the fact that Sting was also recording a new solo album, and naturally, it was not what was expected. Taking the winter as it's over-arching theme, Sting instead recorded a selection of ancient hymns, carols, folk songs and re-recorded a small selection of his own songs with a hugely talented group of musicians including Dominic Miller and Kathryn Tickell. The resulting album 'If On A Winter's Night...' was release in Autumn 2009, and the songs on the album received a world premiere in the magnificent setting of Durham cathedral, in Sting's native northeast England where the two performances were also filmed for a feature length DVD/TV programme. Further shows in New York, Paris and Baden Baden followed before Christmas 2009.
The new year found Sting performing occasional live shows in places like Dubai, Venezuela and Colombia with a core band of Dominic Miller and David Sancious and one of a selection of drummers - Vinnie Colauita, Abe Laboriel Jr and Josh Freese - depending on their respective availability. The main live activity of 2010 though will be the forthcoming tour with the Royal Philaharmonic Concert Orchestra and a quartet consisting of Dominic Miller, David Cossin, Jo Lawry and Ira Coleman. The tour will see him performing his most celebrated songs re-imagined for symphonic arrangement, conducted by Steven Mercurio (Pavarotti, Bocelli). The tour plays across North America in June and July arriving in Europe in September. As ever, Sting continues to surprise..." Article source: Sting on MySpace.
0 comentarii:
Post a Comment