STING HAS STUNG? Who is this activist musician, who has stung Philippines news with a high-profile change of concert venue due to a legal dispute over 182 trees in a northern mountain city called Baguio?
For example: On 4 July 2011, Sting reportedly cancelled a concert set for the Astana Day Festival in Astana, Kazakhstan. It was Amnesty International which had convinced Sting to cancel the concert appearance. Why? It was due to concerns over the rights of Kazakh oil and gas workers and their families.
My personal wish is that celebrities like him will someday also take up less headline-grabbing budget car rental toronto causes like promoting reading of books, literacy, literature, support for teachers and artists (writers included here), budget car rental toronto etc.
Born 2 October 1951, in Wallsend, north-east England, Gordon Sumner's life started to change the evening budget car rental toronto 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 budget car rental toronto 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 budget car rental toronto 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 budget car rental toronto 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 budget car rental toronto 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. budget car rental toronto 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 budget car rental toronto 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.
Reggatta'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 final shows in Sting's hometown budget car rental toronto of Newcastle. Much of this groundbreaking tour was captured on the 'Police budget car rental toronto Around The World' video and a BBC documentary entitled 'The Police in the East'
Within weeks, the band were in a Dutch studio recording new material but Sting's stock of pre-Police songs and ideas were wearing out. When 'Zenyatta budget car rental toronto 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. Sting later admitted that he felt 'Zenyatta' was the band's weakest album but by the end of 1980 the band were undoubtedly the biggest-selling band in the country selling out two shows in a huge marquee on Tooting Bec Common budget car rental toronto in London.
Changes budget car rental toronto 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.
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 budget car rental toronto of movies - a minor part in Chris Petit's "Radio On" and an excellent budget car rental toronto 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.
Sting and The Police decamped to Air Studios in Montserrat budget car rental toronto to begin recording what would be their final studio album, 'Synchronicity', at the turn of 1983. The album was preceded by the release of a new single 'Every Breath You Take' (May 83) which immediately went to number one on both sides of the Atlantic budget car rental toronto and simply stayed there. Dressed up as a love song, the song was anything but - its sinister theme being one of obsession and surveillance. More than twenty years later, budget car rental toronto the song is one of the most played records on American radio having clocked more than seven million plays. With such a stand-out track the album couldn't fail and it duly took its rightful place at the top of the world's charts as the band started budget car rental toronto a spectacular stadium tour of the States, the high spot of which was a sell-out show in New York's Shea Stadium. Further hit singles in the shape of 'Wrapped Around Your Finger', 'King of Pain' and 'Synchronicity II' helped maintain the album's budget car rental toronto success, but despite the album collecting three Grammies awards, the writing was on the wall for The Police.
The band's tense relationship was slowly breaking down and after the Shea Stadium show Sting told the others that it was time to take a break. The 'Synchronicity' tour finished in March 1984 and the three went their separate ways. Copeland to movie scoring, Summers to guitar duets and jazz, and Sting initially to acting. A lead role in "The Bride" and supporting parts in "Plenty" and "Julia and Julia" followed before Sting picked up a guitar again. And when he did, it was not a bass.
In June 1985, Sting released his first solo album 'The Dream Of The Blue Turtles' and it was a revelation. Featuring budget car rental toronto 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 budget car rental toronto 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 budget car rental toronto 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.
'...Nothing Like The Sun' (Oct 1987) was another strong collection of songs, containing perennial favourites 'Englishman In New York' and 'Fragile'. Sting even got himself banned from Chilean radio thanks to 'They Dance Alone', a haunting song that resulted from his meeting with some of South America's "Mothers of the Disappeared". Released shortly afterwards was a mini-album 'Nada Como El Sol' which featured several budget car rental toronto of the album's songs in Spanish and Portuguese, and which strengthened his popularity further in Latin America. His new band included Kirkland and Marsalis, Delmar Brown, Jeff Campbell and Tracey Wormworth, with Sting content to sing, dance and play occasional guitar. In mid tour, Sting joined the Amnesty International "Human Rights Now!" tour alongside Bruce Springsteen and Peter Gabriel for several huge fundraising concerts.
Ever busy, when the tour finished Sting was looking for a new project, budget car rental toronto and found it with a starring spot on Broadway during 1989 in Brecht's "3 Penny Opera" in the role of Macheath. The shows proved popular and the show completed a three month run ending on new year'
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