Sting: The Ambition That Took Him Beyond The Police

In Nineteen Eighty-Three, The Police were one of the biggest bands in the world. Synchronicity was becoming an enormous international success, Every Breath You Take dominated the airwaves, and stadiums were packed with fans.

Behind the scenes, however, Sting and Stewart Copeland were barely able to work together without arguing.

Their battles over arrangements, songwriting and control had become so intense that recording sessions could descend into shouting and physical confrontation. The extraordinary success of The Police was pushing the three musicians further apart.

For Sting, walking away would mean abandoning the biggest band of his life. But his determination to keep moving had begun long before The Police existed.

Escaping the Shipyards

Sting was born Gordon Sumner in Wallsend, North Tyneside, in Nineteen Fifty-One.

The enormous Swan Hunter shipyards dominated the landscape of his childhood. His father worked as a milkman and his mother as a hairdresser, but Gordon became determined to find a different life.

Music offered the escape.

He taught himself guitar, absorbed everything from The Beatles to jazz and eventually became a teacher by day while playing Newcastle clubs at night. During his time with the Phoenix Jazzmen, a black-and-yellow jumper earned him the nickname Sting.

By the mid-Seventies, he was playing with the jazz-rock group Last Exit.

Then Stewart Copeland saw him perform.

The Police Take Shape

Copeland was looking for musicians for a new band and recognised something in Sting immediately.

Sting moved to London, leaving teaching behind. The Police initially featured guitarist Henry Padovani before the arrival of the more experienced Andy Summers completed the classic trio.

Their combination was unusual. Punk energy collided with reggae rhythms, jazz influences and sophisticated musicianship.

Roxanne initially struggled in Britain, but growing American interest helped transform the band’s fortunes. Soon Message in a Bottle, Walking on the Moon and other hits were pushing The Police towards international stardom.

But success also altered the balance inside the group.

The Police became international stars while relationships inside the trio grew increasingly difficult.

Success Creates a Power Struggle

Copeland had formed The Police, but Sting was increasingly writing the songs that defined them.

As his songwriting became more successful, Sting arrived at sessions with increasingly developed ideas of how those songs should sound. Copeland had equally strong opinions and resisted simply following instructions.

Andy Summers was frequently caught between them.

By the time Synchronicity was recorded at AIR Studios in Montserrat, years of frustration had accumulated. Sting and Copeland fought repeatedly over the music, while producer Hugh Padgham attempted to manage an increasingly fractured recording process.

Remarkably, the resulting album became their greatest commercial success.

Every Breath You Take became an enormous hit, while Synchronicity turned The Police into stadium-level superstars.

It wasn’t enough to save them.

Walking Away at the Top

In August Nineteen Eighty-Three, The Police performed before roughly seventy thousand people at Shea Stadium in New York.

For Sting, reaching that extraordinary level of success produced an unexpected reaction. Instead of wondering how much bigger the band could become, he began questioning where they could possibly go next.

After completing their remaining commitments, The Police stopped working together.

Sting wanted complete artistic freedom.

In Nineteen Eighty-Five, he emerged with a new group of musicians drawn heavily from the American jazz world, including Branford Marsalis, Kenny Kirkland, Darryl Jones and Omar Hakim.

His first solo album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles, confirmed that leaving The Police had not ended his commercial career.

Sting deliberately moved away from The Police sound when he began his solo career in the mid-Eighties.

Returning to the Past

Sting continued changing direction throughout the following decades, but some of his most personal music came from confronting the childhood he had once been desperate to escape.

After the deaths of both his parents, he struggled to write.

The breakthrough eventually became The Soul Cages in Nineteen Ninety-One, an album filled with ships, water and imagery drawn from his upbringing in the North East. The landscape he had spent his youth trying to leave had become the inspiration he needed.

More than twenty years later, he returned to the same world again with The Last Ship.

He also eventually returned to The Police.

In Two Thousand and Seven, Sting, Copeland and Summers reunited for a major world tour. More than two decades after their conflicts had helped bring the band to a halt, the three musicians were playing together again.

The reunion lasted until Two Thousand and Eight.

Sting then returned to the pattern that had defined his career from the beginning: moving on rather than standing still.