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Sting: armed and famous?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The elegant and positively sublime Sting turned usually hardboiled TV critics into mush Saturday night during a PBS-sponsored concert and Q&A promoting his “Great Performances” set to air Feb. 26. And since dabbling in reggae, world and jazz music wasn’t enough, he’s now promoting his successful “Songs From the Labyrinth” CD packed with classical songs from 16th century lute player John Dowland.
Sting also dangled a carrot in front of hungry Police fans who have been awaiting a reunion tour for more than two decades. Sting told the reporters that 30 years have passed since the Police formed so he would be open to doing something special this year. He just didn’t say what he would be willing to do. Naturally, a reunion tour would rake in incredible amounts of money, but Sting has plenty of loot (or is that lute?) and hasn’t been enticed to cash in the way the Rolling Stones or the Who have done. When a reporter implied that he perhaps didn’t get along with former bandmates Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers, he said that wasn’t the case at all (at least now) and that he simply left the group back in the ’80s because he felt constricted.
For now, Sting is hitting Europe for a few weeks with the man who taught him the lute, Edin Karamazov. The Bosnian played the instrument (he had several vintage replicas at his grasp) with dexterity and didn’t even blink an eye when a string broke. Sting didn’t look nearly as comfortable when he played his lute, but his vocal stylings fit Dowland’s melancholy tunes.
Surrounded by more than 70 candles, Sting finished off with a bluesy Robert Johnson tune “Hellhound on My Trail” and two hits of his own: 1993’s evocative “Fields of Gold” and a Police classic from 30 years ago (as opposed to, say, 430 years ago), “Message in a Bottle,” which he dedicated to his former bandmates Copeland and Summers.
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By Deirdre
January 14, 2007 10:02 AM | Link to this
I love Sting! And doesn’t he look great for his age? :)