It had been a while since Sting had given such an extensive interview to a media outlet and he chose The Sunday Times this time. This year, he is succeeding with his musical The Last Ship and his stellar collaboration with Argentine musicians Catriel and Paco Amoroso. At 74 years old, he is "annoyingly fit", says the writer from The Times who authored the article, Ed Potton. Here is what he shared.
Sting greets him at the door of the West End theatre where his musical is being staged. A man asks him for a selfie, and the singer jokes that it will cost him 15 euros. "I could make a fortune out of this," he says. His fortune is around 400 million.
Sting started doing yoga in the 90s. "In the end, you realize that everything is yoga. Walking to work is yoga. I exercise every day, and of course, it's part of what I do, but I no longer practice yoga per se. I don't think I need it." He eats "everything," he claims. "I like ice cream. I like wine. I like gin. I don't smoke. I have never smoked anything legal in my life."
Gordon Sumner, leader of The Police, made headlines some time ago for his famous seven-hour tantric sex sessions with his second wife, Trudy Styler, mother of his last four children, with whom he has been for over 30 years. A romance that caused a stir at the beginning of their relationship since she was a close friend of Sting's first wife and mother of his first two children, actress Frances Tomelty.
Sting speaks to the press because he wants to promote The Last Ship, his latest challenge. With music and lyrics by him, it tells the story, set in the 80s, of shipyard workers who confront Margaret Thatcher's government over the closure of their factory in Wallsend, the singer's hometown a few kilometers from Newcastle. With union leaders quoting Marx and an "evil" conservative politician, it's not your typical Mamma Mia show with glitter and clapping.
"Most musicals," explains Sting, "are based on existing intellectual property, so if you do something like this, it's challenging. At the same time, this is the play I wanted to do; I was never tempted to write a jukebox musical, where you fit a story around your greatest hits. That bores me to death."
The Last Ship is a tribute to his grandfather, who worked in the shipyards, and his father, who worked in a local turbine factory. Despite receiving two Tony Award nominations, the show did not succeed on Broadway during its first run in 2014. "I am persistent. I don't confuse commercial success with excellence". Sting has even joined the cast of his own musical and appears in work overalls, "singing in a melodious Geordie accent in a show that starts with a shower of welding sparks and unfolds under the shadow of a huge ship," says The Times. "There are parts of me all over the work," explains Sting. "The complex father-son relationship seen in the musical is something I definitely identify with." Sting's parents passed away before the musical premiered, but his brother saw it "and was devastated."
Sting opens up about his wife, Trudy, a film director. "She's doing great, finishing Banderas' film." He refers to Up Against It, a romantic comedy she directs and produces, starring Antonio Banderas, Richard E. Grant, and Mickey Sumner, Sting and Styler's daughter, whose premiere will take place this month at the Toronto Film Festival.
Sting and Styler split their time between London, Tuscany, New York, and Los Angeles, but their roots are in Wallsend. The Last Ship is a continuation of The Soul Cages, the 1991 album inspired by northeast England that ended Sting's long period of creative block after losing his mother, a hairdresser, and his father to cancer in the 80s. "If you don't grieve in the traditional way, you are doomed to do it in a much more prolonged way," he states. "I started writing songs about where I grew up. At that time, I didn't appreciate how surreal that environment was: the ship at the end of the street, armies of men walking to work." The Wallsend shipyard, he explains, had "one of the worst safety records in Western Europe. They worked with asbestos and all kinds of toxic rubbish. There were explosions." The Last Ship doesn't sugarcoat that world but conveys "the city's pride in what was being built there. On launch days, you didn't have school, and some dignitary traveled from London."
The shipyard closed in 2006. "Britain used to produce 70 percent of the world's ships," Sting states. "Now we produce very few. Successive governments were short-sighted for years, trying to weaken the unions and turn Britain into a service economy." Currently, the industry is dominated by China, Japan, and South Korea. "The government should have subsidized the shipyards."
Sting's former bandmates in The Police sue him for the band's copyright
This would please Andy Burnham, who has advocated for reviving British industrial tradition. "I'm glad Andy is there," says Sting. "He's giving a voice to the North, and it's nice to hear someone with a regional accent in Parliament." So, will Sting vote for the Labour Party? "Of course. It's a very critical moment. Democracy is fragile. When it's infiltrated by anti-democratic forces, it's hard to get rid of them."
Sting recalls that he realized he wanted to leave Wallsend at the age of 8 when the Queen Mother waved at him from a Rolls-Royce during a visit to the shipyards. "The whole family seemed from another planet. I thought, 'I want a bigger life than what they're offering me. I want to be in that car.' I did everything I could to escape."
After university and two years working as a teacher, he formed The Police in London in 1977 with Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers. They were together until 1984 and reunited in 2007 with great public success, raising 300 million. Last year, Copeland and Summers took Sting to court over alleged unpaid fees. Sting doesn't want to discuss that with The Times. He had an easier dispute with Diddy (Sean Combs), who used a sample of The Police's Every Breath You Take without permission in his 1997 hit I'll Be Missing You, reportedly paying Sting several thousand dollars a day in royalties.
In 2020, he sold his publishing rights to Universal for 200 million pounds.
Their Children
Sting and his wife have not allowed their children to live solely off their last name. They have four - Mickey, 42 years old; Jake, 41; Eliot, 36; and Giacomo, 30— Eliot is a non-binary actor who appeared in Ripley and in the James Bond movie No Time to Die. Sting also worked as an actor in Quadrophenia, a mod icon.
In recent years, Sting has recorded duets with Barbra Streisand, Dolly Parton, and Snoop Dogg. The latest one was with Catriel and Paco Amoroso.