Sting
Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner was born at Sir G B Hunter Memorial Hospital in Wallsend, Northumberland, England, on 2 October 1951, the eldest of four children of Audrey (née Cowell), a hairdresser, and Ernest Matthew Sumner, a milkman and former fitter at an engineering works.
Sting attended St Cuthbert’s Grammar School in Newcastle upon Tyne. He visited nightclubs such as Club A’Gogo where he saw Cream and Jimi Hendrix. He learned to sing and play simultaneously by listening to records at 78 rpm.
Sting worked as a schoolteacher for two years. This after having other shorter-term jobs such as tax officer, bus conductor, and construction worker. The classic Police song “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” relates the story of a student’s infatuation with her young male teacher.
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 songwriting. 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.
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 in London 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.
Their 1978 debut album, Outlandos d’Amour, reached No. 6 on the UK Albums Chart and contains the singles “Roxanne” and “Can’t Stand Losing You”. Their second album, Reggatta de Blanc (1979), became the first of four consecutive No. 1 studio albums in the UK and Australia; its first two singles, “Message in a Bottle” and “Walking on the Moon”, became their first UK number-one singles.
Four of the band’s five studio albums appeared on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and two of the band’s songs, “Every Breath You Take” and “Roxanne”, each written by Sting, appeared on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
The Police have sold over 75 million records, making them one of the best-selling bands of all time. The band won a number of music awards, including six Grammy Awards, two Brit Awards (winning Best British Group once), and an MTV Video Music Award.
The Police became a phenomenon in the early ’80s and are still regarded as one of the greatest bands ever. However, after seven years Sting had enough and decided to call it quits. It was essentially a gamble, as having a successful career after leaving a super-successful band is akin to commercial suicide.
Sting married actress Frances Tomelty on 1 May 1976. They had two children. In 1982, after the birth of his second child, he separated from Tomelty and the couple divorced in 1984 following Sting’s affair with actress Trudie Styler. The split was controversial; as The Independent reported in 2006, Tomelty “just happened to be Trudie’s best friend (Sting and Frances lived next door to Trudie in Bayswater, west London, for several years before the two of them became lovers)”.
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 of movies – a minor part in Chris Petit’s “Radio On” and an excellent 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.
In November 1984, Sting was part of Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, which raised money for famine victims in Ethiopia. Released in June 1985, Sting sang the line “I Want My MTV” on “Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits.
In June 1985, Sting released his first solo album The Dream Of The Blue Turtles. Featuring 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 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”. The success of the album, a solo appearance at Live Aid, and a well received world tour were proof that Sting had no need for the safety net of The Police.
With his wife, Trudie Styler and Raoni Metuktire, a Kayapo Indian leader in Brazil, Sting founded the Rainforest Foundation Fund to help save the rainforests and protect indigenous peoples there.
In 1995, Sting gave evidence in court against his former accountant (Keith Moore), who had misappropriated £6 million of his money. Moore was jailed for six years.
His album Nothing Like The Sun’ (Oct 1987) contains 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”.
Brand New Day album (Sep 1999) proved to be Sting’s most popular album in terms of sales in excess of eight million copies worldwide.
In the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2003 Sting was appointed a Commander of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to the Music Industry. In 2006 Sting was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Music by Newcastle University.
In February 2007, Sting stunned everyone when together with Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers The Police reformed for a performance at the annual Grammy Awards, where he announced, “We’re The Police and we’re back!” At a press conference in Los Angeles’ Whisky A Go-Go club the following day the band performed again and confirmed what was now the world’s worst-kept secret: that they would be starting a world tour. Shows sold out around the world in record time as more than 2.5 million tickets were sold.
The autumn of 2011 saw Sting celebrate his 60th birthday with a star studded concert at New York’s Beacon Theatre where artists including Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder and Lady Gaga all performed.
Sting supports his hometown Premier League football club Newcastle United and in 2009 backed a supporters’ campaign against the plan of owner Mike Ashley to sell off naming rights of the club’s home stadium St James’ Park.
In March 2018, The Last Ship musical opened to widespread critical acclaim in Newcastle and toured around the provinces also visiting Dublin. The ’44/876′ album with Shaggy was released in April 2018 and the duo toured throughout the summer in Europe and North America with a number of shows in Central and South America. The album went on to win a Grammy in the Best Reggae Album category.
Sting publicly opposed Brexit and supported remaining in the European Union. On 23 June 2016, in a referendum, the British public voted to leave. In October 2018, Sting was among a group of British musicians who signed an open letter sent to then Prime Minister Theresa May, drafted by Bob Geldof, calling for “a 2nd vote”, stating that Brexit will “impact every aspect of the music industry”.
Sting owns several homes worldwide, including Lake House and its sixty-acre estate near Salisbury, Wiltshire; a penthouse at 220 Central Park South in New York City; and the Villa Il Palagio estate in Figline Valdarno, Tuscany.
A keen chess player, Sting played chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in an exhibition game in 2000, along with four bandmates: Dominic Miller, Jason Rebello, Chris Botti and Russ Irwin. Kasparov beat all five simultaneously within fifty minutes
In March 2024, Sting announced the ‘STING 3.0’ Tour, a new dynamic era that showcasing his catalogue via a three piece combo alongside long time collaborator Dominic Miller on guitar and drummer Chris Maas. Dates in Europe began in the Spring and were followed by sell-out, multiple-night stints in some of the most legendary theatres across North America.
Sting has sold over 100 million records and singles. As a solo performer, he has released 15 albums between 1985 and 2021, most of which have sold millions of copies worldwide.
