2023-12-31 07:30:16
Forty years after disbanding his legendary group The Police, and with more than 100 million albums sold, Sting, a 72-year-old gentleman musician, continues to travel the world solo. Committed to the defense of the environment and human rights, a virulent opponent of Brexit, he is concerned about current attacks against democracies and the too low presence of women in power.
I wouldn’t have gotten here if…
…If it hadn’t been for the Beatles!
They played such a role?
This will seem incredible to you, but I remember vividly the moment I heard them for the first time. It was 1962, I was 11 years old, and I was in my last year of primary school. We were in the changing rooms of the swimming pool, drying ourselves off with loud blows of towels when, suddenly, I heard the first measures of Love Me Do, outputs of a transistor. It was striking. John’s lonely harmonica and Paul’s bass, the vocal harmony, the sobriety of the arrangements… I immediately perceived something important, revolutionary. We all stopped our antics. And I thought: this is changing my life.
A flash?
A certitude. A window opened. I became an absolute Beatles fan. I studied their records meticulously, returning the needle of the record player hundreds of times to measures that escaped my understanding to reproduce the chord sequences on the guitar. I learned to play all their songs, I was crazy about it. Which music !
But something else touched me: they came from Liverpool, a working port on the west coast of England, and I was from Wallsend, a port on the east coast, near Newcastle. They were, like me, of modest origin. Same environment, same culture. And what had they done? Nothing less than conquering the world with their own songs. Well their example authorized a whole generation of young English people to dream of doing the same thing! And that’s what I did. Without them, I’m not sure I would have had permission to try. I am infinitely grateful to them.
Read also: “John Lennon, 1940-1980. Splendor and misery of a rock’n’roll hero”, the new special issue of “Le Monde”
Were you already a musician?
I had inherited a guitar from an uncle who had gone to Canada that I had been playing since I was 8 years old. It became my obsession. I spent all my free moments leaning on her, withdrawing into myself, and learning on my own. But music had always been present in the family. My mother played the piano, especially tangos, which she loved. And my father, who had a tenor voice, sang alongside him. When they weren’t arguing. Alas, the arguments took everything away…
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