Sting

Like so many artists over the last two years, he began working on this album as a kind of self therapy while in lockdown. Before long, a loose theme began to emerge. The songs are populated by characters in a state of transition, an unsettling place between life and death, health and sickness, between relationships, between worlds, all looking for

the bridge to a future that's safer and happier. Though the forward thinking musician has long been a champion of environmental and humanitarian causes, this desire for a writer future certainly feels more acute in two, but the serious subject matter is bolstered by some of the strongest melodies he's crafted in years. The lead single, if It's Love opens with a Whistle, a first in his extensive back catalog.

As near as I can tell, it's a welcome note of whimsical optimism amid a deeply thought provoking record both intimate and immediate. The Bridge stands proud alongside his formidable list of classics. I'm so happy to welcome to the show, Sting. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did. Your new album, The Bridge is fantastic. It's it's a much needed adventure for those of us stuck at home. I mean, it's so vary musically and emotionally. I can't

begin to tell you how much I enjoyed it. Well, that's a very good start to an interview. Thank you. I'm flatted. Um. The album, I mean, it came together during the pandemic for someone who's been on tour and on the move really more or less for for so many years. Did the opportunity to sit still more comparatively speaking,

I guess impact you creatively. I think, to be honest, making an album is usually usually cloised, it away for weeks on end in the same place, So it actually isn't that much of a novelty for for recording artists to be stuck. It's very hard to make albums on the road. We tried but failed. Um, So in a way it was it was a way to cope with lockdown, um, even though I was out of my work cycle you know, which is recording, uh, touring, thinking recording, you know. Um,

this was halfway through the the the touring cycle. So I just said, okay, this is the universe saying you have to get back in the studio and do some work otherwise you go completely nuts. To ask you more about the title the Bridge, It's a metaphor of that that crops up at one form or another throughout the album, and it's certainly a time they want, given the unsettled, uncertain world that we all find ourselves in unfortunately these days. Can you tell me more about what the bridge means

to you? It's a it's a useful metaphor, and as you say, it does recur on on the record in almost every song. I think all the characters I'm writing about are in some sort of transition, um, between love affairs, between life and death, health and sickness, as as we all are, of course in in this current um climate of crisis. You know, the climate crisis, the pandemic, you know, the political crisis. All of us are looking towards a

route to a safer future. Um. We have different ideas of what what that is, but we're all looking for it. It's a it's a metaphor. It's um, you know, a bridge. It's it's a it's a spiritual bridge if you like. Whatever that means that the vacant concept. But um, it's something we we searched for. It's not iron or steel.

It's just it's just hopefully there. And you've said that this theme kind of revealed itself to you sort of late in the process when you're looking back at that the songs that that you've that you've written so far. Is that a regular occurrence for you? Do you often finish the song and read it back and learn something about yourself, almost like a good dream reading or something. Well, once, once I've finished, you know a fair number of the songs, I will lay them out and look at them and

see if there's any connecting tissue between them. And I'm often surprised that there is. And because it's the songs are created subconsciously. Um. And this theme of the bridge came after looking at a nine or so songs, and then I wrote the song called the Bridge. So in a way, that was it was organic in that in that sense, it wasn't like I started off with an agenda at all. I was just allowing the music to

tell me a story. And if you allow allow it to if you if you allow that process to happen, um, you know, miraculously it appears. And I don't quite understand how or why, but not being lucky enough for it happened on a number of occasions. I mean, your songs are so character driven, and they say and in screenwriting that the characters tend to write themselves after a while, they sort of behave according to their own internal logic that you've given them and almost take it from there.

Do you find that in the case and your songs that the characters almost wind up in the driver's seat by the end of the writing session actually do and it's driven by rhyme? I think rime is a very interesting phenomena in music. Uh, there's a there's a truth to rhyme. You know, when things rhyme, we tend to accept them as being gospel, you know. I mean that

maybe a trick. At the same time, there is a rus to rhyme, and if you follow a rhyme scheme, um, the mystery of a story opening out is it becomes very apparent. You know. I started one song called the Bells of St. Thomas, you know, with just one line I woke up in some rich woman's bed, and then the rhyme just kept, you know, opening our possibilities for this character to explore. And I had no idea what it was about when I was writing it. I'm still

not sure, but it's kind of evocative. I think, what an opener. I woke up in Antwerp and some rich woman's bad I was going to ask him, no, no, it's not biographic, but um, you know, it's not a lot of time in Antwerp. Um. It's an interesting city sort of it's in Belgium, but it's also very Dutch, and it's on the on the coast to the North Sea, and it just has a has a mood about it that is kind of what's the word, it's mysterious. It's

a mysterious town. It's also where you know, the Flemish artists lived, which became another strand in the story of the work of Peter Rubens. I love how these historical figures crop up in in some of these songs. I mean, one of my favorite tracks on the record is the Book of Numbers, inspired by to me, one of the most compelling historical figures, Robert Oppenheimer. Can you talk a little more about about the story in that song, because

it's so powerful to me. Well, Oppenheimer has has dropped up twice in my work, once in Russians Um many years ago, and this time he appears as a ghost UM haunting I suspect the bar near Los Alamos out in the desert, and he's the ghost is haunted by the idea that he needs to repent for what what he's invented. You know, there's a wonderful YouTube footage of Oppenheimer talking um with an incredible will, regret and compassion

um recording the bag bad geta. You know, I you see, I'm become deaf and he could not reconcile what it invented with his humanity, and that that tragedy is kind of stays with stays with me. Oh, it's an incredible clip for anyone listening who hasn't seen it. I recommend watching it. It is uh trying to read the emotions on his face as he as he said, just to rationalize inventing, you know, unleashing inadvertently the atomic bomb in

the world and what it's real world repercussions. It's um, it's a study in character and a study and emotion.

It's pretty extraordinary. I mean I called it the Book of Numbers because you know, it's one of the first books of the Bible, and it's it concerns the wandering in the desert and the census where they counted the tribe, but they counted everything, which I can I thought to be the metaphor for the beginning of math, you know, on the beginning of math leads to leads the science, and science eventually leads to the ability to destroy ourselves. So uh, it's it's a it's an interesting conundrum being

a human being, absolutely, I guess. On on the on the flip side of the desert water is a recurring theme on this record as well. I mean, having grown up I think quite literally in the shadow of a shipyard, I imagine that must be a really primal touchdown for you. Yeah, I was born right next to the river on the shipyard and quite close to the North Sea, and I'm very very attracted toward I'm also very afraid of water. Um. I think it's a fearsome element. Traditionally it symbolizes the feminine.

Um symbolizes the subconscious and both of those things that I'm deeply interested in. And um, as you say, water crops up again and then again in this and on this album as sacrament as a cleansing agent. Uh news. Yeah, what is a powerful symbol for me. It's a lot of I mean hearing you say that water is related to to the feminine, that's sort of feminine energy I

feel like on this this album as well. I mean, you know, from the broken Promise of Captain Bateman to you know, reference referencing God's daughter and rushing water and as in addition to the many water references in general. It's interesting to me that you say that because I thinking back now, I can I pick up on a lot of those references. Well, I'm glad you do. You know,

I'm essentially agnostic. I don't belong to a faith. Agnostic meaning I don't know, but um, you know, I used the word spiritual before, but I think I'm going to only define spirituality as curiosity. I'm curious about why we're here, about what what this whole thing is. And that's my spirituality, not not any dogma, just curious. We had, of all of the songs and all the characters on this record, the one that seemed to me to have the most of you, and it was seemed to be Harmony Road.

Uh assessment. I do come from the wrong side of the tracks, um and managing it like that. Well, managed to escape my postal code or what what was signified by that through music, through education. But I've never forgotten my humble upbringing, and I think that story is a you know, a powerful one. It's a powerful archetype for all of us that you can move out of your uh predicament if you like. So. Yeah, how Many Road is kind of biographical though I never stole a car,

not once. Well, we'll put that out there, put that on record. I mean a lot of touchstones. Do you bring me the hills at the border too, I mean those hills up by Scotland near Hadrian's Wall. I mean that area must also have a strong connection for you. Yeah, we know, I come from a border town that changed hands between the English and the Scots over hundreds of years and the Vikings, and you know, it was a war zone basically after the Romans left, there was this

war zone. And um, that natural border between England and Scotland was was haunted by ghosts as well as bandits and in clans who would you know, rape and pillage a lot. So there's a lot of there are a lot of battles fought. And I just wrote a ghost story about those hills that they're they're kind of mysterious achieving. It's you're gonna you're gonna hang up on me for this question. Do you are you open to spirits? Do you believe in I had to think they call them ghosts?

But do you do you feel those presents and interact with them or is that something that you more are open to but haven't really seen much of firsthand experience of. Well, once again, I'm I'm agnostic. I don't know. UM, certainly a possibility that are that there are other realms than the ones we perceive. Um, you know, we have a limited range of perception visually, and perhaps these rooms exist. I just don't know, you know, I know one of a note vibrates. You know, at a certain frequency, you

get harmonics. They keep going up and up and up, and we can only hear a certain level of them. But I'm assuming that they keep going up, so vibration keeps getting, you know, higher and higher. So I don't know, I really don't. That's a great, very very practical answer. I feel. I feel like there's a lot of makes a lot of practical sense that their realms that that we can't perceive or experience. Yeah, I mean, I'd like to believe it. Um. I think it's a it's a

lovely idea. But again, I'm just curious. I'm thinking in the last few years, I guess, prior to the pandemic, we revisited your past work on on my songs, the album, and the tour and the and the Vegas resident residency and your audio only memoir Upon reflection, Did revisiting those pieces from your past uh set the stage in any way for the bridge? Was there a link between contrasting

the then and the now? I don't think I do it as as obviously as that, but I'm kind of intrigued when I when I do hear my music by accident, you know, I found in the shop and they're playing a song of mine. It'll take me a while before I recognize it, and my wife will say, that's that's you on the on the sound system, so oh yeah, And then I listen and I'm always kind of surprised by the decisions I might have made as a younger musician. You know, how did I know that? How did I

know to go to that chord there? That's interesting? So yeah, but I don't often do it. Um that my song has forced me to do that. That that the concept of going going back and re recording them with the knowledge that we now have, um, musical knowledge, technical knowledge, whatever it is, to try and make them not better, but just different and reflecting who I am right now? When when you do right do you get more inspiration? Looking outward or looking inward? I turned to want to

write about characters other than me at the moment. I think, you know, a singer songwriter, I can get very kind of naval intensive, you know. Um, so it's more interesting to put yourself in someone else's shoot is I think songs are great empathy machines. You know, you you look at the world through someone else's eyes and and see it from that point of view, So in a way it's a useful psychological exercise. But of course then you also bring your own you know, your own biases in

your your own subconscious comes into the process. So it can never be entirely without without a personal element. But that really is what you know. I listened to music and I asked the music to tell me a story. H it's generally about somebody else, not me. This is sort of a corlery to that question, and it's gonna betray the fact that I've never been able to successfully write a song in my life. What is it that

compels you to write in the first place? Is it a desire to connect with other people or is it something a little more introverted, like a desire to excavate an expouse or feelings. Well, it is my bridge to people in general, music and singing, and I have a voice that so I have a vehicle to express it in. And then that seems to be a fairly successful mode of expression. Um, but I am fairly introverted, even though

I'm a performer. You know, the act of performance across you cross the line and you become the opposite of what you are most of the performers I know this way too. They're not people who immediately want to be the center of attention in a room at all. They observe and and I'm one of those people. I'm quite shy. Are you superstitious at all when it comes to songwriting? Do you have certain rituals or do you feel at a certain time of the day he's more inspiring or

a room or an instrument. Can I kind of avoid it, you know, as often as I can. It's it's not an easy process. Facing a blank page is terrifying, and you know, the whole process is fraught by that acause I will I will I be able to write a song as good as the one I've just written. You know, You're happy for a few minutes, and then you go, now, what what what do I have to say? Uh? What? What will be useful? I love songs to have a um, a utility, you know, beyond just amusing myself. It's a

nice one. They're used for campaigns, like, you know, even as a joke, don't stand so close to me was used as the part of the you know, the COVID warning, you know, just to keep your distance. You know, I enjoyed that. You know, song songs can have a utility. Is it a daily practice for you writing? And the way that some people jog or swim or do yoga, is that's something that you've incorporated into your your daily life in one way or another. No, I say, I

avoid it. It's just a certain point of the year and I know I have to knuckle down and actually right, you know, I kind of open to inspiration. I think you have to put yourself in a state of open necess state of receptivity. Uh, and ideas come to you. A line will come to you, a melody, and then you build from that. You know, songs begin in a

very modest way. It's like one little step on baby step and not at least two another, and then you end up with something sometimes fairly complex from that process. But again, it's a mystery Jordan's It's totally a mystery to me as a fan of yours and a passionate amateur basis myself. Speaking of superstition, I want to ask you about your mainstay, your your workhorse, the your p bass.

It's one of the most iconic instruments this side of Paul McCartney's Hoffner What is it about that instrument that that keeps you, you know, married to it. UM's it's from so we're kind of almost the same age. It's been pretty battered over the years, a bit like me, and it's my It's my bruised little brother. You know. It has a growl about it has a spirit about it, you know. I'm Leo Fender actually must have wound the pickup himself and probably put it on a naze and

made it so it has that sense of history. But I think every note that's ever been played on it is somehow, you know, embedded in the instrument itself. And I love it. Mind you. I did a bass solo on this album, but I played it on a Fretless bass, not not my normal favorite. I have a Founder Fretless that was a copy of Jacko's bass, which I love. Oh wow, you you knew him, didn't he? I think I read somewhere that you hung out in in Miami and we're we're friendly with him. What what was Jaco

like to to be with one on one? Jacko came to see the police a couple of times, and uh, we used to exchange from course late at night, you know, he'd bring me up like four in the morning. I say, Jacko's four in the morning, said no, man, it's not it's only turned okay. But he was a lovely man and you know, a genius. I mean, he completely recalibrated people's ideas of what a base could do, and to this day he has yet to be you know, superseded. I mean that Charlie Parkers so low as he did

on the base. Who would have thought of that? I mean, it's incredible love the amazing some of your other Base heroes. I mean I saw the title for Harmony Road and I immediately thought a Harmony Road. Jack Bruce, who were some of the other Base people that you looked up to that really kind of showed you the way when you were first starting out. Well, I think playing the bass and singing is it is not the natural thing. You know, you're playing contrapuntal to the rhythm of the song.

It's not the same as strumming a guitar and singing, so you have to work it out basically. You know, it's like juggling, you know, doing one thing with the left hand and one thing both sides of the brain. So Jack Bruce obviously was a huge influence on me as a singer and a bass player. McCartney very much so.

And the phil linnet from From Thin Lizzie. I admired that those guys who could you know, sing the top line and also be in the engine room um, which struck me as a very useful place to be the band leader for him, because the rest of the band is working within your bandwidth. Literally, you know, you sing the top line and you're controlling the harmony underneath. UM. Without being particularly flashy, You're just that's how you lead the band. The heartbeat my my high school jazz band

directory stole we say the herdbeat. Yeah, we were you in the engine room. I love it. I mean speaking of leading the band, I mean getting back to the bridge. I imagine it was all recorded remotely because of COVID, which I believe the technology to record remotely has been in place for years, so I assume it wasn't a technical problem. But how did you keep it intimate with with the musicians when you in some cases worth thousands

of miles apart. Yeah, that that is the problem. Although we've recorded remotely many many times before, it's yeah, giving it a warmth and intimacy, which really is about, you know, have it. Knowing the musicians already, I would find it very difficult to to to work with somebody remotely who had never met m But you know, the musicians on this record, Dominic Miller, Many cutch A Brampit, Marcellus, I've

known for decades and they know my work process. They know what I want without me having to say very much at all. So um, it was kind of easy. But yeah, I want to get back into studio with musicians in the same room. It's it's much better that way. I mean, the Bridge is such an intimate record, not strictly dude, just like the lyrics, but just sonically, with the interplay between musicians and your voice. I feel like it's mixed so front and center. It seems so present

that it makes it very personal. It feels almost confessional to me. That was a very deliberate policy to bring the vocals right up so it's right inside your head. And um, you know, I've made albums where the vocal was laid back and inside the matrix of the band more, but this I wanted to be to be up front. I wanted to go to hear I'm thinking, and uh yeah, I like that. It's kind of a friend front a

French way of recording and mixing French. French songs have that very upfront vocal, I guess because I'm immediately thinking of like Jane Berkin and search Game Burger, something where it's right on the mic, when you can hear every every breath, every gasp, all the saliva. Yeah, very very visceral. I mean you've said that surprise is the essence of all art, and I want to ask you about that

because that's so interesting me. That's something that wouldn't have immediately struck me as the obvious definition of the essence of our Can you talk a little bit more about that. You know, if if someone sends me a tape of their songs, um, I'll give it a certain number of bars, and unless I'm surprised within the number of bars, I have to say, well, no, I don't have time. You have to surprise me within eight bars or sixty in bars if you haven't, and then you're just you know,

turning water here. I want to be surprised. I want something I haven't heard before. So when I compose, you know, when I put an album, and I want to surprise people. You might have preconceptions about what I do, but I want to flat those the That's my job, the artist job. I mean, you've done that so much of the course of your career. It's you've been a bridge for so many different kinds of music, from shaggy to Julio Iglesias to Algerian folk singers and jazz. I'm hard pressed the

name of genre that you haven't explored. Is that to keep it, keep the element of surprise in music for you? Or is that purely just the way you hear it in your head when you're when you're first coming up with these melodies. No, no, I'm so, I say, I'm driven by curiosity, and I don't you know, I live in my own ecology, and so I don't have to obey any rules. I just have to, you know, follow my curiosity. And if I hear something that I can incorporate into my world, and then I will, I will.

I won't have no fear about that. But again, it's about creating surprise, the sort of surprises. The expanded version of The Bridge features a cover of you Know, one of my all time favorite songs. And was writings sitting on the dock of the bay. You've had these great weekly videos on on social media where you sort of been talking about what that song is meant to you. Uh, did you learn anything new about that song by by

sort of getting inside it and singing it? You know, I would never have ever considered recording again what I considered to be a masterpiece. So this wedding song is something that I really it's of a high value to me. I bought the record as a kid, as a fifteen year old kid when it came out, and something about the song spoke to me. You know. I used to sit on the ferry landing down by the by the river and feel exactly that watching ships roll in and out.

What's beyond the world and I'm stuck here. So the song had a very personal meaning for me, not least because I just died a few weeks after that record came out. I was recorded in a few weeks before he died anyway. Um, And then I was asked to do it by the Alzheimer's Association, who had a campaign about music being very therapeutic for people suffering from dementia, that they remember music more readily than our songs, more readily than anything else. And would I record something that

meant something to me? Uh strongly? So I said, okay, I'll do it. But having done it, and I've never actually played the song before, I realized that was just playing major chords. There are no minor chords and that very very sad, melancholic song. It's all major chords. Now, you know, as a stounded Steve Cropper who was the writer with with otis, but I tip my hat to them. They did something that's really great. There's only there's a there's a major seventh chord and in a chorus, but

apart from that, it's just major chords. It's phenomenal. Wow, that's incredible to get something that, as you said, melancholic and sad at us out of you know, traditionally those you know, the sounds that we associate kind of with more with happiness. That's so interesting. I never made that connection. Wow, And and it's it's so incredible to me. I mean, as you said that for the Alzheimer's association, that music sort of makes the longest impact on the brain in

a sense, and that's so incredible to think. Mean, what is it do you think about music that makes it such an effective conduit of emotion. Well, you know, it's it's it's not intellectual at all. It's actually it's it's it's vibration and the resonance, and that's that's in the cells of our body. So it doesn't surprise me that, you know, if even if part of your brain is switched off, the cells of your body are responding to

to music and Brian and melody. And I hope, I hope, I hope we keep us in the world a little longer, and we're grateful for all the music that that you've given to us. I think it's a beautiful note to end on my my final question, Uh, we live in a divided time. How do you build a bridge between people that you may disagree with? I think it's very important that we do try and make that bridge. Politicians tend to want to make the divide greater so that

they can occupy that space. It's up to artists and musicians to fill that space. Um, So that's I take that very responsibly. I don't I don't want to just play to a thing, to the choir, you know, I want to I want to sing to everybody. UM. I think the message in the music is is a is a positive, a cohesive one. Society needs to cohere. We are one society. Uh, we have facing problems that we all have. You can't separate yourself from the problems and they have to they have to be tackled by society

as a whole. So a divided country as a weak country. That's a great point and perfect note to end on. Sting. Thank you so much for your time today and your music. It's been such a pleasure. Thank you, Thank you, Jodano a pleasure to talk to you too. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Inside the Studio, a production of I Heart Radio. For more episodes of Inside the Studio or other fantastic shows, check out the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.