serious talk about the band reuniting this year to celebrate
the 30th anniversary
• The Police may be headed your way.
Well, at least Sting is considering it. This year marks the 30th anniversary
of the formation of The Police, and the band’s famous former front man
says he may take a break from his current lute obsession to reunite
with drummer Stewart Copeland and guitarist Andy Summers. “We started 30
years ago,so it would be nice to do something to celebrate,”
says Sting. “We don’t quite know what, but we’re talking about it.”
Sting says this just seems like the right time to discuss the past, though
he isn’t sure what form that discussion will take, including whether there
will finally be a long-awaited, much prophesized national reunion tour.
(Told that Police and Van Halen are “the two big reunions the world
is waiting for,” Sting jokes “I’ll join Van Halen.”) But he does promise
he’ll do something with his old band mates.
“I’m deeply, deeply fond of both of them. I’m very proud of the band
that we were in. I left the band because I felt I wanted to grow as a
musician, to mature as a musician, and to try more things than a band
is able to do. A band is very constricted. And you know, I spent the
last 25 years exploring that freedom and having a great time doing it.
We’re still great friends. It is the 30th anniversary. We are discussing
something. Don’t know what, but definitely something.”
Whatever he does with Police, Sting is not yet ready to stop exploring
the lute and the music of 16th century British composer John Dowland.
His album of Dowland songs, Songs From the Labyrinth, debuted on the
top of Billboard’s classical chart. And he’ll do songs from the album on
PBS for a February Great Performances special filmed at his manors in
England and Italy.
The lute, he says, is far more than a musical lark. “I took this very
seriously. I spent a lot of time studying and researching and took a
lot of advice from people who have been in the realm for many years.”
Normally, Sting says, this repertoire is sung by operatic singers. But he
felt the immediacy and melancholy in Dowland’s music could be adopted
to his “pop singer” style, though doing so, he says, was a great challenge.
And that’s not even considering playing the lute, a hard instrument to master.
“I think it’s good to put yourself through apprenticeship now and then to
learn something new and really challenging. I’ve played guitar for many years.
This is a different kind of animal altogether but I’m fascinated by it.”
And in some ways, says Sting, fascination is its own reward. “Work is
never wasted. If you do something well, it always helps the creative
process. So whether you’ll hear it on another record, I don’t know.
But it feels good. It feels like I’m doing something that I should be doing.”
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