F EL BERG REAL L I F E S TORI ES
Sting
A SHORT BI OGRAPHY
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F EL BERG REAL L I F E S TORI ES
RYSZARD WOLAC
SKI
Sting
A short biography
Translation and glossary by
Aldona Stepaniuk
Warsaw 2002
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Series Editor
Adam Wola ski
Reviewer
Zbigniew Mazur
Copy editor
Natica Schmeder
Production editor
Barbara Gluza
Cover designer
Andrzej-Ludwik W oszczy ski
DTP
A.L.W. GRAFIK
Copyright © by FELBERG SJA Publishing House, 2002
Photograph copyright © by Universal Music Polska
Acknowledgements
All illustrations in this publication reproduced by
courtesy of Universal Music Polska.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior written permission of the Publisher.
Printed in Poland
ISBN 83-88667-17-3
2
I NTRODUCTI ON
He once confessed that the only person who ever
addressed him by his real name was his mother. His wife,
ex-wife, and even his children call him Sting. He has always
had a nickname. For instance, they called him Lurch in
primary school. Apparently, with his height and behaviour, he
resembled a character from the Addams Family. In his later
school days, when writing and speaking backwards was in
fashion, friends used to call him Noddy. Noddy is short for
Nodrog, and Nodrog is his real name spelt backwards.
How did he come to be called Sting? An interesting
story, that. Or stories, as there are more than one! Which
of them is true, he is not even sure himself anymore.
Jazz musicians have always liked nicknames. Take Louis
Armstrong. His nickname was Satchmo from the word
satchelmouth, because some people said his lips were satchel-
shaped. Lester Young, the saxophone virtuoso, was nicknamed
Pres, from president. Charlie Parker was simply called Bird.
The young double bass player in the Newcastle band Phoenix
Jazzmen was christened Sting by his fellow musicians because
he looked like a wasp in his black-and-yellow striped sweater.
Another version of the origin of this nickname is that during
one of their concerts the Phoenix Jazzmen noticed their
bass player was making very odd, expressive movements.
Strangely enough, the movements didn t seem to go with
the rhythm of the slow-moving, sad jazz ballad they were
currently performing. The reason was not the musician s
artistic ecstasy, and it was soon revealed. There was a
wasp in his trouser leg. From then on, the young man was
called Sting.
3
3
CHAPTER ONE
Gordon Matthew Sumner
He was born on October 2, 1951 in Wallsend, a
working-class quarter of Newcastle, one of the largest ports
in Great Britain. He had three younger siblings, brother
Philip and two sisters, Angela and Anita. His father, an
engineer, worked in a dairy, and his mother was a hairdresser.
His childhood was not a happy one the Sumner family were
not doing too well financially. This caused frequent quarrels
between the parents. Philip, although younger, would also
give him a hard time, often winning in brotherly fights.
Memories of his early school days give him the shivers
to this day. Primary school discipline was very strict, the
slightest misbehaviour was punished by flogging. The
minimum penalty was six strokes with a cane on the bare
backside, a cruel and humiliating practice. Secondary school
wasn t a bed of roses either. He may have graduated with
good grades, but he remembers it as an unpleasant, if not
hostile place. He didn t have many friends there. He was
somewhat different: he read a lot, talked about music all the
time, considered going to university, while his schoolmates
ambitions were limited to learning a trade and then finding
a job at the dockyards or a coal mine. So he lived in his own
world. The world of the sounds from the guitar that he had
found among the things left by his uncle. He first played
this guitar to early Beatles and Rolling Stones recordings. He
also had some borrowed jazz records. While playing them,
he pictured himself as the bass player.
Why the bass player, Sting is not even sure himself.
Perhaps because the fi rst guitar he bought with his hard-
earned money was a bass guitar, the only one he could afford.
He practised playing it every minute of his spare time that
was not devoted to studying, as he was also preparing for
his university entrance exams at that time. He hoped the
English course at Warwick University would be his chance
to leave the mining district, a place he felt was not for him,
for good. He didn t succeed, though. His university career
4
ended after just one semester, so it
was back to Newcastle again. First
on welfare, or as they say in Britain,
on the dole, later he managed to
find a job and was digging drainage
ditches for half a year to follow. He
also helped his father in the dairy.
When it was warm, he coached an
amateur soccer team, or as they
call it in Britain a football club. In
winter, he worked at a vegetable
processing plant. Next, he got a bus conductor s job, and then
he was employed as a tax collector. However, he wasn t a good
clerk and when he was threatened with dismissal, he enrolled
at the Northern Counties Teacher Training College.
In 1974, after three years of study, he graduated with
a teaching diploma in English and music. He was a fully
qualifi ed teacher! Especially the music diploma gave him
a lot of satisfaction. As a teacher he was well liked by his
pupils, and as a musician he was soon recognised too. The
Phoenix Jazzmen, a dixieland band playing four times a
week at The Wheatsheaf pub, invited him to join them and
play whenever their full-time double bass player had too
much to drink at the bar. One night the regular musician
didn t show up at all and so Gordon Matthew Sumner
became a permanent member of the band. A school teacher
in the morning, he played his bass guitar in the evening,
first with The Phoenix Jazzmen, then with another combo
called The Riverside Men. Finally, he ended up with The
Newcastle Big Band, where he recorded his first album! He
even performed twice at the famous jazz festival in San
Sebastian, Spain. The band also gave concerts in France.
What a great joy it was to be a real artist, to tour the
Continent, to hear people applauding and complimenting
him, to read favourable reviews in foreign papers.
At that point Sting because he was Sting already by
then felt good enough to do something on his own. He
selected a few musicians from the big band and started his
5
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