The bassist Sting thought was out of everybody’s league: “As Hendrix was for the electric guitar”
He might be a caricature for many music fans, a nature perfectly lampooned by his appearance as himself in Zoolander 2, spinning the story of Adam, Eve and the lesser-known ancestor of all models, Steve, but beneath such comedic fluff, Sting is an expert musician and has earned his stripes.
The Geordie is, in several ways, the ultimate musical paradox. While he is one of the best-selling artists of all time for his work as the frontman and bassist of The Police and as a solo entity, with both endeavours confirming the extent of his technically proficient approach, he has never been the coolest cat – take his stage name, for instance. A precursor to the likes of U2 and Level 42, despite the triumph of his art and the flair beneath it, he’s always had a hard time reconciling talent with his reputation.
This has much to do with the seriousness of his work, which, in light of punk’s emergence just before The Police formed in 1977 and the sneering irony at its core, always pitted them against the culturally significant zeitgeist, regardless of how many records they shipped. This was just the beginning, too, with the comically serious 1993 solo hit ‘Fields of Gold’, clearly displaying why Sting has long been widely deemed one of the most pretentious characters in music.
Describing why he wrote the track in Lyrics by Sting, the Geordie offered a strong hit of why he holds such a status. He recalled that out the window of his 16th-century Wiltshire manor house one summer, all he could see were rolling fields of golden barley. Yet, he took this quintessential British sight down a bizarre route, even for a man famed for his tantric sex odysseys: “There’s something inherently sexy about the sight, something primal, as if the wind were making love to the barley. Lovers have made promises here, I’m sure.”
Moments such as the above holistically paint a picture of a highly complex, outlandish individual, but still, his status as a fine bass player should not be obscured by them. Neither should the fact that his distinctive, refined approach makes him one of the greatest to have ever picked up the instrument. This also qualifies him to comment on the importance of other lauded names, including the late pioneer Jaco Pastorius.
For a long time, the bass guitar has been routinely mocked. As Geddy Lee, the low-end master for Rush, once put it, “Back in my day, nobody chose to be the bass player. You were always a guitarist, and somebody said, ‘Well, we need a bass player,’ so they had a vote and you became the bass player. That’s how I became a bass player: I was voted in.”
It goes further, as what the four-string guitar offered was stability while six-string beckoned fame to the door, as Lee continued: “I think that was pretty common for the period, because everybody wanted to be Jimi Hendrix; everybody wanted to be Eric Clapton; everybody wanted to be Jimmy Page.” But if there was one bassist who seemed to curry a similar appreciation, it was Pastorius.
Tragically, Pastorius died aged 35 in 1987 due to the injuries sustained in a fight outside a Florida nightclub, but in his short time on the earth, he rose to become one of the most influential players in the history of the bass, which heavily implies just how immense his talent was.
While he was best known for being a crucial part of the jazz fusion supergroup Weather Report from 1976 to 1981 – which greatly inspired Sting – Pastorius also worked with other notable artists such as Pat Metheny and Joni Mitchell. This included the latter’s 1976 masterpiece, Hejira. The opener ‘Coyote’ is one of his most famous efforts and conveys the sheer force of his fretless bass work.
When appearing in the 2014 documentary Jaco, Sting aptly described Pastorius’ relationship with the bass as the same as what “Hendrix was for the electric guitar”.
He recalled: “I met Jaco in Miami a couple of times; he would come to see us whenever we played there, and we stuck up a friendship, and he liked the way I play – although I play in a completely different way – he appreciated what I do, and I was obviously a huge fan of his. So, I think he was as influential on that instrument as, say, Hendrix was for the electric guitar, completely reinventing its possibilities.”
Debating the great “What if?” concerning what the American’s career would have panned out like if he’d lived to 60, Sting asserted that there was no telling what his “extraordinary” musical genius would have achieved. Like everyone, he was appaled by the nature of his friend’s death but maintained that he should only be remembered for his musicianship and “inspiration”.
