The album that pushed Sting to his limits and harmed his voice: “I was tearful”
The Police had one of the messiest break-ups in rock, so much so that it changed Sting’s outlook on the dynamics of a band entirely.
“I don’t think any grown man can be in a band, actually,” he once told Mojo. “A band is a teenage gang. Who wants to be in a teenage gang when you’re knocking 70? It doesn’t allow you to evolve.”
Most of Sting’s issues with the band remained the same. They revolved around the theme that he was “song-driven and not necessarily band-driven”. And his desire to branch out and explore new sonic territories without restraint only grew, causing some of the biggest frictions in the group.
This also bled into another issue the others had with Sting’s dominance. From their perspective, his death grip on the reins was pulling them apart. But from his point of view, his inability to take on certain contributions came from a place of pushing them to excellence, even if it wasn’t always easy. To him, it was a necessary evil. As he once said, “Explaining to someone why their song isn’t working is a bit like saying their girlfriend’s ugly.”
Eventually, he’d had enough. His first solo record, The Dream of the Blue Turtles, should’ve felt like a proper breath of freedom. But the same old issues from his time with the band still hung around like a bad smell. On top of that, you got the sense he just wanted out – anywhere but here – just to clear his head and make sense of the split.
The reason he took on the project in the first place was because he felt a certain pull to it. He felt deep down he needed to do it; the title even came to him in a dream. It felt prophetic enough for him to bench his problems and give it a go. But that didn’t mean his problems didn’t linger behind him at all times, resurfacing after the fact and forcing him to question if he’d even done the right thing.
As he reflected to Musician in 1985, “I believe that everything happens for a purpose, so I asked myself why did this happen now? Then I realised the truth. I’d lost my sense of direction.” He went on, “Is the album any good? I don’t know anymore. My voice, it’s so weak. I was even tearful before. I just wanted to forget the band. I wanted to go home, crawl into bed, just forget the whole thing because I can’t sing.”
He knew pragmatically why he was doing it. He even enlisted jazz musicians to help bring his sonic and artistic vision to life. It’s what he’d always wanted to do – but at the time, he just couldn’t find deep down the organic reason for doing it at all. But maybe that’s the beauty of it in the end. Joni Mitchell made her best work when she was at her most uncertain. Sting said himself he could have played it safe and made another album with The Police, but what he did instead was take a risk.
But, as we know, playing it safe almost always ends in disaster. As Sting said, “This risk is more logical and more in tune with what my instincts tell me.”
