The music legend Sting was disappointed in live: “Too much energy”
Every rock star must know how to be a showman before anything else. It’s one thing to be able to play an instrument, but there isn’t a soul on Earth who goes to a stadium rock show who expects their favourite artists to come out onstage and play on a tiny stool to pump out some of the finest music ever made. It’s about taking everything to the nth degree, but Sting knew as well as anyone that there was a point where someone could go way too far in the opposite direction.
Then again, rock and roll and spectacle have always gone hand in hand. Elvis Presley had some of the greatest rock and roll tunes under his belt, but no one was talking about that when he first arrived. What everyone was noticing was his dance moves and how he was causing a stir with young teenagers who were suddenly finding out what it meant to let loose at a concert for the first time.
And while Sting did have a fair bit of antics he could get into with The Police, it was always about the music before anything else. He was more than happy to share his knowledge of music theory, but since he was born in the same clubs that had housed he biggest names in punk, there needed to be some sort of aggression between tunes like ‘Next to You’ and ‘Roxanne’ to keep everyone on their toes.
But by the time Synchronicity came out, Sting was fighting tooth and nail to preserve the importance of his music. The band had graduated into the kind of territory that only The Beatles had seen before them, and despite being an electrifying power trio across their career, there was hardly any reason to keep the band going with all of the tension and the inevitable drop-off that would have happened had they continued.
Although Sting looked like a rock and roll alien at times with his Dune haircut singing ‘Every Breath You Take’, it was nothing compared to what Prince could do. In every iteration of his career, ‘The Purple One’ made sure that nothing got in the way of him putting on one of the greatest performances anyone had ever seen, from the James Brown dance moves to the electrifying guitar work to having everyone perform in lockstep with him at every turn.
It was a sight to behold whenever Purple Rain came to town, but Sting was always slightly let down whenever Prince took the stage in his prime, saying, “He had a lot of energy and he’s a really good musician, but he spent too much energy in being a vamp. I wasn’t turned on by his ass or whatever, but he’s young and he’ll mature, and I would hope he won’t be doing that when he’s older. I hope he’s sending himself up – if he is, he’s very funny. His songs would be more potent as sexual propaganda if he didn’t go in for all this camp stuff.”
But asking Prince to tone down the sexual overtones was like telling AC/DC to turn the guitars down a little bit. It was a core part of his identity, and despite him going on a journey of spiritual awakening when converting to his life as a Jehovah’s Witness, there’s a reason why he will forever be associated with writhing across the stage and making the kind of filthy lyrics that made people uncomfortable like ‘Darling Nikki’.
It might not have been the most tasteful way of working, but it’s not like Prince had to sacrifice any piece of his credibility to become a legend. He was always looking to improve even if it had some suggestive moments, and when measured against Sting’s career, it’s easy to appreciate something like Dream of the Blue Turtles and Sign O’ The Times in equal measure.
