The artist Sting called “one of my favourite musicians in the world”
If you looked at what Sting was doing the minute The Police hit it big, no one would have guessed he would be where he is today.
He was in the thick of it with the gnarliest punk rock bands of all time, so how the hell do you come from that to being one of the darlings of adult contemporary within the span of a few years? The Police may have fit right in when playing places like CBGBs, but Sting was always looking for something much bigger than three chords and the truth every single time he made a record.
Even as early as Reggatta de Blanc, he was already starting to move out of the confines of punk rock half the time he played. ‘Walking on the Moon’ may have had a simple chord progression, but when you look at the arrangements behind everything, he was clearly looking to stretch the same way that the greatest progressive musicians were doing at the time. He wasn’t necessarily in the same territory as Yes or Genesis, but when he struck out on his own, his band needed to play a whole lot more than rock and roll.
Songs like ‘Russians’ demanded something bigger than the traditional rock and roll band setup, and when he got to work with guitarists like Dominic Miller later down the line, it was easier to see what he was going for. He had graduated to the world of jazz, and while the rest of The Police were well-versed in jazz by the end, Sting preferred balancing tunes like ‘Shape of My Heart’ with the knockout pop choruses like on ‘Fields of Gold’.
But it’s another thing to actually be playing with some of the greatest musicians of all time. Any bass player would need to get their act together if they were thinking about playing with someone like Vinnie Colaiuta, and had he started his solo career a few years earlier, chances are Jaco Pastorius would have played him under the table every time he strapped on his four-string.
Then again, the biggest stars in the world aren’t necessarily looking for the most demanding songs of all time. Even if they want a bit of a challenge, nothing can beat a strong melody, and when Sting started working with his favourite artists on his Duets album, getting Herbie Hancock to work with him on a song like ‘My Funny Valentine’ was like a dream come true.
The whole thing was put together as a favour for Sting’s manager at the time, but the opportunity to play one of the most celebrated songs in the American Songbook with one of the biggest names in jazz wasn’t lost on him, saying, “Herbie and I have been friends since 1985. I met him in Paris. Herbie came to check us out because my band was all jazz players. [My manager] said ‘My favourite song in the world is ‘My Funny Valentine’. Will you sing that with Herbie?’ We did a lovely version of it. Very floaty. And he’s one of my favourite musicians in the world.”
Their version of the classic is beautiful for what it is, but it’s a lot more simplistic from what everyone would have been used to. Anyone who listened to Hancock from albums like Headhunters might be disappointed to see him fade into the background more than a few times, but when you have a song like this, any other musician would need to dial things back rather than grandstand.
Jazz players can play nearly anything they can get their hands on, but being able to serve the song effectively every time the tape starts rolling can often be a lost art with many virtuosos. The opportunity might be there to play a million notes, but both Sting and Hancock have understood the power that comes in the spaces between the notes.
