Sting set the battlements on fire and set himself free with the deeper wave of this thoughtful musical crusade. The Police had found it increasingly difficult to work together after the tour for 'Synchronicity' "Following the massive success of 'Synchronicity'
'The Dream of the Blue Turtles' was engineered by Pete Smith and Jim Scott and produced by Pete Smith and Sting at Blue Wave Studios in St. Philip, Barbados and Le Studio in Morin Heights, Quebec. The sessions featured Sting on lead vocals, guitar, and double bass; Omar Hakim on drums; Darryl Jones on bass guitar; Kenny Kirkland on keyboards; Branford Marsalis on saxophones and miscellaneous percussion; Dollette McDonald and Janice Pendarvis on backing vocals; with Eddy Grant on congas, Danny Quatrochi on additional background vocals and synclavier, Robert Ashworth on additional guitar, Frank Opolko on trombone, additional background vocals by Pete Smith, Elliot Jones, Jane Alexander, Vic Garbarini, Rosemary Purt, Stephanie Crewdson, Joe Sumner, Kate Sumner, Michael Sumner, Pamela Quinlan, and The Nannies Chorus.
Sting reveals: "The title of the album came from a dream that woke me up on my first night in Barbados. I dreamed I was sitting in the walled garden behind my house in Hampstead, under a lilac tree on a well manicured lawn, surrounded by beautiful rosebushes. Suddenly the bricks from the wall exploded into the garden and I turned to see the head of an enormous turtle emerging from the darkness, followed by four or five others. They were not only the size of a man, they were also blue and had an air of being immensely cool, like hepcats, insouciant and fearless. They didn't harm me but with an almost casual violence commenced to destroy my genteel English garden, digging up the lawn with their claws, chomping at the rosebushes, bulldozing the lilac tree. Total mayhem. I woke up to the sound of Branford in the room upstairs, riffing wildly on his tenor sax, followed by his unmistakeable laughter ... This new band is more clearly defined. I hired them to play, and I'm the songwriter and singer. So there are no arguments about roles, which makes the process a lot easier. But there's still room for the dialectic to and fro. They're not sidemen, they're too good for that. It was my intention all along to have a band, not a super-session bunch of hirelings. They're too proud to be that, and I'm too clever to want that. I didn't want to be seen as a patrician white pop star with his minstrel band. That's not the idea ... The four blue turtles are the four musicians in my band. They're a good symbol: The turtle is a creature who lives both under the sea and out of it. The sea is a good symbol of the subconscious. I feel black people are closer to that unconscious and blue is a good colour for jazz musicians anyway. What they're doing is destroying my safe formula, my safe back yard. They're wrecking that safety, that formularised easy option, which is making a Police record. Churning up the land is what a farmer does when he wants it to be fruitful a year hence. In many ways it's a confirming dream. Yes, it's frightening and dramatic, but ultimately you'll be rewarded ... It's not a concept album. There's no consistent theme running throughout - but there's also no song on the record that doesn't have an issue. It's not just a riff of a guitar with nonsense lyrics. A lot of thought and energy went into it. The songs are more didactic than they've ever been before. I have to be inspired before I write, but then when you're writing about issues like the miners' strike, the proliferation of nuclear power, and the arms race, then you have to have a certain responsibility to those issues. You have to think about them. I think time is running out. You can't really make records that are about nothing anymore."
'The Dream of the Blue Turtles' charted at number thirteen in Austria; nine in Japan; six in Switzerland; five in Sweden; four in Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, and Norway; three in the UK; two in the US; and number one in Australia, Italy, and the Netherlands. The album was nominated for Grammy Awards for Album of the Year, Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, and Best Engineered Recording.
http://www.sting.com/ "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" became his biggest solo hit in the US, peaking at number three.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSGl3d4KOMk VIDEO "Love Is the Seventh Wave" made it to number ten in the Netherlands.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXZistami3c VIDEO "Russians" is adapted from the Lieutenant Kijé Suite by Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev . It went to number eight in the Netherlands, four in Germany, and two in France.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHylQRVN2Qs VIDEO "Fortress Around Your Heart" found its way to number eight in the US.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiPiRKbNCWY VIDEO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qcVtEy6G1Q VIDEO 'The Dream of the Blue Turtles' full album:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVSmE10fWX-AFWSnMjV3azN3moNJ9OwEu VIDEO All songs written and composed by Sting, except where noted.
Side one
1. "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" 4:14 2. "Love Is the Seventh Wave" 3:30 3. "Russians" (Prokofiev, Sting) 3:57 4. "Children's Crusade" 5:00 5. "Shadows in the Rain" 4:56 Side two
6. "We Work the Black Seam" 5:40 7. "Consider Me Gone" 4:21 8. "The Dream of the Blue Turtles" 1:15 9. "Moon over Bourbon Street" 3:59 10. "Fortress Around Your Heart" 4:39 b-sides
"Another Day" - 3:54 "Gabriel's Message" - 2:15 'Bring On The Night' documents the formation of the band and their first concert. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itN9lSrXHxA VIDEO
Sting turned the clock to zero and spent a year reworking the emotional explorations of this romantic renewal. After four albums recorded with producer Hugh Padgham ('...Nothing Like the Sun' 'The Soul Cages' 'Ten Summoner's Tales' and 'Mercury Falling' ), Sting began work on a new project without him.
Sting reveals: "I pretended I wasn't working on a record. I pretended I was just gonna get some musicians together and have fun in the house and jam a little, and then pick the bones out of the jams in the mornings, and then adapt them a little bit. This was in Italy, in Tuscany. I converted a granaio, a big barn, into a playing space with a little desk in it. So I just jammed around for a month or two, and picked bits out and started to loosely structure songs without any lyrics. I finished and sequenced an hour of music without any idea of what it was about lyrically! This is not the normal way I work, which is to write lyrics first or second but always in the same period of time as the music. This was different. So I would take an hour of music away with me on my walks around the woods in Tuscany, and try and allow characters or stories to emerge, rather like the way I imagine sculptors work - they find a piece of rock and see a bit of a nose here, and a bit of an arm or leg there and end up with a body. Some days nothing would emerge out of the mist, and other days whole characters would emerge. So the music was telling me the stories. I had no plan that the songs would be connected in any way, because the music was quite disparate, but I ended up with twelve songs that were really love stories in the very traditional sense - but with "lover" always as a metaphor for something larger, some larger philosophical thought or religious view of the world. They're all connected in that sense, and I think it's quite a romantic record...I feel the millenium is very much part of this record - and as my strategy in life is to be optimistic, in art I want to be the same. We need to look positively toward the future and not be sucked in by the lunacy that this is the end of the world, or that everything's going to fall apart - trouble, strife, plague, all that stuff. All that becomes self-fulfilling. So my strategy is to be optimistic, naive maybe. But maybe that's my job...I didn't set out to write lyrics just above love, yet almost all the songs have the theme of broken lives that can be mended by love. My challenge was to write a happy love song without being banal or smug. For example, 'Brand New Day', the last song, begins with a jaundiced view and then moves toward acceptance, to diving back into love. It's basically the thought that falling in love is an act of optimism - and I think if the album has that tone, for me... it's an optimistic one...I think there's an optimism in just about all the songs...That love actually transcends not only lifetimes, it also transcends break-ups. There is meaning in a relationship even if it doesn't last. It's been a profound and useful part of living."
'Brand New Day' was produced by Sting and Kipper (Mark Eldridge) with engineers Simon Osborne, Neil Dorfsman, Geoff Foster, and Chris Blair. The process took place from summer of 1998 through the summer of 1999, starting and ending at Il Palagio in Tuscany; with string sessions recorded at Air Lyndhurst studios in London; overdubs at New York's Right Track and Avatar studios; and mixing in Paris at Studio Mega. The sessions featured Sting on guitar, bass, keyboards, vg-8 guitar synth, and vocals; Kipper on drum programming, keyboards; Dominic Miller on guitars; Manu Katché and Vinnie Colaiuta on drums; Jason Rebello on piano and clavinet; and Chris Botti on trumpet; with Stevie Wonder on harmonica; James Taylor on vocals and acoustic guitar; Cheb Mami on vocals; Branford Marsalis on clarinet; Mino Cinelu on percussion; Dave Hartley on string arrangements, conduction, and Hammond organ; B.J. Cole on pedal steel guitar; Kathryn Tickell on Northumbrian pipes and fiddle; Don Blackman on Hammond organ; Sté on vocals; Ettamri Mustapha on darbouka; Joe Mendez, Janice Pendarvis, Althea Rodgers, Pamela Quinlan, Marlon Saunders, Veneese Thomas, Darryl Tookes, Ken Williams, Tawatha Agee, and Dennis Collins on background vocals; Gavyn Wright as string leader; Farhat Bouallagui on string arrangement, conductor, and leader; with string players Moulay Ahmed, Kouider Berkan, Salem Bnouni, and Sameh Catalan. Kipper says: "He's got this place called Il Palagio, which is literally a palace with three hundred acres of olive groves and vineyards. He bought that about a year and a half ago and has been getting it up to scratch. He's only lived there for the period of time we were working on this album. He wanted to be in a different environment for the summer, and it's beautiful in Tuscany...We would jam every evening for about four or five hours and experiment. We did that for about four weeks, and then each morning we'd listen to the work we'd done the night before and write down the timecode of where we thought there was something good. Then we'd work that bit out and develop it to the next level...Even three or four months in, we were just doing demos. Of course, in the back of your mind, you know you're making a record, but you free yourself from the pressure of having to make something amazing. It's a really valuable approach for Sting, because obviously there is a lot of pressure on Sting to write another hit song and do something that's better than Ten Summoner's Tales
'Brand New Day' rose to twenty-one in Australia; nineteen in Canada; sixteen in New Zealand; nine in the US; seven in Denmark, Japan, and the Netherlands; five in Spain and the UK; four in Belgium and Sweden; three in France; two in Switzerland; and number one in Austria, Finland, Germany, and Norway. The album won two Grammys for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.
http://www.sting.com/ "Brand New Day"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA46ZNjrzeY How many of you people out there
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu9R4egeg_I "Desert Rose"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3lWwBslWqg "A Thousand Years"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQGgFCCPOrY "After the Rain Has Fallen"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLvZbR0R3CA 'Brand New Day' full album:
VIDEO All songs written by Sting, except where noted.
"A Thousand Years" (Kipper, Sting) – 5:57
"Desert Rose" (featuring Cheb Mami) – 4:45
"Big Lie, Small World" (featuring David Hartley) – 5:05
"After the Rain Has Fallen" – 5:03
"Perfect Love... Gone Wrong" (featuring Sté Strausz) – 5:24
"Tomorrow We'll See" – 4:47
"Prelude to the End of the Game" – 0:20
"Fill Her Up" (featuring James Taylor) – 5:38
"Ghost Story" – 5:29
"Brand New Day" (featuring Stevie Wonder) – 6:19
bonus tracks
"The End of the Game"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqCIMKmQSu0 "Windmills of Your Mind" (Michel Legrand, Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj7KZRMAIxQ
Gordon Sumner stung his critics with the humor and heart of this eclectic ragbag of styles and had the biggest album of his solo career. 'Ten Summoner's Tales' 'Nothing Like the Sun...' 'The Soul Cages' he felt unburdened: " I just felt that it had served its purpose personally in that I was, um, allowed to exorcise a few ghosts and uh, didn't really feel the need to do it again. So, I wanted to make a record that...get back to just writing songs about having fun, y'know? Um, which is obviously why, why I began the whole thing how many years ago? I'd write songs for, for fun. And um, I have to say that's exactly what happened. I was in a very good mood. I was, uh, with my band and I was writing songs to amuse them, to amuse myself, to amuse my family. And, uh, that kinda makes me smile when I listen to the record. "
The recording took place at Lake House, Wiltshire and were produced by Sting and Hugh Padgham. Sting reveals: " I really don't like studios very much. I find them sort of prison-like environments. Y'know, where you don't see the air, or breathe the air, or see sunlight for months on end. So, I decided that I'd make a record at home. Y'know, with the kids around and...So I moved everybody out of the dinning room (laughs) and moved this equipment in, and, uh, and the band and their instruments and my producer and engineers. And we made a record at home in the dinning room. And the kitchen is next door so we had the nice smell of food going most of the day. And we could, y'know, walk out in the garden, open the windows and just live a real life instead of this sort of fake, uh, environment that the studio gives you, you know? It just made, it us happier basically." The sessions included: Sting on vocals, bass, harmonica, and saxophone; Dominic Miller on guitars; Vinnie Colaiuta on drums; David Sancious on keyboards; Larry Adler and Brendan Power on chromatic harmonica; John Barclay and Guy Barker on trumpet; Sian Bell on cello; James Boyd on viola; Richard Edwards and Mark Nightingale on trombone; Simon Fischer and Kathryn Greeley on violin; David Foxxe on narration; Paul Franklin on pedal steel guitar; Dave Heath on flute; Kathryn Tickell on Northumbrian smallpipes and fiddle; and David Sanborn on saxophone.
'Ten Summoner's Tales' " It's a mild joke. A mild literary joke, because my name, Sumner, comes from the medieval name Summoner. And a Summoner was someone who summoned you to court, or summoned you to see the king, or, you know...something. And, um, and the Canterbury Tales was written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the fifteenth century. Um, it's a collection of stories told by a group of pilgrims. So, there's a nun, there's a miller, there's a knight, there's a summoner, there's a pardoner, and they each tell a story. And there's a whole different...all kinds of stories. Romantic stories, funny stories, rude stories. All told in different styles. And there's a kind of ragbag. So I thought, there's, there's a connection here because my album is essentially a ragbag of styles, y'know? It comes from everywhere. The only thing that connects it is me. So, I thought with my connection here with this name, Summoner, and this, this, this album being a sort of eclectic ragbag of tunes I'll call it SUMMONER'S TALES, 'Ten Summoner's Tales' 'The Soul Cages' "The album was nominated for the Mercury Prize and six Grammy awards including Album of the Year, winning Best Engineered Non-Classical Album, Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, and Best Long Form Music Video. 'Ten Summoner's Tales' "I just like ten, as a number (laughs). I think we get around it by having the last number as a, as an epilogue. You know? It's a sort of after-thought...that you could listen to, at least, these songs and you really should put your amateur analyst hat to one side because...Maybe I'm kidding myself. I'll say you, you could listen to these songs and really, they're not really about me. But maybe I'm kidding myself. Maybe they are, y'know? Maybe you find out more from these songs than you would from deliberately autobiographical songs or confessional songs."
http://www.sting.com/ 'If I Ever Lose My Faith in You' found its way to thirty-nine in France, thirty-one in Germany, thirty in the Netherlands, twenty-eight in Ireland, seventeen in the US, sixteen in Switzerland, and fourteen in the UK. It was nominated for Grammys for Song of the Year and Record of the Year and won the Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. Sting says: "Quite deliberately in that the song is, are, is in two distinct parts. The first part is about the things I've lost faith in. It's quite easy to be, um, precise about the things you've lost, at least I've lost, faith in. Politics. Media. Uh...science. Technology. Things that, y'know, everybody feels this at the moment. And yet I, along with most other people, have a great deal of hope and y'know, a feeling of things can, things will and can get better. But so what do we place our faith in? What do we still have faith in? And I can't define that as easily as I can define what I don't believe in anymore. Uh, and yet it still exists. So I haven't defined it. I've just said, "If I ever lose my faith in you." And you, or you (laughs), could be, uh, my producer (laughs again). It could, it could be, uh, faith in, in God. It could be a faith in myself or a faith in, um, romantic love. It could be all of those things, but I don't define it. I think it's important not to define it, because it's, once you define something it's, it evaporates. I think it's important in, uh, this day and age when we're dictated to by MusicTeleVision that, y'know, what a particular song is about that, uh, the old ambiguity that songwriters had can be retained y'know?" You could say I lost my faith in science and progress
You could say I lost my belief in the holy church
You could say I lost my sense of direction
You could say all of this and worse, but
If I ever lose my faith in you
There'd be nothing left for me to do
Some would say I was a lost man in a lost world
You could say I lost my faith in the people on T.V.
You could say I'd lost my belief in our politicians
They all seemed like game show hosts to me
If I ever lose my faith in you
There'd be nothing left for me to do
I could be lost inside their lies without a trace
But every time I close my eyes, I see your face
I never saw no miracle of science
That didn't go from a blessing to a curse
I never saw no military solution
That didn't always end up as something worse,
But let me say this first
If I ever lose my faith in you
If I ever lose my faith in you
There'd be nothing left for me to do
There'd be nothing left for me to do
If I ever lose my faith
If I ever lose my faith
If I ever lose my faith
If I ever lose my faith in you
VIDEO 'Fields of Gold' walked to fifty-two in Germany, forty-four in the Netherlands, twenty-five in Switzerland, twenty-three in the US, twenty-two in Ireland, and sixteen in the UK. Sting reveals: "I moved to the country for the first time in my life in, in England. And, um, there are barley fields right next door. And, uh, I remember walking through one day and, and just, just seeing this crop being moved by the, the, the wind and the sunshine. And it looked like, um, - well there could have been people making love in the barley! (laughs) Or the wind could have been, y'know, the wind seemed like it was making love to the barley. So, I thought that was a great metaphor for love. And, uh, I don't know. It's kind of a love song." You'll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You'll forget the sun in his jealous sky
As we walk in fields of gold
So she took her love for to gaze awhile
Upon the fields of barley
In his arms she fell as her hair came down
Among the fields of gold
Will you stay with me, will you be my love
Among the fields of barley?
We'll forget the sun in his jealous sky
As we lie in fields of gold
See the west wind move like a lover so
Upon the fields of barley
Feel her body rise when you kiss her mouth
Among the fields of gold
I never made promises lightly
And there have been some that I've broken
But I swear in the days still left
We'll walk in fields of gold
We'll walk in fields of gold
Many years have passed since those summer days
Among the fields of barley
See the children run as the sun goes down
Among the fields of gold
You'll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky
When we walked in fields of gold
When we walked in fields of gold
When we walked in fields of gold
VIDEO 'Shape of My Heart' He deals the cards as a meditation
And those he plays never suspect
He doesn't play for the money he wins
He don't play for respect
He deals the cards to find the answer
The sacred geometry of chance
The hidden law of a probable outcome
The numbers lead a dance
I know that the spades are the swords of a soldier
I know that the clubs are weapons of war
I know that diamonds mean money for this art
But that's not the shape of my heart
He may play the jack of diamonds
He may lay the queen of spades
He may conceal a king in his hand
While the memory of it fades
I know that the spades are the swords of a soldier
I know that the clubs are weapons of war
I know that diamonds mean money for this art
But that's not the shape of my heart
And if I told you that I loved you
You'd maybe think there's something wrong
I'm not a man of too many faces
The mask I wear is one
Those who speak know nothing
And find out to their cost
Like those who curse their luck in too many places
And those who fear are lost
I know that the spades are the swords of a soldier
I know that the clubs are weapons of war
I know that diamonds mean money for this art
But that's not the shape of my heart
VIDEO 'Ten Summoner's Tales' full album:
VIDEO
All songs written by Sting except where noted.
1. "Prologue (If I Ever Lose My Faith in You)" 4:30
2. "Love Is Stronger Than Justice (The Munificent Seven)" 5:12
3. "Fields of Gold" 3:42
4. "Heavy Cloud No Rain" 3:39
5. "She's Too Good for Me" 2:30
6. "Seven Days" 4:40
7. "Saint Augustine in Hell" 5:05
8. "It's Probably Me" (Sting, Eric Clapton, Michael Kamen) 4:57 9. "Everybody Laughed but You" 3:53 10. "Shape of My Heart" (Sting, Dominic Miller) 4:38 11. "Something the Boy Said" 5:13
12. "Epilogue (Nothing 'Bout Me)" 3:39
'Ten Summoner's Tales' VIDEO
00:20 : If I Ever Lose My Faith In You
06:10 : Love Is Stronger Than Justice
11:49 : Fields Of Gold
15:54 : Heavy Cloud No Rain
19:46 : She's Too Good For Me
23:05 : Seven Days
28:05 : Saint Augustine In Hell
33:24 : It's Probably Me
38:25 : Shape Of My Heart
43:26 : Something The Boy Said
49:02 : Epilogue (Nothing 'Bout Me)
Sting: bass/vocal Vinnie Colaiuta: drums
Dominic Miller: guitar
David Sancious: keyboards
Brendan Power: harmonica
