Over the course of a career that began in 1978 with the Police, Sting has been many things to many people. To casual listeners, he's a pop icon with a string of hit songs. To fans, he's a genius on the level of Lennon and McCartney. Detractors call him an egomaniac and bandwagon celebrity activist. Still others know him as the weird guy with the metal underwear from ""Dune.''
Chris Sandford takes on all of these personalities in his biography, "Sting: Demolition Man," released in the U.S. this October.
Sandford is no stranger to schizophrenic pop stars. He has written biographies of David Bowie, Kurt Cobain, and Mick Jagger. By comparison, Sting should have been a cakewalk. Still, there were all of these different personalities to deal with.
To his credit, Sandford does a fairly good job at combining all of the different images of Sting into one composite picture. However, he seems more of an archeologist and less of a biographer, since his main subject is conspicuously missing in many parts. Sting is currently working on his authorized biography with his own author, which is due this month as well. Thus, Sandford had limited access to Sting himself, and had to put together his picture the artist through interviews with Sting's friends, enemies, and associates, and research from countless clippings and previous biographies.
The result is that the book reads like a 350-page review of Sting, as if he were one of his albums. The author never shies away from labeling Sting, or praising him. Sanford says, "At his worst, he was turning rhymes. On peak form, Sting was translating the human condition into words of one or two syllables. ...it was easy to see why he straddled both highbrow and lowbrow, hovering between worlds and carving himself a niche as the great communicator." He also claims that Sting was "the most eloquent and innately bright man in rock."
At times, these descriptions seem to feed an already existing image of Sting as an icon, rather than shedding light on what went into creating that image in the first place. Sandford's reviews of each of Sting's works, including both albums and film, are included in the general narrative, and he sometimes lapses into that voice when trying to separate the man from his work.
The details, however, are not neglected. The book can be quite revealing, as when detailing the epic battles between Sting and Police-mate Stewart Copeland and how the inflated pop star began to give way to the reflective and gregarious husband in the 90s. These are the details fans have followed already, and Sandford delivers a deeper perspective on them.
Sting's childhood in Newcastle is reconstructed with a striking precision. His relationship with his blue collar father and more liberal mother serve as a great backdrop for the forces that shaped the child that would eventually become Sting. Sandford unearths an interesting dynamic that goes a long way toward explaining how the proletarian lyrics of a song like "One World (Not Three)" could come from the same author as "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da."
There is also a wealth of anecdotes and amusing trivia. The name "Sting" didn't come from the sweater he wore. It was his nickname in one of his first bands, Last Exit, and the rest of the band had equally puzzling nicknames like "Fang" and "Bruiser." The sweater came later. And in one quote Sandford managed to get from Sting, he talked about the Police reunion at his wedding:
I turn around and ten years suddenly evaporate and there I am glowering at Stewart [Copeland] and he's glowering at me and Andy's fumbling with the chords and suddenly it'd all come back and Stewart and I caught each other doing it and started to laugh. It was very funny. It was actually a very warm moment. (end passage)
Then there is the inevitable celebrity dirt and dish that may very well be true, but seems so sensational it casts doubts on the rest of the book. Sandford describes the violent and graphic detail in some of the stories Sting had written as a teenager, then comes to the conclusion that, "Such lurid symbols suggest anger, even fury, in Gordon's [Sting's] sex life." The images he describes are indeed graphic, but the conclusion seems a bit circumstantial. There is also talk of Sting's belief in the paranormal, including the ghosts that haunt one of his houses and his UFO sightings.
Most of these things probably have a solid basis in fact, since Sandford goes to such great pains to list his sources. However, many of these stories aren't attributed directly to their source. Instead, there is a general list, for each chapter, of people Sandford interviewed. A quote attributed to "a friend" says, "He never made up his mind whether he was Gordon Sumner made good, or a rich and randy rock star." Similarly, many quotes are attributed to other friends, ex-girlfriends, and associates, without naming them specifically or showing their particular relationship with Sting. That leaves a lot of room for conjecture, and it's very easy to be cynical when reading the more sensational material.
Fortunately, most of the book escapes the tabloid fodder. Sandford may have felt responsible to report what he found with censor, which means taking the good with the bad.
Since the book was originally released in the U.K., there are a few notions that might not make much sense on this side of the water. Sandford claims, for example, that of the O.J. Simpson verdict and Sting's court battle over his accountant's shady practices, "Sting's name wrung the biggest headlines." Whether it's to Sandford's credit or his fault, the text has not been changed to accommodate the U.S. market.
In the final analysis, "Demolition Man" provides an interesting, if somewhat muddled, perspective on a pop phenomenon, from every angle.