Andy Summers

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STING Gordon Matthew Sumner was born on October 2, 1951, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. His early life and his character contrasted with Stewart Copeland's in almost every way. The eldest of four children, he grew up jo the harsh climate and harsh economy of the depressed, unemployment-racked North-East. His own family was never poor and his father's steady job as a milkman led to him owning a small dairy jo later years. But constant tensions at home - his parents eventually divorced - reinforced his strong desire to escape, somehow. Having won a grant-aided place at an otherwise fee-paying Catholic grammar school, he paid attention to social climbing by ridding himself of the local Geordie accent. Perversely though, he gave himself no chance of the outstanding academic achievement which might have given him a way out. In class he was a routine disaffected teenager. Among his contrasting recollections are being caned a school record 42 times in one year, and giving up a promising athletic career when he could finish "only" third in the 100 yard sprint National Junior Championship - it was no use to him if he couldn't be Number 1, it seemed. Still, he showed a natural gift for music, playing and making up his own songs from the time he picked up an uncle's discarded guitar at eight or nine. He spent his formative years listening intently to artists and styles as diverse as The Beatles, Stax, Tamía, Bob Dylan, Thelonious Monk and Charlie Mingus. The first band he saw live was the 1965 edition of The Graham Bond Organization, featuring his early bass hero Jack Bruce (later of Cream) - and the second, as it happened, was Zoot Money's Big Rolí Band with one Andy Summers on guitar (Sting was unimpressed at the time). The following year, a friend gave him his first bass, home-made and crude, but nonetheless an introduction to the instrument. In 1969, he qualified for a university place in the Midlands but was so uninspired by what he found that he returned to Newcastle and his parents' home within a month. He drifted for a couple of years through unskilled labour on a building site, a bit of bus conducting and a brief shot at a career in tax collection. Then, in 1971, he at last began to sort himself out. He trained as a teacher and enjoyed the stage-like aspects of the classroom. He took his music out of the bedroom too. Impartially, he played bass for a college rock group called Earthrise, two trad jazz line-ups - in one of which a waspish yellow-and-black striped sweater earned him that perfect nickname - and the ramshackle but locally beloved Newcastle Big Band, game to tackle anything from Coltrane to The Beatles with boozy gusto. Eventually, in 1974, with three friends, he formed Last Exit. Two years later, with Last Exit still playing local pub residencies, in May 1976 he married Frances Tomelty, a fast-rising actress he'd met while playing bass for a rock musical at a Newcastle theatre 18 months earlier. That October their first child, Joe, was born. Ml of this could have implied a settling-down phase. Instead, he quit his job as a teacher so that he could move his family down to London with Last Exit and make it big. Their farewell-to-Newcastle gig was already booked before he met Stewart Copeland. From "Message in a box" STING TIMELINE