Blue Turtles: 1985/86

Sting and all that jazz!

For someone who once told me he preferred Mozart to rock, Sting has gone a long way as a rock star.

His eight years at the front of Police - one of the world's richest and most famous groups-made him a sex symbol and helped him break into films.

And for the past eight months he has been on a world concert tour, seeing if he can be just as popular an attraction on his own.

He has cleverly surrounded himself with a group of the finest jazz musicians he could find, including Omar Hakim and Branford Marsalis of Weather Report, and Darryl Jones who has played bass with Miles Davis.

Last night, for over two hours, he dominated the Royal Albert Hall stage with this new exciting line-up. His six sell-out concerts there are proof enough of his immense popularity.

It would be futile to go to these concerts looking for the magic of Police. Instead Sting offers a different kind of magic - the powerful sound of a fusion of rock, jazz, blues and reggae, creating a mood rather than a spectacular event.

Sting is in fact merely returning to his roots. His earliest performances were with a jazz band in Newcastle where he first gained the nickname Sting after turning up at a rehearsal in a black and yellow hooped sweatshirt.

Almost the entire programme is planned round his best-selling solo album 'The Dream Of The Blue Turtles', although he throws in the Police's 'Roxanne' and 'Every Breath I Take' for good measure.

These days Sting stands arrogantly aside from banal pop lyrics that too easily swamp the charts, instead presenting songs of social awareness which manage to bridge the generation gap between teenagers and adults.

(c) The Daily Express by David Wigg