Celebrities who choose to go by one single name tend to be those who exude a stadium’s worth of confidence and panache: Madonna, Cher, Drake, Eminem.
Then there’s Sting. At age 73, he spent two hours in an intimate sold-out Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre evincing a level of cool craftsmanship and stage presence that is both admirable and mesmerizing.
Dubbing the tour “Sting 3.0,” the former lead singer of the Police opted for a stripped down trio, though not the one featuring Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers that was briefly the biggest rock band in the world in the early 1980s. Outside a short and very financial remunerative 2007-08 reunion tour that included a stop at Philips Arena in Atlanta, that trio has chosen to carve their own separate paths.
Instead, Sting brought along drummer Chris Maas, who has played with Mumford & Sons, and his veteran collaborator and guitarist Dominic Miller.
Credit: RODNEY HO
Credit: RODNEY HO
The staging and lighting was optimally simple and even Sting’s choice of outfit was low key: a plain white T-shirt and pleather-like dark pants. He appeared both cut and sinewy, a man who clearly takes care of his body. The focus was on the music, not any sort of spectacle.
Sting sounded a little ragged in the beginning though that may have more to do with the fact he has been touring heavily. (This was his 14th concert this month alone.) He did sound progressively better as the night went along, and his guitar work remained effortlessly impeccable.
Fortunately for Sting, there was no shortage of great music to pick from. His 23-song set list covered nearly five decades of music. He noted that his 1981 Police deep cut “I Burn For You” was the first song he ever wrote at age 24 when he was still a teacher. He also threw in a recent song, the raw, guitar-driven “I Wrote Your Name (Upon My Heart).”
His primary hit-making years as a solo artist (1985 to 2000) actually extended far longer than his time recording with the Police and was significantly more robust than many of his 1980s peers who opted to go solo (e.g. Dennis DeYoung, Peter Cetera, Lou Gramm, Steve Perry).
Credit: RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com
Credit: RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com
So much so that he skipped over some of his biggest hits such as “We’ll Be Together” and “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free” that might have needed backup singers and brass. He did throw in concert favorites like the ever jaunty “Englishman in New York” and the atmospheric “Mad About You.”
Sting didn’t get political in any way but did have a glint in his eye during 1993′s “If I Ever Lose My Faith” when he sang the line, “You could say I’d lost my belief in our politicians./ They all seemed like game show hosts to me.” The crowd chuckled knowingly.
And while introducing “Fields of Gold,” he made it readily apparent being Sting is not exactly a hardship. “I was feeling a little homesick,” he said. “I have a little house in the English countryside.” He paused, grinned and said, “It’s more like a castle. Near Stonehenge. Two miles south and that’s my house surrounded by barley fields. One day, I looked out and thought, ‘There’s a song here’.”
But Sting is also open for self deprecation. Before introducing an album cut from his “Soul Cages” album “Why Should I Cry For You?” he said his dad gave him one simple piece of advice: “See the world. Make something of yourself.”
“Of course,” he said. “I disappointed him.”
While the set list doesn’t change much each night, he throws in one variable. His guitarist Miller, who has worked with him for 35 years, gets to pick a random song from Sting’s vast catalog. “He remembers songs I’ve completely forgotten!” Sting said. “Fills me with trepidation.”
Miller this time picked one of Sting’s bigger hits “Fortress Around Your Heart,” probably to Sting’s relief, though Sting joked, “Are you sure about that? A lot of chords!” He then walked over to a stool, noting, “Can I sit down for this?”
Fortunately, he remembered the chords and the lyrics.
Police fans were not left disappointed. He played nine cuts from that time frame including classics like “Message in the Bottle,” “Driven to Tears” and a propulsive crowd pleasing “So Lonely” that got the Gen X-heavy crowd moving.
And while he stuck largely to the recorded versions of his hits, he would occasionally shift the rhythm here and there or add a jazzy interlude, say, on “King of Pain.”
His two-song encore featured an extended version of “Roxanne” with an interpolation of “Be Still My Beating Heart” and a moment where he changed the melody. He also gave the charged audience a chance to do multiple callbacks.
Given this is Sting, he said he wanted to end the show “quiet and thoughtful so you can leave quite and thoughtful.” So he finished with “Fragile,” a tribute in 1987 to Ben Linder, an American civil engineer killed by the Contras while working on a hydroelectric project in Nicaragua that has a universal message.
“Nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could/ For all those born beneath an angry star/ Lest we forget how fragile we are.”
