Sumner's Tales: Sting talks...

"I started last summer, but 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 12 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.
Billboard, 9/99

"I play all the bass on my Fender P-bass, and then I play a Roland guitar synthesiser, and a classicla guitar. I typically play the simple guitar bits, the centre of the songs. Dominic Miller plays the colours, which he's really good at. I don;t play any piano or keyboards on this record; I was in love with this guitar synth. It gave me so many opportunities to have fun. There's two drummers, Vinnie Colaiuta and Manu Katche. Three percussionists, Dominic, myself, three or four keyboard players, and an Orchestra. James Taylor sang on a song called 'Fill Her Up', Stevie Wonder played on 'Brand New Day', Branford Marsalis played saxophone on 'Tomorrow We'll See' - a song about transvestites - and Cheb Mami sang on 'Desert Rose'."
Bassist, 10/99

"I didn't even want to think that I was composing songs for an album, I just simply started to make them.In the past, the music and the lyrics came out almost simultaneously, but this time I just started with the music. For a year I have been doing sequencies and arrangements. I wanted to do an experiment and see if the lyrics would turn up as stories from the music. I used to walk every day through the forests round my house in Tuscany and many times I came back with no ideas at all. But slowly a face or a story appeared, and the songs began to take shape."
El Pais (Spain), 9/99

"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. Even the song about the transexual. There's a pride in the way he/she sings about his/her life that I found very engaging. I like that it's a song about saying, 'don't judge me'."
World Cafe interview, 12/99

"I wrote most of 'Brand New Day' on a Roland VG-8 [guitar-synth system] with synthesizer sounds. That gave me a shot in the arm about being creative on guitar. I created most songs by jamming with a drum machine and getting riffs - that sound is all over the album. The theme from 'A Thousand Years', for instance, comes from the VG-8. I do sometimes write on the bass, though."
Revolver, 3/00

"I composed this music long before I ever had even a rhyming couplet or even an idea of what it would be about. I don't normally work that way. I normally write lyrics and music in the same period. This time, however, I'd written an hour of music, sequenced it, had it all in order, and then had to try and figure out what it was going to be about. I'd go for long walks with this music in my head and hope that characters, moods or stories would appear. It's a slower process. But they eventually did, and what I found was that virtually all the songs were love songs, which is not unusual. It's a variety of love songs, from sad to hopeful to optimistic - even some twisted, which shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone following my career."
Sky magazine, 12/99

"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."
'Brand New Day' Official Press Release, 9/99

"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."
'Brand New Day' Official Press Release, 9/99

"I composed, finessed and even sequenced the music before I'd even written a word. I had to trust that the music would tell me stories, begin to create characters. It's a much more mystical process. You have to be more patient. It's a little like sculpting a piece of wood - you begin to see faces in the wood."
'Brand New Day' Official Press Release, 9/99

"Trying to write simple pop songs over compound time is my idea of a crossword puzzle - or three dimensional chess. That's my obsession, and I think people expect that of me - to throw a few loops here and there, and I think people would be disappointed if I didn't."
'Brand New Day' Official Press Release, 9/99

"For this album, I wanted to pretend that I wasn't making a record, but merely to make music and have fun with various musicians, that was the idea. Just to spend some time and have some fun. Only at the last minute would I allow it be called a record, I wouldn't have anyone saying, 'This is the new record'. Instead we were just playing, experimenting, or just using time in a good way. I've spent since last June getting this far - longer than I've ever spent on an album. I usually make albums in a much quicker and more professional way. It was recorded piecemeal, a little here and there, in a casual and relaxed manner, basically in my home in Italy."
Bassist, 10/99

"The album was recorded in beautiful surroundings and I tried to kid myself that I wasn't making a record. I just phoned up my musicians saying, 'come over for a few weeks, the sun is shining, have some good wine,' and I didn't really look on it as doing a record until I started mixing the tracks. Otherwise I'd be thinking I have to put a record out to satisfy the record company and pay everybody's mortgage who works for me which would stifle the creativity. Really the album is window cleaning music... People will be polishing the windows, start humming a tune then suddenly go: 'Oh, it's a Sting album'."
Newcastle Journal, 9/99

"I never make a record unless I have something to say. I feel very confident about this record. It has an optimism which reflects my mood. I just hope people respond to it that way. It's always been my strategy to be optimistic, sometimes in the face of painful reality. If you are optimistic you tend to be rewarded in life. I will tend to take a risk, take a punt and see what happens. If I'm over-cautious, it doesn't really work for me. These are all love songs. I must have reached that romantic time in my life. I'm an incurable romantic and I'm very happy about that."
The Daily Record, 9/99

"My strategy always is to be optimistic - mainly because the alternative isn't very uplifting. And anyway, I'd rather be optimistic. That's always the way I've handled my life, and it's certainly done well for me up to this point, so I don't see why the millennium should change that now. Why be afraid of the future We have a lot of problems to sort out, but lets be optimistic that we can do it. Besides, the naysayers scare me. I don't uncertainty and just plain paranoia - which is why I try to avoid them."
Sky Magazine, 12/99