Broken Music
By StingThe Dial Press, 337 pp., $26
How do you have tantric sex? Will the Police ever reunite? These should be the first two questions that spring to mind when picking up the new memoir by pop icon Sting. Sadly, Broken Music doesn’t solve either mystery or offer much beyond the childhood experiences of the man born Gordon Sumner. There are momentary glances at his young adulthood, and even a peak at the beginning stages of his globally beloved band, but for many, that’s where the story no doubt ends. Only a dedicated fan base will truly savor tales of his parents and grandparents. Nevertheless, Sting gradually paints a very delicate picture, starting with a late-Eighties drug hallucination that sends him swimming back to his boyhood home in the English town of Newcastle. He relays the stories of his first encounters with death and even his first real “singing job” (as a paperboy). As he ages, the stories become more engaging. With grace, Sting explores the profound influence the Beatles had on his youth, especially once he gets his first guitar. Eventually, there’s his first love, first band, first heartbreak, and his first encounters with the two other musicians who made up the Police. At this point, Broken Music should start breaking up the charts, yet after hundreds of pages of backstory, the yarn has been all but spun. He skips over the VH1 highlights altogether and arrives at “the demise of the Police would coincide with the break up of my family” and nothing else. The (nonexistent) accompanying CD opens with “Driven to Tears.”
This article appears in May 28 • 2004.