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A First Failure, A Second Chance

© Greg Camden

Love can mend your life, but love can break your heart —"Message in a Bottle," 1979

I never made promises lightly And there have been some that I've broken But I swear in the days still left We'll walk in fields of gold —"Fields of Gold," 1994

Sting met Frances Tomelty in 1974 on the set of Rock Nativity, a Christmas show/rock musical, which was playing in Newcastle: Frances had the role of Virgin Mary; Sting's band at the time, Last Exit, supplied the music. Sting, while quite the ladies' man, was nonetheless immediately taken with Frances. She was at least two years older than Sting (The Police Files reported her to have been born in 1950, but to this day she does not reveal her age), more worldly, and a successful actress. By the time the two met she already had a history of political activism (largely fueled by her experiences being born and raised in the politically-turbulent Northern Ireland), which mixed well with Sting's semi-Marxist sensibilities (though there are those who say that, at least at the time, Sting's political leanings were merely a pose).

She also was more practical than Sting, who was, as she herself put it, "very naive." "I had to take on myself the filthy job of taking tapes round the A&R men," she explained to Sounds magazine in an article about Last Exit. "We thought it would be quite soul-destroying for the band to have to do that. Perhaps it's an advantage to be able to joke and flirt with the businessmen rather than saying 'Listen. This is my tape, my art.'"

Sting and Frances, courtesy the biography Sting: Demolition Man by Christopher Sandford.

On May 1, 1976, the two married in a Catholic ceremony held at Our Lady and St. Oswin's Chapel in Tynemouth. Frances was three months pregnant with the couple's first child. ("He was the reason we got married, of course," Sting admitted.) Still, this did not prevent her from fully supporting her new husband's stardom-seeking endeavors, and she pushed for the move to London even though her career was not the one in need of a boost and this would entail sleeping on a friend's apartment floor for a few months before finally taking a flat of their own. In fact, perhaps once they'd moved to London and Sting had joined The Police, Frances's support was even more valuable. The band was scrambling to make something happen, and at some early shows the audience would be little more than the bandmates' three wives; but all the while Frances encouraged Sting to stay the course. But as can easily be imagined, it was a stressful situation for all involved, as Sting's diary entries from this time reveal: