It happened largely because of one night when he was 15. On March 10, 1967, Gordon went to a local club, Go-Go, to see the Jimi Hendrix Experience, having recently purchased "Hey Joe," the band's first single. He was unprepared for what he saw. "I'd never seen or heard anything like it in my life," Sting wrote in the liner notes to his second solo album, 1987's . . . Nothing Like the Sun (which features a cover of Hendrix's "Little Wing"), "and don't suppose I ever will." More recently he expanded upon that important moment in his life: "[Hendrix is] one of the reasons I became a musician. He's the first musician I ever saw live who was a virtuoso.[. . .] I’d never seen a black man before. The guy was six feet tall, with this Afro haircut, dressed like some 17th-century guy . . . playing left-handed guitar, destroying his amplifier, setting it on fire. I thought it was incredible. It changed my life. I was all set to become a schoolteacher. After that, forget it." (Ironically, Sting would still go on to become a schoolteacher, but that did not diminish how deeply Sting had been affected by Hendrix.)
It was around this time that a friend gave Gordon his first bass guitar. While it was a largely homemade affair, it nonetheless got him started on the instrument which would so prominently figure in the rest of his life. Additionally, it helped to narrow his focus regarding how he might attain his ultimate goal: escape from Newcastle. While his life there was not one of particular hardship, it was not particularly satisfying, either. Aside from his mother (who he resembled quite a bit), Gordon did not have anyone to whom he was particularly close ("It wasn't really a close family [. . .] ")--especially concerning his father, who was "distant"; and his parents' deteriorating marriage (which would eventually end in divorce) didn't help matters. Concerning his future, Gordon's prospects were (fittingly enough) rather bleak if he remained in Newcastle. Of the options that readily presented themselves to someone of Gordon's ilk--the coal mines, teaching, the dairy--not one seemed appealing to the teenager. The reality of this was brought home when Gordon was so disenchanted with what he found at Warwick University (to which his academics had been sufficient to earn a place) that he dropped out after only a month and moved back in with his parents.
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