A First Failure, A Second Chance

happiness aren't necessarily the same thing," he later said, "and I think that's a useful lesson to learn." And Sting's evaluation of himself at the time gives insight into how awful the situation must have been for Frances, calling himself "fearsome, a bit aggressive [. . .] I don't how much of it was chemically induced. Apparently, I was pretty horrible. Emotionally impacted." Even before there was any news of trouble in his marriage, Sting would often drop hints, as he did in a 1980 interview: "I am fairly lonely. I'm not constantly crying in my beer or anything, but I have suffered a lot of loneliness. In many ways, I suppose, I'm misanthropic. I'm not terribly social. The real me is fairly isolated. I think I function better on my own, particularly creatively."

In reality, it had become painfully clear to anyone on the inside that his relationship with Frances was, in effect, over. "My marriage is the one crisis in the last five years where I didn't want to admit defeat," Sting said in 1985. "I wanted to have a perfect marriage that would last forever—I really wanted it so bad I would lie to myself about it. It was the only real crisis of my life. It was a question of taking responsibility for what you've done and coming to terms with that reality, not pretending that things are different than they are."

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

It was some time in 1981 that Sting and Trudie became lovers, and it wasn't too long before the British press began to go wild with the story of the pop star's failed marriage and new lover, as Sting talked about to Playboy: "It was a nightmare, a horrific, endless nightmare, and I couldn't see any way out but to get out—I went to Jamaica. I wasn't talking to the press, but they made interviews up. They harassed me at home and they harassed my wife and my mistress and they harassed my children. They had photographers out behind the house one day—fuck knows what for. They were just idiots. [. . .] But when the whole bubble burst—my affair with Trudie—it was an excuse for the press to hang me from the neck. So I became the Devil for a few months—always a philandering, drug-taking Devil, totally evil. I just had to sit

Go To Page: 1 2 3 4 5

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic