Home » Music » Sting » The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same - Page 4

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same - Page 4

© Greg Camden

In the midst of recording, Sting's mother died of cancer. He found out when he was called to the phone while playing a game of pool with writer Vic Garbarini. "That was Trudie in London," he said when he returned from taking the phone call. "My mother died just as we finished the last game. It's all right now, it really is. She's not in pain anymore." He decided not to fly back to England for the funeral for fear of its becoming a media circus. Instead, he dedicated the album "to my mum and all those who loved her." After its release, Sting realized that the dedication was more appropriate than he'd realized: "I look back on this album and I realize that the record is about my mother although I didn't see it at the time."

The album's first single, "We'll Be Together," was not indicative of the album's general tone—and no wonder! "'We'll Be Together' is funny because it was written as a beer commercial for a Japanese company called Kirin. I like the idea of music being a craft, I'm not precious about it. They wanted a song and the only prerequisite was the word 'together.' [. . .] The Japanese loved it, and then the record company loved it too. 'This is exactly what we need. [. . .] It's a hit!' And it was." The single followed the pattern of The Dream of the Blue Turtles's first single, reaching #7 in the US but only #41 in the UK. The album, though, was top-10 on both charts, hitting #1 in his homeland. Critical appraisal of the album was mixed; and while that itself wasn't particularly noteworthy, Sting's response to the criticism was, perhaps reflecting his state of mind in light of his mother's death and father's illness more than anything else. In response to a negative review by Howard Hampton in The Village Voice, Sting was given equal time by the alternative New York paper, which he used to level a variety of charges against Hampton: [. . .] you [are] a eunich [sic] at a Lester "Gang Bangs" masturbating dryly over pictures of war atrocities, wallowing in the squalid enormities of History's charnel house. Nothing beautiful can be tolerated in your world because without hatred you feel nothing, you love perversion and despise life. You hate music and you hate people. You dipshit fascist simpleton. Your writing has all the hysteria and self-loathing of the child molester, the sickening, rhetorical violence of the neo-Nazi. So I've filed you away with a select and thankfully small group, of psycho-sickos who want to torture my children or take a razor to my face."

The copyright of the article The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same - Page 4 in Sting is owned by Greg Camden. Permission to republish The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same - Page 4 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.