“Turned my head”: The two artists that made Sting want to form a band

Posted On October 24, 2024October 24, 2024

Most artists don’t wake up one morning convinced they will be the second coming of The Beatles. It takes a lot of time and effort to reach that level of stardom, and usually it comes from something greater than one’s self to drive them from jamming in their garage or basement to becoming one of the biggest names in music. Although Sting was already a student of music from a young age, it wasn’t until seeing these two bands that he figured out that he could try his hand at playing rock and roll.

At the same time, The Police were always far different from the traditional sounds of rock. The era of classic rock had started to look passe, and even in the era when punk and new wave were dominating, no one was prepared for ska-influenced songs like ‘Roxanne’ put write next to pop masterpieces like ‘Message in a Bottle’ on a setlist.

It’s not like these were paint-by-numbers rock songs, either. Sting had a vast knowledge of music theory, so it wasn’t out of the question to throw in some strange chords when he wanted to or ask Stewart Copeland or Andy Summers to follow his lead when making strange key changes like on ‘Every Little Thing She Does it Magic’.

Everything was about being much more far-reaching than before, but the true innovators had already come a few years before. Before the punk revolution had come out, the guitar was being put through its paces as rock’s next golden instrument, and Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton were at the forefront of the movement.

Whereas Clapton had been playing for years before forming Cream, hearing him play off of Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker was what gave them a lot of wiggle room when it came to arrangements. And anyone with at least a passing interest in guitar needs to bow to what Hendrix did, especially in his ability to make his Stratocaster sound completely clean one minute and then create a lick that sounded like the instrument was about to explode in his hands.

Above everything else, though, Sting thought that the combination of only three people onstage was enough for him to think about the possibility of forming a trio, saying, “One of the first bands I ever saw was Cream. I also saw the Jimi Hendrix Experience when I was 14, but then I saw Cream, and they kind of turned my head around. It was a very formative experience to see those two bands. And then I was in The Police, so the trio thing was prevalent.”

But the beauty behind each band was how they worked around each other’s capabilities. Everyone has to support each other in some fashion in a trio, and by keeping everything low to the ground behind the bass, Sting had a firm control over both the melodic and rhythmic sides of the stereo image whenever he played one of his tunes.

So, while Sting is still considered the main driving force behind The Police, seeing Clapton and Hendrix in their element with their respective power trios helped teach everyone a valuable lesson about bands. There might be the one flashy star, but if the rest of the group isn’t gelling together correctly, everything is bound to collapse.

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