Sting's ". . . Nothing like the Sun" Quiz

Answer: We'll Be Together

You can hear Sting sing the following lines from "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" at various points at the end of "We'll Be Together": "If you need somebody", "If you want to keep something precious", "Love somebody", "Love someone", and "If you love somebody".

". . . Nothing like the Sun" was released in October of 1987 and represented Sting's second solo album following his departure from The Police. It received three Grammy nominations, including "Album of the Year", and was awarded "Best British Album" by the Brit Awards in 1988. "Rolling Stone" magazine also ranked it as number ninety in its "100 Best Albums of the Eighties". Many of the songs on the album were inspired by a couple of different experiences of Sting's during the 1980s. One was his journey through Latin America during Amnesty International's Conspiracy of Hope Tour, and the other was the death of his mother Audrey Sumner. In an interview in an October 1987 publication of "Timeout", Sting said the following about this album: "I look back on this album and I realise that the record is about my mother although I didn't see it at the time. It's about mothers and daughters, mistresses and wives, sisters . . . . Every song has one of these themes. It surprised me. I didn't realise it was there. It's all about women."

"We'll Be Together" was the first single released from ". . . Nothing like the Sun"; it rose to number seven on the "Billboard Hot 100" chart but only to number forty-one on the UK chart. Originally, Sting composed the song for a commercial for Kirin Brewery Company, and a very early recording of it includes Eric Clapton on guitar. Within the album sleeve, Sting made comments about each of the songs on the album. He included only the following quotation under the title "We'll Be Together": "I shall meet you outside the railway station, you shall know me by the cut of my clothes and the smell of my cologne".

Answer: Andy Summers

Henry Padovani was initially the guitarist for The Police when they first became a band in 1977 in London. By May of that year, Sting and Stewart had met Andy Summers when they were invited by Mike Howlett to play in his band Strontium 90 as substitute musicians. Summers had formerly played with Eric Burdon and the Animals, and both Sting and Stewart Copeland were highly impressed with Summers' experience and talent. They invited him to become a fourth member of The Police, and eventually Summers convinced Sting and Copeland that the band should be a three-member one and that Padovani should go. This was essentially an easy decision for Sting and Copeland as Padovani's inexperience and inability to play some of Sting's more complex songs had become frustrating. Summers was born in Lancashire, England, in 1942 and is ten years older than Sting and Copeland, who were born in 1951 and 1952 respectively. Summers was essentially responsible for the first two Grammys The Police ever won, for he co-wrote "Regatta de Blanc" and solely composed "Behind My Camel", both of which won the Grammy for "Best Rock Instrumental Performance".

Andy Summers is credited with playing guitar on both "Lazarus Heart" and "Be Still My Beating Heart".

Other guitarists credited for playing on the 1987 ". . . Nothing like the Sun" album are as follows: Hiram Bullock on "Little Wing"; Fareed Haque, Mark Knopfler (of Dire Straits), and Eric Clapton on "They Dance Alone"; and Sting (who normally plays bass, as he does on most of the other songs on the album) plays guitar on "Fragile" and "History Will Teach Us Nothing".

Answer: Fragile

"Fragile" was released as a single in the United Kingdom, where it climbed only to number seventy on the Singles Chart, and a live variation of the song was released in 2001 as a single from the "All This Time" album. While traditionally Sting uses the song as his closing act when performing on tour, he used it to open his concert in Italy on September 11, 2001, a choice made in response to the terrorist events in the United States on that very day. The song is a beautiful yet powerful indictment of violence reaching its thematic climax with the following words: "[N]othing comes from violence / and nothing ever could".

In the album's liner notes, Sting writes these words: "In the current climate it's becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish 'Democratic Freedom Fighters' from drug dealing apolitical gangsters or Peace Corp workers from Marxist revolutionaries. Ben Linder, an American engineer, was killed in 1987 by the 'Contras' as a result of this confusion".

The chorus to the song is "On and on the rain will fall / Like tears from a star, like tears from a star / On and on the rain will say / How fragile we are, how fragile we are". In his 2007 book "Lyrics", Sting explains, "[The song] was originally written in 1987, on the island of Montserrat during a weeklong tropical storm. The rain just kept falling and falling. I had read a newspaper report about a young man named Ben Linder . . .".

"Fragile" also appears in the documentary "The Panama Deception", which won an Academy Award in 1992, and in the documentary "The Living Sea", which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1995.

Answer: Manu Katche

Manu Katche was born in Saint-Maur-des-Fosses, France in 1958. As a young child, he studied classical piano in Paris, and at fifteen he began attending the Conservatorie Nationale de Paris Much of the music-listening world grew to know Katche from his work with Gabriel and Sting; however, he has also worked with others, such as Jeff Beck, Tears for Fears, Simple Minds, Eurythmics, Dire Straits, Youssou N'Dour, Robbie Robertson, Tori Amos, and Kyle Eastwood (Clint Eastwood's son). He also was a member of the band Preface from 1985 to 1988.

Other musicians credited in the album's liner notes are Mino Cinelu, percussion and vocoder; Kenny Kirkland, keyboards; Branford Marsalis, saxophone; Andy Newmark, additional drums; Kenwood Dennard, drums on "Little Wing"; Mark Egan, bass on "Little Wing"; Gil Evans and his orchestra on "Little Wing"; and Ken Helman, piano on "Secret Marriage". Sting plays bass guitar on most of the songs. For the guitarists credited on ". . . Nothing like the Sun", see the extra information on question number two.

Answer: They Dance Alone (Cueca Solo)

"They Dance Alone (Cueca Solo)" is a protest song that is uncharacteristically soft and melodic as protest songs go and thus is somewhat deceptive, much like the symbolic actions of the women Sting sings about who are protesting through their dancing. During the rule of Augusto Pinoceht, who came to power through a United States-backed coup, thousands of Chilean people "disappeared" either through wrongful and secret imprisonment or through murder. His regime came to an end in 1990, and he was finally arrested in 1998 and charged with countless human rights violations as well as tax evasion and embezzlement. Sting became acquainted with the people of Chile and their suffering during the 1986 Amnesty International tour with Bruce Springsteen, Peter Gabriel, Youssou N'Dour, and Tracy Chapman.

Sting wrote the following about this song in his 2007 book "Lyrics": ". . . [W]e were introduced to former political prisoners and victims of torture and imprisonment without trial, from all over the world. These meetings had a strong effect on all of us. It's one thing to read about torture but quite another to speak to a victim and be brought a step closer to a reality that is frighteningly pervasive. We were all deeply affected. I had a special affinity for the people of Chile. Thousands of people had 'disappeared' there during the Pinochet years, victims of murder squads, security forces, the police, and the army. Imprisonment without trial and torture were commonplace. The Cueca is a traditional Chilean courting dance. The Cueca Solo or the dance alone was performed publicly by the wives, daughters, and mothers of the 'disappeared.' Often, they danced with photographs of loved ones pinned to their clothes. This was a powerful gesture of protest and grief, and I wrote 'They Dance Alone' in response".

Actor, musician, and activist Ruben Blades provides the spoken interlude in Spanish.

Answer: Dollette McDonald and Janice Pendarvis

Dollette McDonald grew up in Newark, New Jersey. She is a singer and songwriter who has worked with Talking Heads.

Janice Pendarvis was born in Queens, New York. She is a singer and songwriter who has worked not only with Sting but also David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, Steely Dan, the O'Jays, and Jimmy Cliff. She also has worked as an associate professor of voice at Berklee College of Music in Boston. In addition to the albums referred to in the question and the tours associated with those albums, Pendarvis also provided backing vocals on Sting's "All This Time" live album.

Vesta Williams and Rene Gayer are also given credit for their vocal performances on Sting's ". . . Nothing like the Sun" album.

Answer: Englishman in New York

"Englishman in New York" is also a song very often associated with Sting. It was released in 1988 as the third single from ". . . Nothing like the Sun". However, it has fared much better in live concerts and on tours than it did on the radio, where it climbed to only number fifty-one on the UK Singles Chart and only number eighty-four on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Within the album liner notes, Sting wrote the following about this song: "I wrote 'Englishman in New York' for a friend of mine who moved from London to New York in his early seventies to a small rented apartment in the Bowery at a time in his life when most people have settled down forever. He once told me over dinner that he looked forward to receiving his naturalization papers so that he could commit a crime and be deported. 'What kind of crime?' I asked anxiously. 'Oh, something glamorous, non-violent, with a dash of style' he replied. 'Crime is so rarely glamorous these days.'"

The friend Sting is referring to was Quentin Crisp, who lived from 1908 to 1999. Throughout his life he was considered an authority on social manners and style, wrote several books, acted in several films and documentaries, and performed live in several one-man shows mostly as a raconteur. Perhaps, what brought him the most fame was his autobiographical book "The Naked Civil Servant" and the subsequent TV film adaptation starring John Hurt. Crisp was noted for his courage to express his being gay freely as well as his courage to express himself freely in general. His life was frequently surrounded by controversy in that as a younger man he worked as a male escort and as an older man he often frustrated several people with his criticism of Princess Diana and the gay liberation movement. For instance, according to a Wikipedia article, Crisp remarked, "I always thought Diana was such trash and got what she deserved. She was Lady Diana before she was Princess Diana so she knew the racket. She knew that royal marriages have nothing to do with love. You marry a man and you stand beside him on public occasions and you wave and for that you never have a financial worry until the day you die."

Answer: Lazarus

"The Lazarus Heart", according to Sting's personal comments in the album's liner notes, "was a vivid nightmare that [he] wrote down and then fashioned into a song". Sting continues to remark, "A learned friend of mine informs me that it is the archetypal dream of 'The Fisher King'. Can't I do anything original"? In the first verse of the song, a man looks "beneath his shirt" to find a gaping wound with flowers growing out of it. As he turns around, he finds his mother standing there, holding in her hand "the sword that cut him open".

In his 2007 book "Lyrics", Sting explains, "My mother was terminally ill during the writing of this album [". . . Nothing like the Sun"] and I think this strongly influenced my creative process, not that the record is in the least morbid--my mother would not have wanted to be remembered that way. There is a thread of romance, sadness, and fun that characterizes the record as well as her life".

Sting also explained the upbeat tempo of the song as well as its title in a 1988 "Rolling Stone" interview, "It's a victory song. That's the way my mother was. That's what she gave to me when I said goodbye to her. It was her incredible sense of humour and her sense that all was not lost. She was joking and she was loving. She gave me such an example of courage that I had no choice but to rejoice. That's why the record is happy. It's not a mournful record; it's an up record".

Answer: Sister Moon

"Sister Moon", according to Sting in the album's liner notes, "is a song for lunatics everywhere, for all of those whose sanity is dependent on the phases of the moon". He also explains his use of the line from Shakespeare's sonnet in the lyrics of the song as well as for the title of the album: "I was accosted late one night on Highgate Hill by a staggering drunk who grabbed me by the lapels and, after tranquilizing me with his foul breath, pointed to the moon which was swollen in its fullness and demanded of me threateningly, 'How beautiful is the moon? . . . How beautiful is the moon?' he repeated. Thinking quickly and not wishing for an early toxic death, I fixed him with my eye and declaimed, 'My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun'. Shakespeare is always useful I've found for calming down violent drunks if only because it gives them the impression that you're crazier than they are. 'A good answer . . .' he said. 'A good answer' as he set off on a tack for Kentish Town like a listing Galleon".

"Sister Moon" and "Englishman in New York" demonstrate the influence of jazz, which is heard more solidly on Sting's first solo album "The Dream of the Blue Turtles". This accounts most likely for Herbie Hancock's choice to cover "Sister Moon". Most of the other songs on the ". . . Nothting like the Sun" album are influenced more by pop and world music.

Answer: History Will Teach Us Nothing

"History Will Teach Us Nothing" captures the fear of an individual who is worried about what civilization will turn to for moral guidance following its abandonment of Christianity and other religions that argue for the existence of a divine order to existence. Ultimately, the singer argues that we cannot rely on history for proper instruction: "Without freedom from the past things can only get worse", "Sooner or later we learn to throw the past away", and "History will teach us nothing". He argues that faith without reason is "a curse" and that faith in reason is a more enlightened path: "Convince an enemy, convince him that he's wrong / Is to win a bloodless battle where the victory is long / A simple act of faith in reason over might / To blow up his children will only prove him right".

In the album's liner notes, Sting writes the following: "I once asked my history teacher how we were expected to learn anything useful from his subject, when it seemed to me, to be nothing but a monotonous and sordid succession of robber baron scumbags devoid of any admirable human qualities. I failed history".

Answer: The Secret Marriage

Hanns Eisler, originally from Austria, is famous as the composer of West Germany's national anthem and for his collaboration with Bertolt Brecht, the famous German poet, playwright, and director. The two were very close friends and created many plays and songs together. Eisler eventually travelled to America, having been banned by the Nazis prior to World War II, but interestingly had to then leave America during the late 1940s because of the persecution instigated by Senator McCarthy's investigations into un-American activities. Woody Guthrie, Charlie Chaplin, Leonard Bernstein, and Aaron Copland protested his deportation. Prior to his leaving, he had written eight scores for American movies, two of which were nominated for Academy Awards.

Sting also has a connection to Bertolt Brecht. He played Mack the Knife in a Broadway production of Brecht's "Threepenny Opera".

Answer: Straight to My Heart

"Straight to My Heart" was not released as a single, but it is often played live and remains a favorite of both fans and critics because of its lively sound and witty wordplay.

Noticing that three titles on the ". . . Nothing like the Sun" album contained the word "heart"--"Lazarus Heart", "Be Still My Beating Heart", and "Straight to My Heart"--Sting was led to muse the following: "Why does tradition locate our emotional center at the heart and not somewhere in the brain? Why is the most common image in popular music the broken heart?" These questions are asked within the album's liner notes.

Answer: Rock Steady

In the album's liner notes, Sting writes the following about this song: "A great uncle of mine who was a seafaring man once gave me the following advice: 'Never board a ship unless you know where it's going'. Sometimes it's hard to tell the game shows from the TV evangelists".

Very interestingly, the children's book "Rock Steady: A Story of Noah's Ark" was published in 2001. Sting's lyrics to the satirical song "Rock Steady" were copied completely, and Sting is listed as the author while Hugh White is credited as the illustrator. The book was marketed as a contemporary retelling of the Genesis story of Noah's ark with proceeds going toward the preservation of the Amazonian rainforests.

Answer: Be Still My Beating Heart

"Be Still My Beating Heart" reached number two on the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks, number fifteen on the Billboard Hot 100, and number thirty-seven on the Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks. As was mentioned earlier, the song is one of two on which Andy Summers plays guitar. The song also appears in the documentary "Dolphins" for which Sting contributed most of the soundtrack.

Answer: Little Wing

"Little Wing" by Jimi Hendrix is ranked number three hundred and sixty-six in "Rolling Stone" magazine's list of Top 500 songs of all time. Sting's cover of the song has received a great amount of critical praise, and his decision to include a recording of it on ". . . Nothing like the Sun" fits with his theme of honoring his mother and praising of the feminine in general, for the song is a very poetic idealization of a woman. Sting's recording includes a host of guest musicians: Gil Evans and His Orchestra, Hiram Bullock, Kenwood Dennard, and Mark Egan. Gil Evans (1912-1988) was a Canadian jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader who collaborated with Miles Davis for many years, and he and his orchestra achieved renown for his jazz adaptations of the songs of Jimi Hendrix, a musician he truly admired. Sting also shares a great admiration for Hendrix's music as well as that of Gil Evans.

He wrote the following in the album liner notes of ". . . Nothing like the Sun": "I met Gil Evans one night in Ronnie Scott's club in London.

He'd been a hero of mine since I was fifteen. He reminded me of one of those wise elders from Star Trek who are the only survivors of a planet after some holocaust, the sole guardians of all the knowledge of their race. I went backstage after the show to introduce myself and was amazed and flattered that he had ever heard of me. He told me he liked the bass line of 'Walking on the Moon'. I went home on cloud nine. I sang with his band a couple of years later in a little club in Greenwich Village called Sweet Basil. His fifteen piece band was crammed onto the tiny stage so that there was no room for me. So, I sang on the floor, squashed between two tables. One day I aspire to the stage. Anyway, we did three songs together. One by Tony Williams, called 'There Comes a Time', and two songs by Jimi Hendrix that Gil has performed for years, 'Little Wing' and 'Up from the Skies'. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was one of the first bands I ever saw. I was fifteen and had just bought Jimi's first single 'Hey Joe'. He was appearing at the club Go-Go in Newcastle. I'd never seen or heard anything like it in my life and don't suppose I ever will."