Sting Books

Rock music; for voice and piano, with chord symbols and guitar chord diagrams.

Gordon Matthew Sumner, Sohn eines Milchmanns, arbeitete als Bauarbeiter und wurde Lehrer. Doch die Idee, eine eigene Band gründen zu wollen, ging ihm nicht aus dem Kopf. »The Police« stürmte ab 1978 die Charts, und danach tat es Sting solo. Hier legt er zum ersten Mal eine umfassende Sammlung seiner Lieder vor und kommentiert ihre Entstehung. Er schildert, wie er in Paris in einem schäbigen Hotel an Cyrano de Bergerac denkend »Roxanne« schrieb, und warum er den Song immer noch mag. Er erzählt, welche ganz persönlichen Anteile es in seinen Texten gibt und wie ein kleiner Gedanke alles in Bewegung bringen kann. Unprätentiös und poetisch, bisweilen wild, dann wieder melancholisch. Sting eben.

More than twenty of the UK’s finest musicians discuss the magic and reveal the secrets behind their art in a rare collection of conversations about fifty years of classic British songwriting.

'I pore over Beatles albums with the same obsessive and forensic scrutiny that I'd applied to Rodgers and Hammerstein, only now I have a guitar. I have an instrument that can reproduce the practical magic of the chord structures and the network of riffs that their songs are built on. And what songs, one after the other, album after album. I learn to play them all, confident that if I persevere, what I can't play immediately will yield its secret eventually. I will reapply the needle of the record player again and again to the bars of music that seem beyond my analysis, like a safecracker picking a lock, until the prize is mine. No school subject ever occupies as much of my time or energy. I'm not claiming that any kind of prescience about the future was at work here, but there was something in the driven and compulsive nature of this obsession that was unusual, something in the unconscious saying, "This is how you escape." "This is how you escape.'''

The revised edition of this songbook concentrates on Sting's work as a solo artist. Each song features instructions to read the guitar chords so no other musical knowledge is needed. Full lyrics are supplied.

Message in a bottle Can't stand losing you Englishman in New York Every breath you take Seven days Walking on the moon Fields of gold Fragile Every little thing she does is magic De do do de da da da If you love somebody set them free Let your soul be your pilot Russians If I ever lose my faith in you When we dance Don't stand so close to me Roxanne