Sting Famous Brit musician Sting actually has a real name—Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner. Not a very rock ‘n’ roll-sounding name, which is perhaps why he is known by, and goes by Sting. But where did “Sting” come from? When Sumner first started out doing music gigs at home, he played with local jazz band Phoenix Jazzmen. During one performance, frontman Gordon Solomon noted Sumner looked like a bumblebee in his black and yellow jersey with hooped stripes—thus, “Sting” was born…and stuck. Sting was born to Ernest Sumner and Audrey Cowell on October 2, 1951 in Wallsend, near Newcastle upon Tyne in northeast England. Gordon was the oldest of three other siblings: Angela, Anita and Philip. Sting always knew he would be a musician, and after attending Northern Counties Teachers’ College from 1971 to 1974 and teaching for two years at St. Paul’s First School in Cramlington, he moved to London to get serious about a music career. In London Sting hooked up with Stewart Copeland and Henry Padovani—soon to be replaced by Andy Summers—to form the renowned ’70s/’80s rock band The Police, in which Sting became the lead singer, songwriter and bassist. The Police soon became very popular, releasing many successful albums with hit songs and winning six Grammys. The Police released their last album as a band in 1983, Synchronicity, containing their most popular song “Every Breath You Take.”
After The Police disbanded, Sting began to pursue a successful professional solo career. Sting also led his own band—The Secret Police—for his own arrangement of Bob Dylan’s I Shall Be Released, including star musicians Phil Collins, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Bob Geldof. Sting released a total of 17 successful albums as a solo artist, from 1985 to 2003. Many of his albums reached platinum status, including his first solo release in 1985, The Dream of the Blue Turtles, featuring jazz veterans Kenny Kirkland, Daryll Jones and Branford Marsalis; The Soul Cages (1991), dedicated to his recently deceased father Ernest Sumner; and 1993’s Ten Summoner’s Tales, which reached triple platinum. In addition, in 1994 Sting performed “All for Love” with musicians Bryan Adams and Rod Stewart for the film The Three Musketeers, a song that stayed at the top of the U.S. charts for five weeks and went platinum. Early in 1994 Sting won two more Grammys and was nominated for three more. Later in the year he released Fields of Gold: The Best of Sting, which went double platinum. In February 2001, he added another Grammy to his collection. Besides Grammy awards and nominations and platinum-status albums, Sting has had even more impressive accomplishments. In 1992 he was awarded an honorary doctorate music degree from Northumbria University and two years later, he received another from The Berklee College of Music. As if that wasn’t enough, in 2002 Sting won a Golden Globe Award, was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and became a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Personally, Sting has been married twice and has six children. He first married Irish-Catholic actress Frances Tomelty in 1976 and had children Joseph (1976) and Fuchsia Catherine (1982) before the couple divorced in 1984. Sting married longtime girlfriend and actress/film producer Trudie Styler in 1992. They two already had three children together: Bridget Michael (1984), Jake (1985) and Eliot Pauline (1990). Giacomo Luke was born in 1995. Sting has led a very full life, and perhaps his next accomplishment will be to retain full ownership of the trademark name “Sting,” which currently belongs to a wrestler by the same name. |
