By BRUCE DENNILL
Sting 3.0 Tour / SunBet Arena, Time Square, Pretoria
There are very few genuine A-listers in popular music and fewer still who are all-time greats in more than one area. Sting started ticking all those boxes as a songwriter, vocalist, bassist and all-round musician nearly 50 years ago and at 73, with an ease borne of working and enjoying success for all of that time, he returns to the stage as part of a power trio – which worked out quite well with the Police.
Chris Maas, behind the kit, is the antithesis of Stewart Copeland – chilled and metronomic rather than mercurial and jazzy. He still offers plenty of personality, but the most obvious and meaningful outcome of his work is the platform he provides for Sting and his long-time collaborator and guitarist Dominic Miller, to enjoy their musical interactions and to be playfully loose around the beat.
Sting looks better – and oozes more cool – than most performers 20 years younger, but does make the occasional concession to the passing of time, adopting a mostly stand-and-deliver approach to his performance and pulling up a barstool for a couple of songs when he feels the need to get off his feet for a few moments. He’s also – entirely unsurprisingly – knocked a couple of semitones off the original keys of some of the songs, which is most notably evident when Miller starts the introduction to Message In A Bottle too high and Sting simply shouts over the guitar, “Wrong key!” and then starts singing and playing at the more friendly pitch, with Miller immediately adjusting.
That’s one of a number of Police hits in the setlist – obvious options like Roxanne, Walking On The Moon and Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic and, rather wonderfully, other gorgeous, powerful and darker pieces like King Of Pain and Synchronicity II. The power trio format makes those songs sound as powerful as they did in the Eighties, but with slight stylistic differences given Miller’s playing style and Sting’s vocal variations (noticeably less breath at the beginning of many phrases but still those fantastic eight-bar sustained notes when he’s in the mood).
New song I Wrote Your Name (Upon My Heart), with its punchy snares on every beat is grown-up garage rock that doesn’t sound out of place in its elevated surroundings and also gives multiple repeat concert attendees (Sting is one of the few big foreign acts that has come back to South Africa regularly) something new to react to. That people know the songs well is made evident a number of times, and amusingly so when Sting tries to get a call and response going during Englishman In New York, only having the audience respond to his “Oh-oh” with the full line – “I’m an alien, I’m a legal alien, I’m an Englishman in New York” rather than the usual basic echo. The singer looked bemused by this development, but pleased that everyone knew his material well. And Maas’ kit sounds massive in the drum break, which is what fans always hope for but sometimes don’t get to hear in Sting’s live shows.
Sting 3.0 is one version of an excellent showcase for a song catalogue that can hardly be beaten. And there is a sense, watching the musicians at work, that the show could be either two hours longer or feature a completely different setlist and be no weaker for it. Perhaps that’s something to look forward to in Sting 4.0.
