Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
STING’S ON ZOOM ...IN MY SITTING ROOM!
Imagine if one of the world’s biggest rock stars dropped in to your virtual choir practice. That’s what happened to Jane Slade – and here she tells the full, heartwarming story behind it...
Lockdown has brought a sense of thoughtful reflection to one of Britain’s greatest singersongwriters, and inspired him to record a song with his local community choir. Famed for classics such as Every Breath You Take and Message In A Bottle with his band The Police, and solo hits including Englishman In New York and Fields Of Gold, Sting has now revived the haunting anthem Hymn that he wrote for his musical The Last Ship – and asked his local choir in Battersea, south London, to record it with him.
The Last Ship first sailed in Chicago in 2014 before transferring to Broadway later that year and touring the UK in 2018. It embarked on another US tour this year, but that was cut short when the pandemic hit. The show is about the demise of the shipbuilding communities on Tyneside, and was inspired by Sting’s childhood in Wallsend, Tyne and Wear, and particularly his relationship with his father who had been an engineer in a family of shipwrights.
‘I did everything in my power to escape Wallsend. I became successful, but I owe a debt to that community,’ he said when the show opened. ‘This play is me trying to honour that community, to pay back what they gave me – a sense (our youngest member is six), backgrounds of self but also the engine that allowed and ethnicities, and we’ve me to escape. That’s the paradox. I sung with some big names in some love where I come from, I’m glad I great venues. TV’S most famous escaped, at the same time I need to choirmaster Gareth Malone invited us tell that story as a sort of “soul debt”.’ to perform in a flash mob at the opening
Sting received two Tony nominaof The Ned, a new hotel in the City tions for The Last Ship but Hymn, of London three years ago in the presence which originally opened the show, was of Princess Eugenie and actors cut when the production was rejigged. Eddie Redmayne, Woody Harrelson Now he has composed a new and Simon Pegg. Then arrangement of the song, Gareth invited us to sing layered with harmonies live at his Christmas evoking the concert at Alexandra feel of a lullaby Palace in 2018. and a prayer, We’ve performed especially for the at the Royal College Battersea Power of Art and Station Community the Victoria & Choir, which Albert Museum, rehearses in the and when Sting shadow of the iconic heard our version of building overlooking Labi Siffre’s hit Somethe Thames where Sting as a boy growing thing Inside So Strong, Sting now lives. up on Tyneside a tribute to the NHS,
I have been a member on and off he suggested a collaboration. ever since Alex Baker, who works for But when he joined us for one of the power station developers, started it our rehearsals, which have been held in 2016. We rehearse in a community over Zoom for the past few months, centre with our conductor Sam Evans, we couldn’t believe it. There he was and instead of using classical terms in his recording studio, telling us how such as soprano, alto, tenor and bass to excited he was about the project. He describe our voices – we call ourselves picked up his guitar and started singing Whitneys (after Whitney Houston), the ballad he had written about Lulus and Freddies (after Freddie Mercury). the dangers sailors face at sea. We I’m a Lulu, and my husband Neil were at our own private concert, lisis a Freddie. It’s grown from 14 members tening to him quietly strumming and to more than 70, all locals living in singing, his face beaming live into and around the power station. our homes. We were mesmerised.
We are a diverse bunch of all ages ‘And as ye sleep, the angels round
thee have brought ye safely home across the ocean,’ he sang. ‘Rest ye well all those who toil upon the sea.’
He told us his musical was about the stresses communities face. ‘It’s the subject of our play, but also what’s happening in the world,’ he said. ‘We need our communities more than ever. I need this as much as any of you so thank you for the opportunity.’ He was actually thanking us for the opportunity to sing with him! How special was that!
Angie Conway, a children’s counsellor and founder member of the choir, told him how important singing was to her too. ‘It is what I look forward to each week,’ she said. ‘Music has been my soul. I’m not a great singer but for so many people from different backgrounds to sing together is such a powerful thing. I feel blessed to collaborate with you.’
Accountant Adam Williamson has sung with the choir for three years but grew up singing with big church choirs. ‘I stopped in my twenties but I’m so glad to be back singing,’ he said. ‘People talk about community choirs and diversity – this is the most diverse group of people I interact with on a regular basis. It is so important we meet people we would not normally meet.’
Sting became a global star with his band The Police, one of the world’s most successful ever with 75 million albums sold, before enjoying huge solo success. He had spent many years living in New York, and he also has homes in Wiltshire, the Lake District, Malibu and Tuscany, but in 2014 he and his wife Trudie Styler bought an apartment at Battersea Power Station, in the heart of a thriving community.
‘I live in Battersea now,’ he told us. ‘We have an apartment and look at one of those wonderful chimneys, which is an iconic sight to wake up to. Battersea is the first place I lived when I moved to London in the 70s, so I’ve come full circle and I’m back in Battersea and happy to be part of a community.’
He recalled on the David Letterman Show back in 2013 that his earliest memory in Wallsend was of ‘the sky being blotted out by a massive ship, towering above the house. I would watch the men go to work every morning and think, “Is that my destiny?”’ Interestingly, the power station now brings back memories of the community where he grew up. ‘It reminds me, strangely enough, of my home next to the shipyard,’ he mused to us. ‘The power station looks like a giant ship, with those chimneys going into the river.’
Now he has joined our community and is making music with his community choir. ‘I’d written Hymn as a choral piece and presented it to you and you loved it and said you would make a great fist of it,’ he told our conductor Sam Evans. Sam then began teaching us the individual singing parts Sting had written for us Whitneys, Lulus and Freddies. We had to memorise them and video-record ourselves on our phones, singing along to the track, then send them back to Sting.
We next saw Sting – the soloist – at our rehearsal to hear the final recording that his technicians and our own audio editor Dan Swana had ‘knitted’ together so we all blended. We were also joined by members of the cast of his show, who sang with us on the track.
We were so excited. It was the first time we’d heard the recording and I had goosepimples. Would he like it? Happily he loved it, and confessed that he was even ‘a little overcome’.
We were overcome too. Our singing had moved one of the greatest rock stars in the world. It doesn’t get much better than that. Except perhaps to perform it live with him some time in the future.