Graeme Whitfield
I’M always very suspicious of people who say that the first record they ever bought was something really cool, implying that they had great musical taste when they’re eight years old.
As soon as someone says: “Yeah, my first ever record was The Jam” (or The Stone Roses, or Oasis ,depending on their vintage), my response is: “Mine was I Am A Cider Drinker by The Wurzels”. (My first album was Golden Delicious by The Wurzels and my first gig was The Wurzels at the Newcastle City Hall and I apologise for nothing.)
But my second, or possibly third, record was Walking on the Moon by The Police and I have been following the career of a chap called Sting ever since.
This week he received the rare honour of being named a fellow of the Ivor Novello awards and my general understanding is that he has done OK for himself in the 40-something years since I first bought one of his records.
It was great to find out, as a young Police fan, that Sting was from the North East.
My tastes have developed over the years and I can’t say that I have much of his work in my record collection any more, but I still think he has the occasional amazing song. (If you don’t like
Eva Cassidy’s version of Fields of Gold, for example, my feeling is that you don’t really like music).
The slight problem with Sting – to put it delicately – is that he can occasionally be...how to put this?...a bit of a nitwit.
There was the album of lute music, posing for pictures with Amazonian tribesmen, pompous sleeve notes about his songs, and banging on about tantric sex.
Every time he’s on the telly I think: “Just sing Every Breath You Take” – partly because it’s a good tune, and partly because it will stop him talking.
Nothwithstanding that unfortunate tendency towards nitwittery, I was quite excited a few years ago when I thought I’d got the chance to interview Sting.
It was 2006 and he was getting an honorary degree from Newcastle University; as The Journal’s education correspondent at the time, it was my job to cover such events.
Honorary degrees normally come in blocks of four or five and work to something of a pattern: one will be an ageing academic who has given a lifetime of service to this or some other university; one will be a local public servant; one will be the former Prime Minister of Portugal or the head of something obscure at the UN; and one will be the person who will actually get the university’s name in the papers.
But on the day Sting was due to get his award, I got a slightly sheepish note from the university to say that Sting would not, under any circumstances, be speaking.
Using all of my cunning, I said that I’d come to the ceremony to interview the other recipients, wagering that if Sting saw a little ginger bloke with a notebook talking to the former Prime Minister of Portugal, a retired professor of microbiology and the boss of the local hospitals trust, he would let his guard down and grant me a few words. Readers: he did not.
So while I have been in the same room as Sting, we have not spoken and the closest I will get to him is likely to be listening to his songs. Some of which are canny good.