It's something i've done for many years now, worked in the houses that i had.
This is my environment and i wantto be creative in it.
Everybody enjoys the ambience of the house and the food and the view.
They prefer working somewhere like this, than some soulless studio.
To have people working in the house, in a creative way,
whether it's musicians or film crews or whatever, it's good for the house.
There's an energy that seeps into the brickwork. The house feels used.
So when you come back to it, it has some great memories.
I spend so much time away from home,
when i can be at home, i want to be at home.
We're in the middle of a rehearsal. We don't have very much time to rehearse.
This is where we start from. We want to learn the tunes
to the point that it's the lowest common denominator of arrangement.
We started off deconstructing all the songs
and taking them back to drum machine and my sequenced bass.
Not having a drummer actually allows colours to emerge
thatthe sonic range of drums tend to obliterate.
I love drummers. I like loud rock'n'roll music.
But in the rehearsal period, that's all you hear.
The acid test for whether a song is good or not
is whether you can break it down into just a simple rendition.
If it still works like that, it's a good song as far as i'm concerned.
It's a very good transition stage between the recording,
the big show with the drummer.
It will sound different from the album,
just by that factthat we don't have 96 tracks in the recording studio.
We have to just do what we can do as five musicians.
Certain things we can't play.
If we had four hands each, maybe we could.
So we have to rationalise what's important.
We've just spent a year making this record and really honing the songs.
Now we're making them completely naked and reinventing them.
This performance will be different and hopefully better.
I think we're ready now to play the songs in this environment
and to add a bit of performance to what we've done in malibu.
It's interesting singing with joy.
Joy sang backup on a lot of the album,
but, because she's such a good singer, i want to feature her more.
So i'm giving her some of the lines in a song like "inside".
It's a brilliant song to do.
At first he was like "can you just take the alternate lines?"
Which is just me ranting.
I've given her half ofthe lines,
and so it becomes about a man and a woman fighting a battle with words.
It's changing the meaning of the song and the meaning of the words.
It's a very interesting theatrical struggle going on.
I was thinking "ok, i'm a backing vocalist so don't go too over the top."
That's why i was very, very wary of putting too much of myself in it.
I was like "it's great anyway."
"This is sting's song. Sting's singing on it. What can i do?"
Joy, you could give us some attitude.
Then he said "give us some more" so i was like "ok, i'll give you more."
She can definitely dish.
- Give it a bit more vibe and we'll be there. - I love that.
Lfthey're good songs, they will transmute their meaning into different situations.
Before we start the day,
i want to talk about kim turner who was my friend for 25 years.
He died last night. He was my friend.
He was my manager, my mentor, my little brother.
I wanttoday to be a celebration of his life.
I want to dedicate our work today to him, his memory, his spirit,
in gratitude of having spent a quarter of a century with him,
in his company, with his humour,
his great gitts.
Every note that we sing today or play is dedicated to kim.
So this is for you, kim.
Wherever you are.
The lyrics of that song is very, very enlightening
in the sense of"walking in his grace" and "all my life i'ii walk with you."
For me, it's very, very personal so i do get quite emotional on that song.
I think "dead man's rope" does have a christian underpinning.
But i think there are core values at the heart of all religion,
whether it's christianity or islam or judaism or hinduism,
that are good values.
That common ground between religions is what we should be trying to foster.
When we're making this transition from record to live,
the most importantthing is that sting's comfortable
and feels like he can communicate the message of the song.
When he makes an album, he starts off with the music and then does the lyrics.
So he'll go off into a garden or just go for a walk and come back with a lyric.
I tend to be creative in a private sphere.
Writing songs, for example, i need to be alone.
He came in one morning with this lovely guitar riff.
He said "what do you think?" i said "that could be a song. Let me go outside."
I went outside and rejigged some of the chords and just restructured it.
Dominic's convinced that i found the lyrics under a stone in the garden.
I did, actually.
- I don't listen to the lyrics much. - He's a guitarist. They don't exist, lyrics.
They get in the way of his riffs.
- I might have to getthese words. - Can we get the words for dom?
- Not the whole song. There's too many... - justthe choruses.
They'll get their money's worth with the lyrics on this album.
He said "do you want to know what it's about?" i said "no."
- You still don't know what it's about. - I still don't know.
I don't know. Is there another verse?
I know you don't like my lyrics much, but there's another verse.
- Do you wanna sing it? - No.
We'ii do the chorus now, right?
Throughout most of my career i've hired musicians who are way better than me.
I'm awe-struck by their musical prowess, particularly jason.
He's a musical genius, i think.
Jason was really recruited by the late kenny kirkland,
who worked for me for 16 years.
Kenny once brought this kid up to me atthe glastonbury festival in england
and said "this is the only cat in england i listen to."
Then kenny passed away a couple of years later.
I thought"how the hell can i replace kenny kirkland?"
"That chair's empty. I've gotto fill it somehow."
I thought"that kid i met at glastonbury. I wonder where he is?"
I did some research. I got his number.
Somebody told me he'd given up music and become a buddhist monk,
which was true.
I wanted to go and be a monk, so i gave up playing.
I did abouttwo months and i just panicked
cos it's quite disciplined and regimented.
Somebody said "he's not a monk any more."
"He's come back and he's playing music and making albums." so i called him.
I remember he said "i've been put in the almost impossible situation
of looking for a replacement for kenny kirkland."
He said "lt'd be a great honour."
It's strange because i wasn't expecting it at all.
Yet when it happened, at the same time, i wasn't hugely surprised.
It just seemed very normal.
Every night, whenever jason plays, i think of kenny.
Kenny's smiling down there because he putthis guy in the band.
Jason has a kind of lett-field humour.
You've got to go "jason, here's a section for you to just let go
and run free from the confines ofthe pop format of a song."
I've always thoughtthat the album was a starting point.
Then you'd create something different
when you got musicians on a stage and an audience.
Something different to the studio work,
especially with the calibre of my musicians, who are from a world of jazz
where they take the head of a song and take it somewhere else.
Dom, if you're playing that riff atthe beginning with me, it's:
- The first one. - Three, four.
It's no surprise to me that dominic would call jason a genius.
I think dominic's a bit of a genius as well.
Dominic, who's been my right hand for 12 years on guitar.
He plays all the tricky stuff that my big, fat hands can't manage.
I'm not a very good guitar player. He is.
So i can realise my musical dreams through him, through his finesse.
Playing the bass and singing involves a certain amount of neural independence -
one side ofthe brain is singing, the other side is figuring out where your fingers go.
I think he's a fantastic bass player. I can't really fault him.
The only way i would fault him is sometimes his timing's a bit dodgy.
He's ahead of the beat, which is a very british thing. It's almost a punk thing.
But that's ok. He's the band leader.
Bass players are stoic, honest...
modest.
Bass players are usually very, very sexy.
Sexy!
Do that chorus again.
We've gotto be serious.
I heard all ofthis last night when i was trying to sleep.
My bedroom is justthere.
What i don't understand is when sting says "let's have a break",
they immediately start playing.
- Walk away - walk away
stand up
walk away
the whole point of a break is "just relax, guys", but they're incapable of it.
Then we're gonna come back home
where you belong to
home...
come on, kipper. Finish the tune, man.
Walk away
i couldn't believe what i was hearing.
It did go a bit offthe rails at points.
It was the red wine.
Ok. Already too loud.
Down. It doesn't have to be loud. Quiet.
Just remember the lyrics are really important.
Just pay attention to the story.
The reason i said "the lyrics are important"
was to getthe musicians to focus not necessarily on justtheir part.
I'm normally just playing the guitar,
thinking about the chords and the harmony, the melody.
Just to thrash through it isn't helping me,
so i say"if you listen to the lyrics, try and hear the story,
you will play more sensitively and you will dovetail with what we wantto do."
So it's a quiet song. Where you can play less, you should play less.
As soon as i said that, the nexttime he did it, it sounded like music, like a song.
It sounded like a story. We're telling stories.
Why don't we have tea, then come back and play this perfectly?
Or we can play it perfectly now and then have tea?
- Let's do that. - You wanna do that?
- Either way, we have to do it. - Let's do that, then play it perfectly again.
So let's go from the first song. Ok. Number one.
Here i come.
We've moved the equipmentfrom my home in malibu to this theatre downtown,
the mayan theatre, which is very nice.
It looks like the set of temple of doom or something.
Today's really a sound check day.
It feels like a weird rehearsal in front of a few people and we don't know the songs,
so it's like half-performance, half-recording, half-live-workout.
But it's good to be doing it in a theatre in front of a few audience members
because that's how sting really gets a chance
to see how this audience responds to certain arrangements.
It's crucial for me to communicate with the band
before i can communicate with the audience.
That's what we're doing now - trying to home in on that communication.
There's a couple ofthings that don't sit well on the guitar.
Well, i figured out:
This is the one time when i'm working with sting during a rehearsal period
that we enjoy eye contact.
Once we go on tour, that all finishes. He doesn't look at me, i don't look at him.
Mentally it was a very tough record to make.
The songs are written almost subconsciously.
I only figure out what they mean later on.
When you string all the songs together, you see an underlying theme.
It definitely is a difficulttime to be creative.
First of all, the threat of war, post-september 11th,
the actual war happening.
There's a certain amount of confusion and dread on the record,
as well as a great deal of joy and hope.
You wonder "what on earth am i doing this for?"
"What bearing does this have on reality?"
I think the motivating answer really is
that art and joy and music has never been more important.
This is real human progress,
that we produce things that are beautiful and make people happy.
My task is to give people as much of the spotlight as they want, and shine in it.
Chris is one ofthose people who took that to the letter and was a featured artist.
I like the idea of democracy.
The first song, what would you prefer to play? What do you wanna play?
- That i begin in the first chorus. - You just do what you feel.
I think this song does need a few high, angelic things in the background.
- Yeah. Like in the distance. - In the distance.
I'm grateful for people who slightly alter my perception of the song.
- What do you prefer? - I like you not doing anything
- in the last two bars. Just more strings. - Wrong answer.
How is everyone feeling aboutthis one?
- What is it? - "Sacred love".
Dom and jase, you should listen to the recording ofthis for these changes.
No, no. So it goes:
What was it you wanted me to play there?
You had an idea...
i can't remember what it is.
You're doing your wah-wah riff.
Yeah.
I'll just do that.
From the top. Three and four.
"Sacred love" is about the way that sex has been denigrated
to something that's just an amusement or something frivolous
or something dirty or there's something wrong with it.
It's god's greatest creation - the ability to create,
the ability to give pleasure, to give love to someone else.
This song is quite a sexy song. Atthe same time, it has this religious imagery.
This finding transcendence through sexual love,
through a ritualised sexual context.
I believe in sacred love.
With this setup, it's much more dynamic.
You can say "i'm not quite hearing this."
"I need to hear more or that. Far less ofthat."
Were you playing the wrong chord? Come on, admit it.
Yes. Ok.
If i was surrounded by people that didn't make mistakes, i'd be really upset.
Kipper is my producer. He keeps everybody laughing.
I love you guys.
It's just the most amazing environment for me to feel creative and to feel relaxed.
He's an absurdist.
Why don't we hold that chord and hold it, sustain it?
Yes. That's a very good idea.
Great. Let's go for it now. What do you reckon, dom?
I think we should. That was a brilliant idea.
His totally absurd sense of humour,
although it's a function of insanity, it actually does keep people sane
to be able to laugh atthe most ridiculous things.
He's not coming on tour with me. He's having a baby.
Well, he's not having a baby. He's responsible for his wife having a baby.
We don'ttend to lose people in this operation.
People will tour for a while and do an album,
then maybe go and do something else - a solo project - and then they dritt back.
They don't have to do everything i do all of the time.
They're my family.
I'm notthat much into star signs, but sometimes i like to know these things.
- A lot of saxophone players are virgos. - Virgos?
- Do you believe that? - That's true.
- A lot of famous saxophone players... - what do mean "it's true"? How many?
- About ten. That's quite a lot. - All right, name five. I know one.
Branford. I think john coltrane, sonny rollins, wayne shorter.
Lester young, i think.
- All virgos? - Yeah.
And you know a lot of famous, successful female artists are leos.
- What a load of rubbish. - It's true!
- Utter nonsense. - They are all leos.
I was always sceptical about it.
Then a friend who does itfor a living said "don't be sceptical. I'll teach you to do it."
I said "no, it's rubbish."
"Have some respect. Let me teach you how to cast the horoscopes." i went "ok."
We spent months doing it. I'd go to his house and he'd teach me all this stuff.
To test me, he would give me an anonymous chart of someone famous.
"Ok, analyse that."
Elvis presley, i got him. Marilyn monroe. I just gotthem.
The only one i got wrong out of, say, ten was trudie's.
I thought it was jesus christ.
Songs are a little bit like children, in a way.
You give birth to them and you do the best you can for them,
give them the best start in life.
Then you watch them grow and carry on growing.
Other people cover them, adaptthem and change them, sample them.
You can only feel pride that your song has gone into the world
and now exists as an entity.
I sing them as otten as i can, just to breathe life into them,
have a relationship with the song, so they're almost humans to me.
Bridge.
Jason rebello. Thank you.
Take a bow. Stand up, jason.
Thank you.
"My old man's a dustman".
So we're waiting for miss maryj blige.
I'm extremely excited. I hope you are.
When he said he wrote the song for me, i knew that when i first heard the record.
I said "you wrote this with me in mind" cos that's how i feel.
I'm not ashamed to say it out loud cos that's what i believe.
It's gonna be very exciting. She's got terrific energy and an amazing presence.
I think it will just raise our game when she comes in on that song.
There you go. I'm aboutto sing with one of the greatest soul divas of the century.
I've gotta bring my voice up to scratch.
I'm just happy and honoured
that sting would want mary j blige in his life in any kind of way.
We've got the essence of that song, we can play the chords,
now we just need to perform it.
- She'll give us that motivation. - We'll get ittogether.
Miss maryj blige.
Thank you.
... Sergei7721...http://tracker.nova-lan.ru/