Sting
The Dream Of The Blue Turtles

THE REVIEW

We were quite young, and like all young people, we were extremists. The usual story of being incendiaries at twenty and firefighters at forty. Rhetorical, boring, and quite true... Today I look at this operation with disenchanted, amused, and admiring eyes. Back then, of course, I got pissed off. And with me, those who played with me. All raised on bread and Police, Prince, and Boss, we firmly believed that some things should not, nor could they, be touched. And we had followed the evolution of the Police practically on our knees, getting excited every time, and each time more and more.

Those five records, none like the other, but all with that splendid common denominator of the most original “light” instrumental trio in history. New sounds, strongly contaminated but truly unlike anything else. And, after the thrill of one of the most beautiful ballads ever (“Every breath you take”, of course), included in a very refined album, at times not easy at all, and apparently the result of a path, we could not accept a step forward, or perhaps better "elsewhere", which implied the tragic abandonment of the other two Policemen. And there was no jazz excuse that held. We were pissed off. And we were wrong. We were wrong to look for Summers' guitar where the guitar could not and should not be, and the little there was played by Sting himself, the six-string companion good for singing but nothing more. And we couldn't expect Copeland's snare where Hakim's beat completely differently. Then, apparently, too many pianos, too many keyboards, too much sax. For Christ's sake... where had our Police gone? Sting, though also young then (we age together...: I’ll reveal this horrible secret to you), had understood more than we had. He understood that things are born, develop, and end. And this applies even to the bands that made your fortune. It's up to you to understand that the truly great is the one who changes direction (Battisti, Faber, Bowie), while the miserable one keeps beating, always worse, the same worn-out and melted asphalt. And maybe even the Sting, getting older, will beat the solo path always a bit worse to eventually end up singing medieval songs and returning with the Policemen... But back then there was an urgency, the emergency to say something new. To really turn the page.

Because in the dream of the blue turtles only the voice, although continuously and evidently maturing, was the same as before: everything else was different. And the thing would become all the more evident in the album tour, splendidly documented by the live “Bring On The Night”. And even if it's certainly not the first time in history that the grounds and languages of jazz are mixed with songwriter music, rock, or more generally so-called “light” music, we can say without fear of being wrong that it's the first time languages mix like this. The Police (hence Sting until then) had inaugurated a “post-punk” language of “white reggae” to find still partial and mocked definitions, actually inaugurating a new and unforgettable page in the history of music not only beyond the Channel. Sting translates his language, his voice, giving an apparent tribute to reggae next to a self-covered policing, paying more than a total act of love to the world of jazz, touching social themes even citing Procofiev. In short: creating an album both light and intellectual. Easy and difficult. Of immediate enjoyment as well as long chewed. Miracles, whatever you say, that could still happen only in the much-maligned eighties, years of Gazebo and Righeira, but also of “Don Giovanni” and “Creuza de mä”. Years that saw greats like Bowie, Morrison, Stones, Pink Floyd, etc., survive quite well, but commercially saw the birth of U2, Simple Minds, Prince, Talking Heads, Dire Straits, and many others. Quality commercialism, a canon now lost. In Italy Vasco, Pino Daniele, Bennato, De Gregori, Faber, Secchioni, Guccini. New people alongside who was there before but still knew how to say great things. Other times, other orgasms, the Squallor would say. Other greats, gone, since then.