The Man Whose Wife Brought His Tea to the Stage – Sting in the Arena...

The English star, exercising significant self-restraint, brought a total of one song written in the last 20 years to the stage last night, but in return he handed over a catalogue of the best songs of his career.

And - let's quickly add - he gave a really good concert. But what makes a Sting concert good?

Well, it's definitely not because of that, and it's not because we go to see Gordon Matthew Sumner's performances these days, because something new, special, never seen or heard before is happening. Not because of the invention. Moreover, not only does this not happen at the performances of the English bassist-guitarist-singer, but for some time now, it hasn't happened in his own interpretation at all.

Or rather, unfortunately, for some time now, it's good for us as long as he doesn't have any special ideas.

Unfortunately, there have been some in the past two decades: we barely had a symphonic concert program and album, and the same is true, for example, of his latest solo album, 2016's 57th & 9th, on whose tour he also performed in Budapest (we wrote about it here). But 2018's 44/876, recorded with Shaggy, was a particularly unworthy success, and we remember with little pleasure, for example, his lute album evoking winter tales (If On a Winter's Night) or the terribly nonsensical The Last Ship, which is a musical (and its LP version), but it doesn't really matter what, because we don't remember anything from it.

What's good for us is when he gives concerts and puts the best of his classic catalogue on stage. Lots of Police and solo songs, preferably songs from 1985 to 1999. Sting is self-reflective, because he acts accordingly - two years ago he didn't force current songs, and now, when he's touring his otherwise completely gratuitous album My Songs, which contains re-recorded versions of his emblematic compositions, the best-of theme is even more the guiding principle.

This means that the Budapest concert program included a total of one song written after 1999, Waiting For The Break Of Day, which can be heard on the album with Shaggy, and on top of that, half of the concert program was made up of Police classics – very commendably – and the rest were selected from his solo album (The Mercury Falling fortunately, The Soul Cages unfortunately fell out of the mix).

When Sting plays these songs, everything is fine. He is in amazing shape. At 67, he is still a terrific guy. When needed, he is restrained and decent, when needed, macho and energetic, and of course, the romantic troubadour is not left out of the roles. He saves the latter for the very end, for Fragile, performed with acoustic guitar and solid orchestral accompaniment – but before that, he showed the audience all his faces for 21 songs. And it goes without saying what kind of frontman and bandleader he is.

The evening also had two interesting things: one, the guitarist Dominic Miller, who has been playing with Sting since the aforementioned 1991 The Soul Cages, was missing from the stage, and whose new solo album Absinthe was released this year. The family was represented by his son, also a guitarist, Rufus, who we have seen in Sting's band for two years now (Dominic Miller was replaced by the Australian guitarist Ben Butler living in New York). The other, which is not really special, but still information for connoisseurs: behind the drums was once again Josh Freese, who we also know from Guns N' Roses, A Perfect Circle and Nine Inch Nails. Oh yes, and it was especially nice and funny that before the encore, Trudie Styler, Sting's wife, appeared on stage with a cup of tea.

Well, so everything was fine, nothing special happened. With some irony, we can also note that Sting can actually be given a reprieve from making new songs, new records, new projects. Not every little thing he does is amazing, but all of his amazing things are enjoyable even now, decades later.

(c) HVG.hu by Németh Róbert