A Wasp Jumper, a Milk Round and a Teaching Certificate

Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner was born in 1951 in Wallsend, Northumberland, the eldest of four children of a hairdresser and a milkman. He grew up near the shipyards, helped his father deliver milk, and by the age of ten was obsessed with an old Spanish guitar left by an emigrating friend of his father. He learned bass by speeding records up to 78 rpm so he could hear the bass lines more clearly.

After a term at the University of Warwick he left, and worked as a bus conductor, building labourer and tax officer before qualifying as a teacher in 1973. He taught at St Paul's First School in Cramlington for two years and played jazz in the evenings and at weekends. His nickname came from his time with the Phoenix Jazzmen, when bandleader Gordon Solomon remarked that his black-and-yellow striped jumper made him look like a wasp. Years later, in the documentary Bring On the Night, a journalist called him Gordon, and he replied that his children and his mother both called him Sting.

In January 1977 he joined Stewart Copeland and Henry Padovani, soon replaced by Andy Summers, to form the Police, as lead singer, bass player and main songwriter. From 1978 to 1983 the band had five UK chart-topping albums. Their last album, Synchronicity, included “Every Breath You Take”, written by Sting. He has said he decided to leave while onstage at Shea Stadium on 18 August 1983.

His solo career began in 1985 and has mixed rock, jazz, reggae, classical, new-age and worldbeat. “Englishman in New York” and “Fragile” are among the songs from his solo years. He has sold over 100 million records as a solo artist and with the Police, and has won 17 Grammy Awards. The Police entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003, and he holds a CBE and Kennedy Center Honors. Not bad for a man who never legally changed his name to Sting.