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| Sting w/ the SF Symphony @ Davies Hall (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
Sting delivered a sweet treat to San Francisco on Valentine’s Day with a deeply personal and memorable 18-song performance with the San Francisco Symphony at Louise M. Davies Hall. Dressed in a black turtleneck, leather pants and cowboy boots with the fit look of someone in his late 20’s, he thanked the audience from his stool for coming out on “St. Valentine’s Night” and shared that his valentine for the last 40 years – wife Trudie Styler was in the crowd.
For a moment, I was transported back to the first time I saw Sting live. Back in 1983, he was the undisputed leader of the biggest band in the world as they took the stage for a stadium show at the Oakland Coliseum. Bill Graham’s Day on the Green was always stacked with terrific acts and often the scene of an act lower on the bill stealing the conductor’s baton from the headliner (witness Metallica’s 1985 performance before Scorpions). But on that scorching September day in 1983, the supremacy of The Police stood out among some of new wave’s best competition (The Fixx, Oingo Boingo, Madness, Thompson Twins) and Sting’s energy and charisma resuscitated a sun-drenched crowd and brought them to a frenzy.
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| Sting w/ the SF Symphony @ Davies Hall (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
It's nearly unfathomable that the man who took the stage on Thursday night at Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, backed by famed conductor Edwin Outwater and the San Francisco Symphony, somehow still has that light shining just as bright 40+ years later. But his performance was spellbinding as he wove deeply personal tales and his singing effortless varied from soft-spoken tenderness to defiant, full-throated rage as he took the audience on a wide-ranging tour through his life’s catalog. The night harkened back to “Unplugged” and “Storytellers” and was reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen’s recent Broadway show (albeit with a LARGE backing band).
Taking to the stage behind Outwater, he told the audience that tonight would be an intimate night where he would share some of the stories behind the songs. Sting picked up his guitar and took his place on a center stage stool in front of Outwater that would be his home for almost the entire night. He told of The Police’s first trip through Europe where they had an extended stay at a hotel that catered to ladies of the night plying their trade upstairs. “Roxanne” took him some time to find the right name for a character that was being talked out of her profession. He followed that with “Englishman in New York” that was inspired by a friend who had been granted legal alien status and wanted to celebrate that he would no longer face the threat of deportation with Sting.
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| Sting w/ the SF Symphony @ Davies Hall (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
The bouncy, celebratory nature of “Englishman” transitioned nicely into the upbeat Police favorite “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic.” After a slow and haunting “Fields of Gold” he introduced “When We Dance” by reflecting that “I love you and you love me songs are nice, but I love you and you love someone else is far more interesting."
“When I was a kid, I had two ambitions,” Sting told the crowd. “I wanted to be either a musician or cowboy. I was obsessed with tv westerns. Rawhide. Maverick. Bonanza. I bought a songbook of Hank Williams and learned every song and I was thrilled when Johnny Cash covered this next tune.” With the grand introduction, “I Hung My Head” provided grand visuals in its lyrics with the symphony’s backing creating the feeling of a wide-angle aerial shot flying over the open plains.
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| Sting w/ the SF Symphony @ Davies Hall (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
Sting’s introduction of “Why Should I Cry for You” elicited murmurs of “I had no idea” throughout the audience as he shared that his great, great, great grandfather (forgive me if I am off a “great”) had died at sea in 1860 with a son who had rarely seen the man who lived his life at sea. The song’s title directly reflects the search for how to feel grief that is expected of losing a father even though there is little relationship. With that meaning at hand and the huge support of the symphony, the song took on an operatic quality.
In keeping with the autobiographical nature of the night, he introduced the first set’s final number “The End of the Game” – a somewhat tragic story of two foxes being subject to an English hunt. “I’ve always been very against fox hunting,” he shared. “That is, until Trudie and I began raising chickens and in one night a fox came through and killed every chicken we had. You have to respect the fox – he’s an outlaw who lives in our midst. This is Trudie’s favorite song and when I asked her why, she said ‘It’s about us.’”
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| Sting w/ the SF Symphony @ Davies Hall (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
Returning from the set break, Sting and the orchestra performed “The Shape of My Heart” with the song really showcasing his still breathtaking vocals. He performed all night without any backing vocalists (or backing vocal tracks) in what could be a lesson to so many of today’s performers. From there, he took a three-song tour through his musical “The Last Ship” which, ironically met its end in San Francisco with the covid shutdown in March of 2020. I was at a performance in the final week of that run and remember all the uncertainty towards masks and how the virus might or might not be spread. Nearly four years later, it feels almost a lifetime ago, though with strong lingering reminders. Sting talked about walking down from his hotel to the Ferry Building and seeing the Grand Princess covid-ridden cruise ship steaming toward Oakland and knowing then that the end of his production in SF was imminent. He chose “The Last Ship” title song along with songs from the generationally-apart suitors of Meg, the lead female character – “Practical Arrangement” of the elder suitor and “What Say You, Meg?” of the younger suitor.
He returned to his solo catalog with a haunting version of “What Could Have Been” before playing the night’s most politically-charged number. “This was written about the Cold War, but seems to have relevance right now,” he said before launching into a triumphant version of “Russians.” To close the second set, he went with two Police classics. “King of Pain” reached a screaming crescendo before he picked up his guitar once again for “Every Breath You Take.” Begun with lilting, strings-only backing before the full orchestra kicked in and the pace picked up, the song brought the audience to their feet clapping and singing along before roaring with approval.
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| Sting w/ the SF Symphony @ Davies Hall (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
For the two-song encore, Sting returned to his solo material with a loud, fast paced “Desert Rose” supported by the orchestra’s backing to accentuate all its Middle Eastern influence. He finished with the night's most poignant moment as he picked up a vibrantly-colored acoustic guitar and told a deep tale of how it had been constructed in an Italian prison by convicts converting abandoned refugee boats into instruments. Even though it “feels a bit like a fruit box” and took seven hours of tweaking and tuning to originally get it “to sing” the guitar in Sting’s hands created a magical sound with a unique depth and desperation to its tone – particularly on his solo within. After that, there seemed to be a bit of a pause as the audience certainly expressed hope for another song. But the evening was done for Sting as he exited to enjoy the rest of the holiday after a triumphant first of two-nights.
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