Sting's Rock & Roll Salvation

He's got a charmed life and a loud, hard-hitting new album. So why can't he stop thinking about dying?

- Stephen Rodrick

Sting sits on a stool in a rehearsal space on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. He cradles his bass and waits for drummer Vinnie Colaiuta to count in “50,000,” a rocking lament to Bowie, Prince, Lemmy and others lost recently. It’s from 57 th & 9th, his first rock album in 13 years. His Springsteen-esque biceps pop out of a gray T-shirt. (Those muscles made middle-aged women gasp and fan themselves at a downtown acoustic show the night before.) Muffled, ungodly sounds leak through the walls. It’s Kiss mucking about next door. “Do you know Gene Simmons?” asked Sting later. “An interesting guy.”

Colaiuta starts the count, and an Australian camera crew filming the proceedings moves in for a close-up. Sting halts his band for a moment. He sends his fingers on a not-so-secret journey.

“OK, no boogers.”

A publicist titters, but Sting gives a naughty grin and shrugs: “It’s always good to check.”

In the three days I spent with him, Sting played against the cliché of him as a dour rock god with an overly earnest sense of self-importance. Sometimes he failed: He humble-bragged that he received an award from BMI for “Every Breath You Take” being played 13 million times in the United States. “That’s quite a lot,” he said with arched eyebrows. This was shortly after he marveled about Bob Dylan’s I’m-not-there attitude toward winning the Nobel Prize.