STING: What a nice welcome, hey?

IVO: Sting, I'm afraid the only thing we have in common is that you also went to a Catholic school and were born and were raised by the Jesuits. What did YOU learn from them?

STING: (Laughs) What did I learn from the Catholic Church? Actually I'm very grateful to have been brought up a Catholic, because for a songwriter to have this idea of guilt and sin and eternal punishment is very good.

IVO: So it worked?

STING: It's very creative. It puts you in a sort of creative soup of all of this stuff. I'm not sure if I want my children brought up that way.

IVO: Why not?

STING: Because I think the world is different now. I want to teach them my own values, but I don't regret it at all. I loved the music, I loved the Latin mass and I've got a lot to be grateful for.

IVO: All that happened in Newcastle. It seems that one of your greatest ambitions once was to escape from Newcastle. It looked like you wanted to escape like it was from Alcatraz. Was it that bad in Newcastle?

STING: No, it was not too bad; when I look back on my life, I realize that actually, it was a very fascinating place. I lived next to a shipyard, next to a river; the coal mine at one side of the town and this big shipyard at another; and the railway line going past my house. That was a very stimulating environment. It was actually a beautiful place, in a sort of strange way.

IVO: They have a very special language there, a beautiful language.

STING: Yes, they do.

IVO: It's called Geordie. So do you also know what this means: "How ya hee how ver there how ya hammer over here?"

STING: Aye, yes.

IVO: What does it mean?

STING: How are you over there, would you throw the hammer over here.

IVO: Yes, that's what everybody says in Newcastle everyday, or not?

STING: It's very like Dutch, actually. It's the same.

IVO: It sounds like Dutch, How we're lass.. But the houses in the neighborhood where you lived were later declared, let's say, uninhabitable. That bleak environment, where you lived, did that make you want to become first?

STING: To become first; you mean - to win? .....

IVO: In something..

STING: I think as a child I found everything difficult. I found speaking difficult; I found playing football difficult; I found learning difficult. And yet, I was determined to do something well, and so I ended up with the guitar and concentrated all my efforts on being able to play the guitar. So, no, my life was not easy as a child, but I'm very grateful for it, because it made me who I am. And I'm glad I'm who I am.

IVO: Yes, but because in sports, I understand, that most of the time you became second, and you wanted to be first in singing or not?

STING: (shouts) No, no, I became second ONCE in my career.

IVO: But now you become first in singing or do you prefer Pavarotti?

STING: I like Pavarotti, but I don't think that you can measure singing in a league table, you know, I mean I'm certainly not Pavarotti, but he's not me. And we can respect each other and I can respect other artists, but it's not comparative like the football league, you know; like Ajax versus Newcastle.

IVO: Who would win that game?

STING: Newcastle. (Laughs) ....

IVO: But it's a fact that at the age of 24 you had gone back to the same school where you were before, as a teacher.

STING: Oh, that's not true, no; I went to ANOTHER school; I wouldn't go back to my old school.

IVO: But you were a teacher in Newcastle.

STING: I was.

IVO: And so, you - at 24 you resigned; so you went with a 'deux chevaux' a 2CV. to -London. What made you so sure that you wanted to become a musician?

STING: When I look back now I have no idea of where I got my confidence from, that I got the idea that I would make it, because the chances that you will make it are millions and millions to one. And yet I had this dream, and this quest, and I gave up my job. I took my wife and my baby child and my dog and an armchair (that's all we owned) to London to follow my dream. Now my son is having the same dream and I am telling him: "Don't go." (laughs).

IVO: What other sort of advice you give him?

STING: Oh, the usual advice that parents give teenagers, you know, about drugs and sex, be careful and ah.

IVO: And your daughters, will you allow them to come home with a pop musician?

STING: Certainly not musicians, no, never.

IVO: Why not?

STING: Because I know what they're like.

IVO: The average pop star, nowadays, lives with high walls around his house, as far away from the fans as possible. You live in a pretty normal house, in a pretty busy street with no bodyguards; you just wear sunglasses when you're out in the street. Does it mean that you think you want to say that we glorify pop stars far too much nowadays?

STING: I don't think it's a reward for success if I'm having to live my life behind height walls or have to hide, but I don't think fame is necessarily a bad thing. I don't run away from it; I quite like it most of the time.

IVO: But you get strange situations, because of... I heard you once changed the wheel of your car, and suddenly there was a crowd standing there watching you, thinking it was a sort of a stunt to promote your latest album, or not?

STING: No, they were curious to see whether I could do it.... They were also watching, you know, "..mmm, mm"..., and I get the jack, and so I did it. I hadn't changed a tire in 10 years, but I remembered....

IVO: How do you feel about, nowadays, about having to do world tours of seven months?

STING: Sometimes more than seven months, sometimes they're for 14 or15 months now. Ah.. It's part of my life, It's a part of my life that I actually love. I like touring with my band and my road crew. I miss my family, that's the only drawback, but..... No matter how homesick you feel, or how ill, or how tired and bored you might feel, before you go on stage... as soon as you walk on stage, you get this kind of reaction ... There'll be 20,000 who are going, who are very glad to see you, and that fills you up with an amazing feeling, so it makes it worthwhile.

IVO: So you're not going to sit by the fireplace with your two Springer Spaniels and just make music at home?

STING: There's plenty of time for the rest of them.

IVO: We're not going to talk about all the charities you've done, because you work for a number of charities. But you set up the Rainforest Foundation to protect the Amazonian Rainforest and to protect the Indians that live there.

STING: (nods).

IVO: You get to know them very well and it seems that you were very impressed by their lifestyle. In what Respect?

STING: I think the tendency for us in the West to call such lifestyles primitive, it isn't...couldn't be further from the truth if anything. We're more primitive than they are, in that they know exactly where every artifact in their lives comes from; every tree, where the furniture comes from; every blade of grass; they're responsible for their environment. We, on the other hand, have no idea where this plastic came from, or even how it is made; we have no idea; no. We don't know where the wood came from or the leather for this chair. So we're not as responsible. We tend to be irresponsible and therefore rather primitive.

IVO:Talking about lessons: what sort of values do you like to give to your own children? What sort of values, what do you consider important?

STING: Oh...I think, what I can give my children... is a view of a man, of a father who enjoys his life, who enjoys his work. I think...that ah...most people don't enjoy their work, so I think I'm very lucky in that.

IVO: Your father didn't enjoy his work?

STING: No, my father didn't really enjoy getting up in the morning at four o'clock every day, no.

IVO: Is that a negative example?

STING: No, I think a lot of people go to work and their children don't know what they do, you know, so "I go to the office" or "I go to the factory", but it's very mysterious what they do. At least MY children know what I do : I GET UP ON STAGE AND I SHOUT, that's what they say.

IVO: From one of your albums, we learned that you didn't give yourself the time to mourn after the death of your father. In what respect did it affect you so profoundly?

STING: I didn't really know how to behave, ...because ah...in our society, we're conditioned now to try and ignore death as if it's not a real fact. So when it hits you, it's not a movie, it's real life, and we're not quite sure how to mourn anymore: I didn't cry. And because I didn't cry, I therefore had to work out my emotions in a different way, and luckily, I have song writing; I have music. I can transmit my emotions through that. Without that I think that I would have gone crazy. So I made a record really about that, channeling of those emotions, trying to understand them, trying to work them out.

IVO: So there really is a very let's say therapeutical, a very personal value to making music?

STING: Always! It's my therapy, I think without music I'd be completely insane, totally.

IVO: I don't know whether you consider these questions far too personal, but somewhere I read that before your father died, you discovered that.. you noticed that he almost had the same hands as your have.

STING: Well, the only compliment my father ever paid me - God bless him - was, on his deathbed. He ..ah.. grabbed my hand and said: "You know we have the same hands" -- they are virtually identical -- and I said: "Yes they are", but he said: "You've made better use of yours than I've made of mine." And that was quite a thing to say, for my father.

IVO: You heard that he died, on a moment, you were in Rio de Janeiro - and there was a crowd of 200,000 people waiting for you. Isn't it the strangest kind of life one can imagine?

STING: I tried to use that concert as a wake, I don't know if you can understand that in Dutch, but as a way of celebrating my father; what I've done in my life, really is a celebration of my father. And ..ah.. it's my way of saying thank you, for creating me; so it was difficult, but it was meaningful

IVO:How different were you on stage that night than during your normal concerts?

STING: Very different, very different. I didn't have to act. I did not have to think about anything else but what I was going through.

IVO: You're a very restless person. I have the impression that you...that you always like to change everything in your life after seven years. What sort of personal revolution can we still expect?

STING: Personal Revolution...I'm not looking for personal revolutions anymore. I'm looking to improve bit by bit. I'm quite happy with the pattern of my life at the moment. I don't want any big upheavals, any changes in my life. I just want to work with what I've got. I don't really have any more ambitions. That's a strange thing to say for an artist, but I don't. I'm not terribly ambitious; I don't need to succeed. I just need to stay healthy and sane and happy.

IVO: And you still have the urge...the need for making music?

STING: I love music, yes.

IVO: You're going to sing a song for us, because now we have this album with the greatest hits, but there are two new songs on the album. They have to become greatest hits also?

STING: Well that's pretty presumptuous to put two new songs on a greatest hits album, because they might not be hits. One of them is, so far, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed, so...

IVO: That's the one that you going to do for us. It was great having you here, and you, you're going to sing When we Dance. Thanks to you, Sting.

STING: Thank you, Ivo.

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