Sting's "The Dream of the Blue Turtles" Quiz

Answer: guitar

Sting did play double bass on "Moon over Bourbon Street" but guitar on all the other tracks, with some additional guitar playing by Robert Ashworth.

Released in June of 1985, "The Dream of the Blue Turtles" was Sting's first album after the unofficial break-up of the band The Police. It climbed to number one on the Australian Kent Music Report, to number two on the U.S. Billboard 200, and to number three on the UK Albums Chart. It also reached Triple Platinum status for sales in the United States. Furthermore, it was nominated for Album of the Year at the 1986 Grammy Awards and was given four stars by "The Rolling Stone" album review.

The album's sleeve contains these words by Sting: "Since I started this thing, people have consistently referred to it as my solo album, which of course is ridiculous. It's as if I had done everything myself. Well, I didn't. The contribution and commitment of all those involved made it far less an indulgent and personal statement than a statement about how well people can work together without diluting or compromising ideas or ideals. We also had a lot of fun."

Answer: If You Love Somebody Set Them Free

"If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" was released July 9, 1985, and it spent three weeks at number one on the US Album Rock Tracks. It climbed to number three on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, but did not fare as well in the UK, where it climbed to only number twenty-six on the UK Singles Chart.

In the 2007 book "Lyrics", Sting wrote the following: "This song was as much a hymn to my newfound freedom [he had recently split from The Police as well as from his wife] as it was an antidote to the brooding issues of control and surveillance that haunted 'Every Breath You Take' [arguably Sting's most celebrated song performed by The Police]. Perhaps the highest compliment you can pay to a partner is 'I don't own you--you're free.' If you were to try to possess them in the obvious way, you could never appreciate them in the way that really counts. There are too many prisons in the world already."

The Dead Milkmen lampooned the song in 1990 with "If You Love Somebody, Set Them on Fire".

Answer: Darryl Jones

Darryl Jones was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1961 and met Miles Davis through Davis's nephew Vince Wilburn, Jr. He had become a regular of Davis's, someone Davis thought highly of, and performed on Davis's 1980 albums "Decoy" and "You're Under Arrest".

However, he was lured away by Sting, much to Davis's frustration. He has played with Herbie Hancock's Headhunters and John Scofield as well as with Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Peter Gabriel, and Madonna. Since 1993, he has played bass guitar with The Rolling Stones during their touring and recording sessions.

Answer: Every Breath You Take

If Sting wanted to send a message to the world that he was not going to be defined by his work with The Police, he could not have found a better song to mock than "Every Breath You Take" from the "Synchronicity" album. The song was the greatest success, both popularly and critically, for The Police; it spent an amazing eight weeks at number one on The Billboard Hot 100 in 1983 and went on to be nominated for three Grammy awards and to win two of them--Best Song and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.

In comparison, "Love Is the Seventh Wave" reached only number 17 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. However, not only does Sting create a joke at the expense of arguably his greatest hit, he celebrates love as something stronger than the darkness that fills this world in "Love Is the Seventh Wave" while "Every Breath You Take" presents a dark and cynical view of love. Sting was definitely delivering a message that he was doing something new, that he was doing something unlike what people had grown to expect of him.

Answer: Omar Hakim

Omar Hakim was born in New York City in 1959, Music was a significant part of his family, for his father--Hasan Hakim--played the trombone in bands for both Count Bassie and Duke Ellington. Omar Hakim graduated from the New York School of Music and Art, and his career really began with jazz musician Mike Mainieri and pop/folk musician Carly Simon.

However, he would become very well known during the early 1980s after joining the line-up for the world famous Weather Report when he was only twenty-three years old.

After several members left the band in the early 80s, the two remaining veterans, Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter, recruited Hakim and then entrusted him with the responsibility of recruiting other new members to fill out the rhythm section of the band. Of course, Hakim eventually caught Sting's attention, and he not only participated in the recording of "The Dream of the Blue Turtles" but toured with Sting following that. Later, Hakim recorded all of the drum accompaniment on Dire Straits' famous "Brothers in Arms" album, which includes the "Money for Nothing" single with Sting's vocals.

Answer: Shadows in the Rain

"Shadows in the Rain" was originally released on The Police's 1980 album "Zenyatta Mondatta". As has been mentioned earlier, Sting wanted to send a message that he had separated himself from The Police and The Police sound. He could have picked one of The Police's hit singles to re-record; however, any such song probably would have been rejected after critics compared it to the merits of its earlier recording. Thus, Sting wisely chose a song that many listeners might not have loved quite as much.

However, he took a song that originally possessed a slow, driven, brooding rock sound with The Police signature written all over it and added keyboards and saxophone to create a jazzier sound with an upbeat tempo. The more lighthearted tone begins before the song even kicks off as listeners to the album hear one of the band members frustratingly asking on more than one occasion what key everyone is playing in and then resigning just to start playing whether he's in the right key or not.

Answer: Branford Marsalis

In addition to playing the saxophone, Branford Marsalis is also credited on the album sleeve with playing various percussion instruments as well. Marsalis was born in 1960 in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana; his parents--Ellis and Dolores--were both educators and jazz musicians--his father, a pianist, and his mother, a vocalist.

His brothers--Wynton, Jason, Ellis III, and Delfeayo--are also jazz musicians; perhaps, Wynton, a trumpeter, is the most well-known out of the group as he has won several Grammy Awards as well as a Pulitzer Prize for Music.

In the 1980s Branford and Wynton were part of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, but following Branford's release of his own album "Scenes in the City", he joined Sting to record "The Dream of the Blue Turtles" and to tour with Sting following the release of that album. From 1992 to 1995, Branford Marsalis was the leader of the "Tonight Show" band during the initial years of Jay Leno's tenure as host of the "Tonight Show". Throughout his career, he has played with Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Harry Connick Jr., and The Grateful Dead, and he has acted in such films as "Throw Mama from the Train" and "School Daze".

He has also created the Branford Marsalis Quartet, which has focused on classical and world music, released recordings, and won a Grammy award.

Answer: We Work the Black Seam

In his 2007 book "Lyrics", Sting writes the following about "We Work the Black Seam": "The 1984 Miners' Strike in Britain disintegrated into a personality conflict between the Prime Minister, Mrs. Thatcher, and the miners' union leader, Arthur Scargill.

As I was raised in a mining community, I felt not a little sympathy for the miners, whose way of life was being threatened, and also had some serious concerns about the safety of the nuclear power stations the government was putting such faith in. Of course, neither source of power is ideal, but that would be another song." What Sting is talking about can be seen in such lyrics as "It's hard for us to understand / We can't give up our jobs the way we should" or "We matter more than pounds and pence / Your economic theory makes no sense" or "They build machines that they can't control / And bury the waste in a great big hole / Power was to become cheap and clean / Grimy faces were never seen / Deadly for twelve thousand years is carbon fourteen / We work the black seam together". According to a Wikipedia article, the National Union of Mineworkers was reacting to the Thatcher administration's announcement to shut down twenty mines as well as a long-term plan to shut down eventually seventy. On the other side, the Thatcher government was extremely suspicious of the NUM, believing it to have unfairly manipulated markets for years.

Much violence erupted through noteworthy events, such as the Battle of Orgreave between several thousands of miners and police officers and the death of a taxi driver who was attempting to drive a non-striking miner to work. Eventually, the NUM caved, the miners went back to work, and the power of all union influence was crippled.

Answer: Kenny Kirkland

Kenneth David Kirkland was born in September in 1955 and died in November of 1998 of congestive heart failure. Some accounts declare that Kirkland learned of his progressive heart failure early enough to have corrective surgery but that he chose to live out the remainder of his life without the surgery because he was told by medical professionals that there was a good chance he would not survive the surgical procedure. Early in his career he worked with Urbaniak and then Vitous, but he met and became friends with Wynton Marsalis and began to work with him for several years. While a part of Marsalis's band, Kirkland met Branford Marsalis and soon became close friends with him. When Branford left his brother's band to join Sting's band, Kirkland followed, and the departure of both talented musicians disappointed Wynton Marsalis, especially when he considered Sting's music a corruption of jazz. Because of his close friendship with Branford, Kirkland followed him to the "Tonight Show", where Branford was the band leader. Eventually, they both left for the same reason: to leave behind what they believed was not music played with any real spirit or creativity.

Kirkland also became a close friend of Sting's; he played keyboards on many other Sting albums and toured with him. For Sting's live 2001 "All This Time" album, Sting wrote lyrics for a Kirkland composition called "Dienda", and then he and his band performed it to celebrate the memory of Kirkland. In Sting's 2007 book "Lyrics", he wrote the following words to introduce the lyrics he composed for what he calls "Song for Kenny's Dienda": "My dear friend and colleague Kenny Kirkland . . . was an extraordinarily gifted musician, revered by his peers and loved by his friends for his sweet smile and his baffling modesty. . . . Kenny's picture is on the wall behind my piano. I think about him every day."

Answer: Russians

Sting credits Prokofiev in the album's sleeve and includes the Russian composer in a long list of contributors as he makes the argument that "The Dream of the Blue Turtles" is not truly a solo effort. The anti-war song was released as a single in November of 1985 and interestingly rejects the destructive attitudes and rhetoric of both Russia and the West in lyrics such as "Mister Khrushchev said, 'We will bury you' / I don't subscribe to this point of view" and "Mister Reagan says, 'We will protect you' / I don't subscribe to this point of view".

The song also expresses a great desire for peace so that we all might live and escape nuclear annihilation: "We share the same biology / Regardless of ideology / What might save us, me and you / Is if the Russians love their children too".

In his 2007 book "Lyrics", Sting writes the following words about the origin of this song: "In this political climate [that of the Cold War] a friend of mine, who was doing research at Columbia University in New York, had a computer system sophisticated enough to intercept the Soviets' TV signal from their satellite above the North Pole. On a Saturday night in New York City we could watch Sunday morning programs for the kids in Russia.

The shows seemed thoughtful and sweet, and I suddenly felt the need to state something obvious in the face of all this {war time] rhetoric: Russians love their children just as we do." The song begins with a report in Russian spoken by the Soviet newscaster Igor Kirillov about a promising meeting between Gorbachev and Thatcher. "Russians" climbed to position 16 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart and position 12 on the UK Singles Chart; it was also included on the album "Grammy's Greatest Moments, Vol. I", which was released in 1994.

Answer: Children's Crusade

Sting wrote the following words about this song in his book "Lyrics": "This is one of my more ambitious songs. I tried to combine an abiding interest in the First World War, heroin addiction in contemporary London, and the abuse of twelfth-century street children, who were sold into slavery in a cynical pseudoreligious scam that was appalling even by the low moral standards of the Crusaders and the ethics of the time.

There seemed to be a connection." Consider the following lyrics: "Young men, soldiers, nineteen fourteen / Marching through countries they'd never seen / Virgins with rifles, a game of charades / All for a children's crusade" and "Midnight in Soho, nineteen eighty-four / Fixing in doorways, opium slaves / Poppies for young men, such bitter trade / All of those young lives betrayed." Of course, poppies, particularly red ones, are associated with the memorial celebration of those who have lost their lives during wartime while at the same time the poppy is the source of opium, from which heroin is derived.

Answer: Moon over Bourbon Street

In his 2007 book "Lyrics", Sting claims that while "the direct inspiration for this song" was "Interview with the Vampire" by Anne Rice, "there was one moonlit night in the French Quarter of New Orleans where [he] had the distinct impression that [he] was being followed." I have seen Sting perform live in New Orleans on a few occasions; every time, he performed this song, and every time, the crowd went wild with adoration.

Answer: The Dream of the Blue Turtles

Lasting a little longer than a minute, "The Dream of the Blue Turtles" is a romping, joyful, jazzy piece that ends with mischievous laughter about something unknown to us, the listeners. While Sting laughs, Branford Marsalis, who plays the saxophone on the track, manages to speak through his own laughter to ask, "What's 'his' problem?"

The title of this song, as well as that of the entire album, comes from a dream that awakened Sting on his "first night in Barbados", the location of Eddie Grant's studio where Sting had gone to record his first album after leaving The Police, according to his 2007 book "Lyrics". He explains, "I dreamed I was sitting in the walled garden behind my house in Hampstead, under a lilac tree on a well-manicured lawn, surrounded by beautiful rosebushes. Suddenly the bricks from the wall exploded into the garden and I turned to see the head of an enormous turtle emerging from the darkness, followed by four or five others. They were not only the size of a man, they were also blue and had an air of being immensely cool, like hepcats, insouciant and fearless. They didn't harm me but with an almost casual violence commenced to destroy my genteel English garden, digging up the lawn with their claws, chomping at the rosebushes, bulldozing the lilac tree. Total mayhem. I woke up to the sound of Branford in the room upstairs, riffing wildly on his tenor sax, followed by unmistakable laughter." In a "Rolling Stone" magazine article from 1985, Sting explained that he interpreted that dream as a sign that all would be well following his departure from his world-famous band, with the garden representing the success of his years with The Police and the blue turtles representing the new band members he was playing with and their jazz backgrounds.

Answer: Consider Me Gone

"Sonnet 35" by William Shakespeare begins with the line "No more be griev'd at that which thou hast done", and the original lines from which Sting borrowed are "Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud, / Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun, / And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud."

About the song, Sting wrote this in his 2007 book "Lyrics": "It's nice to be able to use our national bard as a resource, and 'Sonnet XXXV' was always one of my favorites. I've always fancied this title ["Consider Me Gone"] as my epitaph."

Answer: Fortress Around Your Heart

The pain that resulted from the failure of Sting's first marriage led to many dark songs about love on the final Police studio album "Synchronicity": "Every Breath You Take" and "King of Pain", for example. This darkness seemed to continue to "The Dream of the Blue Turtles" with "Fortress Around Your Heart", but any close listening to the lyrics of this song will make evident that the song is truly about an attempt at some kind of reconciliation. "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" is also a positive look at having the courage to let go. About "Fortress Around Your Heart", Sting wrote the following in his 2007 book "Lyrics": "There are songs of love, songs of heartache, songs of revenge. And then there are songs of reconciliation." According to a Wikipedia article, Sting also said the following in a "Musician" magazine interview: "'Fortress' is about appeasement, about trying to bridge the gaps between individuals. The central image is a minefield that you've laid around this other person to try and protect them. Then you realise that you have to walk back through it. I think it's one of the best choruses I've ever written."

In 1985, "Fortress Around Your Heart" rose to number eight on the U.S. Hot 100 chart and to number 49 on the UK Singles Chart. It also achieved the number one position for two weeks on the "Billboard" Top Rock Tracks.