LISTEN: Sting hopes to bring Peter Gabriel co-headline tour to the UK in 2018
Speaking to Planet Rock’s Wyatt today, Sting says he’d bring his double headlining tour with Peter Gabriel to the UK in a heartbeat.
The unique and highly collaborative North American Rock Paper Scissors this summer saw Peter and Sting explore each other’s music on stage together including tracks by The Police and Genesis.
Invigorated by the experience, Sting says he wouldn’t hesitate to bring it to the UK once he’d wrapped up touring his twelfth solo album ‘57th & 9th.’
“Peter and I had so much fun, it was half the work and twice the fun,” Mr Sumner enthused. “It was a very unique tour because we started rehearsing (with) both bands in one room facing each other and I said to Peter ‘play a song’. So Peter and his band played a song, so me and my band responded, and then Peter responded to that.
“It was like a very genial battle of the bands - sometimes we’d go against what we’d just heard, sometimes we’d compliment it or do a similar theme but spontaneously that was the set we toured. We didn’t leave the stage. I played bass on some tracks, Peter played keyboard on some of mine, we’d swap songs - the audience were seeing something quite unique - two people with kind of similar careers, we’d both been in big bands and left big bands and had similar trajectories as solo artists.
“We had a lot in common, the audience were seeing this kinda interplay between two people who clearly like each other and the bands were really enjoying the healthy competition between them.
“So I’d love to bring it to Europe - perhaps not this (coming) year because Peter is doing a new album and I’ve got to do this one, but next year I would do it in a (snaps fingers).”
Reflecting upon his own solo tour, Sting continued: “I start touring again in February and I’m looking forward to it, with a small band - two guitars, bass and drums - we’ll go around the United States first of all in small theatres, we’ll see how the album is received to see where we can progress to.
“We’re playing at Hammersmith Odeon here in London in the spring and I’m looking forward to playing this music because it’s very accessible.”
You can listen to Sting’s full interview with Wyatt below where he also talks in detail about ‘57th & 9th’ and how time constraints and the city of New York sculpted it, plus how he enjoyed returning to rock on current single ‘I Can't Stop Thinking About You’ after a string of “esoteric records.”
‘57th & 9th’ is released globally on Friday 11th November.