Gordon Matthew Sumner, CBE (born October 2, 1951), universally known by his stage name Sting, is a British musician from Newcastle upon Tyne. Prior to a distinguished solo career, he was the lead singer, principal composer and bassist of the 1970s/1980s rock band The Police. Sumner was born in Wallsend, which is a suburb of Newcastle upon Tyne, in North-East England to Audrey (a Protestant) and Ernest Sumner (a Catholic via his own mother, Agnes White, whose father was an Irish stevedore). Ernest was a milkman, and raised his children as Roman Catholics. From an early age, Sumner knew that he wanted to be a musician. He attended the University of Warwick, but did not graduate. From 1971 to 1974, he attended Northern Counties Teacher Training College. He is the oldest of four children and has a brother, Philip, and two sisters, Angela and Anita. Philip owns a pub in Newcastle, Angela works for British Airways, and Anita is an artist. Both Audrey and Ernest Sumner died of cancer, but Sting did not (or could not) attend either funeral. Before playing music professionally, Sumner worked as a ditch digger and a music teacher at a Catholic primary school. His first music gigs were wherever he could get a job. He played with local jazz bands such as the Phoenix Jazzmen and Last Exit. He has stated that he gained his nickname while with the Jazzmen. He once performed wearing a black and yellow jersey with hooped stripes that fellow band member Gordon Solomon had noted made him look like a bumblebee, thus he became "Sting." He uses Sting almost exclusively, except on official documents. In 1977, Sting, Stewart Copeland, and Andy Summers formed the rock/pop band The Police in London. The group had several chart topping albums and won six Grammy Awards in the early 1980s. Their last album, Synchronicity which included one of their most successful songs, Every Breath You Take,was released in 1983. The Police performed together at some of the shows on the 1986 Amnesty International "Conspiracy Of Hope" tour alongside U2 and other artists. Their performances were just for the benefit shows and were not part of an intended permanent reunion. To help promote a greatest hits album that year they also made a re-recording of one of their hits "Don't Stand So Close to Me '86" as a special bonus track to be included on the album. In September 1981 Sting made his first-ever solo live performance performing on all four nights of the fourth Amnesty International benefit "The Secret Policeman's Other Ball" at the invitation of producer Martin Lewis. He perfomed solo versions of "Roxanne" and "Message in a Bottle" He also led an all-star band (dubbed "The Secret Police") on his own arrangement of Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released". The band included Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Phil Collins and Bob Geldof all of whom (except Beck) later worked together on "Live Aid". His performances were prominently featured in the album and movie of the show and drew major critical attention for Sting. Sting's participation in "The Secret Policeman's Other Ball" was the beginning of his growing involvement in raising money and consciousness for political and social causes. 1985's The Dream of the Blue Turtles, featuring a star-studded cast of jazz musicians, was Sting's first solo album. It included the hit single "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free". Within a year, it reached Triple Platinum. He also sang the introduction and chorus to "Money for Nothing", a groundbreaking song by Dire Straits. Sting released Nothing Like the Sun (1987), including the hit songs "We'll Be Together" and "Be Still My Beating Heart", dedicated to his recently deceased mother. It eventually went Double Platinum and was recognized as one of the most important rock & roll albums of the 1980s. Soon thereafter, in February of 1988, he released Nada Como el Sol  a selection of five songs from Nothing Like the Sun sung (by Sting himself) in Spanish and Portuguese. Throughout the 1980s, Sting strongly supported environmentalism and humanitarian movements, such as Amnesty International. With long-time girlfriend Trudie Styler and Raoni Metuktire, a Kayapó Indian leader in Brazil, he founded the Rainforest Foundation to help save the rainforests. His support for these causes continues to this day. His most high profile contribution to the human rights cause came in 1988, when he joined a team of major musicians and rising stars assembled under the banner of Amnesty International for a 6-week world tour celebrating the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights. The tour was conceived by the Executive Director of Amnesty International's U.S. Section Jack Healey, and producer Martin Lewis who had first recruited Sting to work with Amnesty in 1981 for The Secret Policeman's Other Ball. Healey had produced Amnesty's 1986 Caravan Of Hope U.S. tour also featuring Sting. The new tour - titled the Human Rights Now! Tour featured Sting, Peter Gabriel and Bruce Springsteen - and rising performers Tracy Chapman and Youssou N'Dour. Other stars such as Bono and Jackson Browne played at some of the individual concerts but were not present on the whole tour. Like most such ventures - there were problems that had to be surmounted. The tour's main sponsor withdrew just weeks before the start of the tour. This motivated Sting and others to solicit a sponsor themselves. New sponsorship was eventually secured from Reebok. There were also dilemmas about some of the countries and venues. Certain concerts were planned for remote locations. In some cases host governments were not happy to have the touring superstars preaching freedom and democracy in their backyard. Concert-goers in the developed nations purchased tickets for the shows. Most concerts in the Third World were free of charge. Sting's 1991 album The Soul Cages was dedicated to his recently deceased father and included the top 10 song "All this Time" and the Grammy winning "Soul Cages". The album eventually went Platinum. The following year, he married Trudie Styler and was awarded an honorary doctorate degree in music from Northumbria University. In 1993, he released the album Ten Summoner's Tales, which went Triple Platinum in just over a year. The hit single "Fields of Gold" has since become a "standard", and very well known via versions by Eva Cassidy and Verity Keays. In May 1993, he released a remix of the classic Police song from the Ghost In The Machine album, "Demolition Man" for the Demolition Man film, starring Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock and Benjamin Bratt. Sting reached a pinnacle of success in 1994. Together with Bryan Adams and Rod Stewart, they performed the chart-topping song "All For Love" from the film The Three Musketeers. The song stayed at the top of the U.S. charts for five weeks and went Platinum; it is to date Sting's only song from his post-Police career to top the U.S. charts. In February, he won two more Grammy Awards and was nominated for three more. The Berklee College of Music gave him his second honorary doctorate of music degree in May. Finally in November, he released a greatest hits compilation called Fields of Gold: The Best of Sting, which was eventually certified Double Platinum. Sting's 1996 album, Mercury Falling debuted strongly, but dropped quickly on the charts. Yet, he reached the Top 40 with two singles the same year with "You Still Touch Me" (June) and "I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying" (December). (Sting was also featured on Toby Keith's country cover-version of "I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying", on Keith's 1997 Dream Walkin' album.) In 1998, he appeared in the Guy Ritchie film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Sting made a (partial) comeback with the September 1999 album Brand New Day, including the Top 40 hits "Brand New Day" and "Desert Rose" (Top 10). The album went Triple Platinum by January 2001. In 2000, he won Grammy Awards for Brand New Day and the song of the same name. At the awards ceremony, he performed "Desert Rose" with Cheb Mami. For his performance, the Arab-American Institute Foundation gave him the Kahlil Gibran Spirit of Humanity Award. In February 2001, he added another Grammy to his collection. His song "After The Rain Has Fallen" made it into the Top 40. On September 11, he recorded a new live album in Italy, but the Internet simulcast was canceled after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack. Later, Sting performed "Fragile" for the fundraiser America: A Tribute to Heroes. His live album, All This Time, recorded on a moonlit night in Tuscany, was released in November but did not generate healthy sales. All This Time featured jazzy reworkings of Sting favorites such as "Roxanne" and "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free". 2002 was a year of awards for Sting. He won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for his second Academy Award for his song "Until..." from the film Kate & Leopold. In June, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Late in the year, it was announced that The Police would be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March 2003. In the summer, Sumner was awarded the "OBE" - the Order of the British Empire. Sting kicked off 2003 with a performance during the Super Bowl's half time show. During that performance Sting performed a duet with Gwen Stefani of "Message in a Bottle". 2003 also saw the release of Sacred Love, an original studio album with racier beats and experiments collaborating with hip-hop artist Mary J. Blige and sitar maestro Anoushka Shankar. His autobiography Broken Music was published in October. Sting embarked on a Sacred Love tour in 2004 with performances by Annie Lennox. Also in 2004, his song "You Will Be My Ain True Love" for the Cold Mountain soundtrack was an Oscar nominee, and was performed at the awards by Alison Krauss, with Sting accompanying on a hurdy-gurdy. Sting married actress Frances Tomelty, a Catholic from Northern Ireland, on May 1, 1976. The couple had two children, Joseph (born 1976), and Fuchsia Katherine (born 1982), before they divorced in 1984. In 1982 - shortly after the birth of his second child - Sting separated from Tomelty and began living with actress (and later film producer) Trudie Styler, but the two did not marry until 1992. Sting and Trudie have four children: Bridget Michaela (aka "Mickey", born 1984), Jake (born 1985), Eliot Paulina ("Coco," born 1990), and Giacomo Luke (born 1995). Sting's lookalike son Joseph is following in his father's musical footsteps and is a member of a band. Although Sting also owns properties in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, and Malibu, California, he currently calls Tuscany his home. It is unclear whether he was serious or not when he referred to himself as manic-depressive. He has written a song entitled "Lithium Sunset" which appears to refer to lithium carbonate, a treatment for the disorder. According to some reports, he did this because he wanted to help people who really have this disease. In an interview given by Sting, he also referred to what he believed was the natural occurrence of lithium in the brain when one views a sunset, but this may have been a confusion with endorphins. Although Sting was long reputed to be a devotee of tantric sex, he has more recently claimed that it was an interview prank, or a dinner-party joke that took on a life of its own. In early 2005, Sting proclaimed that he admires Hinduism, wants to spend a lot more time in India and that he loves Indian culture. His words in an interview were: In a sense I am more of a Hindu... I like the Hindu religion more than anything else at the moment I have become addicted to India ... I would want to spend the rest of my life discovering your beautiful country.
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