A friend of mine told me that on the Night of 9/11/01, Sting and his band were scheduled to perform in Italy at a palazzo for some wealthy person. Because of the time difference, they found out about the attacks shortly before. They debated about whether they should, and this being Sting, a high handed ethical discussion had to happen before they made the decision that, of course, the show must go on. But then the song they chose was no mere diversion. It was about what had happened written way before it happened. It was about something that had always been happening and would continue to happen. The meek were not inheriting the earth. The meek was all of us, and the song was “Fragile.”
If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one
Drying in the color of the evening sun
Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetime's argument
That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are
This was so on the nose, you had to wonder what maniac conceived any of this. Steel and flesh were one. The rain would wash it away, but not completely. You could love this song without loving everything about this smug pique of self-righteousness, virtuosity, and selling out known as Sting. His real name is Gordon, and it took a lot of confidence to turn that into a verb. But this song, this moment, stung in many ways. Stevie Wonder covered it. So did Kenny Barron and Regina Carter. I was told that the musicians were crying, including Sting. But I wonder if he thought about how he looked while he was doing it.
“Fragile” is so apropos, one wonders why it took so long to be written. We are vulnerable. They are the ones who are not just hitting us with planes. They are hitting us in all kinds of ways. They are forcing us to take it and take it again. You could be tough or you could ignore it. But if you are a sensitive soul who creates things, it is sometimes impossible to look away. My dissertation adviser told me he never heard the voice of George W. Bush, and this was four years into his presidency, which was really something. But looking away is harder to do these days, especially if we are following the world on our phones and can’t escape; after all, the insurrection was just a dress rehearsal.
No tanks have ever rumbled through these streets
And the drone of planes at night has never frightened me
I keep the hours and the company that I please
And we call for the three great stimulants
Of the exhausted ones
Artifice, brutality and innocence
Joni Mitchell sang these lines in 1985. She was invoking Nietzsche for artifice, brutality and innocence, but apocalypse beckons everywhere we turn. It’s all about to blow. Tanks in the street? Check in early 2025. We are sending out an SOS. We can’t forget how fragile we are.
I saw Sting play with Branford Marsalis’s band when I was 15. I loved Branford, I loved Kenny Kirkland, Darryl Jones, “Smitty” Smith. I thought he was doing something similar to what Joni was doing with Jaco Pastorius and Wayne Shorter the previous decade. I liked the sophisticated lyrics, the pop hooks, the jazz virtuosity. Joni liked to say that Sting was the baby she and James Taylor never had. She even wanted The Police to play on her 1982 album Wild Things Run Fast. But as they years went on, Sting went out of my rotation. I loved much of The Police—the ska, the musicianship. I loved the weird novelty songs by Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland, though this had nothing to do with their success. I still enjoy The Police when I hear them, but I came to find that those songs were just a step above advertising jingles. But now I’m listening to them and think I was being too critical. Maybe it was the little pop songs that were perfect in their way. It was the solo career that was more frustrating.
The friend that told me the 9/11 story told me another one. He was writing a magazine profile of Branford Marsalis. It was big news in the jazz world that his brother Wynton, who was becoming hailed as the great trumpet virtuoso of his generation, who was winning Grammy Awards in Classical and Jazz, had become the standard bearer of integrity, and he kicked Branford out of his band just because he played with Sting. Ouch. What was Branford playing with Sting? Was it worth it? I first heard Branford’s name on live television when Sting introduced him at Live Aid. I was 12, and he was the first saxophone player I knew by name, and he was a great place to start, since Sonny and Coltrane and Wayne and Bird were in there. But I take you to a song at the end of Sting’s first solo album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles: “Fortress Around Your Heart.” Sting, certainly influenced by the musicians who played with Joni, with Steely Dan, had a budget to get a dream team for his Dream. Apparently, these musicians—Kenny Kirkland, Branford, Omar Hakim, Darryl Jones—did a musical version of building a fortress. They built. Slowly, very slowly. Like foreplay. Like a living creature coming alive. After they recorded it, they looked at each other and cried. Sting cried, too, and he probably wasn’t even worried about crying ugly. It was a human moment. They all shared it.
Under the ruins of a walled city
Crumbling towers and beams of yellow lights
No flags of truce, no cries of pity
The siege guns have been pounding through the nights
It took a day to build the city
We walked through its streets in the afternoon
As I returned across the field's I'd known
I recognized the walls that I'd once laid
Had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines I'd laid
All the way to this catharsis.
And if I built this fortress around your heart
Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge
For I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire