WAR AND PEACE

HE MAY BE one of the most prolific singer-songwriters of modern times, the recipient of a ridiculous amount of awards, a campaigner for the environment and a self-proclaimed tantric sex guru, but Sting, like the rest of the world, found himself profoundly shaken up by the events of September 11, 2001.

The former Police frontman says he was so disturbed that he questioned his ability to write new material. 'Something like that made me consider my position as a songwriter,' he says. 'I really had to stop and think about what I was writing about.' At the end of a two-year stint touring the world, Sting and his bandmates had planned an exclusive gig for 200 people at his home at Il Palagio in Tuscany, to be recorded for an album and webcast live around the world - on September 11.

He wanted to 'bring the music he had toured across the world back home where it was born' as a thank-you to his fans. Plans had been laid for months, he and his band had rehearsed new, reconstructed arrangements for some of his biggest hits, and a five-camera film crew was ready to capture the whole event.

As the guests - record company employees, competition winners and fan club members, some of whom had come from as far afield as New York and Japan - made their way to the venue, news of the terrorist attacks reached Tuscany.

The band agonised over whether the show should go ahead. It was decided that while an entire webcast would be inappropriate, Sting should perform his song Fragile for the world, then shut the webcast down out of respect for those who lost their lives and loved ones. Sting then polled the audience on whether or not to proceed with the rest of the concert - what followed was an emotional set of 18 songs. 'It was the last thing I wanted to do,' Sting says, 'but people had come from all over the world to see this show in my backyard, and I felt they needed some kind of therapy, just to be together.'

The intimate show is documented on DVD, and is surely one of the most emotional live performances, with players and audience members shedding tears. Fragile, from the subsequent album, All This Time, was nominated for best male pop vocal performance at this year's Grammy Awards.

While Sting continued to tour and perform at benefit gigs, festivals, and even the opening ceremony of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics last year, he says that creatively, the past two years have been a difficult time for him. 'At first I just wasn't in the mood to write songs. First because of September 11 and then the war, it was a difficult time to be creative. You wonder, what on earth am I doing this for? What bearing does this have on reality?' But he turned his introspective mood into a diverse new album, the just released Sacred Love, which he describes as his emotional response to period of reflection.

'Of course, a lot of the themes of what's happening in the world come into the album unconsciously, but mentally, I found this a tough record to make,' he explains. 'I didn't want to specifically write about that situation at all, but when I look back at the songs I've written since then, there is this mood of import.'

Recorded largely in Paris during the buildup to the war in Iraq, Sacred Love explores the themes of love and individual struggles, familiar to all Sting fans, as well as global struggles, sex, music and religion. 'I felt that in the light of September 11 and its aftermath, religion had a lot to answer for,' Sting says. 'It's been used in a very narrow political sense to close down who we are. I asked myself, 'what are my religions?' Music is one, and the other is love - romantic love, sexual love.'

Despite the air of contemplation, the album is hardly downbeat. Sacred Love features flamenco guitar player Vincente Amigo on the album's first single, Send Your Love, and sitar player Anoushka Shankar on The Book Of My Life. Having already turned his hand to jazz and world music, Sting is now adding R&B flavours to his repertoire; he also duets with Mary J. Blige on Whenever I Say Your Name, his second foray into the genre after his hit Rise And Fall with British R&B singer Craig David earlier this year.

'I've never really wanted to be linked to any kind of school or movement or even national culture. I've always felt that music, being a universal language, is an ideal vehicle to break those barriers down,' he says of the album's global influences. 'I think a lot of music tends to be ghettoised, not only in the way it's marketed, but the way it's programmed on the radio, and the way people tend to only like one kind of music and nothing else. I've always tried to escape those barriers, and largely I've been pretty successful at doing it.

'When people hear a new record from me they're not sure what to assume about it, except it won't belong to any easy label - that's always been my intention. It's no deliberate strategy on my part to make this a global album. I have a sitar player on the record but I just happen to know her, she's in my world; the flamenco player, I met him one day and loved the way he played. The same with Mary J. Blige. I didn't recruit them to add a cosmopolitan feel or to create some kind of world music at all. They just happen to be in my world - it's organic. I wish I could say that it was a strategy, but it's wasn't.'

What about teaming up with someone like Craig David? Surely there was some strategy behind that? 'Craig rang me up and said, 'I've written a song based on one of your songs, would you like to come and sing on it?', and I said 'absolutely'. I have something to learn from these younger kids - they have a different sensibility, a different knowledge and different expertise, and to go along to the studio and watch him work was fascinating. Craig's a great singer, but he also has things to learn from me, so it's a trade-off.'

And as one of the world's greatest songwriters, Sting is accustomed to people remixing, sampling, covering and paying homage to his songs. His work has been featured by The Fugees, The Sugababes and George Michael, among others. 'I'm not precious about the music - I would never say you can't touch my songs; they're not sacred cows. It's wonderful to see somebody else reinterpret your song and use bits of your song to create another piece of art. I'm fascinated by that,' he says.

'Also, I get paid - I got enough money from the Craig David song to put two of my kids through college, so I'm not going to say no to that.'

When he left The Police in 1985, Sting - born Gordon Matthew Sumner in Wallsend Northumberland - was quoted as saying he was 'sick of making meaningless three-minute pop songs' ('Did I really say that? Well, I was younger then'), so what does he make of today's meaningless pop-dominated industry? 'I'm no social commentator or media commentator; I'm not sure what's going on in the business. Now I think there's plenty of room for three-minute pop songs. But there's also room for the whole thing to evolve into something that I feel comfortable doing. I'm 51 years old, I don't listen to pop music, I'm not in the demographic, it's not designed for me.

'Do I feel natural and confident doing what I do in the studio or on stage? Yes, I do, because I've managed to sculpt a career that's very much singular, it's my career - there's no role model for me, I'm making it up as I go along. I don't have to obey any rock'n'roll paradigm - like, that's how you behave, that's how you look, and that's the kind of thing you write about. I'm totally natural in that I write about what concerns me, what excites me, what gives me pleasure.

'My intention in making records is always to demonstrate that some kind of progress is being made as a songwriter, a lyricist singer, composer, arranger. When that's reflected in sales I'm very happy about that, but there's no guarantee this record will do as well as the last one.'

The last one being Brand New Day, initially a slow-burner until the single Desert Rose was used, somewhat controversially in music circles, in a Jaguar commercial. In the advertisement, Sting is being driven in a sleek black car across a desert landscape, while Desert Rose plays, and the ad asks: 'What do rock stars dream of?' It's hardly the image with which an environmental campaigner should want to be associated. Given his sigh and pained expression, it's a subject he's been confronted about before.

'Well ... we had used a Jaguar in the music video for Desert Rose - it's a beautiful car - and so when Jaguar wanted to do a commercial based on the video, well ... I mean, you know ... we all live in paradoxes. I have six children, I have a family ...' He trails off. 'I don't see it as a sell-out.'

Sacred Love is out now.