![]() In fact, Sting drew heavily on 1960s and '70s covers, ranging from Bobby Darin ('If I Were a Carpenter') to Jimi Hendrix ('Purple Haze') to Bill Withers ('Ain't No Sunshine'). And 'All This Time' was interwoven with Wilson Pickett's 'Midnight Hour'. Sure, he did somber little meditations on the death of his father like 'Why Should I Cry for You', but he also led off with 'All This Time', the bouncy single from his latest album, 'Soul Cages'. Sting wants to know why the girl has to die someday.ĭespite all that, Sting came on stage at Alpine vowing to have a good time and more or less delivered. A lot of rock musicians write about catching the girl. Sting has a reputation for pretension built in part on the silly name, in part on a bent for seriousness verging on self-impor- tance, and in part on a writing preference for dwelling on the dark side. A singer in the bleating Madonna tradition, Hoffs touched on some lovely songs from her new album, plus the obligatory Bangles hits.Īlthough an evening with a pair of sunflowers like Henley and Sting is never going to be exactly lighthearted, Sting's portion of the show Sunday night at Alpine Valley Music Theater was hardly the cup of hemlock one might expect. Too bad more people weren't on time for opener Susanna Hoffs, on her first post-Bangles solo tour. The only perfunctory plays were his popular hits, 'King of Pain' and 'Every Breath You Take'. Where Henley's band reprised, lick by lick, his music, Sting delivered new exciting versions of 'Walking on the Moon', 'If I Build a Fortress', 'Soul Cages' and 'Dream of the Blue Turtles'. His sparse band of four - himself on bass, the incomparable Vinnie Colaiuta on drums, Dominic Miller on guitar and David Sancious on keyboards - ripped through 'All This Time', 'Mad About You' and 'Roxanne', and 'When the World Is Running Down'. Sting stormed the stage with half the musicians but twice the musicianship. He ended with 'Desperado', a song so well-known it became a chorale, the audience singing it back to the songwriter. Though his drumming these days is lame at best, Henley obliged longtime fans by sitting down during two encores. Annoyed as I have become with the hackneyed cliche of perky, aerobically fit backup singers in matching black minidresses, Henley's three came in like angels. ![]() Highlight of the set was an acoustic version of 'Heart of the Matter'. He dipped back into the soulful mode for the Eagles' 'Wasted Time', wringing every last drop of vocal emotion from the sad ballad. The guy described as ''the best thin-lipped soul singer alive'' started off soulful with 'Dirty Laundry' and 'Driving With Your Eyes Closed', then slid neatly into 'End of the Innocence'. More often than not they sounded ''just like the record.'' But that, apparently, is what the mainstream crowd came to hear. The packed house Saturday, spread thick over Alpine's steep hillside, heard Henley roll neatly through a dozen tunes plucked from 20 years worth of material. ![]() ![]() It was a benefit for the Walden Woods project, Henley's crusade to save the Massachusetts countryside that inspired Henry David Thoreau. To have two such lyricists on the same stage was apt. It was a study in contrast when Don Henley and Sting - two of the great rock poets of our time - shared the bill at Alpine Valley this weekend.
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