It's been 46 years since Sting last graced a stage in Plymouth and he did his level best to make up for his long absence. Harking back to his Police days, where he smashed the charts alongside guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland, Sting stripped back his bigger band down to the basics - a guitar, a bass and drums. It's a testament to his skill as a musician, composer and performer that even with such a minimal set up, his material is so vast and so well interpreted that the trio still sounded twice the size.
Looking enviously fit and well for a 72-year-old man - Blondie's Debbie Harry conspiratorially told the crowd earlier "Sting looks tanned" with a knowing wink - he strode out on stage in a simple white T-shirt, dark jeans and large boots to the moody and mesmeric 1980 'Voices Inside My Head' which appeared as a lesser track on Zenyatta Mondatta, the Police's third album. With five Police albums and around a dozen solo albums, Sting has an absolute goldmine of material to choose from for a gig in front of several thousand keen fans on Plymouth Hoe, which had finally decided to be graced by bright sunshine and warm weather on Sunday. Understandably, for many of those there, it was the 'old' classics which appealed and Sting made a point of suggesting at one point that he would try and gauge the average age of the crowd by whether or not they knew one of his early works.
It was no surprise that the likes of Message in a Bottle and Walking on the Moon from the .