“The title of the album came from a dream that woke me up on my first night in Barbados. I dreamed I was sitting in the walled garden behind my house in Hampstead, under a lilac tree on a well manicured lawn, surrounded by beautiful rosebushes. Suddenly the bricks from the wall exploded into the garden and I turned to see the head of an enormous turtle emerging from the darkness, followed by four or five others. They were not only the size of a man, they were also blue and had an air of being immensely cool, like hepcats, insouciant and fearless. They didn’t harm me but with an almost casual violence commenced to destroy my genteel English garden, digging up the lawn with their claws, chomping at the rosebushes, bulldozing the lilac tree. Total mayhem. I woke up to the sound of Branford [Marsalis] in the room upstairs, riffing wildly on his tenor sax, followed by his unmistakeable laughter.”
And so Sting’s debut solo album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles, was born. It was a risky move. Only the previous year, Sting had completed the Synchronicity tour with The Police. The Synchronicity album itself had been a massive success, and they were very much the biggest band in the world by this stage. Yet, at such a juncture, Sting struck out on his own. Indeed, throughout the subsequent solo career he carved out for himself, he has consistently taken musical risks and explored new and unexpected ground. It’s never really possible to predict what he might do next. One minute he is touring with a stripped-back rock band, the next he is recording an album of 16th Century lute music. After that, he is touring with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, followed by another tour with a rock band. Leaving The Police would allow Sting to flex his creative muscles much more freely – to demonstrate just how versatile a musician he really is. The Dream of the Blue Turtles was the beginning of an amazing journey he has taken us on in the 35 years since it was released in June 1985.
To record this album, Sting surrounded himself with some of the best players in the business. Omar Hakim played drums, Daryl Jones played bass, Branford Marsalis played saxophone, Kenny Kirkland played keyboards and Janice Pendarvis and Dollette McDonald sang backing vocals. Sting himself was content to play mostly small guitar parts and focus primarily on singing, whilst allowing the talents of his new Blue Turtles band to shine. This was particularly notable in the case of Kenny Kirkland and Branford Marsalis, both of whom were immensely talented instrumentalists and went on to become regular contributors to Sting’s work for many years afterwards. Kenny sadly died in November 1998 at the age of just 43 and is much missed.
Though the musicians in his band had a background in jazz, describing Blue Turtles as a jazz album would be somewhat inaccurate. The album opens with lead single ‘If You Love Somebody Set Them Free’, an almost anthemic rock song which is perhaps among Sting’s best known solo recordings. Sting has described it in the past as the “antidote” to ‘Every Breath You Take’, in that ‘Every Breath’ was a dark song very much about control, whereas ‘Set Them Free’ was exactly the opposite. ‘Love is the Seventh Wave’ follows with its fun, reggae-infused feel.
The subject matter of ‘Russians’ was inspired by the Cold War situation of the day. A friend of Sting’s had a device which could steal the signal from a Russian satellite, and the two of them found themselves watching Russian children’s TV programmes very late at night, hence the lyric “what might save us me and you / is if the Russians love their children too”. The next track, ‘Children’s Crusade’, was an ambitious attempt to draw a parallel between the carnage of the First World War and the loss of life resulting from drug addiction 70 years later. While being a delicate waltz for the most part, this song also demonstrated the abilities of Branford Marsalis with an outstanding saxophone solo break. A significantly re-worked version of ‘Shadows in the Rain’, originally a Police song from their third album Zenyatta Mondatta, was also a showcase for the soloing abilities of both Branford and Kenny Kirkland.
‘We Work the Black Seam’ was another song inspired by current events of the time, in this case the coal miners’ strikes. As will be a familiar story to many songwriters, the tune had existed in his head for some years before Sting finally found some subject matter for it. ‘Consider Me Gone’, a subtly jazz-infused song, borrows from Shakespeare for its lyrical content. Years later Sting would claim that he liked borrowing from Shakespeare on the basis that “he never complains”. The title track, a short, instrumental and rather playful affair is followed by the wonderfully stealthy ‘Moon Over Bourbon Street’, and the album closes triumphantly with ‘Fortress Around Your Heart’ which, although released as the third of the album’s five singles, was not a significantly big hit here in the UK and perhaps deserves more recognition with such an uplifting chorus and arguably some of Sting’s finest lyrics.
The very best artists are those who have the ability to write and record music that can stand the test of time – music that transcends generations and remains just as effective as when it was brand new. Sting is one such artist. One of the astonishing things about Blue Turtles was that it was recorded and released right in the thick of the 1980s. The charts of the day were dominated by synth-pop, and yet here came Sting recording an album in a much more traditional manner, very much atypical of the era. With a band. And – shock, horror – real drums! In spite of this, Blue Turtles was a massive success and it proved that Sting was a more than viable act without The Police. He didn’t have to think in commercial terms and was now able to follow his own natural creative path, unconstrained by the sonic limitations of his old band. The big risk of leaving such a successful band at the very peak of its powers had ultimately paid off.
The Dream of the Blue Turtles is not an album of its time. It could be an album of any time, and that is why it still sounds so good to this day. It simply hasn’t dated. That is the mark of a great recording, and a truly great artist.
Check out the newly remastered videos for ‘If You Love Somebody Set Them Free’, ‘Love is the Seventh Wave’, ‘Fortress Around Your Heart’ and ‘Russians’ here.
A special picture disc edition of The Dream of the Blue Turtles
Mike's Musical Musings 