In a polarized country like the United States, the music popular – pop, rock, folk, jazz, country, rap – remains the last common language of Republicans and Democrats. The White House has therefore always been interested in its stars: Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Kanye West, Taylor Swift and others. Before the election of November 5thL’Express tells you, in eight episodes, the story of the unlikely couples formed by the beasts of the music scene and the presidential political animals. Very pop’n’pol duos!
EPISODE 1 – Kennedy and Sinatra: An epic bromance, a shattering breakup
EPISODE 2 – Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon: This crazy interview between the “King” and the president
EPISODE 3 – Jimmy Carter and Bob Dylan, friends for life: “Listening to his records…”
EPISODE 4 – The Surprising Story of the Song That Put Bill Clinton in the White House
He had repeated it in one of his most subtle ballads, magnified by the saxophone of Branford Marsalis: Sting always felt like an “Englishman in New York” (Englishman in New York1987). A guy who doesn’t drink coffee but tea. Likes his toast toasted on one side only. And considers that it takes more to be a man than a combat outfit or a gun license. A “foreigner”, therefore, in Uncle Sam’s country.
It doesn’t matter that the text was written in homage to the writer and actor Quentin Crisp, a gay icon of 1960s England where homosexuality was still repressed and who settled, at the end of his life, on the other side of the Atlantic. The hit of the former leader of The Police, born in 1951 in the working class suburbs of Newcastle, in the north of the country, is a concentrate of this dandyism so british which he would make the mark of his solo career, once the post-punk influences of his beginnings had subsided.
In September 2000, Sting – real name Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner – was still a rock star who filled stadiums and topped the charts. But he had lost none of his good manners. So when George W. Bush’s team decided to include his latest commercial success in the playlist for the Republican candidate’s rallies, Brand New Day, The singer’s entourage regrets in chosen words not having been warned. “It’s not polite,” he tells the American media Living room the artist’s manager, Miles Copeland, Stewart’s brother, former drummer of The Police. Sting may live a good part of his time in Manhattan, on the edge of Central Park, but he sees himself as a “guest” on American soil. There is no question of suggesting that he takes a position for one camp or another.
Brand New Day, a shot of optimism
The song in question has been playing for months in public meetings of Al Gore, the Democratic opponent of the Texas governor, without provoking the slightest reaction from him. The lyrics, however, marked by a gentle optimism, wax lyrical about the virtues of renewal and the clocks that must be reset. A godsend for Republicans who want to turn the page on Bill Clinton’s double term (1992-2000). All that’s missing, alas, is the anointing of its creator… “You don’t have to be a genius to understand why Sting doesn’t want his music to be associated with the Bush campaign,” one of his close friends then tackles.
Journalist and author of several books on rock published by Le Mot et le reste (Streets of London And Streets of San Francisco, with Olivier Bousquet), Arnaud Devillard recalls some of the Englishman’s past engagements, which should have alerted Karl Rove, the spin doctor of “W”: “In 1985, in RussiansSting sends Reagan and Khrushchev back to back in the escalation of the Cold War. Two years later, with They Dance Alonehe denounces the exactions of the Pinochet government in Chile, whose coup d’état was supported by Nixon. These women who dance alone, in front of official buildings, are those who have lost a husband, a son or a father, victims of the repression of the regime. Sting does not openly display himself as an anti-republican. But that does not make him a fan for all that!”
Between the son of a milk delivery man and a hairdresser, and the political heir, a Yale graduate who made his fortune in oil like his father, then participated in the latter’s election to the White House in 1988, before entering it himself for two consecutive terms, the divorce is quickly pronounced: Brand New Day disappears from the Bush catalog. The collaborators of the future 43rd President of the United States even take the trouble to publish a campaign CD purged of any song that could give rise to controversy. Too late: whoever rubs against it, gets stung. True to his nickname earned at school where he wore a yellow and black striped sweater, Sting – the dart, in French – then decides to tease the elephant, the mascot of the Grand Old Party.
Climate, the first bone of contention
The first opportunity does not take long. A few months after his narrow victory, at the end of a fantastic recount of votes in three Florida counties, Bush refuses to apply the Kyoto protocol, adopted in 1997, to fight against global warming. “He says there is no scientific proof but he says he believes in God, and as far as I know, there is no scientific proof for that either,” snaps the artist and founder of the Rainforest Foundation with the Amazonian chief Raoni, in the columns of New York Daily News. Before immediately tempering: “I’m just a singer. I have no political echo in this country. It’s up to you guys to change things.”
In 2003, the charge is less direct. This verse of This War, written during the preparations for the American invasion of Iraq, nevertheless sounds like a full-on attack on the Oval Office tenant. “Your father was a businessman / And it always made sense / You know war can make you rich my friend / In dollars, pounds and cents / In the temple of Mammon [NDLR : l’incarnation de la richesse dans le Nouveau Testament] / You have been ordained parish priest / Yes, you can win the coming battle / But will you be able to tolerate peace?” Clear? Questioned by the Belgian weekly The Livelythe feverish interpreter of Roxanne denies the obvious, arguing that he is targeting all the profiteers on the planet.
Facing the hawks, Sting becomes a dove
Brave, but not reckless. When Sting bleached his hair like Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols, in the middle of the punk period, it was first and foremost for the needs of a chewing gum manufacturer to whom The Police had sold their image. And if he one day canceled a concert in Kazakhstan so as not to endorse a repressive power, he sang two years earlier in Uzbekistan at the invitation of the daughter of the dictator in power, Islam Karimov. One foot in, one foot out. Lucid, always, about his contradictions. “I am a millionaire and a socialist, an ecologist and a former Concorde subscriber, faithful to my wife and a supporter of free love…”, confesses this tightrope walker on the release of his youthful memoirs (Broken Music2003). Converted to yoga and meditation, he becomes more of a dove, while the hawks flock around Bush.
In September 2004, a 40-concert tour, called Vote for Changegets going in the swing statesthese states where the electoral outcome is undecided. Unheard of during a presidential campaign. Bruce Springsteen, Ben Harper, John Mellencamp, Neil Young or Pearl Jam take turns on stage to support John Kerry, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts who opposes the outgoing president. The group REM, put into orbit, like The Police, by Miles Copeland, also gives voice. Sting, himself, remains silent.
Sacred Lovethe experimental album featuring This War, did not charm the crowds. A personal failure. Two years earlier, the star had cut ties with his faithful impresario, after a quarter of a century of good and loyal service. Ironically, the Anglo-American Miles Copeland, raised in Washington and the Middle East before ploughing his musical furrow in London, would be invited to the Pentagon by Donald Rumsfeld, Bush junior’s Secretary of Defense.
An ardent promoter of the offensive in Iraq, the leader of the neoconservatives wanted to have his opinion on the opportunity to organize a free concert by Bon Jovi in Riyadh, one of the major American bases in the region, to attract the good graces of the local populations. “A stupid idea,” Copeland, son of… a CIA spy, would later say. The funny thing about all this is that my father had objectively helped Saddam Hussein to take power [NDLR : dans les années 1970]. He once told me: “Saddam is a piece of sh… But he’s our sh…” Sting could have made his honey out of it. In a more polite style.
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