Rox-aaagh... Sting has revealed he was so surprised the first time he heard one of his songs on the radio he fell off a ladder.
The pop star was listening to Radio One in 1978 while decorating when Roxanne suddenly started playing.
He said: “I was painting the ceiling with some white emulsion and I suddenly recognised the song. I thought ‘That’s Roxanne playing’ and I literally fell off the ladder.
“I immediately called the other guys in the band and told them ‘We’re on the radio’ and they were listening too.”
Sting, 71, was speaking as he collected the Ivor Novello Fellowship for Songwriting yesterday with his wife Trudie Styler, 69.
Speaking at London’s Grosvener House yesterday, he said of the experience in his flat in Bayswater, West London: “Nothing will beat that feeling the first time you hear yourself on the radio. That is incredible.”
He said that his rise to stardom with Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers in The Police appeared meteoric but was in fact a slow process.
He recalled: “I remember every gig, every half-empty club, every trip in the van. It seemed like a long hard slog.”
Sting has sold 100 million albums and last year sold his back catalogue in a deal reportedly worth around £183million.
Every Breath You Take has become the most played song on radio stations worldwide. He added: “The most played before that was You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling by the Righteous Brothers. Now, that is one of my favourite songs of all time, from 1966.
“I was 14 or 15 at the time, for one of my songs to supersede that, I still cannot get my head around it.”
Paul McCartney, 80, described Sting’s solo hit Fields of Gold as the song that he wished he had written.
Sting told the BBC : “I cannot tell you how many Paul McCartney songs I wish that I had written. But that was a lovely thing for him to say, I was very honoured... he is one of the reasons I am a songwriter.”
He said of writing a song: “The satisfaction of finishing one lasts about 20 minutes and then you start to wonder where the next song is coming from.”
Geordie Sting joins a handful of music figures such as Paul McCartney, Joan Armatrading, Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel in the Ivor Novello Fellowship.
