A rather famous pop star is holding court. "The first time I met Gil Evans was about three or four years ago when I went to see him at Ronnie Scott's in London. I'd been a fan of Gil's since I was 15 and I went backstage and had the nerve to say 'Hello', and 'I admire your work'. I said, 'I'm Sting, I sing' and he said, 'I've heard of you'. I couldn't believe that he'd heard of me. He said, 'Yeah, I remember 'Walking On The Moon', good bass line'. It was like... I couldn't believe this great man knew about me. I said, 'We must work together one day', so Gil said, 'Yeah, sure'..."

Blue Turtles and Blue Notes - Sting speaks: "I was committed to do an album without the Police, and I went through all kinds of ideas about how I would do it. There are various ways of skinning this cat. I could have done it all on my own, which would have involved synthesisers and sequencers and drum machines and all the rest of it. Actually I wandered to a certain extent along that path and then I thought, 'No, there's too much of that out there already, why add fuel to the fire?' Then I thought perhaps what I needed was a big producer - I think I was going through a need for a big brother figure, somebody to convince me, 'Yes, it's great, do try that'. So I approached Quincy Jones. I sent Quincy some demos, and he was really enthusiastic and said he loved the songs, which was nice. Before that I had approached Gil Evans, who I'm an enormous fan of. I met Gil backstage at Ronnie Scott's club in London. I went to see his show and introduced myself, and surprise, surprise, he'd actually heard of me. And he too was interested...

Pop star Sting goes jazz: Sting, the pop star and actor who left the hugely successful Police to start his own jazz-rock band, has returned to the sound that first inspired him to become a musician...

Bring on the new Sting: It was hard to tell whether there was a moon over Bourbon Street the night Sting and his band hit town, what with the imminent arrival of Hurricane Juan and his vanguard of attendant clouds. But you could still hear and see Sting, and he was more than just a shade. Over the course of a few days, he strolled through the heart of the French Quarter, danced around a concert stage, jovially jousted with reporters in interviews, tumbled through a soccer game at a local field and cavorted on the silver screen...

The band that Sting built revels in it's new-found fame. They hail from small, cramped clubs, the warming ovens of jazz's classic bebop era. They've learned musical craft from apprenticeships with masters such as Miles Davis, Joe Zawinul, the New Orleans pianist Ellis Marsalis. They are part of what has been called the "Young Lions" movement in contemporary jazz...

Sting: Intended or not, his moniker offers apt metaphor for the man who would be: king of pain and nearly all else he surveys. Sting. It's just a nickname. No more. No less. So don't read anything into it, says Gordon Matthew Sumner, who acquired his stage name eight years ago as a 25-year-old playing Dixieland jazz with a band of men old enough to be his father...

Sting shuns labels: 'I'm many things rolled into one'. He's been tagged a god, a melancholy artist and even a rock 'n' roll Renaissance man for his roles in music and film. One thing's for sure: Gordon Sumner - better known as pop star Sting - has plenty of things he wants to do and, despite his popularity, won't allow himself be pigeonholed...

Despite his success, Sting strives for normalcy. It is late June on the sun-soaked patio of Sting's favorite suite in his favorite hotel in West Hollywood, Calif. The rock and film star is insisting that the soft pop life is not for him, but he sure looks content. Sting, 33, has a charming, slightly self-deprecating and conspiratorial way of telling stories that makes everything he says seem like a revelation. The theme this morning is normalcy - or as normal as it gets for someone who is one of the hottest pop personalities in the world...

It's Stingtime for the Chief of Police on screen and disc. He has struck out on his own, formed a new band, tried being a movie star. But through it all - in a video age when rock stars change their image with each new album - Sting hasn't given his slightly demonic, tortured-artist persona a holiday since he formed the Police eight years ago...

Sting feels the burn - Gordon Sumner exercises his prerogatives in music, film and fame: On a lovely April morning, weeks before the completion of his not-the-Police album, the summer premieres of his two feature films, the world tour with his new band and the birth of his fourth child - Sting, a young man with everything to live for dove ten fathoms in the benign Caribbean and ran out of air...

Sting discusses what's past, passing and to come... Among contemporary musicians, only David Bowie exceeds Sting in his quest for movie stardom, and in the number of film roles to his credit. Still it could be argued that Sting has been more of what professional athletic scouts call "an impact player" than any of his other celebrated contemporaries who've attempted the rock-to-film crossover (the jury's still out on Madonna, who on the basis of one film seems to have the star quality that's eluded other rock artists on the silver screen). In addition to a chilling performance as the Jekyll-Hyde rapist character in 'Brimstone and Treacle', Sting's chalked up a major credit as one of the leads in 'Dune', will soon be seen starring opposite Meryl Streep in the romantic drama 'Plenty', and will portray the fatally ambitious Dr. Frankenstein in 'The Bride', a remake of The Bride of Frankenstein...

Sting wings it on his own - The sexy ex-chief of the Police mounts a solo flight to multimedia stardom. "I don't want to become irrelevant. I don't want to be redundant, I fear that, and I think money and success can make you that way very easily, very simply, very quickly. And I want to sidestep all that..."

Fear and loathing in the Caribbean: "The strangest thing happened today: I was out windsurfing on my board and suddenly the rudder was gone. It just snapped off for no apparent reason." Sting is lying face up on a pool table at Eddy Grant's Blue Wave Studio in Barbados. "I believe that everything happens for a purpose, so I asked myself why did this happen now? Then I realised the truth. I'd lost my sense of direction." He shields his eyes with his forearm and continues in a low voice. "Is the album any good? I don't know anymore. My voice, it's so weak. I was even tearful before. I just wanted to forget the band. I wanted to go home, crawl into bed, just forget the whole thing because I can't sing..."

Sting II - Sting has a new band and new dreams. In a Spin exclusive he reflects on where he's going and where he came from: 60° West Longitude, 16°45' North Latitude - "Captain sir, permission to break out the vodka and orange!" whoops the handsome blond helmsman as he hugs the ship's sleek steel wheel, an impish gust suddenly sending some briny spray into his smirking face. "And the gods have spoken!" he asserts, wiping the bracing water away. "Aw, yes, this certainly beats the coal fields of Newcastle...!"

What do you get when you cross four Jazzers who disdain rock'n'roll with Sting, who doesn't particularly like it either? A milestone rock album... The crowd at Manhattan's the Ritz strained against the edge of the stage as Sting stepped forward to introduce the next song, a new number entitled 'Moon Over Bourbon Street'. "This is about an accidental vampire caught between good and evil," he announced, the spotlights casting an eerie glow on his face. Then, with a smirk, he added. "A bit like someone we know isn't it...?"