Weeks before the Sting 3.0 Tour reached Los Angeles, the singer-bassist described his decision to tour as a trio for the first time in years as a way to surprise both himself and the audience.
We can’t say how surprised he was at the Wiltern Theatre on Wednesday, Nov. 13, the second of five nights at the venue, but there was definitely a frisson of excitement in the audience as Sting walked on stage in Los Angeles accompanied only by a guitarist and drummer for the first time since the Police reunion tour ended in 2008. (The Wiltern shows continue Friday-Sunday, Nov. 15-17.)
And when the guitar riff that opens the Police’s “Message in a Bottle” kicked off the show, well, maybe the crowd wasn’t entirely surprised, but the crisp, clear sound of just three instruments racing through this reggae/new wave classic was a genuine thrill.
In a show that delivered 24 songs over two hours, Sting, as usual, mixed hits from his solo career, which often were created with many more musical flavors, with Police classics that originated from just Sting, guitarist Andy Summers, and drummer Stewart Copeland.
Here, playing with just longtime guitarist Dominic Miller and drummer Chris Maas, Sting’s set concentrated the biggest hits in the opening and final thirds of the show, with a looser, less predictable selection holding down the middle.
“Message in a Bottle” slipped into a pair of solo favorites, “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You,” with its soaring choruses joined by most in the audience, and “Englishman in New York,” which kept fans on their feet dancing to the slinky bassline and syncopated rhythm.
The Police’s “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” followed, and four songs in, if you looked around, there were only beaming faces.
The crowd roared during “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You” when Sting sang the line, “You could say I’d lost my belief in our politicians.” (The following line, “They all seemed like game show hosts to me,” hits even harder than when the song was released in 1993).
“I’m not going to say anything about the elections because I’m British,” Sting said when he paused to speak for the first time at the end of “Every Little Thing is Magic.” “But I come from England, and I want to sing about my house.”
A story about looking out the front door of his home in Wiltshire, just up the road from Stonehenge, and being inspired to write “Fields of Gold” by barley fields that sprawled outside his front door, introduced the chattier middle of the show. Now, as Sting sat on a stool to play his bass, most songs arrived with a quick anecdote about their origins and meanings.
While describing himself as an agnostic, he acknowledged the biblical inspiration of King David’s desires as inspiration for “Mad About You.” Introducing “Why Should I Cry for You?” he credited his stoic father’s advice when Sting was still a boy named Gordon Sumner.
” ‘I want you to go to sea, lad!’ Make something of yourself,’ ” Sting recounted his father telling him. “Of course, I disappointed him,” he added to laughter from the crowd.
The oldest song in the set was also perhaps the rarest pick for the performance. “I Burn For You” was written Sting when he was a 24-year-old school teacher playing in a pre-Police band, though the Police did later record it, too, he said. Until September, he hadn’t played the song live since 1990 in Uruguay. (The internet knows everything.)
After a tight run through the Police hit “Driven To Tears,” another of that band’s reggae-infused rockers, Sting announced that Miller was going to pull a random song out of the past and see how well they could do it.
“He can choose any of 300 songs,” Sting said. “Some of which I know. Some of which I’ve forgotten. Because Dominic remembers everything.”
Miller settled on “Fortress Around Your Heart” from Sting’s 1985 solo debut, “The Dream of the Blue Turtles,” which they did pretty much perfectly, having played it a dozen times on tour this year. (Telling you, the internet knows all.) Sting’s pick for Miller and Maas, “I’m So Happy I Can’t Stop Crying,” was slightly less common, showing up in Sting’s show on Wednesday for the first time this year.
The arrival of “Can’t Stand Losing You,” one of three songs off the Police’s 1978 debut “Outlandos d’Amour,” followed by the solo love song “Shape of My Heart,” launched a final stretch of the show that packed one hit after another, while also dropping in the power trio rocker “I Wrote My Name (Upon Your Heart),” which the Sting 3.0 trio recorded before heading out on tour.
Highlights of this last run of songs included the Police’s “So Lonely,” which here was stretched out into an extended version, the Middle Eastern-tinged solo track “Desert Rose,” and the main-set closer of The Police’s “King of Pain.”
If you have seen Sting in recent years in any of his larger band configurations, you can guess the encore at the Wiltern on Wednesday. “Roxanne,” the Police’s signature song, opened the last bit of the night, slipping into a jazzy alternate version, and including a bit of the solo number “Be Still My Beating Heart.”
Then, switching from bass to acoustic guitar for the only time of the night, Sting sang “Fragile,” a gentle, Latin-influenced number that almost always closes out his shows. It was, as always, a beautiful, contemplative finish to a terrific night, showing perhaps that not everything need be a surprise for something special to occur.
