Musician Sting has suggested that the decline of manual labour could be contributing to toxic masculinity in modern society. Speaking ahead of the West End return of his musical The Last Ship, the former Police frontman reflected on the loss of physical productivity for men following deindustrialisation.
Sting on Masculinity and Work
In an interview with the Guardian, Sting said: 'I work with my hands every day as a musician, and I'm lucky. It's a rare thing for modern men to actually use their hands and use their strengths to do anything. We've lost something there.' He added: 'I don't have any answers, but maybe the toxicity in society at the moment is [a result of the fact] that we've lost that direction for our energy, that male strength. It's rare we have to use it.'
The Last Ship Returns to London
The Last Ship, which debuted in Chicago in 2014 before a Broadway run, tells the story of men working at a shipyard similar to Swan Hunter's in Wallsend, where Sting grew up. The yards closed during the deindustrialisation of the 1970s and 1980s. Sting wrote the music and will star in the production at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane from 22 September to 3 October.
Sting criticised successive governments for failing the north of England after the closures. 'Britain's wealth was created in the coalfields and the steel towns and the mill towns and the shipyards,' he said. 'All of those skill sets were thrown on the scrapheap … for Thatcher's dream of a service economy.'
A Complex Legacy
The musical features male characters in crisis as their identities are stripped away. One asks: 'For what are we men without a ship to complete?' However, Sting stressed the production does not romanticise the dangerous industry, which saw hundreds of accidents and fatalities each year. 'I'm the guy who didn't want to work there and for good reason,' he said. 'They were working in asbestos, all kinds of toxic chemicals. At the same time, I'm nostalgic for the sense of community that I was brought up in.'
He recalled the civic pride in Wallsend: 'The town, although it was depressed a lot of the time, was extremely proud of the ships that were built there. The work was awful and dangerous and hard, but those guys could look back and say: 'Well, I built that.' The civic pride was massive.'
From Broadway to the West End
When The Last Ship opened on Broadway, it received mixed reviews and did not match the success of other British musicals like Billy Elliot or Kinky Boots. However, it has toured globally and been revised over the past decade, with a new book by Barney Norris. A 2018 performance in Newcastle upon Tyne earned praise from the Guardian's Michael Billington, who called it 'the most thrilling choral writing I've heard in a British musical since Howard Goodall's The Hired Man'.
Sting admitted he made things difficult by creating an original story rather than adapting an existing one or making a jukebox musical of his hits. 'Those are the easy routes, but I chose the most difficult one and I've enjoyed every minute of it,' he said. 'It's been incredibly difficult and challenging, but also the most rewarding exploit of my life. I think it needs to find its audience. It needs to find its voice. It's taken this long, but I think we're pretty close to it right now.'
Legal Battle with Former Bandmates
Separately, Sting is involved in a High Court dispute over alleged unpaid royalties with his former Police bandmates Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers. The court has heard that Sting has paid more than £500,000 to them since legal action began. When asked about the case, Sting said: 'It doesn't make any sense. That's all I'm willing to say.'
Tickets for The Last Ship go on sale from midday on 28 May.
