A MIGHTY WIND IN THE MAGIC STINGDOM

…disbelief spreads across his face and he looks helplessly at Andy before dissolving into wild laughter.

ROX-HA-HA-HA-AN-AN!
YOU DON’T HAVE TO…

But it’s all over. Andy still has the riff going but we’ve lost Sting. He’s gasping for mercy, leaning forward, agape, as I murder the bass line to his classic song. Every wrong note that I hit on his 1955 Fender Precision bass sinks him deeper and he’s howling.

YOU KNOW MY…
Wrong note
…IS MADE UP
Wrong note
SO PUT AWAY…
Wrong note

We are at the foot of a huge staircase that sweeps up into the dark. Scattered around us is a collection of stringed instruments. It’s a baronial hall with stone walls and the sound that we make wells up around us.

This whole bass thing is his idea. Andy and Sting have taken to pulling out acoustic guitars after dinner and most nights we end up here in the stairwell sounding like The New Seekers crossed with The Gypsy Kings. It’s actually kind of impressive to hear them duelling away with the twanging strings reverberating off the ancient walls. Couple of frustrated Manitas de Plattas, the pair of them, blazing away there by candlelight.

To stop me from going to get some drums, Sting put this venerable antique bass into my hand. Andy shouts out key changes to me and the two of them are head to head, exchanging phrases and trying to extravagantly out noodle each other. I plod along on the bass, mostly keeping up, except for this verse in Roxanne.

I’m a little giddy about my promotion to bass player in the band. Of course it’s just a power grab by Sting who wants to upgrade to six stings, but I’m happy because now that my new instrument produces actual pitched notes (as opposed to the banging and clattering of my previous rank) it makes me officially one of the musicians. The best part is that the notes on a bass are so low that it doesn’t really matter what notes you hit – except to Sting, whom I can now demolish with hearty wrongness on his own axe. And then Andy pulls out an…