BROKEN MUSIC

Those expecting to find lurid tales of rock & roll excess with the Police in Sting''s candidly written, minutely detailed autobiography, BROKEN MUSIC, should probably look elsewhere; the only drug taking here is courtesy of a Brazilian religious ceremony. The experience prompts hallucinogenic recollections on the part of the author and forms the basis of the book''s journey through a childhood fraught with guilty silences (he catches his mother kissing one of his father''s employees), his first sexual and musical experiments, a prolonged period of struggle and penury as a young musician with a wife and child to support (his recounting of the search for living quarters in London is particularly chastening), and the first tentative performances of the Police. The career of the latter is condensed into a few pages; Sting appears to be less concerned with conveying the pleasures of a lifestyle complete with jaunts to the Amazon, country houses, and rock & roll hedonism than he is with recounting the long, intriguing journey he''s made to get there.