Sting Questions What Happens When You Don’t Have Anything To Build With Hands?

On the occasion of the return of the musical The Last Ship to the West End, Sting spoke about the lost pride of shipyards, deindustrialization and male energy that, without direction, can become toxic.

Sting doesn’t talk about toxic masculinity like he’s on a sociology panel. He talks about men who once built ships and could point to something huge and say, “I built that.”

In an interview with the Guardian, on the occasion of the return of the musical The Last Ship to the West End , the British musician linked the modern male crisis to the loss of manual labor . Not by innocently nostalgic for shipyards, nor by idealizing a world of harsh, dangerous and toxic materials, but by looking at what was lost along with them: the sense that the body, strength and hands still had a purpose.

“I work with my hands every day as a musician and I’m lucky,” he said. “It’s a rare thing for modern men to actually use their hands and their strength to do something. We’ve lost something there.”

This “something” is the real crux of the debate. For Sting, deindustrialization didn’t just mean lost jobs. It also meant lost forms of identity, lost communities, lost local pride. A whole male energy was left without direction, and perhaps therein, he says, lies part of today’s social toxicity.

“I don’t have the answers,” he said, but added that the toxicity in society may be linked to men losing a direction for their energy and power. “It’s rare that we need to use it anymore,” he said.

The Last Ship, which premiered in Chicago in 2014 before moving to Broadway, is inspired by the shipyard world of Wallsend, where Sting grew up. The musical tells the story of a working-class community’s crisis as its shipyard closes, and with it, an entire language of male identity, work, and dignity seems to be lost.

Sting said that shipyard closures and deindustrialization had marked the north of England, accusing successive governments of abandoning working-class areas. He said Britain’s wealth was built in coal mines, steel mills, textiles and shipyards, before those skills were “dumped” for Thatcher’s vision of a service economy.

He insists, however, that he does not want to glamorize life in the shipyards . “I am the man who did not want to work there, and for good reason,” he said, describing a place that was dangerous, harsh, full of asbestos and toxic materials. What he misses is not the working conditions, but the sense of community that existed around them.

“The work was horrible, dangerous and difficult,” he said. “But these men could look back and say, ‘I built this.’ The local pride was immense.”

The Last Ship returns to London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane. The musician admits he chose the difficult path, writing an original musical rather than basing it on a well-known story or making a jukebox musical with his own songs.

“These are the easy routes,” he said. “I chose the hardest one and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.”

With elements from Guardian.