Smoldering Sting back to his roots...

"You can't age gracefully in rock 'n' roll," singer Nick Cave said in a 2008 interview. "You have to clock out scandalously. Otherwise you end up like Sting playing lute music."

What Cave didn't realize, but what should have been clear to everyone at Sting's concert at the GrandWest Arena on Tuesday night, is that this 16-time Grammy winner and superstar comes from a different, younger and healthier planet than us mere mortals - he will apparently never have to retire.

If that's not the case, then there must be something to all the media rumours about his yoga addiction and prowess in the tantric sex department (although Sting playfully denied the latter on stage). The 60-year-old British icon simply looks indecently young; in fact, too good to be true. In jeans and a tight grey T-shirt, there was no sign of fat or flaccid, tired flesh to be seen on the former frontman of The Police.

He also didn't treat the packed house to any of his lute music with classical pretensions - the whole idea behind his current Back To Bass world tour is to return to his roots as a bassist and singer.

With a boiling water band of six musicians behind him, he entertained the appreciative audience for more than two hours with an eclectic selection of old and new until the dancing crowd cheered him back for three encores.

After Sting (Gordon Sumner to his mother) started energetically with three big hits - 'All this Time', 'Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic' and 'Englishman in New York' - one became increasingly impressed by his versatility as a singer-songwriter.

The man not only has a phenomenal, unmistakable voice, but as a composer he is equally fluent in pop, rock, funk, jazz and folk - he can even throw in a bit of country if he needs to, as he showed with 'Love Is Stronger than Justice' which ended with a delightfully rabid violin solo by Pete Tickell.

One suspects, however, that the Police's evergreen, reggae-flavoured blend of pop-rock is his musical mother tongue. Sting's solo career has produced several highlights since 1985, but somewhere in the middle of the concert the impression arose that you were listening to the virtuoso style and finger exercises of a highly gifted pop artist whose inspiration sometimes deserts him in the lyrical department.

With rousing versions of the old Police hits 'King of Pain', 'Roxanne' and 'Every Breath You Take' in the first encore, however, all reservations were forgotten and all eyes were on the lithe blonde singer.

Because it is with these smouldering, classic songs about the obsessive side of desire that Sting has thoroughly earned his place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

(c) Die Burger by Danie Marais