The Illustrated Story of Sting’s “BRAND NEW DAY”

In 1998 I made a little sci-fi comedy video, “Gosk, Part 2” (sequel to my 1994 Gosk, Part 1) (http://www.archive.org/details/JonathanDavidSteinhoff_3), starring someone who was Joni Mitchell’s friend and artistic director of the album artwork on a number of her recordings. At this time I had long been a secret major influence on the work of a great number of major recording artists (and others of great importance in the entertainment industry), including Paul McCartney, John Lennon, The Rolling Stones, Madonna, and many others.

Remembering an interview John Lennon had once given in which he described the creation of “Give Peace A Chance” as a deliberate effort to provide a rallying anthem, and having secretly contributed the opening to John Lennon’s song, “Starting Over” (“Our life together is so precious together, etc.”), I was inspired to create a song about someone trying to rally everyone, “Brand New River of Love” (copyright January 1999 as part of my music CD, “Still Around”) (http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=366981&content=songinfo&songID=2724662).

When the Joni Mitchell art director asked if he could have a copy of the song used for the opening credit sequence of “Gosk” (a scratchy Xavier Cugat song slowed down from 78 to 33) (http://www.archive.org/details/JonathanDSteinhoff), I put it on a ten-minute cassette, and for the flipside included my then work-in-progress, a (more uptempo, upbeat) version of “Brand New River of Love”.

James Taylor, one-time boyfriend of Joni Mitchell and very special guest (above all other guests) at an A&E television concert of people rendering Joni Mitchell songs, appears on the 1999 Sting music CD, “Brand New Day”. I surmise that it was via Taylor that Sting experienced “Brand New River of Love”, however, because of my secret importance to the work of so many, it is also possible that it reached Sting in some other way. There can be no doubt that my song led to the Sting song. Nor can there be any doubt that the crying saxophone in my song inspired the crying harmonica in Stevie Wonder’s accompaniment to Sting’s song.

Because Joni Mitchell’s art director also ran a videotape editing and copying business, and because I occasionally created music videos that I needed copied, copies of my videotapes were made by Joni Mitchell’s art director. From certain Sting product that followed, it became abundantly clear that Sting continued to use me as an influence. Though some instances of usage might in and of themselves contain no such implication, the cumulative implication is plain to see (please note: the document this link takes you to begins with this same text found here, but also goes on to include samples of works to illustrate the point).