By Gerri Hirshey

Over the years the beatings [by teachers] continued. . . . By the time I had my last bottom-bashing in the fourth year, my arse was as hard as a fifty-shilling piss-pot. I had merely asked Father Boyle if the Devil had a dick." -- James Berryman, from A Sting in the Tale, the only authorized biography of Sting (Mirage Publishers, U.K., 2000)

These revelatory days, when everybody's scuffling to burrow deep Behind the Music, wealthy rock stars can shop the best and most exotic journalistic bazaars for official biographers and ghostwriters. Cher, for instance, used astrological charts to help select a well-known novelist (with whom she later parted ways). Sean Combs recently allotted four minutes to interview a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for an "inspirational" bio, but found that journalist unequal to capturing the true Tao of Puffy.

As one of the world's richest rock stars (Forbes has listed him in a blue-chip league with the Beatles , the Stones and the suavely IPO'd David Bowie), Sting could have scrolled the best-seller lists for his personal Boswell. But in keeping with his proud history of enlightened perversity - which includes walking away from the Police at the height of the band's fame, in 1984 - Sting chose a Nowhere Man. James Berryman is a failed British bookie and self-confessed screw-up who knew the star as Gordon Matthew Sumner back at St. Cuthbert's Catholic Grammar School and had the dubious honor of puking up "brownie" (local brown ale) beside him in the back streets of their native Newcastle, England. In his zits-and-all schoolboy memoir - call it a Harry Potter noir - Berryman makes it clear that he does not like Sting's music; he mocks the star's posh lifestyle and rain-forest activism. The crude accompanying drawings of Sting and Berryman as lads make them look startlingly like Beavis and Butt-head.

Even stranger, Sting authorized the book at a time when he didn't need to hire someone to beat him up in print. A Sting in the Tale was written during a period when music-industry seers declared Sting, then forty-five, to be in a serious slump. His 1996 album, Mercury Falling, was gasping for airtime - virtually exiled from the Top Forty - and selling a mere, un-Sting-like million copies in the U.S. With the sale of his longtime label, A&M, to Polygram, then to Universal, Sting was feeling "like a chattel, being bought and sold without any say." At a time like this, he hardly needed a biographer who attacked even his now-forty-nine-year-old hairline. "I do not look forward to the sight of Sting looking like a boiled egg," writes Berryman, "but in all honesty, he is on his way to just that."

So, what were you thinking?

Sting laughs at my incredulity, then inhales deeply from a steaming mug of something he calls "man tea." ("You can't have any, it's brewed only for men. It keeps things . . . flowing.") The sounds of Central Park, sirens and tinkling ice cream bells, drift into his Manhattan living room. He has just arisen, at two in the afternoon - the previous evening, he played the last show of a sold-out U.S. tour in Pennsylvania, in support of his multi-platinum, Grammy-winning album Brand New Day. He sports a spiky case of bed head and is blonder than he's been for a while. He is also - as ever - punctual as a stationmaster, despite having flown home after the show. The voice is soft and road-scuffed.

"It made me cry," he says of Berryman's book. It was so funny, he means. In fact, if you can get through it (much of the natter, in deep Newcastle argot, is about Berryman), the weird little volume is a defining rock document, written from the cranky point of view of the guy who didn't get the money for nothing and the chicks for free. Sting explains its genesis: "Jim Berryman was my very close friend. St. Cuthbert's was a hellhole in more ways than one, and he kept me laughing for seven years. We'd drifted apart about university time. He left school and became a bookie. I'd hear stories about him: He was in debt, in trouble, shady stuff. We met again, got drinking one night . . ." And soon, the tubby tout - who was in fact a very bad bookie - was putting the touch on his old chum. "He gets in trouble, I lend him money," Sting says. "This goes on - he's like this bottomless pit of need. I was tired of giving him money outright - I just might as well burn it."

He thought about alternative funding. Berryman's begging letters "were hilarious. I always have to give him the money. I said, 'You're a funny writer. Why not write the story of our life, those years at school?' People have made money on biographies never having met me. They just read the clippings. And they've made a fortune selling these crap books."

Yes, despite his reputation as a lofty and sometimes ponderous lyricist given to quoting Arthur Koestler, Sting does jokes. And how sweet a prank, this grubby little "sod off" to the print hounds snapping at his heels for so long. But surely, despite this literary giggle, the industry aspersions being cast on Sting's twenty-year career must have been making even this blissfully committed yogi a tad cranky. What was the star's reaction to being "acquired" by Interscope, part of the new Universal mega-company? Jimmy Iovine, head of that label, says Sting's transatlantic dismay was so loud and clear that he grabbed his passport:

"I went to Paris to reassure him. It was a jarring thing, a complicated thing - the smartest people couldn't understand this merger. So I talked to him about my experience as a record producer. I think I understand records that are not necessarily pigeonholed. I gave him my word we'd be as aggressive as we could on the next record. We had a great talk. He's very smart, a very equipped guy."

Sting decided to stay at Interscope, but he realized that the next record would be a litmus test of sorts. He wasn't sure he fit the label or a changing market, and he was sensing "a gradual dwindling of interest" in things Stingian. "I came to the realization that I was no longer considered to be a Top Forty maker," he says. "I was considered adult contemporary, or whatever. I felt that with Mercury. It was a nice record. I think it came out the same week as radio decided it was all alternative. And Sting's not alternative."

He is laughing again in this posh house of mirth, a sprawling pied-a-terre he bought from Billy Joel (Sting also has an estate in England and a home in Tuscany). His friends and fellow yoga devotees Paul Simon and Madonna have homes nearby. His gentleman's style of touring features private-jet commutes that let him sleep in his own bed nearly every night when he's barnstorming the States. In this vast apartment, the former King of Pain and Existential Agita has fashioned a place that seems to whisper "sanctuary."

Even the lower-floor office, fully staffed - daily portal to hairdressers, masseurs, messengers and moguls - thrums softly. Up the spiral stairs is the home of a man of wealth and taste - mission furniture, Arts and Crafts pottery, vibrant Hindu wall hangings. But it is very lived in; here is Sting's wife, actress-producer Trudie Styler, padding around in a white terry robe. In the vestibule, one must step around the training wheels of a tiny purple bike. It belongs to four-year-old Giacomo, the youngest of Sting's four children with Trudie. He has two more children from his first marriage; the oldest is twenty-three. For Sting's entire career, there have been toddlers giggling in the stairwells. And this reformed road dog says he wouldn't - couldn't - have it any other way:

"Home for me is not the bricks and mortar, really. It's a firm relationship, and I've definitely had that for the last eighteen years [with Trudie]. That's kept me sane, even though I'm really barking mad . . . about work."

This muggy September day, the buzz downstairs is a bit more insistent than usual, owing to tomorrow night's free concert in Central Park, sponsored by discount electronics dealer Best Buy, which gave away 25,000 tickets. This December pledge season, PBS is relying on a Sting concert special to maintain the gold standard set by the Three Tenors . . . and Yanni.

A makeup artist has been summoned; later this afternoon, we are headed for the Letterman show. Dave wants Sting to sing the hit - his single "Desert Rose" - the one even preteens were able to credit to that guy Sting on VH1's Rock of Ages. Later today, when we pull up to the Letterman stage door, Sting will be genuinely startled at the hubbub created by forty or so fans and paparazzi tipping the hastily placed barricades. From the front seat, he will wonder aloud: "Is that for me?" After the show, they will chase his car down the street.

Thus, in the wake of his alleged slump, the artist is enjoying his last laugh. It is a gentle one, and not at all bitter. "I'm most happy at the moment because we have a single in the Top Twenty, an album in the Top Ten or Twenty, and it's been achieved not by obeying any formula - a Britney Spears, 'N Sync," he says. "In fact, it's the opposite. I've made a record that's nothing like anything that's out there. To come out of left field is thrilling to me."

For the complete story, checkout RS 854, on newsstands now.

Contributing editor Gerri Hirshey wrote about stars and their cars in RS 840.