It's several Mondays ago, nighttime. It's not raining, but it's cold. I enter the Paramount Theatre, walk down the aisle, find my seat, sit down, and look up to see Sting on the stage. He is at the end of his middle years, he is soon to be an old man, and he is in the middle of a song that's unknown to me. The song seems to go on forever. The entire audience is seated and serenely watching the rock star of its youth perform with his band (drummer, two guitarists, violinist, and female singer) a song that's neither bad nor good, and certainly not from the glory days of the Police or even the early days of Sting's less-glorious solo career.

The song finally ends, but before singing the next one, he offers an introduction: "I often do not know the words of a song until I hear the music. The music tells me the words. With my next song, the music, which I listened to on an iPod—yes, this is a plug—told me it is about a car thief who steals expensive cars. The thief also has psychic powers." (The audience laughs in admiration of this clever twist.) "While driving, he can picture in his mind the life of the owner of the car he has stolen. In this particular case, the owner of the car is a wealthy business executive who has a wife, a family, and... a mistress." The song begins, and, like the previous one, seems overlong. When finally done, Sting informs us that his next one is about a fox that killed some chickens at his estate: "Yes, the chickens were killed, but we must respect the fox. It is, after all, just being a fox." This fox song is also not short.

It is a long time before Sting sings a song that I and everyone else recognize: "Driven to Tears." The whole audience explodes from its seats and starts dancing. One woman next to me, a lawyer or accountant, leaves the seating area and gets freaky in the aisle—popping knees, jerking arms, rolling head, swirling hips. This is why we are here—to relive the long lost past. Sting ends "Driven to Tears" (it was way too short), sings one more tune from his peak period, "Fortress Around Your Heart" (it's the last track on his first solo album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles), and returns to those long songs that need long introductions.

This one, he tells us, is about his wife, whom he has been faithful to for nearly three decades. "How was I able to do this, you might ask. Because I gave her everything. You see, she could destroy me if she wanted to. So if you hope to be with someone for a long time, you have to be totally vulnerable." (I'm sure half the people in the Paramount have been through a divorce and feel this advice has arrived a little too late.) The song about his wife is possibly one of the longest songs in the world.

What this concert made clear is a big split between Sting and his audience. He wants to sing his newish stuff; we want to hear the golden oldies. Indeed, before Sting started singing about his wife forever, an exasperated middle-aged man in the audience yelled, "Roxanne!"—meaning he, and all of us, would prefer the tune about the most famous prostitute in rock. It was not always like this—us versus him. There was a time when Sting was one with his audience.

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, I saw Sting perform in Harare, Zimbabwe, at the then-new and Chinese-designed/built National Sports Stadium. (A quick note: There was at the time deep unhappiness about the use of Chinese labor to construct this stadium. Indeed, at one point, people in the townships near the construction site began claiming that their dogs were disappearing and pointing to the Chinese laborers as the culprits: "Chinese Eating Our Dogs," read the headlines of newspapers. African dogs were certainly surprised and confused by all of the love and concern that black Africans suddenly expressed for their kind.)

Now I must describe one of the serious moments of that show. After the crowd had quieted down, Sting began singing "They Dance Alone," a tune about Argentinean and Chilean women whose men (husbands, fathers, sons) were "disappeared" by dictators. As Sting sang the protest song (it was, after all, the Human Rights Now! concert—Bruce Springsteen also played), one by one, women holding pictures of the "disappeared" men walked on the stage. What was so impressive was the fact that these women had been flown in from South America (practically another planet) just for this song, which lasted no longer than 10 minutes. When it was over—when we got the message (South America, like Southern Africa, is fucked for a lot of people)—the festivities resumed and we danced.

Now let us go back to the previous year, 1987: Paul Simon's Graceland Tour. This show took place at Rufaro Stadium (an old stadium in a poorer part of town), cost only five Zim dollars (which was nothing, even back then), and happened from noon to dusk. This concert was very well organized. It started on time, there were no technical difficulties, and Simon sang his entire Graceland album effortlessly ("My traveling companion is 9 years old/He is the child of my first marriage").

The concert ended with the great South African jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela (known in the United States for his 1968 hit "Grazing in the Grass") performing his deep tune "Stimela (Coal Train)": "There is a train that comes from Namibia and Malawi/There is a train that comes from Zambia and Zimbabwe/There is a train that comes from Angola and Mozambique/From Lesotho, from Botswana, from Swaziland/From all the hinterland of Southern and Central Africa/This train carries young and old, African men/Who are conscripted to come and work on contract/In the golden mineral mines of Johannesburg and its surrounding metropolis, 16 hours or more a day/For almost no pay." As Masekela sang these words, a breeze entered the stadium and cooled the sun-baked audience. Even the weather knew this was one of the deepest songs in Africa.

Simon's concert went smoothly (not a single hitch!) because it was organized and financed by a major capitalist record corporation and not the "Marxist" Zimbabwean government. I'm sure the record corporation paid the government a fat fee to stay away from all matters concerning the concert, knowing full well that nothing but a total mess could come out of an involvement with them. (I hated the Zimbabwean government at that time because it was dominated by one political party, ZANU PF, which had abandoned democracy in 1987 to form a one-party state—you can have capitalism without democracy, this is China today, but you cannot have Marxism without democracy.)

Gregory Isaacs's concert, which happened at the same stadium the following year, was, regrettably, organized by the government. There is no way to adequately describe this disaster. From beginning to end, nothing went right. The show was scheduled for noon, but when my friends (my girlfriend, Chipo, and my sister's boyfriend, a graffiti artist from London named the Artful Dodger) and I arrived at the stadium, around 11 a.m., we found much to our surprise that the stage was entirely empty—no sound system, no instruments, no musicians. It was just a bare platform. Had we and 2,000 other people standing on the field and sitting on the stands come on the wrong day? We asked around. Everyone was positive the show was happening that day, but there hadn't even been a sound check (which usually takes forever). And where were the fucking speakers? Was the reggae superstar Gregory "the Lonely Lover" Isaacs even in town? He is in town, someone assured us. He had been spotted at the Sheraton by several fans who wanted him to sign their copies of Night Nurse. But how could this be? There is nothing on the stage. The main show is supposed to begin in an hour. This made no bloody sense.

At around 5 p.m., the stage remained empty. Forty thousand people had filled the stadium. Unlike the Paul Simon show, the tickets for the Lonely Lover had not been subsidized by an American record corporation (Simon did not come to Zimbabwe to make money, he came here to shoot a big commercial for his album). And, again, unlike Simon's show, this concert actually attracted poor black Africans from the townships. (Simon's drew the suburban well-to-do.) So Rufaro Stadium was packed with poor people who had paid a fortune to look at an empty stage. Let's not even mention the high unemployment rate in the country, or all of the promises the government had broken (free education, free health care, higher standard of living).

At 6 p.m., we left the growing tension on the field and took refuge in the highest part of the southern stands. Suddenly, hundreds of men on the field started running after something. They thundered this way and that, looking like a herd of furious water buffalo. It took us a moment to realize what was happening: They were pursuing a homemade soccer ball. Rufaro Stadium was primarily a soccer stadium, and some genius had decided it would be a great idea to make a ball out of plastic and rubber and throw it on the soccer field. In no time, any man who saw the ball was chasing and kicking it in every direction. There were no goals in this hellish game—just running, booting, yelling, pushing, stumbling. And if the ball came in your direction, you ran away from it, because the stampede would surely crush the life from you.

Realizing that the situation was becoming dangerous, the police entered the scene, grabbed a young man who had just kicked the ball, handcuffed him, and began leading him to the area where police vehicles were parked. But before they could throw him into the back of a police wagon, they were encircled by Gregory Isaacs's mad fans and severely beaten. The young man was liberated and lifted into the air for the stadium crowd to cheer. They roared. Rufaro had entered the realm of lawlessness. The police knew they were powerless and left. At 8 p.m., the stage was still empty.

At around 11 p.m., a truck slowly entered the chaos and parked by the stage. People cooled down a little. Something was actually happening. A crew of 10 or so men moved small speakers from the truck to the stage. Some instruments were also placed on the stage. An hour later, musicians appeared, plugged their instruments into the speakers, and began to play music that nobody could hear. These speakers were for a nightclub, not for a stadium. The Lonely Lover (who had been smuggled into the stadium by secret agents) finally walked onto the stage (fearing a political explosion, the president of the country had shown the reggae star only two paths, one to the stadium, the other to a jail cell) and began singing his hits. But only those who were right in front of him could hear the music. For the rest of us, it was like listening to fleas singing at the bottom of a tin can.

Let us return to the Human Rights Now! concert—1988, Sting and, more importantly to us, Springsteen at the National Sports Stadium. En route to the show, I found myself between two beautiful Swedish women in the back of a Land Rover. On my left was Anna and on my right was her sister, Sandra. Both were sleeping, and outside our car was the cold Botswana desert. We had stopped here around dusk to rest for the night. The next day, we would resume our journey to Harare. Because Anna and Sandra both had their backs to me, and because I was drunk, I couldn't tell which one I was on romantic terms with—it was actually Sandra. So I made a guess, put my arms around one of them, and fell asleep. The next morning, I woke up to find Anna in my arms and not Sandra. Sandra was not happy with this situation, nor Anna. I tried to explain the mistake, but it was too late. Sandra would not kiss me anymore.

As we drove across the desert, the radio caught a station in an unknown country. The language spoken by the DJ confused my ears. Was this Zambian? Then something wonderful happened. The DJ speaking the strange language said, "U2" and began playing "A Sort of Homecoming." "And you know it's time to go/Through the sleet and driving snow/Across the fields of mourning/Light in the distance..." The effect of these words were powerful at that moment, as we were surrounded by sunlight, clear skies, and an earth that had been baked to dust.

We arrived in Harare at around 6 p.m., parked at my house in Chisipite, and headed to the Human Rights Now! concert. I was still on very bad terms with the Swedish sisters. I did everything to cheer them up, but they were resolutely gloomy. I had spoiled the trip. I was supposed to be with Sandra. Do all Swedish women look alike to Africans? As we waited in line to enter the stadium, it was announced that Bruce Springsteen would be on the stage momentarily. From where I stood, I could see the stage and the packed field. This event was very well organized. Before entering the stadium, I told Sandra that I doubted very much that Bruce Springsteen would sing "Born in the USA." That would be arrogant, if not imperialistic, of him. She agreed with this opinion. Suddenly, the Boss hit the stage and opened with... "Born in the USA." The Africans went nuts. Everyone knew the song by heart. We sang along with Bruce. We were all proud to be born in America. "Got in a little hometown jam/So they put a rifle in my hand/Sent me off to a foreign land/To go and kill the yellow man." These were the days of miracles and wonder.