As Neil Armstrong looked out through the small window of his capsule to the moon’s dusty surface during what we might imagine a restless night, he, perhaps, only thought of one set of words, which would be carved into the history books in the upcoming generations. ‘One small step for man,’ uttered Armstrong and continued, ‘one giant leap for mankind.’
A decade after Neil’s small step, someone else was also having a restless night. You see, a young man was having trouble sleeping as his mind was filled with these relentless bass riffs that would go on and on. There also came a few words along with these somewhat haunting riffs, and by the morning, he had the outlines of a song written down.
However, the lyrics, ‘walking around the room,’ sounded a bit stupid to him, so he decided to make a few changes. And then, as the young musician started thinking about what would be more interesting than walking around a room, imaginary lighting bulbs appeared and buzzed right in the corner of his head.
‘Walking on the Moon,’ he thought, as it would surely be much more interesting than someone walking in a room. Well, the rocker in question, who you might have guessed from the headline, was Sting, and he had decided to write a song inspired by Neil Armstrong’s small steps during his lunar exploration.
So, during a chat with Discover Music 2021, the Police icon would discuss how he had come up with the song, ‘Walking on the Moon,’ featured on their second studio record, 1979’s ‘Regatta de Blanc.’
Sting recalled how challenging it was to come up with the song while it rang in his mind the entire night, with the following:
“Walking On The Moon’ was written in the dead of night in a nondescript hotel room in Munich in 1979. I woke from a fitful sleep with this insistent bass riff in my head that wouldn’t allow me to return to sleep; eventually, it would become ‘Walking On The Moon,’ inspired by Neil Armstrong’s lunar exploration, but the original lyrics were probably more prosaic – ‘walking ’round the room,’ perhaps.”
So, the legendary lunar exploration of Neil Armstrong helped Sting get inspired while the Police were making their second album. As the bass riffs wouldn’t let the singer sleep through the night, the astronaut’s steps onto the moon help him find a cure to his musical misery and shape the song we know today.
