Joe Sumner is the son of Sting, although the former performer has gone out of his way to avoid this connection since doing background vocals on his pop's pop releases such as the mid '80s Dream of the Blue Turtles. Sumner flies with own group, Fiction Plane, and is said to have forbidden the band's public relations team from even mentioning the Sting connection.

Sumner and cohort Dan Brown decided to start their own band when still barely teenyboppers: their original inspiration was the hard-rocking but nevertheless commercial Nirvana. The first Fiction Plene CD came out in 2003. While trying not to be a chip off the old Sting, Sumner has revealed a similiar facility with political material, scribing the excellent Soldier Machismo on the topic of the 2001 American invasion of Afghanistan. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi