Dire Straits FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) Listing - Version 1.1
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the FAQ listing for the Dire Straits mailing list,
Dire-Straits@merrimack.edu
Last Updated : April 6, 1994.
This is the entire document.
(Postings are split into 3 parts to reduce file size.)
New in this Version of the FAQ
-------------------------------
Mailing list member survey
ftp site max.physics.sunysb.edu:/pub/gene/Dire.Straits.gz ftp.uwp.edu
Mark Knopfler guitar information
Miscellaneous Q&A : Acronym Glossary
Italian Fan Club Address
General Information :
---------------------
An Index is to be added in future releases to aid in searching the document.
The FAQ needs homes ! If you have an ftp site available, please give our FAQ
a places to live. Contact me at fwong@tc.fluke.com if you are willing to
house this FAQ.
The FAQ is available at the following ftp sites :
--------------------------------------------------
The FAQ is now available both by anonymous FTP and WWW:
FTP: max.physics.sunysb.edu:/pub/gene/Dire.Straits.gz (means gzipped)
WWW: http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/~gene/DS.html
FTP: ftp.uwp.edu /pub/music
The FAQ will be posted on a monthly basis to rec.music.info and rec.answers
New in this Version of the FAQ
-------------------------------
Mailing list member survey
Contents :
Part 1
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1) Administrative information
2) News
3) Dire Straits Information Service (DSIS)
4) Books & Magazine and Newspaper Articles
5) DIRE STRAITS FACT FILE
6) Miscellaneous Q & A
Part 2
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7) Discography
8) Bootleg Discography & Ratings
9) Performances with Other Artists
10) All-Music Guides
Part 3
--------
11) Interviews
12) Archives, Lyrics, Guitar Chords & Tabs, Bitmap Pictures
Dire Straits FAQ Listing - Part 1 of 3
------------------------------------------
1.) Administrative Information
---------------------------
This FAQ was created by Frank Wong (email fwong@tc.fluke.com) from information
posted to the Dire Straits Mailing List.
All additions and corrections should be sent to Frank.
This FAQ belongs to the Dire Straits mailing list, and should not be copied,
altered or sold for profit.
Thanks also to all those who have contributed to the Dire Straits mailing
list.
What is the Dire Straits mailing list ?
The Dire Straits mailing list allows fans of the rock group Dire Straits to
communicate with each other via email. Email sent to the mailing list is
forwarded to members of the list. The mailing list serves as a forum for
discussion of Dire Straits, their music, and related topics.
At present there are approximately 200 members of the list.
How do I subscribe to the Dire Straits mailing list ?
Send an email message to dire-straits-request@merrimack.edu with the word
SUBSCRIBE in the body of your message.
Commands you can send to dire-straits-request@merrimack.edu are:
SUBSCRIBE - to subscribe to a mailing list
SIGNOFF - to remove yourself from a mailing list
REVIEW - to get a list of subscribers
QUERY - to get the status of your entry on the list
SET NOMAIL - to remain on the list but not receive mail
SET MAIL - to reverse the NOMAIL setting
SET CONCEAL - to conceal yourself from REVIEW listings
SET NOCONCEAL - to reverse the CONCEAL setting
SET NOREPRO - to prevent the list from sending you your own
postings
SET REPRO - to reverse the NOREPRO setting
LIST - to get a list of mailing lists available on this
host
HELP - to receive a help file
How do I remove myself from the mailing list ?
Send an email message to dire-straits-request@merrimack.edu with the word
SIGNOFF in the body of your message.
Please make sure that your send the message to :
dire-straits-request@merrimack.edu
If you leave out the word "request" your mail will go to everyone on the
list. You will not be removed from the list, and you will end up cluttering
mailboxes of countless people with junk mail. Please use the correct address !
If you send a SIGNOFF request to the mailing list and continue to receive
mail, please be patient, requests are not immediate and may take a few days.
If you still cannot seem to remove your self from the mailing list, please
send email to the list owner , rand@merrimack.edu , and he will remove you
manually from the list. Please only send email to Rand if you are
unsuccessful on repeated SIGNOFF attempts.
How do I send mail to the Dire Straits mailing list ?
Send your email message to dire-straits@merrimack.edu
Your first message to the list should be a completed List Member Survey,
see below for a sample survey.
What topics can I discuss on the Dire Straits mailing list ?
In general any topics related to Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler, or the solo
projects of other band members can be discussed. Topics in the past have
included lyrics discussion, tour information, collaborations with other
artists, book reviews, interviews, and many others. Please don't be shy,
create your own topic for discussion.
What is the proper etiquette on the Dire Straits mailing list ?
People on the list, though sometimes quiet, are a very polite group. Please
treat people with respect and you will receive the same. All flame wars should
be taken to email.
New members to the mailing list are asked to fill out a survey to introduce
themselves to others. Below is a sample survey. Feel free to add your own
headings, if the suggested ones are not enough.
Dire Straits Mailing List Memmber Survey
-----------------------------------------
Full Name: Frank Wong
Email Address: fwong@tc.fluke.com
How did you find out about Dire Straits mail list ? From someone on rec.music
Present Location:Fluke Corporation Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.
Home Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
School Attended:University Of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Occupation: Mechanical Engineer
Computer: SUN Sparcstation 2
Operating Sys: SUN OS 4.1.3
News Reader: nn
Mail Reader: Sun Mailtool
First DS Show: June 24,1985 Ottawa Civic Center BIA Tour
Fav DS Shows: Being in the floor,10 feet away from DS in Ottawa, March 14 1992
Being in first row, front center, Ottawa, March 16, 1992
Last DS Show: March 14 & 16 1992 , Ottawa Civic Center
First DS Song heard: Sultans of Swing 1979
Fav DS Release: I like them all, but Alchemy, because I feel DS is best live.
Fav DS Song: Tunnel of Love from the Houston Concert 1985, because MK tells
a story about the Spanish City, and the end solos are long&great
This song also speaks to me about growing up, love, rock n roll,
and just makes me feel good when I hear it. The guitar is so
lyrical and beautiful.
Fav DS Bootleg: Houston 1985, Summit Theatre
No. of DS releases you own: All of them
No. of DS Bootlegs you own: 31 and always looking for more
Degree of fanaticism : I am a complete DS fanatic. They are my #1 group
Comments: MK is a great guitarist, his guitar is lyrical and vocal
DS is best heard live, because the arrangements & solos are
longer,improved and changed over studio releases.
After I saw DS live I was blown away. Better than the albums!
Hope to hear see all list members fill out the survey, (It's a pre-requisite
to contributing and staying on the list :} )
2.) News
-----------
What is the latest news on Dire Straits or other band members ?
Dire Straits finished their almost 300 show 2 year On Every Street world
tour in 1992, and the band is taking a break right now to work on individual
projects. It is most likely they will not go on another mammoth tour in a
long time (5 years + ) , if ever again.
Mark Knopfler released a collection of his movie soundtrack instrumental
work called Screenplaying, in Oct. 1993. There are no new tracks on the
release, all are available on the already released soundtracks Local Hero,
Cal, The Princess Bride, and Last Exit To Brooklyn.
There is also a CD single associated with Screenplaying, which contains the
tracks Local Hero: Wild Theme, and Comfort & Joy. (which was previously
unavailable on CD).
>From a list of upcoming CD releases in the USA for the next month (April `94) :
The Chieftains "THE CHIEFTAINS AND FRIENDS". Includes guest appearances by Ry
Cooder, the Rolling Stones, Peter Gabriel, Van Morrison, and MARK KNOPFLER.
MARK KNOPFLER was just in Nashville and he played on some songs for the
new Sonny Landreth album. (March 26, 1994.)
Mark Knopfler plays on the Aaron Neville cover version of "Don't Fall Apart
On Me Tonight", written by Bob Dylan, on Aaron Neville's latest album.
Mark Knopfler also played on the original version with Bob Dylan, on the
album "Infidels" , 1983.
David Knopfler's CD , The Giver , is being released on May 17, 1994.
MK is booked to team up with Nick Lowe and Paul Carrack for an MK solo album.
Mary Chapin Carpenter does a cover version of "The Bug" on her latest album.
The Indigo Girls do a cover version of "Romeo And Juliet" on their album
"Rites of Passage"
3.) Dire Straits Information Service (DSIS)
-------------------------------------------
Is there a Dire Straits fan club ?
Dire Straits' management company operates a newsletter called DSIS.
Dire Straits Information Service.
To subscribe to DSIS just send a letter including your return address to:
Dire Straits Information Service
16 Lambton Place
London W11 2SH
They'll send you the latest newsletter They'll also put you
on their mailing list, so you will receive another newsletter as soon as they
start it up again and you can pay your dues ($15 U.S.).
It seems like a really informative thing, complete with news on band
members, a buy/sell/exchange column, and preview ticket sales when DS goes
on tour.
There are also contests in which Dire Straits merchandise are awarded as
prizes.
It's a must for all serious fans, starving of Dire Straits news and
information
There is an Italian Fan Club.
For information send a postcard, with your name and address to :
Solid Rock
C/O Giancarlo Passarella
Via Salutati
750126 Firenze Italy
4.) Books & Articles
-----------------------
What Dire Straits books are available ?
What magazine and newspaper articles are available ?
Thanks to Heather York-Marshall, Eric Troy and Frank Wong for this book
information.
Dire Straits: On Every Street_ (Piano/vocal/chords).
Miami: CPP/Belwin, 1991. [No ISBN] P0939SMX.
Price: USA: $16.95. Canada: $23.95
[From Belle Air Music, London, Ontario]
Mark Knopfler, Chet Atkins: Neck and Neck_ (Guitar tab edition).
Miami: CPP/Belwin, 1990. [No ISBN] P0906GTX.
Price: USA: $16.95. Canada: $23.95
[From Belle Air Music, London, Ontario]
(Address for CPP/Belwin: 15800 nw 48th ave., Miami, FL 33014)
Muiscal Books or Guitar TAB Books
----------------------------------
Distributed by Music Sales Ltd. 8/9 Frith St. , London W1V 5TZ, England.
82 Love Over Gold ISBN0.7119.0210.0,order#AM32145 (TAB)
84 Alchemy ISBN0.7119.0496.0,order#AM36500 (TAB)
88 Money for Nothing P0817SMX (TAB)
91 On Every Street P0939SMX (TAB)
Kamin, Philip - Dire Straits HL8500183205
This is a thin mostly photos type rock book, with minimal text.
Secrets From The Masters : Conversations With 40 Great Guitar Players"
$19.95 US ISBN 0 87930-260-7
This reminds me to mention : I just read a great interview of MK, while in
the bookstore this weekend. The interview is in the book
"Secrets From The Masters : Conversations With 40 Great Guitar Players" ,
from interviews that appeared in Guitar Player magazine.
An excellent interview. MK talks about technical stuff, how he learned to play
guitar, his influences (JJ Cale, Beatles, Kinks, BB King, Chet etc. etc.).
Talks about his first guitar, types of strings he uses, that he likes
F & D Minor scales, as well as B-Minor. All sorts of guitar goodies.
I was tempted to buy the book just for the 2 pages on MK.
There's interviews with Clapton, Malmstein, SRV, Van Halen, and all the greats.
Dire Straits : Making Movies Publish Date: 1980
ISBN 0-89898-051-8
Publisher : Almo Publications, Hollywood CA
Subject: Rock Musicians - Great Britain - Biography
Price: $7.95
Dire Straits Publish Date: 02/1987
ISBN 0-345-33885-5
Publisher : Ballantine Books, Incorporated New York, NY
Subject:
Price: $2.95
Dire Straits_ by Mike Oldfield. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1984.
ISBN: 0-283-98990-4 (hardcover)
0-283-98995-5 (softcover)
Price: UK 7.95 (softcover).
Out of print - check used book stores or libraries. (I paid CDN $4.50
in a used book store.)
Mark Knopfler: An Unauthorized Biography_ by Myles Palmer.
London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1991.
ISBN: 0 283 99937 3 (hardcover)
Price: UK 15.99. Canada: $39.99
Still in print as of February 1994.
Written in My Soul: Rock's Great Songwriters Talk About Creating
Their Music_ by Bill Flanagan. Chicago, New York: Contemporary Books,
1986. Chapter on "Emigrants/Mark Knopfler", pages 366-368; 394-403.
ISBN 0809251531.
(I got this from the London Public Library; it's also in the
University of Toronto Music Library, call number:
ML3534.F6 1986)
For those of you who haven't heard all of this before ......
There are two books that I know of about Dire Straits. Here's
the info for each, followed by my opinions:
Oldfield, Michael. _Dire Straits_. London (UK): Sidgwick &
Jackson, 1984. 152 pages.
ISBN 0-283-98990-4 (hardcover)
0-283-98995-5 (softcover)
7.95 UK pounds softcover
I think this is out-of-print. I have found copies in public libraries,
and I found a used copy in a used book&record store, for $4.50 Canadian.
There's also an American edition, but I don't have the details. Lots of
black & white photos.
This was written by someone who went to journalism school with MK and who
was on tours with DS, so it has first-hand observations. The cover says
it was "written in co-operation with the band." It's more frank than I
expected from an "authorized" type of book. For instance Oldfield doesn't
gloss over David Knopfler's departure from the band (which is about
the only bit of controversy anybody can find) -- but gives several points
of view -- David's, Mark's, and other band and crew members'.
Oldfield's book gives useful background about the band members, the band's
development, the songs, tours and recording sessions. It covers the period
up to _Alchemy_. It's definitely worth getting if you can find it.
================================================================
Palmer, Myles. _Mark Knopfler: An Unauthorized Biography_.
London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1991. 280 p.
ISBN 0283 99937 3 (hardcover)
15.99 UK pounds hardcover
$39.99 CDN in Canada
I would only recommend this to die-hard, obsessed DS fans, and then
reluctantly. It's over-priced and weak on content. Palmer relies a lot on
newspaper, tv and radio interviews and reviews. The transcripts of the
interviews are the best parts of the book. Palmer doesn't have any sources
close to Knopfler or the band, and doesn't seem to be particularly
insightful himself. Try borrowing it from a library if you're still
interested; or check out used book stores. (The University of Toronto
Music Library has it -- probably other public and academic libraries
have it too.) (I ordered it from a university bookstore in Canada--
it took about 3 months to arrive.)
(Oh yeah, and it has some inaccuracies too, which makes it hard
to have confidence in anything in the book not corroborated
elsewhere.)
Has a few b&w photos (8 pages), some of which I'd seen before.
Has anyone else read this? What do you think? My opinion of the Palmer
book is probably quite negative because it's a big disappointment after
the Oldfield book -- I was hoping for something in the same vein and of
similar quality to bring it up to date. If I hadn't already read the
Oldfield book I might not have been so hard on Palmer's. So if anyone
else has a more balanced opinion, please let us know!
Here's the address for Sidgwick & Jackson (publishers of both books), taken
from the Palmer book: 18-21 Cavaye Place
London, UK SW10 9PG
One entertaining passage in the Myles Palmer book (described in
Andrew Bernstein's message yesterday) describes
an interview someone did with both Randy Newman and Knopfler.
Thought you might enjoy it, since it involves a few of the
musicians listed on people's "Fave non-DS" lists. Here goes:
(Remember, it's NEWMAN talking in this passage.)
Newman is a sharp and irreverent talker who hit
some highly entertaining verbal riffs in this interview:
'You know I used to be against world peace until U2 came
out for it? Then the scales just fell from my eyes. Did
you see them walking down those streets just soaking up
America? And when they're singing with those black people?
Do you know that black people just love their music? They
like U2 better than they like Marvin Gaye. Bono's
conducting those black people and they're doing just what
he says ... Blacks love John Cougar too. They're so glad
he came to their town. They say, "Thank you for bringing
us the gift of your music" ... There's no point having a
go at U2. It's like spitballs against a battleship. I
won't be laughing when Bono buys me.'
Newman then said to his friend [Knopfler], 'Now
I've got you worried. You think I might trick you into
saying something bad about U2. I don't worry about
something like that, but you have to. You'd have
something nice to say about Hitler or ... David Crosby
or someone.'
True to form, Knopfler has something nice to say about Guns'n'Roses
(with a little twist at the end, though):
'I think it's good that the kids in Guns'n'Roses are
seriously in love with it [rock'n'roll],' said Knopfler.
'They're into throwing shapes and doing it like
traditional rock'n'rollers. The obligatory bottle of
Jack Daniels on the amp, the wailing Les Paul. I think
it's great. It's like U2 suddenly discovering R&B. Part
of the attraction for me is the same as when the Rolling
Stones started and Mick saw Tina Turner and went for it,
the whole thing.
'It's a love affair, and just because it's
sometimes not as accomplished as you would like to
hear, that doesn't matter [....]'
(Pages 246-249. The text of the book is a bit convoluted, but I think this
interview came from _Q_ Magazine, during promotion of Newman's _Land of
Dreams_ record (1988).)
Magazine and Newspaper Articles
-------------------------------
Media info.
91 dire straits (Warner Bros. 7 pages w/MK, DS photos, folder)
91 Oct. - Q Magazine 16-page DS interview booklet
Articles
79 4/5 McLane, Daisann - "Dire Straits: a rock & roll fairy tale,"
Rolling Stone #288, pp. 10, 33-34
83 1/20 Loder, Kurt - "Mark Knopfler's Dire Straits," Rolling Stone
#387, pp. 10, 12, 62
85 11/21 Tucker, Ken and David Fricke - "Fearless Leader: Dire
Straits' Mark Knopfler takes command," Rolling Stone #461, pp.
36-37, 40, 42, 98, 100 (MK on cover)
86 2/25 Tucker, Ken - "Mark Knopfler: rock's most unlikely star; Up for
eight Grammies, leader of Dire Straits shy, subtle, stubborn,"
The Ottawa Citizen, p. C8
86 Flanagan, Bill - "Mark Knopfler," Written in My Soul, pp. 395-403
88 9/23 Morse, Steve - "Knopfler happy to take break from limelight,"
The Ottawa Citizen, p. B8
90 3/8 - "Knopfler sing the blues," The Calgary Herald (from the
Edmonton Journal), p. F5
90 3/12 Erskine, Evelyn - "Knopfler heads back to Dire Straits; The
Notting Hillbillies takes rock star back to the beginning so he
can start again," The Ottawa Citizen, p. B7
90 7/15 Hurst, Jack - "Rough-cut gem from The Notting Hillbillies;
London-based country band puts out quaint, rootsy album," The
Edmonton Journal, p. D2
90 9/1 - "Mr. Guitar notices his influence," The Calgary Herald (from
Herald News Services), Entertainment section
90 9/27 Edwards, Jack - "BC-Atkins, ADV," Canadian Press Newswire,
16:36 Eastern Time
90 White, Timothy - In the Studio (MK interview), 6 pages
91 8/9 Robinson, Dave - rec.music.reviews ("Calling Elvis" review), 1
page
91 8/14 - "Dire Straits' first LP in six years: Autumn's Hottest?,"
Adresseavisen (Trondheim, Norway), 1 page
91 10 Sandall, Robert - "Ruminative Dire Straits: on every street, in
every home," Q magazine (OES review), 1 page
91 11/5 Walsh, A. - rec.music.reviews (OES review), 1 page
92 1/31 Sady, Gene - (Sacramento, CA show 1/30/92 review), 1 page
92 2/23 Graff, Gary - "Second Time Around for Dire Straits," The Denver
Post, 1 page
92 3/3 Cochrane, Alan - "BC-Weekend-Exchange-Knopfler," Canadian Press
Newswire, 2 pages
92 3/4 Sakamoto, John - "STRAITS' FUTURE ADDS UP; STAT'S SHOWBIZ!," The
Toronto Sun, p. 50
92 3/16 Krewen, Nick - "Mark Knopfler credits perseverance for his
group's long success; Strait talk," The Hamilton/ Burlington
Spectator, p. C1
92 3/16 Saxberg, Lynn - "SAILING THROUGH DIRE STRAITS; Band charts
inventive new course through old songs," The Ottawa Citizen, p.
C9
92 3/27 Graff, Gary - "STRAIT TALK; Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits are
back with a new album and a new approach," The Edmonton Journal,
p. C3
93 5/10 Riles, Beau - (RockLine interview w/MK), 12 pages
5.) Dire Straits Fact File
---------------------------
How was Dire Straits formed ? What is the bands' history ?
Read the Dire Straits Fact File, which was taken from the On Every Street
official tour program. The information in the fact file has also appeared in
press releases. It is reproduced here without permission.
DIRE STRAITS FACT FILE
----------------------
JUNE-NOVEMBER 1977
It's less than a year after The Sex Pistols released Anarchy in the UK.
Teacher Mark Knopfler (guitar/vocals, born 12 August 1949), his younger
brother, social worker David Knopfler (guitar - they were born in Glasgow
and grew up in Newcastle) and sociology student John Illsley (bass, born 24
June 1949) are sharing a flat in Deptford, South London. They start rehearsing
Mark's songs and are soon joined by Pick Withers, formerly house drummer at
Dave Edmund's Rockfield studios.
Under the name of Mark's previous band, Cafe Racers, the line-up debuts at a
punk festival, headlined by Squeeze, on waste ground behind Farrar House. A
friend of Pick observes their sorry financial condition and says they should
call themselves Dire Straits, which they do for their second gig -
supporting Squeeze at the locally legendary Albany Theatre.
They scrape together 120 pounds to record a demo and take it to BBC Radio
London DJ Charlie Gillett, a renowned talent-spotter. He plays the tape on his
Honky Tonk show. Phonogram A&R man John Stainze is listening and, in short
order, Dire Straits are signed to the Vertigo label.
DECEMBER 1977
Stainze contacts Ed Bicknell, former drummer in Jess Conrad's band turned
agent at NEWS, and asks him to book gigs for the band. As soon as he's seen
them play, he offers to manage them. They reach "an informal agreement" and Ed
gets them on Talking Heads' first British tour as support act in the following
January.
14 FEBRUARY - 8 MARCH 1978
Dire Straits record their first LP at Basing Street Studios, London,
produced by Muff Winwood. It includes "Sultans of Swing" , "Water of Love" and
"Six Blade Knife". Total budget is 12,500 pounds - including artwork
MARCH - NOVEMBER 1978
Constant live work - Marquee residency, tours of UK, France, Holland, and
Germany to rapidly increasing audiences. Despite enthusiastic reviews and
responses everywhere, their first single, "Sultans of Swing" and self-
titled album merely drop into the charts and drop out again.
The group signs to Warner Brothers for the USA, but even before their album is
released there, Knopfler visits Muscle Shoals studios to play on a Mavis
Staples session produced by Jerry Wexler (whose tack record includes Aretha
Franklin, The Drifters, Ray Charles). Wexler and Muscle Shoals keyboard player
Barry Beckett agree to produce their second album..
27 NOVEMBER 1978 - 10 JANUARY 1979
They record "Communique" (including "Lady Writer" and "Once Upon A Time In The
West") at Compass Point Studios, Nassau Bahamas. Meanwhile the Dire Straits
album gives them their first Number 1 - in Australia - and climbs steadily
towards the Top 10's in North America and Europe.
23 FEBRUARY - 3 APRIL 1979
Dire Straits first North American tour comprises 51 sold-out shows in 38 days,
not to mention 300 interviews. Mark sessions for Steely Dan's "Gaucho"
album. While they're on the road, "Sultans' of Swing" reaches Number 4 and the
first album Number 2. When they play Los Angeles, Bob Dylan is in the audience
and afterwards he asks Mark and Pick to play on his next album ("Slow Train
Coming", his first born-again statement it transpires, recorded with Wexler
and Beckett at Muscle Shoals May 1-12).
Back home in Britain, though a little later than in America, reissued "Sultans
of Swing" takes off to Number 8, stirring the Dire Straits album to peak
belatedly at Number 5 during a chart stay of 130 weeks.
JUNE - DECEMBER 1979
"Communique" is released and becomes an instant worldwide hit (UK 5, US 11,
the first album to ever enter the German chart at Number 1), usually sharing
Top 10's with the extraordinarily durable first album. Tours of Britain,
America and Europe sell out, but after pre-Christmas concerts in Dublin,
Belfast, and London, Dire Straits announce a six-month break to rest.
JUNE - JULY 1980
The band record "Making Movies" (including "Tunnel of Love", "Solid Rock",
"Skateaway" and "Romeo And Juliet") at The Power Station, New York, with
producer Jimmy Iovine. He had been engineer/mixer on Springsteen's "Born To
Run" and producer on Patti Smith's "Easter". E Street Band pianist Roy
Bittan plays keyboards on the album, David Knopfler leaves for a solo career.
SEPTEMBER 1980 - JULY 1981
Auditions produce a replacement guitarist in Hal Lindes from California and
a keyboard player in Alan Clark from Durham (born 5 March 1952). After the
17 October release of "Making Movies", the band tour North America,
Australia and New Zealand and Europe (they draw 250,000 to their Italian
concerts alone). Despite their live success "Making Movies" does less than its
predecessors in the States (Number 19), but in the UK the hit single "Romeo
And Juliet" lifts it to Number 4, four months after release.
MARCH - JUNE 1982
They record "Love Over Gold" in New York, Mark producing, backed up by
engineer Neil Dorfsman. The first side (in LP-era-speak) comprises just two
songs, "Telegraph Road" and "Private Investigations". ("Private Dancer",
omitted from the album, was later chosen as the title track of the 1984
album which relaunched Tina Turner's career). Soon afterwards, Pick Withers
leaves the band, expressing a desire to play jazz.
JULY 1982
Mark records his first movie soundtrack for the low budget David Puttnam
production "Local Hero" (in part working on the set). He got the job after
Ed Bicknell punted copies of "Making Movies" round various film producers (the
album reaches number 14 in the UK the following year).
Between work on "Love Over Gold" and "Local Hero", the demand for Mark's
services as a guitarist reaches a new pitch as he records sessions for Van
Morrison.
AUGUST 1982 - JULY 1983
"Private Investigations" is Dire Straits' biggest UK hit to date
(Number 2), despite being radio-unfriendly at seven minutes long. "Love Over
Gold" is Number 1 album for a month, their first home chart-topper, and
maintains the band's progress all over the world (Number 1 in 16 countries)
except that in America, like "Making Movies" it stalls at 19.
Terry Williams, formerly of Man and Dave Edmund's Rockpile, takes over the
drum stool in September and immediately work on Dire Straits' "Twisting By The
Pool" rock `n' roll EP (released in February). He and Mark then record with
Phil Everly in London before Dire Straits hit the road.
The band's conquests include the highest-grossing tour of Australia by any
band to that point, the largest public gathering ever in New Zealand (62,000
in Auckland) and their first trip to Japan.
In April - May, Mark takes time out to undertake his first production work
with another artist (apart from the "Local Hero soundtrack") when he co-
produces and plays on Dylan's "Infidels" album.
AUGUST 1983 - OCTOBER 1984
Mixing the tapes for the live double album "Alchemy" recorded at the
Hammersmith Odeon, 22/23 July 1983, Dire Straits eschew the usual "fairy dust"
of overdubs and re-recordings and decide it should be released au naturel,
mistakes and all. The album comes out in March (UK 3, US 46). Through the
autumn and winter of 1983, Mark writes and records soundtracks for two more
British movies, "Cal" produced by David Puttnam and "Comfort and Joy",
directed by Bill Forsyth of "Gregory's Girl" and "Local Hero" fame. By this
time, Mark has started working with keyboard player Guy Fletcher, who joins
Alan Clark in the band. The "keyboard twins" are born. In the same period,
Mark and John Illsley play on David Knopfler's first solo album "Release"
while John records his solo debut, "Never Told A Soul", with assistance from
Mark and Terry Williams. Also, in November at Kensington registry office, Mark
marries Lourdes Salamone.
In June, Mark produces Aztec Camera's album "Knife" which goes to number 14 in
Britain.
NOVEMBER 1984 - APRIL 1985
They record "Brothers in Arms", Mark co-producing with Neil Dorsfman at Air
Studios, Montserrat. It includes "So Far Away", "Walk Of Life", "Money For
Nothing" and "Your Latest Trick". Guy Fletcher (born 25 May 1960) joins the
band as a second keyboard player (from an early stint with Roxy Music and many
sessions). Hal Lindes leaves half way through the recording and is replaced
for the marathon tour to come by Jack Sonni, a friend of Mark's who came
straight from a day job at Rudy's Music Stop, 48th Street, New York. An
additional musician on tour is Chris White on sax, late of the National
Youth Jazz Orchestra.
APRIL 1985 - APRIL 1986
"Brothers In Arms" enters the UK chart at the top and stays there for 3 weeks,
but this hardly offers a clue to the American and worldwide response which
is to transform Dire Staits' status form First Division to Super League. The
album launches a thousand statistics.
In the USA, it reaches Number 1 in August and stays there for nine weeks.
Similarily, "Money For Nothing" with Sting as guest vocalist, is Dire Straits'
first American Number 1 single. In the following months, "Brothers In Arms"
also tops the charts in Canada, Brazil, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Eire,
Finland, France, German, Greece, Iceland, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Israel.
Incidentally, "Brothers In Arms" becomes, perhaps, the key album in
transforming CD from a new-fangled curiosity into a mass-market "music
carrier".
The tour covers 23 countries, 117 cities, 248 shows and sells 3 million
tickets. Legendarily, they play some astonishing unbroken runs of gigs for a
major act, such as 23 straight nights in the UK in December 1985. On 13
July 1985, they perform to a billion TV viewers from the Wembley Stadium end
of Live Aid. The tour ends in Sydney, Australia, the 20th night there, on 26
April 1986.
JUNE 1986 - JUNE 1988
Mark and John play the Prince's Trust concert at Wembley Arena with Paul
McCartney, Elton John, and Tina Turner, Mark produces 2 tracks for her
"Break Every Rule" album, including his own "Overnight Sensation".
Busman's holidaying from the band, Mark records for the soundtrack of Martin
Scorsese's "The Colour Of Money" (starring Tom Cruise and Paul Newman). He
joins the "host of stars" re-recording "Let It Be" to raise money for the
families of the Zebrugge ferry disaster victims; he plays with Chet Atkins
at The Secret Policeman's Third Ball - a benefit for Amnesty International -
then again on an American TV tribute to the great Nashville guitar man; as
is to become traditional, he guests with Eric Clapton's band for his annual
Royal Albert Hall winter session in London and a European tour; he writes
and performs the soundtrack for the Rob Reiner movie "The Princess Bride";
he produces and plays on Willy DeVille's album "Miracle" and several tracks
for Randy Newman's "Land of Dreams". Meanwhile, John Illsley releases a single
under the name of K Wallis B and the Dark Shades of Night, plus his second
solo album, "Glass".
On 9 November 1987 Lourdes gives birth to twin boys, Benji and Joseph.
In early 1988, Mark socialises with Steve Phillips and Brendan Croker, old
guitar-picking friends from his Leeds days as an apprentice journalist. He
offers to produce Phillips' next album. Over the ensuing months Synclavier
meister Guy Fletcher becomes involved too and they very gradually record a set
of some of their country blues favourites.
JUNE 1988
After two fan-club-only warm-up gigs at Hammersmith Odeon, Dire Straits,
with Eric Clapton on second guitar, play the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday
Party at Wembley Stadium (part of the Artists Against Apartheid campaign),
closing the show.
JULY - OCTOBER 1988
Mark plays on Joan Armatrading's album "The Shouting Stage", then he and
Alan Clark join Eric Clapton's band for an American tour. The "Money For
Nothing" hits compilation is released (a UK Number 1).
JANUARY - DECEMBER 1989
Mark writes and records the soundtrack for the German director Uli Edel's
movie of the once controversial novel "Last Exit To Brooklyn". During the
summer, a pub conversation with Steve Phillips and Brendan Croker reaches a
conclusion that they have temporarily become a band called the Notting
Hillbillies, that they will go out on the road to promote their slowly
gestated album and that Dire Strait's manager, Ed Bicknell - last seen on a
drum stool in a ceilidh band for the "Local Hero" soundtrack - is appointed
official tub-thumper fortwith.
JANUARY - OCTOBER 1990
The Notting Hillbillies' album "Missing... Presumed Having A Good Time", is
released by Phonogram on 5 March and goes Top 10 in the UK. They hit the
road for 41 gigs in 43 days around Britain through April and May. The
significant Knopfler verdict on the whole Hillbillies excursion repeated in
interview after interview is, "I'm absolutely in love with music".
By now, Mark has used Nashville pedal steel guitar ace, Paul Franklin and
`steals' him for Dire Straits.
Mark finishes an album of duets with Chet Atkins called "Neck and Neck",
released November 1990 (UK Number 29 and Number 1 in the UK Country chart,
multiplying Atkin's usual British sales by a factor of 6) and concludes
other sideline recording work with Buddy Guy and Brendan Croker before - after
a 5 year hiatus - he and John Illsley decide it's time to get back to Dire
Straits. Mark and John play with Clapton's band at the Knebworth Festival
benefit for Music Therapy, Mark spends the summer in America writing and comes
up with 15 new songs from which the album will be chosen.
NOVEMBER 1990 - MAY 1991
Dire Straits record their sixth album, "On Every Street" with engineers Bill
Schnee and Chuck Ainlay at Air Studios in London with production credited to
Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits and mixed by Neil Dorfsman.
Bob Clearmountain mixes one track "Heavy Fuel".
23 AUGUST 1991 ..... SOMETIME IN 1993
Dire Straits begin their world tour with five dates at The Point in Dublin,
expecting 250-300 more to follow over the next 2 years, with audiences adding
up to maybe 7 million.
The 1986 tour line-up is considerably changed and augmented. While Knopfler,
Illsley, Fletcher and Clark are now officially designated Dire Straits, the
nine-piece line-up now also features Chris White (sax), Paul Franklin
(pedal steel), Danny Cummings (percussion), Phil Palmer (guitar) and Chris
Whitten (drums).
dire straits
world tour
.
.
.
on every street
.
dire straits . on every street
.
US and Canadian tour 1992
LEAD GUITAR/VOCALS MARK KNOPFLER
BASS GUITAR/VOCALS JOHN ILLSLEY
KEYBOARDS ALAN CLARK
KEYBOARD/VOCALS GUY FLETCHER
SAXOPHONE/VOCALS CHRIS WHITE
PEDAL STEEL GUITAR PAUL FRANKLIN
GUITAR/VOCALS PHIL PALMER
DRUMS CHRIS WHITTEN
PERCUSSION/VOCALS DANNY CUMMINGS
TOUR MANAGER TONY WIGENS
PERSONAL ASSISTANT BARRY MURFET
ASSISTANT TOUR MANAGER PETER MACKAY
PRODUCTION MANAGER ALAN HORNALL
STAGE MANAGE WILLIAM PIRIE
LIGHTING DESIGNER CHAS HERINGTON
VARI*LITE OPERATOR JOHN SINDEN
SOUND ENGINEER ROBERT COLLINS
MONITOR ENGINEER ADRIAN FITZPATRICK
ELECTRICIAN ANDY FIELD
GUITAR TECH RON EVE
DRUM TECH ADAM NIGHTINGALE
GUITAR/STEEL GUITAR TECH GLENN SAGGERS
KEYBOARD TECH LAURENCE ADAMS
BASS TECH & PERCUSSION JOOP DE KORTE
WARDROBE NEIL SNOWDON
RIGGER JON BRAY
RIGGER ARTHUR RUSSO
HEAD CARPENTER PADDY FITZPATRICK
CARPENTER ALF ZAMMIT
PA TECH PAUL BOOTHROYD
PA TECH PAUL GIANSANTE
PA TECH SIMON HARDIMAN
PA TECH MICK STAPLE HURST
LIGHTING TECH PHIL DE BOISSIERE
LIGHTING TECH TAD INFERRERA
LIGHTING TECH SCOTTY DUHIG
LIGHTING TECH IAN DOBSON
LIGHTING TECH ALLAN ESPLEY
LIGHTING TECH BILLY MCCARTY
ACCOUNTANTS - EUROPE HARRIS & TROTTER
ACCOUNTANTS - U.S.A. ROBBINS SPIELMAN
SLAYTON & HALFON & CO
INSURANCE BROKERS ROBERSTON TAYLOR
AGENTS U.S.A. DAN WEINER MONTEREY
PENINSULA ARTISTS
FREIGHT SERVICES ROCK-IT CARGO
TRUCKING UPSTAGING INC.
BUSSES SENATOR COACHES
LIGHTING LIGHT AND SOUND DESIGN
LIGHTING VARI*LITE
P.A. BRITANNIA ROW
CONCERT SOUND
M.S.I.
STAGE SET BRILLIANT CONSTRUCTIONS
ROLLING STAGES B + R SCENERY
STRINGS SUPPLIED BY D'ADDARIO
DIRE STRAITS MANAGEMENT DAMAGE MANAGEMENT :
ED BICKNELL
PAUL CUMMINS
LIZ WHATLEY
JOHN HORWOOD
JEAN SEAL
GILLY TARRANT
OLIVIA ROSTAND
TOUR MERCHANDISING
THEATRE FRANCHISE (UK) :
ADRIAN HOPKINS
JO CHESTER
PROGRAMME DESIGN THE DESIGN ROOM :
MICK COLLINS
DAVID TULETT
KAREM MIRZA
PROGRAMME PRINTERS PRINTERS INC
PHOTOGRAPHERS PAUL COX
DEBORAH FEINGOLD
TERRY O'NEILL
FRONT COVER PHOTO:
PAUL WILLIAMS
TRAVEL AGENTS
BROOKS OGDEN
MODERN TRAVEL NYC 10023
TRINFOLD TRAVEL
6.) Miscellaneous Q & A
-------------------------
What kind of guitars and equipment does Mark Knopfler use ?
MK started off - professionally at least - with a Fender Stratocaster, a nod
in the direction of one of his heroes, Hank Marvin. ("... all I wanted was a
red electric guitar..."). David K. also used a Strat & sometimes a Telecaster.
I think Hal Lindes used both a Strat & a Gibson Les Paul.
By the 'Brothers in Arms' tour, MK had moved on, using at least 3 Schecter
Strat-style guitars, in red, white & sunburst finishes ; a red Schecter
Tele style, a Les Paul (e.g.Money for nothing, BIA), the National steel,
Steinberger GL-2, Erlewine automatic, and a Gibson Chat Atkins electro-
acoustic. Jack Sonni played a couple of Strats - including a left-handed one, upside down.
MK now favours Pensa-Suhr models, still Strat derivatives, but a fair way from
his original Fenders. Phil Palmer used a Fender EC Signature Strat & a Godin
Acousticaster on the last tour. John Illsley seems to stick to a Fender
Jazz Bass, though he has used a Wal also.
Amps - I think MK, like EC still favours Soldano
I have also read the MK uses Fernandez guitars, a Mexican clone of Strat.
He supposedly had one of his favourite guitars stolen a while back, so he leaves
most of his favourite guitars at home and does not take them on tour.
Perhaps they are too valuable.
Also, I read in the Guitar Player mag. interview that he used some borrowed
guitars on the recording of Love Over Gold, to get the sound he wanted.
He may have borrowed some guitars from Eric Clapton, but I can't remember the
exact models.
As for Knopfler's guitars, right now he favors a custom-made Pensa-Suhr Strat, serial # 001! For amps he generally uses Soldano heads into Fende cabs.
Hal Lindes uses a Tele and what looks like an Ibanez Gibson copy in _Alchemy_.
On 'Industrial Disease' MK uses a Steinberger which he called 'The Hog.'
What do the acronyms used on the list mean ?
BIA Brothers In Arms
MFN Money For Nothing
LOG Love Over Gold
MK Mark Knopfler
DS Dire Straits
EC Eric Clapton
MM Making Movies
TOL Tunnel Of Love
R&J Romeo And Juliet
ITILYTM I Think I Love You Too Much
PI Private Investigations
Part 2
-------
7) Discography
8) Bootleg Discography & Ratings
9) Performances with Other Artists
10) All-Music Guides
Dire Straits FAQ Listing - Part 2 of 3
------------------------------------------
7.) Discography
----------------
What albums has Dire Straits released ?
What albums has Mark Knopfler released and played on ?
Refer to the discography listed below. It is fairly complete, but there may be
some omissions. If you have corrections and/or additions please let us know.
Thanks also to Eric & Oystein for help in compiling this list.
Dire Straits albums:
77 The Honky Tonk Demos - 'Sultans of Swing' (79 UK LP OVLM5003, 91
Germany CD LICD9.01067O)
78 Dire Straits (USA LP BSK3266, CD 3266-2, Canada LP SRM-1-1197,
Germany LP 6360-162, Netherlands LP 800-051-1, Yugoslavia LP
6360-162(2220067), Japan LP RJ-7541, France CD 800-051-2)
78 Communique (79 USA blue LP sleeve, blue-green pattern LP sleeve
HS3330, CD 3330-2, Canada LP SRM-1-3791)
80 Making Movies (USA LP BSK3480, CD 3480-2, Canada LP SRM-1-3857,
Netherlands LP 800-050-1)
82 Love Over Gold (USA LP 23728-1, CD, Japan CD 23728-2, Russia LP
C60-24731-001)
82 Twisting By the Pool (83 USA EDEP, EP 29800-0, SEMC 29800-4A, Canada
EDEP VEP314, *UK EDEP DSTR212)
83 Alchemy (84 USA 2LP 25085-1, 2CD 25085-2, UK 2LP VERY11(818-243-1))
84 Brothers in Arms (85 USA LP 25264-1, CD 25264-2, Canada LP
VOG1-3357, UK LP VERH25, Germany LP 824-499-1Q, Netherlands LP
824-499-1, Spain LP 824-499-1AR)
88 Money for Nothing (LP 25794-1, CD 25794-2)
90 Knebworth: The Album - 'I Think I Love You Too Much' (2LP
847-042-1, 2CD 847-042-2)
91 On Every Street (USA LP 26680-1, CD 26680-2, Netherlands LP
510-160-1)
92 On the Night (93 UK 2LP, Germany 2LP 514-766-1, USA CD 45259-2)
Dire Straits singles:
83 Twisting by the Pool (4 track EP)
CD singles
91 Calling Elvis/Iron Hand/Millionaire Blues DSCD16 (UK)
91 You And Your Friend w/ Badges,Stickers,Poster,T-Shirts
Vertigo 864 613-2 Made In Germany
91 Heavy Fuel (CDS/w Kingdom Come)
92 On Every Street/Private Investigations/Sultans of Swing/Romeo &
Juliet (UK w/booklet of 1992 spefic tour dates DSCDC18,
Australia w/1992 general tour dates 866-411-2)
92 The Bug/Twisting By the Pool/Expresso Love/Walk of Life DSCD19 (UK)
Vertigo UK DSCD 19 Int. 866967-2 Made in UK
93 Encores - Your Latest Trick/The Bug/Solid Rock/Local Hero-Wild Theme
DSCD20, DS705 (UK)
Dire Straits CD Videos:
78 Sultans of Swing/Wild West End/Down to the Waterline 25814-2 (UK)
87 Twisting By the Pool/Two Young Lovers/If I Had You/Two Young
Lovers(live) 25810-2 (UK)
87 Walk of Life/Why Worry/Ride Across the River 25811-2 (UK)
87 Brothers in Arms/Your Latest Trick/The Man's Too Strong 25812-2
(UK)
87 Money For Nothing ?????
Videos
83 Alchemy 082-741-3
86 Brothers in Arms 38119-3A
92 The Videos 38350-3
93 On the Night 38345-3
Laser discs
83 Alchemy 082-741-1
92 The Videos
93 On the Night 38345-6
Dire Straits promos:
78 Sultans of Swing(long version)/Sultans of Swing(edit)
79 Live-The Warner B. Music Show (promo LP, concert in Philadelphia `79)
83 Twisting By the Pool(stereo)/Twisting By the Pool(mono) 29706-7
85 Walk of Life (promo EP)
85 Brothers in Arms promo (promo CD, pink Brothers in Arms sleeve)
78 Dire Straits
84 Alchemy (2LP)
84 Alchemy - Quiex II Limited Edition pressing (2LP)
Promo CD's
90 I Think I Love You Too Much CDP330 (Knebworth: The Album)
91 On Every Street(album version)/On Every Street(radio edit)
PRO-CD-5394
91 The Bug(album version) PRO-CD-5183
91 Heavy Fuel(album version) PRO-CD-5126
Limited edition CD's
89 Sultans of Swing/Portobello Belle/Live/Romeo & Juliet/Money for
Nothing 872-611-2 (Germany)
93 On the Night/Encores 514-766-2 (UK 2CD)
Dire Straits appearing on collections
90 Knebworth, The Album (concert, 2 tracks)
?? Hope & Anchor - Front Row Festival (benefit record, "Eastbound Train")
85 Prince's Trust Concert, 10th years festival (benefit, 2 tracks)
91 Voices that Care (benefit, CD-Single, MK guitar)
Radio/TV show LP's
79 Warner Bros. Music Show WBMS109
81 7/5 King Biscuit Flower Hour - The Best of the Biscuit (2LP)
82 Retro Rock - Consign TV
12"
78 Sultans of Swing/Eastbound Train(live)/Southbound Again DSTR312
(UK)
85 Walk of Life/Two Young Lovers(live)/Sultans of Swing(live) DSTR1212
(UK)
85 Your Latest Trick/Irish Boy(Cal)/The Long Road(Cal) DSTR1312 (UK)
91 Calling Elvis/Iron Hand/Millionaire Blues DSTR1612 (UK)
91 Heavy Fuel/Planet of New Orleans/Kingdom Come DSTR1712 (UK)
*92 The Bug/Twisting By the Pool/Expresso Love/Walk of Life DSTR1912
(UK)
93 Encores - Your Latest Trick/The Bug/Solid Rock/Local Hero-Wild Theme
(UK DSTR2012, Germany 862-209-1)
Promo 12"
81 Dire Straits 8-55-833 (Germany, wooden guitar cover) - combo of var.
songs from Dire Straits & Communique albums
85 Walk of Life/Walk of Life PRO-A-2384
10"
84 dIRE sTRAITS Live - Love Over Gold/Solid Rock DSTR610 (UK)
7"
78 Sultans of Swing/Southbound Again WBS8736RE-1
80 Romeo & Juliet/Solid Rock WBS49688
85 So Far Away/Walk of Life 21995-7
85 So Far Away/If I Had You 28789-7 (picture sleeve)
85 Money for Nothing/Love Over Gold(live) 28950-7 (picture sleeve)
85 Money for Nothing(long edit)/Twisting By the Pool 21996-7
85 Walk of Life/One World 28878-7 (picture sleeve)
88 Sultans of Swing/Portobello Belle-live DSTR15 (picture sleeve) (UK)
91 Calling Elvis/Iron Hand DSTR16 (picture sleeve) (UK)
92 The Bug/Twisting By the Pool DSTR19 (picture sleeve) (UK)
Promo 7"
78 Sultans of Swing(long version)/Sultans of Swing(edit)
83 Twisting By the Pool(stereo)/Twisting By the Pool(mono) 29706-7
Picture discs
85 Money for Nothing/Love Over Gold(live) DSPIC10 (crown shaped)
85 Brothers in Arms/Going Home-theme from 'Local Hero'(live) DSPIC11
(rectangle shaped)
Cassette singles
91 Calling Elvis/Millionaire Blues 19199-4
91 Heavy Fuel/Kingdom Come 19094-4
Mark Knopfler - Soundtracks
83 Local Hero (LP 23827-1, CD 23827-2) (MK, Alan Clark, Hal Lindes,
Michael Brecker, Mike Mainieri, Neil Jason, Tony Levin, John
Illsley, Terry Williams)
83 Going Home(stereo)/Going Home(mono) 29725-7 (theme of Local Hero)
(promo 7")
83 Local Hero 11307 (video)
84 Cal (USA LP 822-769-1, CD 822-769-2, Canada LP VOG1-3341) (MK, Guy
Fletcher, John Illsley, Terry Williams)
84 Cal (video)
84 Comfort and Joy DSTR712 (UK 12") (MK, Chris White, Guy Fletcher,
Terry Williams)
84 Comfort and Joy (video)
87 The Princess Bride (LP 25610-1, CD 25610-2) (MK, Guy Fletcher)
87 Storybook Love/Once Upon a Time...Storybook Love PRO-A-2817 (promo
12")
87 The Princess Bride 7709 (video)
87 The Princess Bride album cover sheet (promo ad)
87 The Princess Bride 345-34803-6-395 - book by William Goldman
(paperback)
89 Last Exit to Brooklyn (Canada LP 838-725-1, USA CD 25986-2) (MK,
Chris White, Guy Fletcher)
93 Screenplaying (UK 2LP 518-327-1, USA CD 45457-2) (soundtrack
compilation)
93 Going Home(Theme of the Local Hero)/Local Hero-Wild
Theme/Comfort(Theme from Comfort and Joy) VERCD81 (UK CD
single)
John Illsley
84 Never Told a Soul 822-239-2 (CD) (MK, Phil Palmer, Terry Williams,
Chris White)
88 Glass (Netherlands LP 834-311-1, USA CD 25638-2) (Alan Clark, Guy
Fletcher, Chris White, Phil Palmer)
David Knopfler
83 Release (USA LP promo PB6030, Netherlands LP 08-022750-20, France LP
DAVID1) (MK, John Illsley)
84 Behind the Lines 825796-1 (Netherlands LP)
*85 Shockwave/Sunset/The Missing Book 125.231 (Germany 12" blue vinyl
from Behind the Lines)
86 Cut the Wire
88 Lips Against the Steel (USA LP promo YL0120, CD YD0120, Canada LP
CYP907) (Chris White)
88 To Feel That Way Again/Someone to Believe In DAVE7 (UK 7")
88 Critic's Choice II (LP, CD) ('To Feel That Way Again' + special
version of 'Whispers of Gethsemane' from Lips Against the
91 Lifelines
93 The Giver
MK w/other artists
73 Brewer's Droop - The Booze Brothers (89 LP, 92 CD) (MK, Pick Withers)
79 Sandy McLelland and the Backline (self titeled)("Sure Sounds Good to Me"w/MK
79 Bob Dylan - Slow Train Coming (LP, CD) (MK, Pick Withers, Barry
Beckett)
80 Philip Lynott - Solo in Soho (LP, CD) (MK)
80 Steely Dan - Gaucho (LP, CD) (MK, Randy Brecker, Michael Brecker,
Jeff Porcaro)
82 Philip Lynott - The Philip Lynott Album (CD) (MK, Mel Collins)
82 Kate & Anna McGarrigle - Love Over and Over (LP) (MK)
82 Van Morrison - Beautiful Vision (LP, CD) (MK)
83 Phil Everly (from the Everly Brothers) (self titeled) (MK guitar)
83 Bob Dylan - Infidels (LP, CD) (MK, Alan Clark)
83 Tina Turner - Private Dancer (LP, CD) (MK, Terry Williams, Alan
Clark, Hal Lindes, John Illsley, Mel Collins)
84 Aztec Camera - Knife (LP, CD) (MK, Guy Fletcher, Chris White)
85 Chet Atkins C.G.P. - Stay Tuned (LP, CD) (MK, Jeff Porcaro)(2 tracks MK)
85 Bryan Ferry - Boys and Girls (LP, CD) (MK, Guy Fletcher, Omar Hakim,
Neil Jason, Tony Levin, Jimmy Maelen)
86 Color of Money soundtrack (LP, CD) (MK)
86 Tina Turner - Break Every Rule (LP, CD) (MK, Guy Fletcher, Tommy
Mandel)
86 Tina Turner - Overnight Sensation/Overnight Sensation (promo 12")
87 Chet Atkins & Friends - "Music From the Heart" (video) (MK)
87 Chet Atkins C.G.P. - Sails (CD) (MK)("Why Worry")
87 Willy DeVille - Miracle (LP, CD) (MK, Guy Fletcher, Jeff Porcaro)
87 Secret Policeman's Third Ball - The Music (LP, CD) (MK)("Imagine")
87 Sting - ...Nothing Like the Sun (LP, CD) (MK, Manu Katche)
88 Joan Armatrading - The Shouting Stage (LP, CD) (MK, Alan Clark, Phil
Palmer, Manu Katche)
88 Chet Atkins - C.G.P. (LP, CD) (MK)
88 Randy Newman - Land of Dreams (LP, CD) (MMK guitar+prod., Guy Fletcher,
on 7 tracks, Jeff Porcaro)
88 Randy Newman - It's Money That Matters/Roll With the Punches (7")
89 Brendan Croker - Brendan Croker & the 5 O'Clock Shadows (CD) (MK,
Guy Fletcher, Alan Clark)
89 The Judds - River of Time (LP, CD) (MK)
89 Tina Turner - Foreign Affair (LP, CD) (MK, Phil Palmer, Danny
Cummings)
89 Weird Al" Yankovic UHF ("Money for Nothing" parody w/MK guitar, Guy
Fletcher)
90 Chet Atkins/Mark Knopfler - Neck and Neck (CD) (MK, Guy Fletcher,
Paul Franklin, Vince Gill)
90 The Jeff Healey Band - Hell to Pay (LP, CD, album cover sheet) (MK)
91 Brendan Croker - The Great Indoors (CD) (MK, Barry Beckett, Paul
Franklin)
91 Bob Dylan - the bootleg series (3CD) (MK, Barry Beckett, Pick
Withers, Alan Clark, Roy Bittan)
91 Buddy Guy - Damn Right, I've Got the Blues (CD) (MK)
91 Ronnie Milsap - Back to the Grindstone (CD) (MK, Vince Gill)
91 Voices That Care (CD, video) (MK)
92 John Anderson - Seminole Wind (CD, video) (MK) ("When It Comes to You"
92 Chet Atkins C.G.P./Jerry Reed - Sneakin' Around (CD) (MK)
92 Rory Block - Ain't I A Woman (CD) (MK, Alan Clark,Brendan Croker guitar)
92 Rory Block - Faithless World(edited version)/Silver Wings (CD promo
single)
The Notting Hillbillies
90 Missing...Presumed Having a Good Time (UK LP 842-671-1, USA CD
26147-2) (MK, Guy Fletcher, Paul Franklin)
90 Your Own Sweet Way/Bewildered/That's Where I Belong NHBCD1 (UK CD
single)
90 Will You Miss Me/That's Where I Belong/Lonesome Wind Blues NHB312
(UK 12")
90 Will You Miss Me/That's Where I Belong NHB3 (UK 7")
90 Feel Like Going Home/Lonesome Wind Blues/One Way Gal NHB212 (UK
12")
90 Feel Like Going Home/Lonesome Wind Blues NHB2 (UK 7")
90 Warner Bros. media info., 4 pages
90 A Friendly Funny Night (bootleg, live, april/may 90, CD, 45 min)
Pick Withers
7? Spring (Pick Withers)
Chris White
91 Shadowdance 848-656-2 (Norway CD) (MK, Danny Cummings, Mike
Mainieri) ("Jericho Walls"+"Dreamtime" w/MK guitar)
Songs written by MK (other than DS or his soundtracks)
83 'Private Dancer' - Private Dancer (Tina Turner)
85 'Cosmic Square Dance' w/Chet Atkins, Paul Yandell - Stay Tuned (Chet
Atkins C.G.P.)
86 'Two Brothers and a Stranger' - Color of Money soundtrack
86 'Overnight Sensation' - Break Every Rule (Tina Turner)
87 'Spanish Jack' w/Willy DeVille - Miracle (Willy DeVille)
90 'Your Own Sweet Way' - Missing...Presumed Having a Good Time (The
Notting Hillbillies)
90 'The Next Time I'm In Town' - Neck and Neck (w/Chet Atkins)
COVER VERSIONS
-------------------
79 'Setting Me Up' - Just One Night (80 2LP, 2CD) (Eric Clapton)
85 'Why Worry' - Born Yesterday (86 LP, 85 CD) (Everly Bros.)
87 'Why Worry' - Sails (CD) (Chet Atkins C.G.P. w/MK)
89 'Water of Love' - River of Time (LP, CD) (The Judds w/MK)
90 'I Think I Love You Too Much' - Hell to Pay (LP, CD) (The Jeff
Healey Band w/MK)
92 'When It Comes to You' - Seminole Wind (CD) (John Anderson w/MK)
92 'The Bug' - Come On Come On (CD) (Mary-Chapin Carpenter w/Paul
Franklin)
92 'Romeo & Juliet' - Rites of Passage (CD) (Indigo Girls)
8.) Bootleg Discography
-----------------------
What are bootlegs ? What Dire Straits bootlegs are available ?
What is Dire Straits' opinion of bootlegs ?
Can I bring up the topic of bootleg trading on the list ?
Where can I buy bootlegs ?
What Dire Straits bootlegs are available ?
Bootlegs are unofficial recordings made from radio broadcasts, studio
outtakes, or audience tapings of concerts.
Strictly speaking bootlegs are illegal, and deprive Dire Straits of royalties.
Dire Straits however, does not mind you recording their concerts for your
own personal use, as long as you don't sell them for a profit. The Dire
Straits Information Service (DSIS) , which is a newsletter sent out by Dire
Straits' management company even has a classified sections in it for fans to
trade bootlegs. Most die-hard Dire Straits fans who buy or trade bootlegs have
all of Dire Straits' officially release material, so the band feels that
they are not losing money. The quality of bootlegs can sometimes be very
poor, so the purpose of this discography is to rate sound quality, and allow
fans to buy or trade bootlegs intelligently.
You can bring up the topic of bootleg trading amongst list members, but all
subsequent trades should be discussed privately by email.
Bootlegs can in general be bought openly in European countries such as
Italy, France, and Germany where copyright laws are less strict. In the U.S.
they may be found at used record stores, record conventions or through mail
order.
A list of known Dire Straits bootlegs appears below :
Thanks to Oytstein and Fabrice for their input
Dire Straits Bootleg List Last Updated March 7, 1994.
------------------------- ---------------------------
This is a list of known Dire Straits bootlegs. It is by no means
comprehensive,
so if you have additions or corrections, please email me and let me know.
Not all of the information in the list has been verified.
The purpose of the list is to rate the sound quality of the bootlegs, so that
if you are considering purchasing or trading bootlegs, you can make an
informed
decision.
There are multiple bootlegs of the same concert from different companies,
however the sound quality may vary.
Typically the best sounding bootlegs come from demos, studio sessions or
FM radio broadcasts. Poorer quality bootlegs come from audience recordings.
DISCLAIMER
----------
I am in no way affiliated with any of the bootleg companies or manufacturers.
I do not sell bootlegs, so please do not contact me with requests.
This list is provided solely for information purposes.
That being said, if you know of bootlegs not on this list, and/or you want to
send in your sound ratings or comments please email me.
I do not have sources for where to buy all of these bootlegs.
If you know of stores or mail order sources of bootlegs, please email me your
information.
Email concerning this bootleg list should be addressed to :
fwong@tc.fluke.com
This list was compiled from information posted to the Dire Straits Mailing
List,
Dire-Straits@merrimack.edu
Sound Ratings
--------------
5 Excellent, A+, almost as good as a studio recording
4 Very Good, A , small amount of hiss & audience noise, clear sound
3 Good, a medium amount of noise, and hiss, mostly clear sound
2 Fair, a large amount of noise, and hiss, but listenable
1 Poor, audience recording, more noise than clear sound
FM - FM Radio Broadcast
CD - Compact Disc
AUD - Audience Recording
TAPE - Tape Copy
!,@,#,$,%,* - Same concert , different bootleg manufacturer
Anything marked with a "?" or left blank means that I have not heard the
bootleg, or do not know the information.
Compact Discs
---------------
No. Title Source Sound
--- ---------------------------------------- ------ -----
2CDs ! Australian Dream - Live in Sydney 26/04/86 FM 3
2CDs ! THANK YOU TO AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZELAND FM 3
1CD ONCE UPON A TIME - Live in Brussels - 05/06/81 4
4CDs BIJOU - box set, including Notting Hillbillies Lives 5
2CDs TICKET TO HEAVEN - Live in Basel - 28/06/92 FM 4
1CD @ WALK ON STAGE - Live in London, Wembley Arena FM 5
1CD @ 85 Live-Westwood One Radio Network (concert) FM 5
1CD @ 85 Straiting out things (BIA tour, Wembley `85, ) FM 5
1CD @ 85 London `85 (BIA tour)
1CD @ LONDON 1985 - Live in London. Wembley Arena 1985
1CD $ ON THE ROAD TO PHILADELPHIA -CapitolTheatre 1979 FM 4
2CDs STRAIT TO THE POINT - Live in Dublin. The Point 5
1CD SULTANS OF SWING - Live in Philadelphia. Tower FM 4
2CDs# 85 San Antonio `85 (concert in San Antonio, Texas) FM 4
1CD # HOUSTON 85 - Live in Houston 1985 FM 4
2CDs# TEXAS SUNSET - Live in Houston. Coliseum - 1985
1CD # SWING - Live in San Antonio 1985
2CDs# 85 8/17 Southern Star Amphitheatre, Houston, TX FM 4
1CD A Friendly Funny Night - Notting Hillbillies England
1990 4
2CDs AMERICAN TOUR 1985 - Live in Cuvanooa Falls 1985
1CD ANYBODY LISTENNING - Live in Philadelphia 1992
1CD AROUND SOUTH AMERICA - Live - In metal box -
1CD DON'T TALK TO STRANGERS - Live 1980
1CD EARLY DEMOS - Studio 1977 3
1CD EUROPE 1979 - Live In Europe 1979
2CDs FIRST COMPLETE DIRE STRAITS LIVE PROJECT
1CD GOIN' HOME - Live In London 1983
2CDs JESUS SAVES - Live in Zurich. HallenStadium
1CD LES INROCKUPTIBLES - Live 1992 - Picture CD FM 4
1CD LIVE IN DORTMUND 1980 - with fold-out cover
1CD LIVE IN USA
1CD NEWS - Live in Baltimore - 07/10/84
1CD ON EVERY STREET OF BARCELONA - Live in Barcelona 08/05/92
2CDs ON STAGE - Live in Zurich 1992
2CDs OPEN AIR 92 - Live in Basel St Jacob Stadium 05/07/92
1CD PERFECT INVESTIGATIONS - Live in London. Wembley
1CD ROCK FILE 78 - Various vacations - Picture CD 1
1CD ROCK FILE 79 - Various vacations - Picture CD
1CD ROCK FILE 80 - Various vacations - Picture CD 1
1CD ROCK FILE 81 - Various vacations - Picture CD
1CD ROCK ROYALTIES - Live in London. Wembley Arena
2CDs ROMEO AND JULIET - Live in Basel - 28/06/92
1CD ROTTERDAM 1978 - Live in Rotterdam. Shouwburg
1CD SOLID ROCK - Live In New York 11/88 - with Eric
Clapton 5
1CD SONS OF LIGHT - Live in California 1992
2CDs THE BEST ROCK N ROLL ORCHESTRA - Live in Milano 2
2CDs THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE - Live in Nimes. Arenes
1CD THE GREAT BOX - 4 CD's Box Set
1CD THE GEATEST HITS CONCERT - Live in Europe 1988
2CDs WORBURN ABBEY 1992 - Live - Bonus live Mandela Concert - 11/06/88
1CD 78 Live In Chester 1978
1CD 78 Live in Rotterdam 1978 ( Rotterdam, 17-oct-78 )
2CDs 8? Cocaine (BIA tour w/ Clapton, `78+'85/6)
85 Sleight of Hand (BIA tour)
86 Perfect Investigations (BIA tour, Wembley 18-jun-86)
2CDs 91 On Every Dire Streets (OES tour, Brussels, 2-oct-91)
2CDs 91 Live Zurich `91 (OES tour, Zurich, 14-oct-91)
2CDs Calling Elvis (Basel 6/92) 2 CD box set, Red Phantom
2CDs Live On U.S. Radio (11/92)
1CD Mark Knopfler Brothers in Conversation Interview, Baktabak 1
CASSETES
---------
Minutes Title Source Sound
------- ---------------------------------------- ------ -----
60 Mark Knopfler An Innerview 1980 by Jim Ladd FM 5
45 Mark Knopfler Rockline Interview - May 10, 1993 FM 5
90 Mix:Prince's Trust Charity King Biscuit Flour Hour FM 5
90 Bootleg mix of DS songs, ITILYTM SNL TAPE 4
90 Dire Straits On Every Street Album Release;Interviews MK FM 5
30 Liveaid July 13,1985 FM
5
25 Knebworth FM
5
60 Wembley 1985
FM 5
90 Dire Stratis Rarities;Sultans&Solid Rock Demos,Hope&Anchor FM 5
180 Dire Straits ;Ottawa March 14 1992 AUD 2
180 Dire Straits ;Ottawa March 16 1992 AUD 2
180 Houston 1985
FM 5
45 1979 Tour
FM 3
45 79 2/17 "WDR Radio" - Rockpalast (Funkhaus), Cologne FM 4
90 Mark Knopfler & Friends ; Mix of MK guest appearances CD 5
90 Mark Knopfler Guest Appearances - with other artists CD 5
45 Concord Pavillion, CA
TAPE
90 Bob Dylan Outfidels;Infidels outakes MK & Pick Withers CD 5
LPs
-----
No. Title Source Sound
--- ---------------------------------------- ------ -----
2LPs 85 Magellan (BIA tour, 2 records, San Antonio `85)
2LPs AMERICAN TOUR 1985 - Live in Cuvanooa Falls 1985
3LPs EUROPEAN TOUR 1992 - Live in Basel - 28/06/92
1LP SOLID ROCK - Live in New-York 11/88 With Eric Clapton
1LP Wembley 1985 FM
5
9.) Performances with Other Artists
------------------------------------
What other artists has Dire Straits performed with ?
Eric Clapton
-------------
While browsing through some Clapton books at a bookstore I came across the
following information concerning dates and locations that EC & DS or MK have
played together. If anyone has information on these shows, or has recordings
of them, please let me know. It seems to be the most complete list I have come
across.
Later,
Frank
Seattle, WA.
Date Location Details
----- -------- -------
18,22 Dec. '85 Hammersmith Odeon Dire Straits with EC, Cocaine, Further
On Up the Road,Solid Rock,Two Young Lovers
20 June '86 Princes Trust Charity
6,7,8 Jan. '87 Royal Albert Hall With Sting, Steve Winwood, MK
10-12 Jan. '87 Royal Albert Hall With MK, Money For Nothing
6 June '88 Royal Albert Hall/Princes Trust
8,9 June '88 Hammersmith Odeon Dire Straits with EC Warm up for Mandela
11 June '88 Mandela Concert Dire Straits with EC
2 Nov. '88 Tokyo Dome With Elton John, MK
1,2,3 Feb. '89 Royal Albert Hall With Mark Knopfler
30 July '90 Knebworth Benefit Dire Straits with Eric Clapton
Mark Knopfler joined Eric Clapton for his 1988 North American Tour, and played
at the following locations :
Date Location
----- --------
1 Sept. '88 Dallas
2 Sept. New Orleans
4 Sept. Pittsburgh
6 Sept. New Jersey, Meadowlands
7 Sept. Philadelphia
8 Sept. Capital Center, Maryland
10 Sept. Hartford
11 Sept. New York, Nassau Coliseum, Long Island
13,14 Sept. Marsfield, Mass.
16 Sept. Detroit
17 Sept. Millwaukee
19 Sept. Denver
21 Sept. San Francisco, Shoreline Amphitheater
22 Sept. Sacramento
23 Sept. Irvine
25 Sept. Los Angeles
26 Sept. Portland, OR
27 Sept. Tacoma
28 Sept. Vancouver, B.C. , Pacific Coliseum
29 Sept. Pantages Theater. ???
30 Sept. Calgary, Saddledome
1 Oct. Saskatoon
3 Oct. Winnipeg
4 Oct. Minneapolis
6 Oct. Montreal
7 Oct. Toronto
8 Oct. Hamilton
Japanese Tour
2 Nov. Tokyo Dome
4 Nov. Budokan with Sting, Mark Knopfler
5 Nov. Osaka with Knopfler, Elton John
10.) All-Music Guides
---------------------
All-Music Guides are taken from information available on Internet, and reproduced here with the condition that they cannot be sold or copied
for profit.
All-Music Guidelines in file: ALLMUSICHELP
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Artist : Dire Straits
Genre : Rock
Style : Rock & roll, Adult Oriented Rock, Popular,
Instr. : Group
Rating : importance (2) popularity (1)
All-Music Guide Biography
In 1977 disco reigned and the new-wave/punk movements were heralding
the death of tired FM rock. It was then that Dire Straits came along
with a unique blend of atmospheric blues-flavored rock and literate
Dylanesque story-type lyrics. Singer, songwriter, and lead guitarist
Mark Knopfler's dry, low-key vocal delivery and economical, clean
guitar playing immediately hit a nerve with the public, and the
group's self-titled debut effort went #2, aided by the driving #4 hit
"Sultans of Swing." ,Aside from COMMUNIQUE, the band's sophomore
effort, Dire Straits increasingly developed a cinematic approach to
songwriting and production. LOVE OVER GOLD is a particular highlight.
It was only a natural sidestep for Knopfler to score the highly
acclaimed soundtracks for LOCAL HERO (1983) and THE PRINCESS BRIDE
(1987). ALCHEMY, a double-record live set, was released in 1984.,In
1985 BROTHERS IN ARMS was released, becoming one of the biggest
internationally selling albums of the 80s. The song "Money for
Nothing" became free advertising for MTV, with the hook "I want my
MTV.",Knopfler undertook various side projects, including the Notting
Hillbillies and a fine duet album with Chet Atkins (NECK AND NECK).
Six years after the release of BROTHERS IN ARMS, ON EVERY STREET was
released. ~ Rick Clark
---------- Related Artists -----------
Notting Hillbillies
Rea, Chris
Crystle, Charlie
---------- Roots & Influences ----------
Dylan, Bob
Atkins, Chet
---------- Bibliography ----------
Oldfield, Michael |Dire Straits |Sidgwick & Jackso
AMG Artist ID # : P000004101
Chronological Album List |Date| Label | Number |R S T|Rating
--------------------------------+----+----------+--------+-----+------
On the Night |1993|Warner Bro|45259 |R |
On Every Street |1991|Warner Bro|26680 | S | OK
Alchemy Live |1991|Polygram V|082741 |R | Good
Money for Nothing - Video |1989|Warner Bro|25813 | |
Money for Nothing |1988|Warner Bro|25794 |R S |+BestA
Interview Disc |1987|Baktabak |2018 | S |
Walk of Life |1985|Warner Bro|25811 | |
Brothers in Arms |1985|Warner Rep|38119 | |
Brothers in Arms |1985|Warner Bro|25264 |R S | BestA
Twisting by Pool |1984|Warner Bro|25810 | |
Alchemy - Dire Straits Live |1984|Warner Bro|25085 | S | Good
Twisting by the Pool |1983|Warner Bro|29800 | S | Good
Love over Gold |1982|Warner Bro|23728 |R S | BestA
Making Movies |1980|Warner Bro|3480 |R S T| BestA
Communique |1979|Warner Bro|3330 | S | OK
Sultans of Swing |1978|Warner Bro|25814 | |
Dire Straits |1978|Warner Bro|3266 |R S | BestG
Dire Straits/Making Movies |Z |Warner Bro|25135 | | BestA
All-Music Guide Album Details (Alphabetical Order)
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Alchemy - Dire Straits Live
Artist : Dire Straits
Rating : Good
Charts : Billboard #046, entered Apr 21, 1984, on charts 018 weeks
Down Beat #4
Genre : Rock
Time : 92:00 min
Type : live
Date : 1984 (release)
AMG ID : R000005891 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
1983 CD Warner Brothers 2-25085
1984 LP Vertigo 11
1983 CS Warner Brothers 4-25085[K
1982 LP Warner Brothers 27085[K
CD Warner Brothers 25085
Warner Bros. 25085
------- Album Personnel/Sidemen -------
Mark Knopffler - Producer
Nigel Walker - Engineer
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Alchemy Live
Artist : Dire Straits
Rating : Good
Genre : Rock
Type : video
Date : 1991 (release)
AMG ID : R000085917 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
1991 Polygram Video 082 741
PolyGram 082741
------- AMG Album Reviews ---------
For a change, here's a live video better than the album it's attached
to. ~ Bruce Eder
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Brothers in Arms
Artist : Dire Straits
Rating : Best-of-Artist
Charts : Billboard #001, entered Jun 8 , 1985, on charts 097 weeks
Genre : Rock
Time : 54:40 min
Date : 1985 (release)
AMG ID : R000005892 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
1985 CD Warner Brothers 2-25264
1985 LP Vertigo 25
1985 CS Warner Brothers 4-25264
1982 LP Warner Brothers 25264
CD Warner Brothers 25264
Warner Bros. 25264
------- AMG Album Reviews -------
Their biggest-selling album, containing the mega-hit "Money for
Nothing" as well as "Walk of Life" and "So Far Away." ~ William
Ruhlmann
------- Album Personnel/Sidemen -------
Michael Brecker - Horn
Randy Brecker - Horn
Alan Clark - Keyboards
Malcolm Duncan
Guy Fletcher - Keyboards, Vocal
Omar Hakim - Drums
John Illsley - Bass, Vocal
Neil Jason - Bass
Mark Knopfler - g/v/prd
Tony Levin - Bass
Jimmy Maelen - Percussion
Mike Mainieri - Vocal (background)
Dave Plews - Horn
Jack Sonni
Sting - Vocal
Terry Williams - Drums
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Brothers in Arms
Artist : Dire Straits
Rating : not rated yet
Genre : Rock
Type : video
Date : 1985 (release)
AMG ID : R000085918 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
1985 Warner Reprise Video 38119
Warner Brothers 25812
Warner Brothers 38119
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Communique
Artist : Dire Straits
Rating : OK
Charts : Billboard #011, entered Jun 30, 1979, on charts 019 weeks
Genre : Rock
Time : 42:24 min
Date : 1979 (release)
AMG ID : R000035451 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
1978 CD Warner Brothers 2-3330
Warner Brothers 3330
1979 LP Warner Brothers 3330
1978 CS Warner Brothers W5-3330
1979 Warner Brothers 3330
CD Warner Brothers 3330
Warner Bros. 3330
------- Album Personnel/Sidemen -------
B Bear - Keyboards
John Illsley - Bass, Vocal
Mark Knopfler - Guitar, Vocal
Jack Nuber - Engineer
Pick Withers - Drums
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Dire Straits
Artist : Dire Straits
Rating : Best-of-Genre
Charts : Billboard #002, entered Jan 6 , 1979, on charts 041 weeks
Genre : Rock
Time : 41:34 min
Date : 1978 (release)
AMG ID : R000005886 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
1978 CD Warner Brothers 2-3266
1978 LP Warner Brothers 3266
1978 CS Warner Brothers M5-3266
CD Warner Brothers 3266
Warner Bros. 3266
------- AMG Album Reviews -------
Even after all the success, the debut is the best example of the
intricate style of Dire Straits, dominated by the electric
finger-picking of guitarist Mark Knopfler, his smoky voice and poetic
lyrics. Features their first hit, "Sultans of Swing." ~ William
Ruhlmann
------- Album Personnel/Sidemen -------
Rhett Davies - Engineer
John Illsley - Bass, Vocal
David Knopfler - Guitar, Vocal
Mark Knopfler - Guitar, Vocal
Pick Withers - Drums
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Dire Straits/Making Movies
Artist : Dire Straits
Rating : Best-of-Artist
Charts : Billboard #019, entered Nov 15, 1980, on charts 031 weeks
Genre : Rock
Time : 77:56 min
AMG ID : R000005885 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
CS Warner Brothers 4-25135
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Interview Disc
Artist : Dire Straits
Rating : not rated yet
Genre : Rock
Date : 1987 (release)
AMG ID : R000035453
--------- Album Releases ---------
1987 LP Baktabak 2018
------- Album Personnel/Sidemen -------
Mark Knopfler - Guitar, Vocal
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Love over Gold
Artist : Dire Straits
Rating : Best-of-Artist
Charts : Billboard #019, entered Oct 16, 1982, on charts 032 weeks
Genre : Rock
Time : 40:59 min
Date : 1982 (release)
AMG ID : R000005889 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
CD Warner Brothers 2-23728
CS Warner Brothers 4-23728
1982 LP Warner Brothers 23738
CD Warner Brothers 23728
------- AMG Album Reviews -------
The fourth Dire Straits album is their most atmospheric effort,
featuring the spacious title track as well as the epic "Telegraph
Road," with the extended guitar workout at its conclusion. ~ Rick
Clark
------- Album Personnel/Sidemen -------
Alan Clark - Keyboards
John Illsley - Bass, Vocal
Mark Knopfler - Guitar, Vocal
Hal Lindes - Guitar
Mike Mainieri - Vocal (background)
Ed Walsh - Synthesizer
Pick Withers - Drums
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Making Movies
Artist : Dire Straits
Rating : Best-of-Artist
Genre : Rock
Time : 37:19 min
Date : 1980 (release)
AMG ID : R000005888 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
1985 CD Warner Brothers 2-3480
1985 CS Warner Brothers M5-3480
1980 LP Warner Brothers 3480
1980 CD Warner Brothers 3480-2
CD Warner Brothers 3480
------- AMG Album Reviews -------
The third album displays Knopfler's expanding ambitions as a
songwriter with, as the title suggests, a cinematic sweep on such
songs as "Tunnel of Love" and "Romeo and Juliet." ~ William Ruhlmann
------- Album Personnel/Sidemen -------
Roy Bittan - Keyboards
John Illsley - Bass, Vocal
Mark Knopfler
Pick Withers - Drums
-------- Album Tracks --------
Tunnel Of Love,Romeo and Juliet,Skate
Tunnel Of Love
Romeo and Juliet
Skateaway
Expresso Love
Hand In Hand
Solid Rock
Les Boys
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Money for Nothing
Artist : Dire Straits
Rating : Best-of-Artist (First Pick)
Charts : Billboard #062, entered Nov 12, 1988, on charts 017 weeks
Rock & Roll Disc #3/4
Genre : Rock
Time : 65:57 min
Type : compilation
Date : 1988 (release)
AMG ID : R000005893 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
1988 CD Warner Brothers 2-25794
1988 CS Warner Brothers 4-25794
1988 LP Vertigo 64
CD Warner Brothers 25794
------- AMG Album Reviews -------
... best of ... it is good to have "Twisting by the Pool" at last on
CD, but jeers to whomever chose to omit "Skateaway," a radio favorite
and moderate chart hit. The CD contains one more track than the LP,
and the version of the title track included is the 4:05 single edit,
not the 8:24 original. ~ Richard Riis, Rock & Roll Disc.
This best-of collection contains Dire Straits' biggest hits as well as
some key album tracks. "Sultans of Swing," "Walk of Life," "Money for
Nothing," plus a live version of "Telegraph Road" from LOVE OVER GOLD,
are among the highlights. Even though this may be a fairly
representative sampler, listening to their better albums in their
entirety is the best way to hear this band. ~ Rick Clark
------- Album Personnel/Sidemen -------
Mark Knopfler - Guitar, Vocal
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Money for Nothing - Video
Artist : Dire Straits
Rating : not rated yet
Genre : Rock
Type : video
Date : 1989 (release)
AMG ID : R000085919 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
1989 Warner Brothers 25813
Warner Brothers 25813
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : On Every Street
Artist : Dire Straits
Rating : OK
Charts : Billboard #012, entered Sep 28, 1991, on charts 032 weeks
Genre : Rock
Time : 59:55 min
Date : 1991 (release)
AMG ID : R000005894 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
1990 CD Warner Brothers 2-26680
1990 CS Warner Brothers 4-26680
1990 LP Warner Brothers 1-26680
CD Warner Brothers 26680
------- Album Personnel/Sidemen -------
Chuck Ainlay - Engineer
Alan Clark - Keyboards, Conductor
Danny Cummings
Dire Straits - Producer
Guy Fletcher - Keyboards, Vocal (background)
Paul Franklin
Vince Gill
John Illsley - Bass
Manu Katche - Drums, Percussion
Mark Knopfler - v/g/prd
George Martin - Conductor
Phil Palmer
Jeff Porcaro
Bill Schnee - Engineer
Chris White
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : On the Night
Artist : Dire Straits
Rating : not rated yet
Genre : Rock
Date : 1993 (release)
AMG ID : R000170320 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
CD Warner Brothers 45259
1993 Warner Brothers
CD Warner Bros. 45259-2
CS Warner Bros. 45259-4
------- AMG Album Reviews -------
A live document of Dire Straits' 1991-1992 world tour supporting the
ON EVERY STREET album, ON THE NIGHT works sporadically, offering
enough good material to interest fans but not enough to win back the
commercial audience BROTHERS IN ARMS earned for the band. ~ All-Music
Guide
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Sultans of Swing
Artist : Dire Straits
Rating : not rated yet
Genre : Rock
Type : video
Date : 1978 (release)
AMG ID : R000085920 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
1978 Warner Brothers 25814
Warner Brothers 25814
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Twisting by Pool
Artist : Dire Straits
Rating : not rated yet
Genre : Rock
Type : video
Date : 1984 (release)
AMG ID : R000085921 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
1984 Warner Brothers 25810
Warner Brothers 25810
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Twisting by the Pool
Artist : Dire Straits
Rating : Good
Charts : Billboard #053, entered Mar 12, 1983, on charts 015 weeks
Genre : Rock
Date : Jun ??, 1983 (release)
AMG ID : R000005890 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
LP Warner Brothers 29800
1983 CS Warner Brothers 4-29800
------- Album Personnel/Sidemen -------
Alan Clark - Piano
Mel Collins - Sax
John Etchells - Engineer
John Illsley - Guitar (bass)
Mark Knopfler - v/g/prd
Hal Lindes - Guitar
Terry Williams - Drums
Pick Withers - Drums
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Walk of Life
Artist : Dire Straits
Rating : not rated yet
Genre : Rock
Type : video
Date : 1985 (release)
AMG ID : R000085922 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
1985 Warner Brothers 25811
Warner Brothers 25811
<1994 1 23> Thank you for using All-Music Guide.
====================================================
====================================================
Please submit corrections or additional albums for this artist
(also bios, sidemen, tracks, ratings, and reviews)
at Internet Address: AMG@ALLMUSIC.FERRIS.EDU
All-Music Guidelines in file: ALLMUSICHELP
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Artist : Mark Knopfler
Genre : Rock
Style : Films
Instr. : G/V/COM
Rating : importance (3)
---------- Bibliography ----------
Palmer, Myles |Mark Knopfler: An Unathorised|Sidgwick & Jackso
AMG Artist ID # : P000018709
Chronological Album List |Date| Label | Number |R S T|Rating
--------------------------------+----+----------+--------+-----+------
Last Exit to Brooklyn |1989|Warner Bro|25986 |R | OK
Cal |1984|Mercury |822769 |R | BestA
Local Hero |1983|Warner Bro|23827 | S |+BestA
Screenplaying (Music from the F| |Warner Bro| | |
All-Music Guide Album Details (Alphabetical Order)
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Cal
Artist : Mark Knopfler
Rating : Best-of-Artist
Genre : Rock
Time : 34:30 min
Type : soundtrack
Date : 1984 (release)
AMG ID : R000111302 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
CD Mercury 822769-2
CS Mercury 822769-4
1984 Mercury 822 769
CD Mercury
CD PolyGram 822769
------- AMG Album Reviews -------
This is probably the strongest of Dire Straits' leader Mark Knopfler's
soundtracks, featuring plenty of his elegant guitar playing and
several instantly likeable tunes. As befits the film's setting, the
flavor of the music is Irish, with the guitar, bass and drum lineup
filled out by tin whistle, mandolin, and Uilleann pipes. ~ Backroads
Music/Heartbeats
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Last Exit to Brooklyn
Artist : Mark Knopfler
Rating : OK
Charts : Rock & Roll Disc #2/4
Genre : Rock
Type : soundtrack
Date : 1989 (release)
AMG ID : R000104781 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
CD Warner Brothers 2-25986
CD Warner Brothers 9 25986-2
CS Warner Brothers 4-25986
1975 Warner Brothers 25986
CD Warner Brothers 25986
------- AMG Album Reviews -------
... on its own, the soundtrack to Uli Edel's film, LAST EXIT TO
BROOKLYN, is a pleasant disc. ~ Jim Fusilli, Rock & Roll Disc.
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Local Hero
Artist : Mark Knopfler
Rating : Best-of-Artist (First Pick)
Genre : Rock
Time : 39:48 min
Type : soundtrack
Date : 1983 (release)
AMG ID : R000042531
--------- Album Releases ---------
1988 CD Warner Brothers 2-23827
1988 CS Warner Brothers 4-23827
1983 LP Vertigo 4
CD Warner Brothers 23827
1983 Warner Brothers 23827
Warner Brothers 23827
CD Warner Brothers 23827
------- Album Personnel/Sidemen -------
Ed Bicknell - Drums
Michael Brecker - Sax
Alan Clark - Keyboards
Alan Darby - Guitar
Eddie Gomez - Bass
John Illsley - Bass
Neil Jason - Bass
Steve Jordan - Drums
Mark Knopfler - g/s/per
Tony Levin - Bass
Hal Lindes - Guitar
Mike Mainieri - Vocal (background)
Roddy Murray - Guitar
Gerry Rafferty - Vocal
Brian Rowan - Bass
Terry Williams - Drums
Dale Winchester - Accordian
Mark Winchester - Violin
Jimmy Yuill - Whistle (instrument)
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Screenplaying (Music from the Films "Local Hero", "Cal",
"Princess Bride", & "Last Exit
Artist : Mark Knopfler
Rating : not rated yet
Genre : Rock
Type : soundtrack
AMG ID : R000190288 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
CD Warner Bros. 45457-2
CS Warner Bros. 45457-4
<1994 1 28> Thank you for using All-Music Guide.
=========================================================
=========================================================
All-Music Guidelines in file: ALLMUSICHELP
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Artist : David Knopfler
Genre : Rock
Style : 80's Rock
Instr. : G/V/COM
Rating : importance (3) popularity (3)
AMG Artist ID # : P000018708
Chronological Album List |Date| Label | Number |R S T|Rating
--------------------------------+----+----------+--------+-----+------
Life Against the Steel |1988|Cypress |0120 | S |
Cut the Wire |1987|Greenhill |1 | S |
Behind the Lines |1985|Making Wav|102 | S |
Release |1983|Peach Rive|1 | S |
All-Music Guide Album Details (Alphabetical Order)
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Behind the Lines
Artist : David Knopfler
Rating : not rated yet
Genre : Rock
Date : 1985 (release)
AMG ID : R000042528
--------- Album Releases ---------
1985 LP Making Waves 102
------- Album Personnel/Sidemen -------
David Knopfler - Guitar, Vocal
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Cut the Wire
Artist : David Knopfler
Rating : not rated yet
Genre : Rock
Date : 1987 (release)
AMG ID : R000042529
--------- Album Releases ---------
1987 LP Greenhill 1
------- Album Personnel/Sidemen -------
David Knopfler - Guitar, Vocal
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Life Against the Steel
Artist : David Knopfler
Rating : not rated yet
Genre : Rock
Date : 1988 (release)
AMG ID : R000042530 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
CD Cypress 14166-0120-2[K
CS Cypress 14166-0120-4
LP Cypress 14166-0120-1
Cypress 1020
1988 LP Paris 4
------- Album Personnel/Sidemen -------
David Knopfler - Guitar, Vocal
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Release
Artist : David Knopfler
Rating : not rated yet
Genre : Rock
Date : 1983 (release)
AMG ID : R000042527
--------- Album Releases ---------
1983 LP Peach River 1
1983 Passport 6030
------- Album Personnel/Sidemen -------
Arran Ahmun - D/CFA/PER
Harry Bogdanovs - Synthesizer
Marie Broady - Vocal (background)
Betsy Cook - P/S/VCB
DMX - Drums
Roger Downham - Vibraphone
John Illsley - Guitar (bass)
Germaine Johnson - Vocal (background)
David Knopfler - g/v/prd
Mike Paice - Sax
Pino Paladino - Guitar (bass)
Kevin Powell - Guitar (bass)
Bub Roberts - Guitar
Danny Schogger - Piano
Tony Spath - Producer
Bobby Valentino - Violin
<1994 1 28> Thank you for using All-Music Guide.
====================================================
====================================================
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Artist : Notting Hillbillies
Genre : Rock
Style : Country rock, Contemporary, Popular
Instr. : Group
Rating : importance (3) popularity (2)
All-Music Guide Biography
Formed by Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler (b 1949), this
acoustic group showcased the fingerpicking skills of several friends
in a primarily country-rock format, with the influence of Knopfler's
idol Chet Atkins looming large. ~ Cub Koda
---------- Related Artists -----------
Dire Straits
---------- Roots & Influences ----------
Atkins, Chet
Dire Straits
Paul, Les
Country music
AMG Artist ID # : P000005041
Chronological Album List |Date| Label | Number |R S T|Rating
--------------------------------+----+----------+--------+-----+------
Missing ... Presumed Having a G|1990|Warner Bro|26147 |R | BestA
All-Music Guide Album Details (Alphabetical Order)
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Missing ... Presumed Having a Good Time
Artist : Notting Hillbillies
Rating : Best-of-Artist
Charts : Billboard #052, entered Mar 31, 1990, on charts 013 weeks
Down Beat #3.5
Genre : Rock
Time : 40:20 min
Date : 1990 (release)
AMG ID : R000014230 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
1988 CD Warner Brothers 2-26147
1988 CS Warner Brothers 4-26147
------- AMG Album Reviews -------
MISSING ... PRESUMED HAVING A GOOD TIME is a superb collection with
strong country leanings. Melodic and memorable. ~ Hank Davis
<1994 1 24> Thank you for using All-Music Guide.
=====================================================
=====================================================
Artist : John Illsley
Genre : Rock
Style : MOR
Rating : importance (3)
AMG Artist ID # : P000018410
Chronological Album List |Date| Label | Number |R S T|Rating
--------------------------------+----+----------+--------+-----+------
Glass |1988|Warner Bro|25638 | S |+BestA
Never Told a Soul |1984|Vertigo |15 | S | Good
All-Music Guide Album Details (Alphabetical Order)
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Glass
Artist : John Illsley
Rating : Best-of-Artist (First Pick)
Genre : Rock
Date : 1988 (release)
AMG ID : R000041247 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
CD Warner Brothers 2-25638
1988 LP Vertigo 56
CS Warner Brothers 4-25638
LP Warner Brothers 1-25638
Warner Brothers 25638
1988 LP Warner Brothers 25638
------- Album Personnel/Sidemen -------
Albert Boekholt - Keyboards
Alan Clark - Organ (Hammond)
Jerry Donahue - Guitar
Mick Dyche - Guitar, Guitar
Guy Fletcher - Keyboards
John Illsley - v/g/gtb
Mark Knopfler - Guitar
Jamie Lane - Percussion
Karl Lever - Keyboards
Phil Palmer - Guitar
Frank Ricotti - Percussion
Chris. White - Sax
----------------------- All-Music Guide Album ------------------------
Album : Never Told a Soul
Artist : John Illsley
Rating : Good
Genre : Rock
Date : 1984 (release)
AMG ID : R000041246 (album inprint)
--------- Album Releases ---------
1984 LP Vertigo 15
Polydor 822 239
------- Album Personnel/Sidemen -------
John Illsley
<1994 1 27> Thank you for using All-Music Guide.
Part 3
--------
11) Interviews
12) Archives, Lyrics, Guitar Chords & Tabs, Bitmap Pictures
Dire Straits FAQ Listing - Part 3 of 3
------------------------------------------
11.) Interviews
----------------
Are there Dire Straits' interviews available ? What is Mark Knopfler really
like ?
The following are transcriptions of radio interviews and magazine interviews.
In general, the consensus is that Mark Knopler, in addition to being an
excellent musician, is a warm and caring individual. This opinion is confirmed
in interviews he has given and in the Oldfield book.
There are also interviews in the October 1991 issue of MUSICIAN
magazine, and in a 1991 issue of Q magazine. If you have these interviews, please let us know.
If anyone else has radio or magazine interviews please let us know, there
are most likely many others.
Thanks to Heather and Sriram for transcribing these interviews.
Mark Knopfler: "An Innerview" with Jim Ladd, 1980
=================================================
(_Making Movies_ release)
[Taped from CHEZ-106 (Ottawa, Canada)]
JL: Good evening, everybody, I'm Jim Ladd. Tonight we'll meet
writer, vocalist and guitarist Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits.
He is an Englishman who is enjoying great success, not only with
Dire Straits, but also with the recognition he is receiving from
other musicians such as Bob Dylan and Donald Fagen and Walter
Becker of Steely Dan. I think you're going to enjoy this next
hour of conversation and the music of an English band who at
times you would swear came directly out of Louisiana. Welcome to
an "Innerview" of Dire Straits.
["Southbound Again"... instrumental intro]
JL: It's a surprise, this style of music that has come from you
guys, because it's so southern Americanesque in its origin. I
mean, have you ever had a desire to go live in the swamp or
anything, I mean have you ever wanted to wrestle 'gators in the
Everglades? ....
MK: [in macho voice] "show me to the swamp"
JL: I mean, you don't go down and hang out with the Allman Brothers
band and barbecue or anything like that?
MK: No, no, it's nothing like that, I don't really feel that that
connection is more important than any other connection, that's just
part of the whole jigsaw puzzle that makes up what comes out of you.
[Song: "Southbound Again"]
JL: Although as the saying goes, there are no overnight successes in
this business, Dire Straits did have something of a storybook beginning.
It happened on a radio station in England with a disc jockey by the
name of Charlie Gillett.
MK: I just thought - I had this idea, well look, maybe Charlie
should listen to this demo tape that we've done because he could
tell us who could listen to it, and who might be receptive to
it, rather than us doing - you know - 27 cassettes and taking
them around every A&R man in town. (We call the "umm&ahh" guys
now, they go "Umm, ahhh", [laughing].) What they do is that they
get into the office in the morning, and they answer two
telephones, they read the music press, and put the cassettes on
by, you know, your young hopefuls. As it turned out, we had to
go around all of those places anyway, and meet all the umm&ahh
men. So we just took it to Charlie, and it wasn't a question of
wanting him to play anything on the show. We just said: look,
who do you think would be interested, who's the good umm&ahh
men, who's the men who don't go umm&ahh all the time ...
JL: that will actually play the cassette...
MK: Yeah, listen to it. So we just left it at that. And then we
were moving furniture for a friend the next Sunday, so we missed
the show, right? I remember 'cause we were lowering a table out
of a window, an upstairs window, at the time when the show was
on, I was thinking, oh, we're missing Honky-tonk right now. And
then, well, when we just went in the pub that night you know,
around by these flats where we were living, this tenement in
Deptford in south-east London where we were living. And they
said 'Hey!' -- all the guys, all the dudes in the pub, 'Hey! Hey!
Heard ya on Honky-tonk this morning.'
[Song: "Sultans of Swing"]
MK: Before then we were organizing our own gigs and things; we
were getting bits of paper and cutting them up into tickets and
putting them around the flats, what they call the flats, it's
like you call them apartments, well they weren't even
apartments, tenements is the word, nobody else wanted to live
there. And that was it, we just started doing residencies in the
pubs in London.
["Sultans" cont'd "then the man steps right up to the microphone..."]
[commercials]
JL: I'm Jim Ladd, welcome back to our Innerview of Dire Straits
with our guest MK
MK: I think it's the most exciting right now that it's ever been.
JL: Even more so than when the first album was released?
MK: Oh yeah, I think, 'cause that was big time, I remember when
the first record started to explode all over the place,
everywhere, we were very excited. It went to Holland, and then
where it's gone is triple platinum in Germany and everywhere,
you know, and the whole thing started to get really silly. That
was a ridiculous time, but now, right now, is probably the most
exciting time ever.
JL: Why is that, why now? I would think that naturally, the first
album, making it, people listening and actually buying the thing,
I mean you just haven't become jaded yet, you have three whole
albums out, and...
MK: Oh we did get, around Christmastime, and before, leading up to then,
'cause we did over 300 shows in less than two years we were really...
including albums, and tv shows and interviews, a whole mincing machine,
you know.
JL: a mincing machine?
MK: [laughing] We got absolutely shredded about Christmastime,
we just couldn't go on at that pace, and we all fell over and
stayed in a horizontal position for a few months.
[Song: "Solid Rock"]
MK: But now, it's amazing, it's the keyboards thing really,
basically for me. The new record, and even since doing this
record, what's happened, because of the keyboards, and finding
out that I know what to do with keyboards, I mean I never really
thought that I could do this music stuff. It's like umm, I wrote
some of the songs on the new record on keyboards and things
like that, and I'd always sort of messed about on them, and I
got this synthesizer and I started turning my house into like
Apocalypse Now, and I got me drum machine going in, and you
know, bombers and helicopters and things. But in between those
times, I was actually playing some keyboards and some music and
writing on the guitar and some keyboards and sorting out Roy
Bittan from Bruce Springsteen's band to do this record. It was
really great, because it was like we'd been playing for years
just right from the first 5 minutes.
[Song: "Tunnel of Love"]
JL: As might be concluded from the title of Dire Straits' latest
album, _Making Movies_, the relatively new area of rock video
holds great interest for Mark.
MK: The whole vast area of the relationship between sound
and sight is very interesting, just as the relationship between
all the senses is interesting; the relationship between feeling
and thinking for instance, those kinds of...the balance of stuff
you know. So in terms of rock 'n' roll, the whole area of rock
video seems to me have gone in a pretty haphazard and disappointing
direction, rock video is already a formula.
They whack into these rock videos very fast where you know the guy
sort of hoists a big video camera on his shoulder, and turns it upside down
and swings it round the set, you got smoke billowing around your legs.
There's a guy in it with a leopardskin suit on and a leopardskin guitar
and he's standing in a white room with no walls and no floor, and he's
turning upside down himself, you know and all of this sort of stuff.
And it's already become, you know, crashingly boring to me. Whether
or not you can reconcile those kind of things remains to be seen.
And there's so much to talk about there, for instance whether you can
create images, visual images that are gonna last as long as the music
does. If you make the music to last 5 minutes and that tomorrow you're
gonna bring another record out, then fair enough, you can create
an image that people are just gonna want for the same length of time.
But if you wanna try and make something which is unified to the
best of your ability then you have to, you're gonna have to go a
bit further, it seems to me.
[Song: "Skateaway"]
JL: Mark Knopfler and our Innerview of Dire Straits will return in just a
moment. And when we do we'll hear about his work with Steely Dan, Bob Dylan
and Don Everly, when Innerview continues.
[commercials]
JL: I'm Jim Ladd and we're back now with our Innerview of Dire
Straits, and tonight's guest Mark Knopfler we're going to begin
this part of the show with the work he did on Steely Dan's
album, _Gaucho_. This is a band who we've interviewed twice
here, and I swear to God I'll never do them again, because it
was a bath of fire. But I really respect them as musicians, and
that's Steely Dan. Amazing musicians. I mean, did you find it
easy to record with these guys, or no?
MK: It's not the easiest thing in the world, no.
JL: Thank God, I was hoping it wasn't just me.
MK: No, apparently, I didn't know it at the time, I was very
naive, I remember the assistant engineer or somebody telling me
at the end of the session, 'hey, you did great, I've seen them
crucify guys in there'. So it must have been ok, but at the time
you know, I'd never done a session before, and it was a very
strange thing to have been put in there....
JL: You'd never done a session before with anybody?
MK: No, not really, no
JL: Is that right, and your first one was a Steely Dan? You
know there's a saying that any Steely Dan session you can walk
away from was a good one? Beside all that, they're some of the
best musicians going, it's just a compliment to be asked to play
with these guys.
MK: Yeah, it's like being given a medal I suppose.
JL: Another album that you can find Mark credited on
is Bob Dylan's _Slow Train [Coming]_. How was that experience for
you, did you enjoy that? was it easy or not?
MK: It was easy, but it was very exciting to have been asked.
Obviously if you've come up listening to _Blonde on Blonde_,
and sitting around and getting wired on coffee and smoking
cigarettes, it's a very exciting thing. Even now, it's like,
last night I was sitting up with Bob and he was playing
me new songs and we were just strumming on guitars with a
bunch of people. And it's still an amazing feeling to have
made that friendship.
JL: Because you hear so much about people who don't know Dylan
that say he's either shy or aloof or all of these different
things, from people who've never met the guy. But then when you
talk to somebody who's worked with him, they go 'God he's the
easiest guy in the world to work with, and he's real polite...'
MK: Yeah, I mean I don't think Bob has ever been what --
I mean I can't speak for another guy, but I don't think he'd
mind me saying that he feels that he's never really been what
everybody has said he was or said he is, even now or then or
ever.
It's very difficult to try and give the world the right
impression, all you can say is I hope that you're getting the
right reception on your radio, but you're not always, and of course
people tend to believe, for instance, what they read in the papers,
which is a big mistake. Everybody does that, it's just sad, that
that's the way it is. It's a case of a mistaken identity.
[Song: "Slow Train Coming"]
MK: With this record, with the _Slow Train Coming_ record, me
and Bob just ran the songs down a few times in Santa Monica,
then Pick came over with Tim Drummond, the bass player, and
Barry Beckett came up from Muscle Shoals. And then, I think the
next day or a couple of days after that, we went down to Muscle
Shoals and bashed out the record in a few days, I was there for
about nine or 10 days. The first days on a record are always a
little bit strange because you have to work out a way of doing
it. The second day, all it was was that the little band - the
band was actually led by Barry Beckett - he would lead on the
floor on the piano, and I was sitting in a little cubicle, or be
on the floor on electric guitar, but in a cubicle if I was
playing an acoustic guitar in a little isolation booth. Pick
had his drum kit set up there in the studio, and Tim was just
bouncing around in the studio. And we just, the four of us, and
we'd just run down the songs in the room a couple of times to
make sure that we knew where all the verses were going. Once
we'd had a chance to run it down then Bob'd come out and he'd
get in a little booth next to me through a glass window and he'd
just sing them, and we recorded them, just like that, first or
second, maybe third take. It seems to me, as far as I can
remember, that is more or less the way it went down. And then I
would put some lead guitar on afterwards.
And then after I left, me and Pick left, we had to go back to
London, we had to get our own thing going again, then they put
brass on and the girl singers and stuff like that, and then the
record was finished. It was very quick and very straightforward.
Pick did the best job that he could do as a drummer there, and I
did the best job that I could do in the time as a guitar-player,
and that was it.
I mean it's amazing to me, that here we were just doing this,
after you'd gotten over the excitement of being asked, here we
were, we were just a bunch of guys making a record, and there
were these dudes from Texas sort of camped outside the studio,
you know, sort of wanted to speak to the Messiah. I remember one
night we got back from a restaurant, we'd been for a steak or
something, and this guy comes up, says 'Hi Bob! Hi Bob!' with
this really wild look in his eye, you know, like a real fanatic.
If you've had to live for ten years, or for more than a decade
with that kind of deification, you know -- he's dealt with it
*really, really* well, just as a guy.
[Song: "Communique"]
JL: Whenever you get certain musicians talking about who they
used to listen to as a kid, sooner or later you're gonna be
talking about the Everly Brothers.
MK: I used to love that stuff, you know, things like "Til I
Kissed You" and "Bird Dog". Oh you know all those Everly
Brothers tunes, "Bye Bye Love" -- used to sing them all. I'd
love everybody to hear those records now, instead of me talking,
that would be much better.
JL: Maybe we'll include one in the show ....
MK: Yeah,
JL: We'll go dig up an old Everly Brothers song and put it
in here or something.
[Song: "Bye Bye Love"]
MK: There's a very early song, "Setting Me Up" which was done by
Albert Lee, he did a version. And the real kick I got out of
that was Don Everly was singing it as well, with him, and doing
the harmonies on it. You know, when I was a kid, just playing,
singing all those Everly Brothers tunes. And I remember Don
Everly came to London just to promote a record or something, and
me getting on a tube train from out in Essex and going all the
way into London, and being, I must have been one of the only
people who heard them advertising it on the radio, 'cause there
was hardly anybody there. There was just record brass, "God am I
the only guy in London who's come to see Don Everly?" So to have
him singing on the tune like that was great. That's the kind of
thing where you get a delight out of this game, you know.
[Song: "Setting Me Up"]
[commercials]
JL: ...Dire Straits - once again, Mark Knopfler.
MK: There's no formula to me, 'cause every song is different --
not every song is different. One or two songs might fall into
the same kind of category, that you say to yourself, I suppose
it's that kind of song where you've seen something, and you
report on it in a sense. But other songs are different, so there
isn't a formula, if there was a formula I'd tell everybody what
it was. It's just that I don't really, necessarily always
understand what it is, so there is no formula. I think
sometimes you write things down and try and work out with music
afterwards. Other times you feel words with music, so it's a
combination thing. Sometimes it's a simultaneous experience;
and what you call inspiration is the best feeling that there is
I think. Just at that point you realize that you've got
something that other people are going to enjoy, that other
people are going to feel; it's a shared thing. You know, you
know at some point that that is going to be shared.
[Song: "Down to the Waterline"]
MK: You see the thing about it is, when you're actually involved
in it, you have a completely different picture of it than people do
outside it. The thing about success -- I mean I'd recommend
success, if you want to call it that, to everybody. There's a
tremendous amount of good things to be had from that, all that
communication to all those people, that's a wonderful thing and
stuff. But I mean, the funny thing is that when you're outside
it, it seems that you get a different perspective on it somehow,
it's a whole interesting area of how pictures get distorted.
[Song: "Once Upon a Time in the West"]
MK: For instance, the great thing about this situation, is that
if I want a piano I can get one. And I've got a piano in my
house now, and I have an acoustic guitar, you know, I didn't
have a good wood-top guitar til just last year, when we got some
in Connecticut. Things like that, and being able to do this
keyboards thing, and talk to movie people, and do all that. And
create your own world, I mean the great thing about that is that
you're creating your own world with your own actions, you're not
doing what unfortunately most people have to do, which is to do
as they're told by somebody, it doesn't matter whether it's a
foreman or a floor manager, or whatever it is. That their world
is restricted in that sense that they can't determine their own
actions to change the face of their own world. And that's not
necessarily always such a bad deal if people prefer to work in
that situation. But for me I couldn't, you know.
JL: Right, well I think that's the ultimate goal, to have the
freedom to do what you want. And if fortunately people like
that, and will give you the monetary energy to continue with
that, then you're really in heaven.
MK: Sure, I love it, every minute. I'm high on it.
JL: Well I'm glad to hear that. That's where we'll stop. I'm
really glad that we got to meet you.
MK: Thank you, it's been a pleasure.
JL: Thank you Mark.
MK: Bye.
[Song: "Lady Writer"]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fellow MK fans,
Here's an interview I transcribed from a radio broadcast in 1990 just after
the release of the Notting Hillbillies album. It's from the "In the Studio"
series with Timothy White. It's a good in-depth interview with a lot
of interesting revelations from MK. Enjoy. Some comments from me
are in {..}.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
TW: Mark, welcome to the studio. Tell us about your new album,
by the Notting Hillbillies, "Missing, Presumed having a good time".
How did the band come up with this name?
MK: Well, it comes from the studios where we recorded it at Notting Hill.
You might get the telephone on one or two tracks, but it actually seems
to work somehow and its very enjoyable working there because I can
get round there in three or five minutes from where I live, which is
still in Notting Hill. But in terms of the Hillbillies stuff, it
wasn't intended to be a high tech record. In fact, I initially set
out to record Steve and Brendan and put it probably on a small independent
label...
TW: This is Steve Philips and Brendan Croker, two of your friends I think
from Leeds ?
MK: Correct, and I was there for a few years at the University and on a
newspaper, and we used to just play together, and when I left for London
to do music full time, Brendan more or less took over playing with Steve.
It was initially going to be more or less a Steve and Brendan duet record
that I was supposed to produce, and I started slinging in ideas in for songs
and I started playing guitar in my usual unpleasant pushy way and Guy
was playing keyboards...
TW: Guy Fletcher ?
MK: Yes, from Dire Straits, and he and I ended up really
co-producing the record. It was in the middle of doing all kinds of things
I was producing Randy Newman's stuff for two or three months in Los Angeles
and I was doing a film score at the time, Last Exit to Brooklyn and also
getting started doing some things with Chet Atkins in Nashville. I was
touring a lot with Eric Clapton as well 'round America and Canada. But
it was good that we could come back to it, the Hillbillies thing, and
say I don't like that very much, let's change that and so on. So it
took a long time to get finished though the actual time to record it
wasn't so much. But it wasn't intended to be a major thing.
TW: What was one of biggest surprises in making this album?
MK: The biggest surprise was the reaction of Warner Bros. over here, and
I really wasn't expecting to be here doing an interview about it. We knew
it was a good record and everything, but we didn't expect people
stealing copies of it, people want it down at the pub.
TW: Mark, you wrote a song for the album called Your Own Sweet Way. I wonder
if this song has a flavour similar to what you used to play in the south
London pubs when you were getting yourself together, you know, careerwise?
MK: Yes, I think that's fair, that's fair. It's not that far off. The
songs that I've been writing seem to be getting more simple than before. But
as you become a better player, hopefully the simplicity continues to...uh...
complicate things.
TW: I would say there are fewer wasted notes, I would put it that way.
MK: Yeah, that's probably right, fewer wasted chords too!
[Your Own Sweet Way]
TW: I'm Timothy White here in the studio with the ringleader of the
Notting Hillbillies, Mark Knopfler. Mark, does the basic feel of the
Hillbillies sound pays homage to traditional country blues?
MK: A lot of it does, some of the songs didn't allow for that much
innovation, some of them have been done pretty much traditional. But
other songs have taken enormous liberties with, slung in all sorts of
influences. Probably a good example is that Railroad Worksong which is
very old, the first version I heard was Jesse Fuller, and it's got
an African style bass line and stuck in all sorts of things. So it's not
a purist record, even though we could have done that easily enough.
TW: I think what's great about the record and Railroad Worksong in
particular...there's such a conversational common sense quality to
the playing and the lyrics. It sounds very eloquent because you
listen in a calmer way than you might normally.
MK: Well you certainly don't always do that, it's probably by luck
than anything else, where there's nothing left to say...usually there's
something left to play.
TW: It's a kind of feeling that takes you back to the American slavery
days, when your secret feelings are your last defense against demoralization.
When you don't have the power in a situation, in your life...
MK: It's an expression of self-liberation, that's what it is, and it's
applicable now as it was then.
[Railroad Worksong]
TW: I'm Timothy White here in the studio with the Hillbillies own
Mark Knopler. When we come back we will talk about Mark's other band,
better known as Dire Straits.
TW: Mark, let's talk about your guitar playing. How would you describe
the development of your guitar style, both from a technical as well
as a musical standpoint?
MK: Well it was fairly simple I think, I advanced on parallel lines playing
acoustic and electric. I learned to finger pick fairly early on because
I couldn't afford an amplifier, and I had to have this red electric guitar
when I was fifteen years old. It wasn't long before I was finger picking
on friends' acoustic guitars, and playing in folk places and eventually
country blues clubs occasionally. And those two styles playing rock
music and other people's music, eventually after a few years a synthesis
developed. I started playing more with my fingers. This was about
twenty years ago, I've been playing for twenty-five. So it's just
really a synthesis of different styles.
TW: Are we hearing a unison picking sometimes or a drone string against
a melody string?
MK: Sometimes two strings at once or sometimes three strings played at once.
It really comes from having a strong left hand on the neck, I'm
left handed and with the picking on the right, the thumb becomes a percussive
thing.
TW: I always thought your playing had almost a vocal quality to it...
MK: When I started to play, I heard BB King Live at the Regal, and that
relationship between voice, guitar and audience, that triangle there,
hit me like a thunderbolt. I sort of moved backwards from the Chicago
stuff to the 1940's , 30's and 20's but the electric blues was the
most immediate influence with patching in of all the other stuff.
[Once Upon a Time in the West]
TW: That was Once Upon a Time in the West from Dire Straits' 1979
Communique album. Mark, let's talk early Knopfler prior to Dire Straits
even, I know one of your early boyhood influences was the Everly Brothers,
Phil and Don, both as guitar players and as singers.
MK: When I learned to play my very first chords, me and my buddy, one
would be Phil and the other would be Don.
TW: What was your buddy's name, who would be playing with you?
MK: A guy named Vince Harrison, whom I've known since I was nine years
old. And we did a lot of folk clubs together.
TW: Did these early groups have names?
MK: In Leeds when I played with Steve, there was one group called
the Duolian String Pickers...
TW: What's that again?
MK: It was named after one of the National steel guitars, the National
Duolian. We played these guitars from the 1930's and we did some
radio recordings in Leeds. Other bands I was in, in college, was a
rockabilly band called the Cafe Racers, which was a name for a sort
of road racing motorcycle, a modified street bike really. We played
a lot of rockabilly things and I was doing that pretty much up to forming
Dire Straits... the Cafe Racers...did quite a lot of work 'round London.
TW: You mentioned working at a newspaper...
MK: Yeah, that was in Leeds.
TW: Did you consider a career in journalism at this time?
MK: Yeah, I thought about it, I was just a kid reporter.
TW: You did some rock criticism too, didn't you?
MK: Yeah, but I couldn't criticize anything, so I decided to go get an
education at Leed University and got a degree in English. I was still
a kid trying to learn about stuff.
TW: You were also a English teacher at one time. Do you think being a
teacher helped in being an overall communicator?
MK: I think it did help, because teaching a class is a gig. You have
got to be interesting... journalism helped a lot too to get to make
sense of all this information around you.
TW: Did you ever cover any interesting stories? Your song writing has
a very literate quality to it, like someone who likes to read.
MK: Yes, I like to read a lot, I was always good in English in school.
And drama too, I was always up for. In fact, I read my first adult novel
when I was about nine, it was John Steinbeck, Cannery Row, and I remember
thinking, when my Mummy gave it to me when I was ill in bed, this is my
first adult book, it had a heat to it which I remember appreciating.
TW: Romeo and Juliet, a beautiful love song, it seems like the characters
get their romantic vocabulary from other things, like films...
MK: That's right, it's kind of amusing to me in a way. I always thought
the Romeo character was a figure of fun to a certain extent. He becomes
a faintly ludicrous figure, you know, standing under the streetlight, under
the window.
TW: You even mention the song from West Side Story...
MK: Yes, because that's the story of the modern Romeo and Juliet.
[Romeo and Juliet]
TW: Romeo and Juliet from Dire Straits' 1980 Making Movies album.
When we come back we will here some rare Dire Straits music, and even
though it's a brand new album, some rare Notting Hillbillies as well.
TW: We're back with Mark Knopfler. He's brought us a special treat. It's
a song that didn't make it to the final album, a rare track, an out-take
called Lonesome Pine.
[Lonesome Pine]
{ This song sounds a lot like Bewildered with Steve Philips again on vocals,
MK's acoustic guitar is sweet but muted }
TW: Mark, let's talk about some rare music, this time from Dire Straits.
I'm thinking about Twisting by the Pool. Tell me about this collector's EP.
MK: I just wanted to do a record over the weekend. So we did! We just
went booming into a cheap little studio and bashed it out almost as
quickly as we could play it and get it over with. It was just a reaction
after having done that careful Love Over Gold stuff.
TW: This was in late 1982 ?
MK: Yeah, it was just a reaction, after being in the studio for a long
time doing a more careful record. If I Had You, I haven't heard for
a long time, for years. I always liked that, it's really where I come
from. If I Had You, which a lot of people don't know exists, recorded
about long as it took to write and play, I just wrote it down and there
it was. To me, that song is really what I'm all about, more than
a lot of things I can think of.
TW: OK! Let's listen to If I Had You, Mark Knopfler shooting from the hip.
If I Had You, from October 1982.
MK: You have to turn it up really loud.
[If I Had You]
TW: Mark, I read recently that Dire Straits is getting back together
at the end of the year. After touring with Eric Clapton and producing
Randy Newman, and the movie soundtracks what's made you turn your attention
back to Dire Straits ?
MK: A combination of things really, you can't just dream other people's
dreams all the time. Also, if you're a writer you've got stuff you want
to get recorded and it's best to use your own vehicle to do that. You
miss your audiences and people miss you and they get disappointed because
they haven't seen you play for a while. They want another record and
want you out playing gigs again. I am not talking about the music
business people, these are just the fans. Songs have been putting
themselves together at a fairly regular pace.
TW: I heard you have a song about an incident where the police charged
some strikers.
MK: About 1987, when the miner's strike was going on, the BBC said that
the Queen was reportedly shocked by today's scenes. Because it was just
like a cavalry charge, there were these guys on horses with big clubs.
And then all the pickets were in the field. It just reminded me of the
Charge of the Light Brigade.
TW: Does the song have a title yet ?
MK: Yeah, it's called Iron Hand. When the Hillbillies tour is over, I am
looking forward to getting back together again with everybody and we will
be out on the road again. The travelling circus will go 'round the world,
complete with catering. (laughs)
TW: I am sure we will all be excited to see Dire Straits back on tour.
MK: Well we are, for sure. Thanks very much.
TW: I always wanted to ask you about Brothers in Arms, it's sounds like
you're talking about a person made rootless by war, by conflict.
MK: I was putting myself in the position of someone about to expire on
the battlefield. I couldn't help think what would go on in your mind
at that time.
TW: With that strong imagery in mind, let's listen to the title track
from the Dire Straits 1985 album, Brothers in Arms.
[Brothers in Arms]
TW: We are talking with Mark Knopfler, in the studio. Mark, both
you and Randy Newman have done a lot of film scores. You have done
Local Hero, Cal, The Princess Bride and the new one, Last Exit to Brooklyn.
I know that film scoring is very demanding, why do you think you are
well suited to it?
MK: Someone asked Randy why he thought that I was good at film scoring,
and the first thing that popped to his mind was: stamina! That I have
the stamina to make sure it comes out OK. It's not so much talent
as the perverse willpower. It's easy to hate that part of the film
soundtrack which is not theme, not melody, but somehow managing to do
an action sequence. That's when you need to your apply yourself to the grind.
To a certain extent, you have to cue a response, you have to point
the audience to certain things.
TW: Let's pick a track from Local Hero to play. What do you think
about Smooching ? It's such a pretty piece.
MK: I like that. That was my first experience working with really high
quality musicians like Mike Brecker and Mike Manieri. Probably one of
the first simple instrumentals I did, I always liked that tune.
TW: Nice, gentle, beguiling track from the Local Hero soundtrack.
[Smooching]
TW: Let's close by listening to another song from the new album,
Missing... How did the album get its name ?
MK: That came from my main technician Ron, the roadie guy came up with. I
asked him once, "Where's Brendan", and he said, "Missing, presumed having
a good time". If you think of a Hillbilly as a derogatory term, which
it is, it certainly applies.
TW: (laughs)
MK: The album was originally titled "Clubbing", which is what we used
to do.
TW: Well, it's appropriate then that we close by listening to one of Brendan's
songs, That's Where I Belong.
MK: That's a good tune, Brendan's good at that, it has a certain purity
and beauty.
TW: Thanks Mark for your time with us, in the studio.
MK: Thank you.
[That's Where I Belong]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Knopfler / RockLine interview: 93.05.10
The following is a rough transcript of an interview with Mark Knopfler on
RockLine, a "rock radio network" call-in show, broadcast live on May 10,
1993. The occasion was the release of Dire Straits' live album ON THE
NIGHT.
[Note: I haven't included all of the host's remarks; my remarks
are in [] ]
RL: ..... Joining us now though, to talk about Dire Straits and
more, I give you, an early riser this morning, someone who's
had about an hour of sleep, and we're so happy to have with
us Mr. Mark Knopfler. Hi Mark
MK: Hullo there, how are you?
RL: I'm doing just fine. It's pretty difficult to do these shows
over I think 8 time-zones, but we'll get by I hope.
You did this album, 250 shows, and you took 2 different shows
to make the album. How'd you choose which ones to put on
the album?
MK: Well, that's always a hard one. We had a live album out in
'84 I think it was, and I was supposed to listen to about 10
nights of music, and I sat down with a bunch of cassettes and I
started listening to Monday night and after about 10 minutes I
said ok i can't do this, what seemed to be a good night? Well
Saturday was a good night so let's just have that and that can
be the record.
MK: But this time actually we listened a bit more carefully. I
had somebody - another couple of guys doing it - helping me.
Because it's a lot of stuff, if you've recorded say 6 or 7 or 8
or 9 nights and you've got 2 1/2 hours of stuff every night it
sort of multiplies, and you've heard it so many times it's
pretty difficult. Mind, most of it's so bad you know "that's not
going to make it, that's not going to make it," so - It's
pretty much self-evident what's useable and what's not after
awhile, you just get to know it pretty well, say "oh yeah, I
never played that well enough, so that's never going to be on
the record," that kind of thing you know.
RL: Well, you had a core of Dire Straits on this tour, you had
yourself of course, Guy Fletcher, John Illsley, and Alan Clark.
But you really, excuse this pun now, you put some heavy fuel in
there, you beefed up with, what, five more guys is that right? Who
else joined you?
MK: I wanted percussion, I mean, just seemed to get bigger all
the time. It's 9-piece really, because I added percussion
[Danny Cummings -ed.], and we still had sax [Chris White -ed.],
so that's the same as last time, and then Paul Franklin from
Nashville on pedal steel for all the stuff. So it just seemed
as if it was bigger, I mean, I know it was bigger, we needed a
bigger stage and you're further away from the drummer, it makes
things pretty loud, you have to hit the drums really hard cause
you're so far away from everybody. He kept going through heads.
[Also: Chris Whitten on drums; Phil Palmer on 2nd guitar -ed.]
RL: Well I know you love that pedal steel, that Nashville sound,
and Paul's great at that. Why don't we take one right now,
let's hear one from ON THE NIGHT, this is one called "Your
Latest Trick" on RockLine.
[Song: "Your Latest Trick" (live from ON THE NIGHT)]
RL: We're back live and nation-wide on RockLine ....
RL: First call from Louisville, Kentucky, Louise ....
Hi Louise, hello there
MK: Hullo, hullo
Louise: My question is, I'm wondering how Mark would compare
this live album to Dire Straits' last live album, ALCHEMY.
MK: Well, I think um, it's got to be better than that. It's
just, it's got to be better. The first one, I didn't really do
anything with it, was just literally, absolutely, straight off
just really from one night. It's got all kinds of things wrong
with it. I think with this one, well we took a little bit more
care to make it perhaps something you can live with better. I
mean I can't live with my records anyway, I tend to go and take
a cold shower instead, or something like that, I'm not really
good at judging my stuff at all, it embarrasses me, I mean, I
just do it and as soon as it's done i get on to something else.
RL: You don't even listen to your own records, I know a lot of
movie stars don't even watch their own movies. You literally
don't listen to your records?
MK: No, I'm like that, you know, I can't even watch myself on
videotape very happily, certainly not talking, it's not so bad
if I'm playing or something, I can sort of sometimes manage
that, but if I see myself talking on tv or something, it's
awful, it's like somebody else, it makes me a bit uncomfortable.
RL: Mark, John Lennon didn't like the sound of his own voice
either, probably couldn't stand to see himself. Thank you
Louise...
RL: Let's move on to Texas,.... talk to Shirley....
Shirley: Hi Mark
MK: Hello, how are you Shirley?
Shirley: I know you've written a lot of stuff, you've written
all your own stuff, and you've written stuff that other people
have recorded, John Anderson for one, and I love that... ["When
It Comes to You" -ed.]
MK: Oh, thank you
Shirley: ... But, how do you decide which material to keep for
yourself?
MK: Well, uh, I suppose anybody could do anything, I mean,
if you're doing something that, say, somebody like John has
made a big success out of (I'm so happy for him) that's more of
a straight song, it's a proper song, in the sense that it's got
some verses, and it's kind of understandable. But every now and
again you know, I write something that's a bit off-the-wall, and
I've started writing it so I finish it. But I'm going to have to
learn to write songs that other people can do better, like that.
A lot of people in Nashville have recorded actually a lot of
tunes that I've done, so I've built up a lot of friends there.
MK: I don't really know how - I don't really, I don't really say
"ok, well, that's definitely, you know, for me, and this is for,
you know, anybody else who wants it" - it's usually, I think I
end up recording things that nobody else would touch with a
barge pole, you know, it's usually that way round.
MK: I mean I remember when "Private Dancer," when I wrote a tune
called "Private Dancer" and I had a kind of version of it but it
just didn't really fit on the album i was doing at the time so
Tina Turner ended up doing it, and that all worked out rather
well for her. But it's just, it just didn't really suit the
album, so it was there you know, didn't really suit what I was
doing at the time -- but there are no laws about it.
RL: Tina took it and it was the title track to one of the biggest
albums of the 80s, PRIVATE DANCER, that's got to make you feel
pretty good. Thanks for the call Shirley.....Let's go locally
here Mark, talk to Frank in Anaheim.
Frank: Hi, good morning Mr. Knopfler
MK: Good morning
Frank: My question is this, before I moved out here, I used to
live in England, and I remember both you and Eric Clapton used
to always show up on each other's sets, like all the time, and
Alan Clark your keyboard player was part of Clapton's 9-piece
band...
MK: Eric's set-up, yeah
Frank: That's right, and you guys worked so well together, your
differences in music made it blend so well together, um the
stuff at the Nelson Mandela concert, for example, was just
incredible, he added so much, and vice versa with you at the
Albert Hall as well. And I was wondering why it was that you
haven't recorded anything together, because between the two of
you, you're the greatest.
MK: Well, thanks. Yeah, it was always great fun. It was just
literally you know, you get involved with projects that last for
a long time, you know, long tours, and album projects and other
things like that, I mean a tour that goes on for 18 months or
whatever, and then you don't see each other for awhile. And
that's just the way it works out. I mean a lot about
professional music is that, that you form relationships and then
you don't see anybody else, you don't see anybody for a couple
of years [laughing]. It's like that with me and Chet [Atkins] or
something like that, but eventually you get back and you do
something. It's just literally trying to find time to do
everything. I mean I went out on the road with Eric because I was
a bit road-rusty, and I just felt like getting out and relaxing,
and playing live, and that was just one of those great, fun
things to do. And I mean our styles worked out well together,
because they're sort of different, Eric uses a pick and I use me
fingers, so they always blended in just really easy, it was
never a problem.
RL: It's funny, you and I off the air were just talking about
this, it all comes down to just a matter of time, if we had
enough time we could do work with everyone we wanted to.
RL: Let's do one more from ON THE NIGHT, here's one we talked
about earlier, here's "Heavy Fuel"
[Song --- "Heavy Fuel"]
RL: [next caller] Chuck, from PawPaw [sp?] Michigan ....
Chuck: Good morning Mark
MK: Hi Chuck, how are you ?
Chuck: Look, as you heard, I'm from Michigan, and I was just
wondering where you got the idea for the song "Telegraph Road,"
'cause in Pontiac, going up to the SilverDome, US24 is called
Telegraph Road and I was just wondering if you came up with that
while you were on tour or something?
MK: Yeah, that's exactly what happened, in fact was driving down
that road, and I was reading a book at the time, called THE
GROWTH OF THE SOIL [by Knud Hamsun, Norway] and I just put the two
together. I was driving down this Telegraph Road that you're
talking about, I think it's the same road, and it just went on
and on and on forever, it's like what they call linear
development. And I just started to think, I wondered how that
road must have been when it started, what it must have first
been. And then really that's how it all came about yeah, I just
put that book together and the place where I was, I was actually
sitting in the front of the tour bus, at the time.
RL: Chuck, I can't believe you put that together ....
RL: [Next caller from] Upper Derby in Pennsylvania, Michael ...
Michael: Hi Mark, good morning. I saw you last year when you
played at the Philadelphia Spectrum, and I noticed that in the
song "Money for Nothing," you left out the word with a
homosexual reference, and I was wondering, why did you censor
yourself?
MK: Oh I don't -- it wasn't really a question of that, I don't
know, I'd change it about however --- whatever came up -- I'd never
sing it exactly the same any one night. In fact, I never had any
flak for that at all, because everybody, anybody with any sense,
understands that it's a song about a rockhead, an ape-brain.
MK: So, I really never had any problems at all from that, I
remember I think one guy wrote something about it, but he was
probably the guy who decided to get annoyed about Randy Newman
writing a thing called "Short People" which was actually a song
about the stupidity of prejudice. So I mean you can't legislate
against stupidity, I mean some people will read it the wrong
way, but I think it's very, very few, and I never really felt
the need to censor myself on it. But having said that, I am
aware that you have to take responsibility for what you write,
and you do have to be quite careful because some people can take
things the wrong way. So it's not something that I would, on
the one hand, I wouldn't censor myself too strongly, but on the
other, I wouldn't accentuate that side of things for fear that
people might really take things the wrong way, and that's
certainly not intended.
RL: It's certainly intended to be satire, great song, too, "Money
for nothing, chicks for free". Boy what a deal.
Let's talk to someone from Louisville, - Terry ...
Terry: Hello Mark. ... When you did your work with Chet Atkins,
did he influence your musical style in any way, and if so, what
did you learn from him?
MK: Well when I was a kid, learning how to play guitar, a friend of mine
had some Chet records, and we were more interested really in playing
rock'n'roll and the blues and everything, and Chet to us seemed just
light-years away from where we would ever be able to play guitar, I mean
it was just guitar-playing on a whole other planet. But I came up picking
as well as playing with a pick - finger-picking I mean -- so I came up to
be able to kind of play with Chet, after a fashion, but he's influenced me
a lot since meeting him and playing with him, Chet has, in a lot of ways,
and on one level I can steal licks from him like you wouldn't believe,
I'll just say, "Hey man, that was great, Chet" "You like that? I'll show
it to ya, I'll show it to you, don'cha know" In fact there's a lick on
that thing we were talking about, that John Anderson did, we were talking
to the caller before about "When It Comes To You", that little lick after
every verse, which I just stole straight from Chet, just sitting in his
kitchen, picking with him, "I'll take that!" -- "You can have it". Yeah,
he's a great influence.
RL: Thank you, Chet. For those out there that don't know it,
'cause Mark won't say it, the album they did together, NECK AND
NECK, you guys won a couple of Grammys for "best country vocal
collaboration" [MK: oh that was a laugh] and "best country
instrumental", so a couple of Grammys for country music for Chet
Atkins and the great Mark Knopfler who we're with right now.
Let's take one from MAKING MOVIES, let's go back a little bit
and hear some "Solid Rock", what do you say.
[Song --- "Solid Rock"]
RL: And one called "Solid Rock" from MAKING MOVIES, the album from
Dire Straits ... [Next caller:] Gary, West LA
Gary: Hey Mark, good morning, I know it's early over there
MK: Yeah, it's five o'clock in the morning
Gary: Do you think rock'n'roll these days is headed toward its
original R&B roots with the advent of all the electronic sets up
and around these days, and all that kind of stuff. 'Cause you
know, the finger-picking, the country music, you know all that
almost-Elvis-type getting back to stuff? Also if I can ask, are
there any songs of yours that really cook on stage, that you
really enjoy?; and are there any songs that when you're also
playing, maybe bring tears to your eyes, you know, get you very
emotional?
MK: Well, you know, tears, the tears bit, yeah, 'cause they're
all so, you know, 'cause I just can't stand to hear 'em.
MK: That's a 10-part question we got going here now Gary. The
first bit about the original instruments, and the original
recording, I think you've got a point, I mean I think there's
going to be a move back, certainly as far as I'm concerned there
will be. The kind of records that I play and the kind of
records that I like at home to play are very often extremely
primitive records, in the sense that everybody's playing
together and you've got leakage and you've got - you haven't
got separation and all the rest of it, and they're great
records. And a lot of the old instruments are being used these
days, and the old amplifiers which I like to use, old acoustics,
old microphones, and I think a lot of people go back to 16-track
and all the rest of it. And there will be always - I mean a lot
of the young bands, it's interesting to notice - a lot of the
young bands want to play older instruments, you know, they don't
really necessarily want to have the latest and greatest in
so-called technology. So that's certainly part of it, but I mean
there've been moves back to roots music all the way through so
you're gonna get both running together. In other words you're
going to get people making records with samples and all the rest
of it, that will always maybe be going on, but I think at the
same time every now and again there's a so-called "blues
revival," you know every now and again when people start
pointing people back to Appalachian this, that and the other, or
whatever it is, going back down the Mississippi, which is fine
by me, you know I always thought it was kind of cute when bands
just suddenly discovered the blues. But that's always going to
happen, that's always going to happen.
MK: On the other parts of your question, as far as I can
remember it was, no, nothing makes me cry, that I've ever done,
and um...
RL: what gets you revved up? I think he was also asking, what
really gets you kicking?
MK: Well, things that - when music inspires me it will be
something like, a friend of mine in Nashville, who's an
Englishman actually, he's a great songwriter, called Paul
Kennerley [wrote "Poor Boy Blues" on the Atkins/Knopfler album
NECK AND NECK -ed.], sends me little CARE packages on cassettes
of just - he's got a fantastic record collection, and it's just
like little CARE packages, and he just - I'm sure a lot of you
guys must do the same thing, you send each other music - and he
just puts together stuff, and he just titles it, you know "Cool
Stuff" or "More Cool Stuff". And that's what it is, and that's
what gets me going. A lot of it's really early music, but
occasionally it's something from right now. It's just a mixture
and really the thing that probably links it all is that it's all
got soul and it's all from the heart.
RL: Let's hear one of those right now, with soul and from the heart.
It's also from your live album which we're talking about tonight,
ON THE NIGHT. Let's hear one called "Walk of Life", "the boy can
play."
[Song: "Walk of Life"]
RL: Yeah, you gotta like that, I love that Nashville sound there.
Mr. Paul Franklin on pedal steel guitar; Mark Knopfler and the
rest of Dire Straits there. One from ON THE NIGHT, that's the new
live Dire Straits album that's due out tomorrow in the USA. ....
[End of tape Side One.]
[Side Two:]
RL: .... Mark was just saying, live in London there, that
somebody put, what, a couple of bottles of wine there for you?
MK: A couple of bottles of wine at 5 o'clock in the morning,
what do you think I am?
RL: You're a rock'n'roll star, what can you say? Let's go to
[Hartford] Connecticut and talk to some people here. Michael, a
listener there ...
Michael: First let me say it's an honor to talk to one of the
best guitarists in rock'n'roll history
MK: Oh, steady, lad, steady
Michael: My question is with regard to the song "Brothers in
Arms", more specifically, the video. I'm wondering what input
you had to make that video?
MK: Not an awful lot, I didn't have much to do with videos until
"Money for Nothing". I sort of foolishly thought that I'd go on
and play music and film-makers should go on and make their
films. And to a certain extent that was true all the way up
until - I just didn't like the way videos were turning out, so
for "Money For Nothing" I started taking a bit more interest and
worked more closely with them. But the "Brothers" thing, yeah, a
little bit. You know, people come up with new ideas and things
and you do get involved. I kind of liked the idea of making the
guitars into guns and the guns into guitars and all the other
kind of things. But I can't remember really how much input I
actually put into it. You know, usually you're off doing
something else when people are getting involved in all of that
anyway so it's quite difficult to stay absolutely in touch with
it. And, I'm pretty ambivalent about videos anyway, I mean I
prefer the RADIO.
RL: We had Sting on last week and he said the same thing. He
said it's hard enough to write the music, record it and then
tour, when you gotta make the video!
RL: Let's go down south, way down south, near Mobile Bay, that's
why they call it Mobile, Alabama. Jobbett's there listening ...
Hi Jobbett!
Jobbett: Morning, Mark!
MK: Good morning, how's everything down there, alright?
Jobbett: Alright! Been a great fan of yours for years now, and
you gotta be the greatest musician around today.
MK: Oh, please. .... [unintelligible, self-deprecating mumble
sounds like -> "... any aspirin over there?" [or] "desperate over there"]
Jobbett: My first question's about your brother and I was
wondering, listening to him, he's got like a digital - his voice
is like a digital copy of yours. I was wondering why he left the
band, and why the two of you haven't recorded anything together
since?
MK: Well, I saw him today as a matter of fact, Dave. Well, you
know, I think at the time, you know back then, you've really got
to want to do it, this sort of thing. But, yeah, it's just one
of those things, I mean Dave really is a creative person in his
own right, and he wants to make his own records, which he does,
and he does all kinds of things for people, film stuff and all
sorts of things. So he's a writer and a player of his own thing.
I mean the band for me is a way that I can write songs and get
them recorded. And I think at that time, you know, we were
touring, working very hard and touring a lot, and I don't think
Dave would mind me saying that he's not as suited to that kind
of life-style I think, he was more questioning of the whole
thing, probably quite wisely. You know, you've got to be
completely committed to everything. I mean if you don't like the
food, or you don't like this or that or the other, you've got to
put up with it sometimes and just really get your head down and
grind, grind your way through it. You need a real sense of
humour too, it's the most important thing, I think to have in a
rock band, probably more than anything else. And just at that
time, I think, probably it was a bit frayed. But I'm very
glad that it's worked out the way it has, you know, there are
absolutely no regrets, it's probably for the best. But I would
certainly work, I mean I played on Dave's subsequent record and
everything, and I've always loved making music with Dave, and it
might very well happen again.
RL: Things happen for a reason, I'm sure it will happen again.
... Jobbett if you look out your back door, I know you'll see
the water of Mobile Bay, and as you do that, let's take you,
"Down to the Waterline".
[Song: "Down to the Waterline" from DIRE STRAITS]
RL: Ooh, love that stuff, from the first album, that's the first
song I ever heard from you guys, Mark: "Down to the Waterline"
from DIRE STRAITS. Boy, that's great stuff. That was one of the
songs on the demo you guys originally released, is that right?
MK: Yeah, it's a song about living in Newcastle-on-Tyne, up in
northeast England where I come from, on the river. Yeah, it
would be on the original demo that got us a lot of attention on
the radio in London. Charlie Gillett played it on a show called
Honky-Tonk which he had on a Sunday, it was like a roots music
program. And it got a lot of attention, the tape, and it helped
really get us running in London, all the clubs and everything
that we used - and the pubs and everywhere where we were
starting to play, and all the record company interest, yeah.
RL: .... [next caller:] Travers City, Michigan, John
John: How're you doing, Mark?
MK: I'm fine, well I think so, it's half-five now. Waking up,
slowly.
John: First of all I wanted to let you know that I really really
enjoy your LOCAL HERO soundtrack, fantastic film, I highly recommend
it, it's very funny [MK: Thank you]. You're welcome, my question
was, back in 1980, when you worked on, ironically enough, Steely
Dan's GAUCHO album with Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, how did
that all come about? You worked on the tune "Time Out of Mind",
which is a fantastic tune. Did they come to you? Did you go to
them? It's a great tune, I love it, how did that all happen?
MK: No, you get sessions by, usually, people come to you and ask you,
you can't go barging up to people who you don't know and saying,
suggesting, that um ....
No, actually that was the first proper session that I ever
did, so it was a real, you know, in at the deep end, there,
because of course I rated them so highly, and it was a great way
to actually, to start. But I was kind of shocked, because I
wasn't really familiar with you know, the session world, or how
people refered to things, and this, that and the other. So it
took me by surprise, a bit, and I was there till about 4 o'clock
in the morning. And I remember walking out of that session, and
looking at the engineer, and saying "Man, I mean, wow, how was
all that?" I mean, I was kind of puzzled, you know. And he said
"Man, don't worry," he said, "you did great", he said "you wanna
see - you know they been through a hundred and fifty musicians,
crawling out on their knees." So I thought, oh well, it can't
have been too bad. But, you know, you get to, when you do more
and more and more sessions, you get to know the way that it all
works and you just get more used to it, you know, time spent
doing it and everything else. It was a privilege to play on the
record.
RL: They're wonderful, and they've been known to use a few studio
musicians through the years, and join us next week, for Donald
Fagen on the show.... Calgary, Alberta's our next stop, Mark. Let's
talk to Ray....
Ray: Hello, how're you doing there Mark?
MK: I'm alright thank you, how are you?
Ray: ...... My question for you there Mark, is your project with
the Notting Hillbillies, I was curious to know how that came
into being in the first place, if you can elaborate a little bit
more about that?
MK: Yeah well, when I was working in Leeds many years back, I
got to play country blues with a man called Steve Phillips and
he got me interested in a lot of earlier music, and we played
steel guitars together and everything. And Brendan Croker came
along and started playing with Steve about the time that I was
leaving Leeds. So he took over and we got to know each other all
pretty well. And then, I was gonna do a record for Steve and
Brendan. I suggested getting something together with Steve and
Brendan, for just the two of them in London at my little home
studio. So I enlisted Guy [Fletcher] from my band and
everything. And we had such a good time, that we just became ...
you know, we all started sticking stuff into it so we had such a
good time making the record, that we thought maybe we might do a
little tour, in small places. And it just got out of hand,
'cause it was pretty popular. So we decided to call a halt you
know really, as soon as we could, because it was... I thought it
was just gonna end up being on a little roots label, and it
wasn't gonna be a big deal, and then it sold an awful lot of
copies, and they wanted us to do bigger places. The tour that we
did was just in the UK, but we could have gone on, I mean we
could have been playing in the Sahara, now if we wanted to. So
it was just a question of just calling a halt while we were
still ahead, really.
RL: And the name of the band - the name of the band came from
actually where you live, right? That's where your home studio
was.
MK: Yeah, that's it, just Notting Hill, yeah, but we had a lot of
fun, maybe we'll do it again some time.
RL: Great band, and Mark, you can't think something's gonna stay
small, you are Mark Knopfler after all. I mean that sincerely...
MK: Well, that rhymed.
RL: ... Let's go back to the COMMUNIQUE album, your second album, and
hear one that's a little more satire than we're used to talking
about, let's hear "Lady Writer".
[Song: ... "Lady Writer"]
RL: ...Let's go to Binghampton, New York and talk to Pat.
Pat: Hi, Mark, how are you doing?
ML: Fine, thank you, how are you?
Pat: It's a great honor talking to you. Everyone seems to be
putting out boxed sets these days. How do you feel about boxed
sets? And also will Dire Straits be putting one out?
MK: Boxed sets? Well it's not something that I get up thinking about, and
I've never really lost any sleep over boxed sets. Yeah, I worry more
about Bosnia than boxed sets. Boxed sets don't figure really big on my
list of worries.
RL: So you're into making new music, then, would you say?
MK: Yeah, exactly, I mean I don't mean to be flippant, I mean -
yeah that's exactly it. I lose interest, basically I've done it,
you know, and then I look on to the next thing. So, I'm not
really much of an old boy, in terms of that. There's going to
be a compilation of all the film stuff, at some point quite
soon, I think, so you get rid of all the incidental stuff, and
just stick the tunes on, from the different films. So in a
sense, that's a kind of a set, a compilation. But there was a
record, actually, we did have a record out, more of a
compilation, you know, the MONEY FOR NOTHING record. So it will
happen from time to time. I think really because people want it,
you can't really blame people for that, they just want to have
the tunes that they like on a record, so I have nothing against
it. I like those big compilation things sometimes, yeah, and
that Dylan thing was a great one, it had all kinds of outtakes
and different things on it, it was really well worth having.
RL: Your fans are starving for all time B-sides and everything
else, so they will end up on a boxed set one day sometime. If
there's a demand for it, they'll end up there. Let's move on to
Omaha, Nebraska, and talk to John.
John: Hi Mark, great to talk to you. As a member of the Dire
Straits Information Service, I had read that there will be
a CD single possibly called ENCORES, that would feature
"Your Latest Trick," "The Bug," "Solid Rock," and "Local Hero"
["Wild Theme"]. Any possibilities of that being released in the
US, or is that something that's just going to be a UK type of
product?
Mark: Yeah, I think you've got one there, Beau, haven't you?
RL: Yeah, it's been released here in the United States, and on
it you'll find actually, stuff from LOCAL HERO, "Wild Theme,"
not found on the live LP, "The Bug," which we're going to play
for you ...
[Song "The Bug"]
RL: Ahh, do the bug. "Sometimes you're the Louisville slugger,
sometimes you're the ball". That's the way it goes. That one
available on ENCORES, that *is* an import, but you'll find that
song and "Solid Rock" and "Local Hero" and lots of others on the
video LP that is released here in the United States.
RL: Two quick calls, first of all Calgary, Alberta, Sean is
a listener there of CJAY. Hi, Sean.
Sean: Good evening, gentlemen, Mark how're you doing?
MK: I'm alright, thank you, Sean, how are you?
Sean: Oh not too bad, pleasure to talk to you. You're the
greatest, man, keep up the good work. My question is, I'm
putting together my Dire Straits CD collection here, and I'm
having a little trouble finding the TWISTING BY THE POOL EP,
I was wondering if that was available at all on CD?
MK: I think you might find it in a junk shop somewhere, second-hand
store someplace that sells old jewellery and things, you might find it
somewhere. I haven't got one, sorry, if I did I'd send it to you. I
haven't even got this latest album, I must go 'round to the office and get
a couple of copies. I've no idea, I really don't know how you go about
getting things like that. I mean, do people actually still play that
thing?
RL: Yeah, I've heard it on several stations.
MK: Oh I know, I think there's a "Twisting by the Pool" on that
compilation, the MONEY FOR NOTHING album, I think. But there's
an EP, that's right, there was an EP, we did it in a couple of
days, yeah, that was a couple of days' job that, yeah. Don't
know where you get it from.
RL: Go check out the MONEY FOR NOTHING greatest hits, Sean, and
that's a great song, "Twisting by the Pool". Time for one more
caller, from Stillwater, Oklahoma, - Paul.
Paul: Mark, I was just wondering, are you gonna be doing any
more music for movies like you did in PRINCESS BRIDE, I really
liked the tunes you did for that.
MK: Thanks, yeah, yeah, I'm hoping to do something, I hope we'll
be able to get a Robert Redford film, but I don't know when
exactly it's gonna be, but I'm looking forward to it.
RL: Two great pieces of work, LOCAL HERO and PRINCESS BRIDE, a Rob
Reiner film, I think I said Ron Howard talking to you
off the air a minute ago.
RL: ...... Special thanks tonight to Ed Bicknell of Damage Management
Ltd. ... And finally, to our guest tonight, Mark Knopfler. Mark,
next time - I'm sorry you only got an hour's sleep, maybe next time
we can have you here in our Hollywood studio, so we can kick back
and relax a little bit more. Thanks for coming on.
MK: I'll forward to it. Thank you very much.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
12) Archive, Lyrics, Guitar Chords & Tabs, Bitmap Pictures
----------------------------------------------------------
Where can I obtain old messages posted to the list ?
Old list messages are archived on lucy.merrimack.edu and can be obtained by
anonymous ftp. The archive is maintained on a VAX system so the commands
for changing directories are different than Unix. Please refer to the
README file for the VAX syntax.
Where can I get lyrics to Dire Straits' songs ?
Where can I get guitar chords or tabs for Dire Straits' songs ?
Where can I get gifs (scanned bitmap images) of Dire
Straits ?
Where are ftp sites ?
Lyrics
-------
Russ Nelson runs a Dire Straits (and others) lyrics server on his computer.
It's usually available from 7am to 11:30pm (ish) weekdays and a little
later on both ends weekends, but isn't on when he's on vacation. For more
information and instructions, finger @HeartAu.st.HMC.edu
The following is a condensation of a List of Internet Musical FTP sites
with some additions, that is posted to the newsgroup rec.music.info
Dire Straits related information (lyrics, guitar tabs and chords, bitmap
pictures) can be found on some of these sites.
LIST OF INTERNET MUSICAL FTP SITES
--- ftp.uwp.edu [131.210.1.4]
Directory: /pub/music
Maintainer: David Datta (datta@cs.uwp.edu)
This is the Music FTP Archive, a place that every music lover on the net
should be familiar with. Many interesting things are stored here, in
particular:
- Classical music buying guide
- Discographies for over 350 artists
- Lyrics to over 15000 songs by over 1100 artists
- Rec.music.info archives
- Sounds & Pictures
--- vacs.uwp.edu
Directory: /pub/music/lyrics/d/dire.straits
--- cs.uwp.edu
Directory: /pub/music/lyrics/d/dire.straits
Directory: /pub/music/pictures/d/dire.straits/dstraits.jpg
--- ftp.sunset.se
Dire Straits bitmaps are located here in /pub/pictures
--- ftp.uwp.edu [131.210.1.4]
Directory: /pub/music/lists
Yup, this is the same ftp-site as the previous one, but I think a second
entry is necessary for mentioning that this specific directory contains
mailing list logs. (The Dire Straits mailing list logs are not here)
--- ftp.iastate.edu [129.186.150.150]
A daily mirror site for ftp.uwp.edu.
--- syrinx.umd.edu [129.2.8.114]
--- archive.phish.net [128.118.193.29]
Directory: /pub/phish
Maintainer: Lee Silverman (phish-archive@fuggles.acc.virginia.edu)
Phish archives. Contains FAQs, lyrics, chords, stories, etc.
To request files from the archive (if you don't have ftp):
phish-archives@phish.net.
To get on/off the digestified list (from rec.music.phish):
phish-request@phish.net
To post to PhishNet:
rec.music.phish (Usenet)
phish@phish.net (Mail)
--- ftp.nevada.edu [131.216.1.11]
Directory: /pub/guitar/d/Dire.Straits
Directory: /pub/bass
Maintainer: James B. (jamesb@nevada.edu)
Archive site for guitar and bass tablature music transcriptions. These
files are also available from the Music FTP Archive, and updates to
the archive are regularly posted to rec.music.info.
--- netcom.com [192.100.81.100]
Directory: /pub/fobs/*
Maintainer: Eric Thompson (fobs-request@netcom.com)
Friends of the Bobs archive. Mailing list logs, hotline transcriptions,
concert dates. [Subscribe to list at above request address.]
--- hobbes.linfield.edu [192.147.171.2]
Directory: /pub/guitar
Maintainer: Dean Gaudet (dgaudet@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca)
This archive is intended for acoustic guitar tablature and chords.
####
Reader's Comments
jen
Was wondering what happened to a friend of mine - Lighting Technician Scotty Duhig, from Hobart Tasmania Aus. Does anyone remember him at all? Thanks...
