found some quotes from Phil about OES :
li: In 1991 you joined Dire Straits, playing on the album ‘On Every Street’. How did the transition from Eric Clapton’s band to Dire Straits come about?
Phil: I was replacing a guy called Jack Sonny, and I don’t really know why he wasn’t asked to do that tour, but I’m glad he wasn’t. The transition between the two was that I was still working for Eric Clapton and we did the Knebworth concert in 1990 with Dire Straits as well and I think that’s the first time I met Mark (Knophler). There’d always been a connection between the Dire Straits management because Paul Brady was also managed by the same people. So Eric had another disaster in his life when his son died in a terrible accident in New York. I remember being at the funeral for Connor [Eric’s son] at Eric’s house and Eric’s manager Roger Forrester said to us “We’re not sure what Eric’s gonna be doing in the future because of this obviously, and so if any of you guys get offered anything interesting you should probably take it because I can’t guarantee Eric will work again for at least another year or two”. Then not long after that, the Dire Straits thing popped up. I think the first time I did anything with them was when I arrived in London to do the tracks on ‘On Every Street’. I got to know Mark and got to know how interesting he was. I think they were already planning the strategy for the promotion of that album; because it was called ‘On Every Street’ and the idea was to tour with it and do as many concerts in as many places on every street on the planet. And that’s what happened, they scheduled a tour that was a year and a half with three months rehearsal and I signed up to do that tour. And then the weird thing was the day that I started rehearsals, which was going to be a long period of rehearsals, Eric called me up and said he wasn’t going to sit around moping for the rest of his life and that he was going to go on tour and could I do it? And I had just signed the contract with Dire Straits so I was bandjaxed really and I had to do Dire Straits now. The first thing Eric did after that was the unplugged CD, which became a massive seller.
Oli: Do you think if you’d had the option at that point of doing Eric’s tour rather than the Dire Straits tour would you have taken it? Or were you happy with how things happened?
Phil: In Retrospect, no I’m happy with the way things panned out. In retrospect, artistically Eric Clapton was always going to be a nicer gig.
Oli: Well as you rightly say Eric Clapton’s Unplugged album was a big seller. The live album from the Dire Straits tour ‘On The Night’ stayed in the top 40 for seven weeks upon release and was a very big seller in its own right. The tour lasted a year and a half, did you have any reservations about undertaking a tour of that magnitude?
Phil: Not really, touring for that length of time is really quite interesting because you go through various stages; the initial euphoria of playing massive gigs with a massively successful band and going to some very interesting and wonderful places. Then you go into the doldrums and realise you’ve got another fifteen months to go. I mean it’s great, it’s always great but it’s quite easy to allow yourself to get lazy because you play the same songs every night and you have to find something to inspire yourself. What I did on the tour was I decided that some kind of sporting activity might be a good idea and so I started learning how to play tennis. Whatever town we were in I would go and get some coaching and go to the big local tennis clubs and give them tickets to the gig and they would give me coaching lessons in return. And that was a great thing to do in retrospect because it kept me fit, it stopped me staying up all night for whatever reason. So I’d get up in the morning in Barcelona or wherever we had to be and I would go and play tennis, and that really helped me through the tour, kept me fit, kept me healthy and it kept me bright as well.
and a quite funny story:
Oli: Would you be willing to share any stories that might have made it into the SPINAL TAP finished script had the writers had access to your stories?
Phil: There is the sausages story of Dire Straits. Basically we’d been in America for a while, at least 6 weeks or something and everyone was really really tired of the food and wanted something a bit more interesting. So we were doing a gig in Canada and the caterers found a Marks & Spencer there and they bought all the pork sausages that they could find to feed the crew and we’d heard about this before we even got to the gig. We were saying “they’ve found pork sausages and we’re having sausages, mash, baked beans and fried onions for dinner tonight”, and everyone was incredibly excited about that. So we got to the gig and did the sound check and then we went to have dinner and it was fantastic. We had English mustard and onion gravy and everything was just perfect. But Mark and I think John [Illsley] decided, which was quite normal for them, that they were gonna save theirs and have it afterwards. So two plates were put aside for Mark and John both with three or four sausages and they would just microwave it after. But, when they came off stage there was only 2 sausages on Mark’s plate… and he was extremely upset. So he had all the crew marched in one by one and questioned them. I have a vivid picture in my mind of him: he still had his headband on and he was soaking wet in the dressing room, pissed off, and he said to each crew member one by one “Have you eaten my sausages? Because if I find out who it is they’re on the next plane home”, and of course nobody owned up to it and the evening went by and it was forgotten about. But the next gig which was a couple days later we arrived at the gig and Mark was still pretty angry about the sausages but the crew decided they would try and make a joke out of it. So they printed out a new set list with all new songs on it and it said things like ‘Romeo and Sausages’, ‘Money for Sausages’, ‘Sultans of sausages’ etc. And I remember Mark looking down at it and he was still pretty angry and he tore it to shreds and that’s the end of the story but I do know now 20 years later who it was that ate the sausages…
Oli: Do you think if Mark found out now he’d still try and get his revenge somehow?
Phil: Well it was a guy called Pete, one of the minders, I think he still works for him sometimes…
whole interview is here
https://olipalmer1.wordpress.com/2013/06/13/interview-with-phil-palmer-180213/
