On the Night - Robin Ross interview

[quizzaciously]

is MK the only major artist treating fans this way ?

* the last DS live truncated of all the main songs
* 25 years of solo career, no official live audio cd and no official concert video
* you even watch that 'Good on you son' video full of stuff taken from concerts, it's something like 'we do have the material but you can't buy it', kidding us ?

I think this situation is similar to Bob Dylan, but they're very close with Mark anyway. All this could be the other way, but because of their personalities it can't be.
In the other hand, you have artist with brilliant marketing and touring, like Paul McCartney, who releases songs like "Fuh You" nowadays. I'll take Mark's songs for sure!

[hunter]

is MK the only major artist treating fans this way ?

* the last DS live truncated of all the main songs
* 25 years of solo career, no official live audio cd and no official concert video
* you even watch that 'Good on you son' video full of stuff taken from concerts, it's something like 'we do have the material but you can't buy it', kidding us ?

Well, according to the interview he didn't include SOS on OTN because
- he didn't like the drum sound    Really, they weren't able to get a decent drum sound during a tour of 200+ shows?
- he didn't think he played one that people particularly would want to have    Really? SOS during the OES had some of his best playing ever. If he weren't happy with his sound, again, they couldn't fix this during a tour of 200+ shows?


As much as I appreciate Mark and his music, his reasoning is really beyond my understanding.

[quizzaciously]

is MK the only major artist treating fans this way ?

* the last DS live truncated of all the main songs
* 25 years of solo career, no official live audio cd and no official concert video
* you even watch that 'Good on you son' video full of stuff taken from concerts, it's something like 'we do have the material but you can't buy it', kidding us ?

Well, according to the interview he didn't include SOS on OTN because
- he didn't like the drum sound    Really, they weren't able to get a decent drum sound during a tour of 200+ shows?
- he didn't think he played one that people particularly would want to have    Really? SOS during the OES had some of his best playing ever. If he weren't happy with his sound, again, they couldn't fix this during a tour of 200+ shows?


As much as I appreciate Mark and his music, his reasoning is really beyond my understanding.

But the official reason as I recall was because they didn't want to make this live album too similar to Alchemy hence they decided to drop Sultans and Telegraph Road. No? Anyway, even if not, it's not the absolute truth, he may really dislike the drums, or disliked his most popular songs and wanted to push newer ones. The true reason is unknow unfortunately. This interview was a long time ago, maybe if somebody would as him today. He'd say "I can't remember"

[TheTimeWasWrong]

Really? SOS during the OES had some of his best playing ever. If he weren't happy with his sound, again, they couldn't fix this during a tour of 200+ shows?

I never liked any SOS from 91/92: too fast, too many notes, far too many drum fills. The saxophone is horrible too, I can hardly stand the 85/86 versions for that reason alone. SOS from 96 was similar but more polished. 2001 was great, as well as 2013/2015 although MK made some notable mistakes almost every night but at least he'd rock again. Not a fan of 2008/2010 with Danny on drums, really lifeless and karaoke-like.

[Jules]

Really? SOS during the OES had some of his best playing ever. If he weren't happy with his sound, again, they couldn't fix this during a tour of 200+ shows?

I never liked any SOS from 91/92: too fast, too many notes, far too many drum fills. The saxophone is horrible too, I can hardly stand the 85/86 versions for that reason alone. SOS from 96 was similar but more polished. 2001 was great, as well as 2013/2015 although MK made some notable mistakes almost every night but at least he'd rock again. Not a fan of 2008/2010 with Danny on drums, really lifeless and karaoke-like.

I also think that the 91/92 Sultans are the worst ever, including the ones from the MK solo tours, the drums were a disaster...

[hunter]

I personally prefer SOS from the OES tour over the BIA tour. I still think the best version is from the early days. SOS has a lot of energy in the big arenas, but I find SOS too pumped up and overblown compared with the early days. I think it always worked the best as a minimalist pub-rock song.

[ds1984]

I like the 91/92 version very much.

[Brunno Nunes]

is MK the only major artist treating fans this way ?

* the last DS live truncated of all the main songs
* 25 years of solo career, no official live audio cd and no official concert video
* you even watch that 'Good on you son' video full of stuff taken from concerts, it's something like 'we do have the material but you can't buy it', kidding us ?

Well, according to the interview he didn't include SOS on OTN because
- he didn't like the drum sound    Really, they weren't able to get a decent drum sound during a tour of 200+ shows?
- he didn't think he played one that people particularly would want to have    Really? SOS during the OES had some of his best playing ever. If he weren't happy with his sound, again, they couldn't fix this during a tour of 200+ shows?


As much as I appreciate Mark and his music, his reasoning is really beyond my understanding.

I remember this justification, which is quite incoherent, after all, between Alchemy and On the Night all the songs won different arrangements, SOS on the OES tour has different arrangements and flavor than the LOG tour, in the same way that Romeo and Juliet, Private Investigations or TR. Two Young Lovers at OES is totally disposable (in my opinion), it didn't work well, and it was played on all 91/92 shows, it could have been replaced by another song. It was a great sacrilege the absence of SOS and TR in an official live release of the band, it would never sound like Alchemy, Oh The Night is poor, because it does not reveal in full a typical show from the last tour, they repeated the same mistake of Alchmey which also doesn’t fully reveal a typical LOG tour show, the absence of 4 songs played at that time, Industrial Disease, LOG, Twisting by the Poll and a super version of Portobello Belle, until today, with all available technology have not been released, UNFORGIVEN !

Regarding the versions of SOS on the OES tour, the drums never pleased me, the mechanical sound, dry and without spontaneity, all millimetrically calculated, however, there are still incredible versions and there is nothing like a record of an era. Personally I prefer the SOS pub rock format, two guitars, bass and drums, but in the Rock arena style, there is nothing like SOS versions of the American tour during the BIA tour, when MK used that guitar built by John Suh, Custom built guitar mainly from Schecter parts, the one he uses in the Sydney 1986 version, that timbre is too delicious for my ears. In his solo career, the 2005 versions are unsurpassed, I also like those of 2001 and 1996.

There will always be several gaps in the official releases of live albums in his solo career, from the Madrid 2001 video, until today not released, unfortunate!

[Jeremiah_Dixon]

If you don't mind, I will transcribe this interview here, I hope you enjoy it! 


Q: New live album about to be released and unveiled, why another live album please?

A: Well, when we were originally talking about it, I suggested to the record companies that put some new things on. And they said, "No no no, everybody wants a souvenir of the tour." So I said fine, and that was the companies all around Europe, and apparently people want to have a souvenir, just the same with the film, the video, the show, they just want to have a souvenir reminder of what it was like to be there on the event.



Q: But shouldn't a live album be like the sort of Frampton Comes Alive albums, and the best of the film or like… you know things like that, and I think that a live album should be an item within itself, should be something that even if you weren't there, you can still enjoy the atmosphere of the event?

A: Well, I think… yeah Minister I still think that… I mean it's relevant as a recording, just because you know when you once you start going out live, you're changing the songs about. I mean as soon as you start rehearsing, which is my favorite time actually. And because you're putting new pieces in here, knocking things out, slicing and cutting and sticking pedal steel solos in, and this that and the other, and it's just a different thing from the record and you've got different people, too. You've got different drummers, and you've got percussionists and this that and the other, so it's a different experience altogether.

So it's worth having just from that point of view. I think it's a different entity from a live record… Sorry, from a studio record. You know we certainly weren't being slavish about being retentive about album parts necessarily. The part of the fun is being able to do it in different ways, they moved to take the songs and change them about, and I mean if you take something like Calling Elvis, it just live, it just became something else. That's what happens with crowds, that's what happens with rehearsals, you have to put endings onto things and all the rest of it. You're making a show, you make it something flow. So it becomes the show itself in a way, becomes something with its own life, made up of different songs and the order that they were on and so on and so forth.



Q: You just mentioned Calling Elvis, now it's been elongated to enormous proportions, say about ten minutes something. How do you justify that then? Because surely that could be a collection of long solos, and how do you also say to yourself right, Calling Elvis and good lines like this, but in rehearsal wouldn't it be nice to do this, how do you… how do you pick out those songs that you think would suit the extensions that you very often give them life?

A: You can't justify it. I think you just say it's nothing really short as indulgence and time-wasting, and the only excuse that I could possibly make would be that it gets everybody played in at the beginning of the set. Drummers can bash away, and percussionists can hit everything that they've got as loud as possible. So the sound people can get a chance to get the PA sorted out, and we get played in. I mean that's a way of getting warmed up, really. We have had quite a lot of fun with it in rehearsal, because I just found myself adding bits, and it's just a failing of mine really. I think it's just something that happens and I have no excuses really whatsoever. Apart from the playing in aspect and getting any getting the oil warmed up if you like.



Q: Well, nice to be honesty as a musician, it just says… Well I just having a bit of ago really(?). Charlie Galette gave you an opportunity many many years ago, and I actually remember the broadcast which is quite an amazing situation to be in. And there was just such a good feeling about that… now he gave you an opportunity, do you now have the opportunity to give younger musicians a chance, do you do things for other musicians in the position you're now in?

A: You do just by being successful, I mean that's started happening straight away. In fact in 1977 or 1978, when first of all that the record company gets to be in a very healthy position, cause it's got a number-one album all over the world, and all the kind of signings that they make. But apart from that, what happens when you go out on tour, for example you take people out on support, and this and that.  When you know you've begun by supporting, opening for other people and so, that the chain goes on down and then you start producing people, and you start.

There's a circulation of music that goes on after a while, if you show an interest in any particular musician, the fact that you've shown interest generates an interest in turn through the game, through the music game. And that's what happens really. It's just a natural impulse I think, you certainly don't feel threatened by… I certainly never have felt threatened by anybody else coming in. When you hear something great, the natural inclination is to rejoice, because it's such a refreshing thing, you're so happy to hear it and you can't ignore that. And certainly you know the idea of not encouraging it, it was repugnant to me, not encouraging somebody or not trying to help somebody along.

The same thing happens with the business side of it, I mean not me but my management people help young managers a lot, there's a lot to be said for that. And in fact for years, I've been pressing Ed, my manager, and Porter, my former managers association(?), so that they can help young managers to find their footing. I mean, when Ed started with us, he thought that mechanicals were something to do with cars, and he would be quite happy to tell you that, so you have to knife and fork your way through, a lot of these things. And if you can put somebody on it, there ain't… for instance you might get somebody from America calling up, wanting to know which promoter they should deal, with which venue should they play, so on and so forth. And in fact a lot of ends time was spent. It's like Dr. Ed helping out people, that happens quite a lot, and there is a network of like, minded people who, because of the problems that they've encountered, they become in a way committed to leaving the business in a better state than they found it.


Q: Excellent, and the serious things, the arguments you said that they put some money back into the record company which there means they can develop new acts, that's one of the arguments now the record companies are saying for the price of CDs, and yet your management and yourself are very much against the costs of CDs at the moment. Isn't that sort of a reverse argument in there somewhere?

A: Well possibly and just in terms of the amount of money that they say that they've got available forex(?). But in terms of the CD, hmm, and I'm talking before CD, even this was in 1977 or whenever it was that were the first album did so well around the world.

CD thing has been… I think as I'd puts it the great North Sea oil of the record companies, and anybody who really has studied the figures and has a look. Well no, I mean part of the reason why Ed got involved in all of this is because of the galling experiences that we've had with compactus in terms of new formats coming in. The only thing that I would say, really, I mean because it's a massive subject. And not nearly as important as Bosnia, but it's a small thing in some respects. But if you were asked or if you were told by your employers that a new broadcasting format was going to necessitate a 50% cut in your salary for an indeterminate period, I should imagine it'd be for some fairly loud squeaking from your direction, followed by a search for new employment, and it's a fairly complex business.

But there seems to be absolutely no question whatsoever, that the figures, that the record company BPI have been putting out incidentally, they haven't put any figures out for the past three years since the consumer Council which magazines or whatever it was got on their backs about it, though the figures are questionable to say the least. And what they say that artistic royalties were getting for CDs fictional and even though I know that Ed has renegotiated our situation to the point where we're probably getting a higher rate than a lot of other artists are for CDs, it's still way under what they say all artists are getting, and you can bet that we are getting a heck of a lot more than Bo Diddley or somebody like that. I wouldn't mind betting that Bo Diddley with all respect and all love that I do have for his music is getting Diddley, so in that sense they have been cleaning up.



Q: Interesting, you mentioned CD, it was… I remember going to try and get my first CD player and I said, well there's only one album you should listen to on CD, and the album that sold millions. Do you think possibly that may have with the great respect to yourself inflated the sales of the album, but what it did do was it brought it to the years of a lot of people who may not have been into the band before that point?
 
A: I really don't know. I think it probably has more to do with singles hits that you get off albums. And what happened was in American that Money for Nothing and Walk of Life were both top five hits or whatever they were. I think I have no idea actually where they got to, you'd have to help me on that.

But that's really what makes the big sales differences is whether you have these kind of singles hits and I've never set out to make a single, just do records and I think that had a lot to do with it. Also the fact that it was early in the technology that the record came out early in the technology of CD, it's just luck. I don't think it's because it was a particularly outstanding record, it's just happened to be in that place at that time. And to do with the singles successes, it came off it had pushed up album sales in America. I mean obviously it did a lotta better in America, and then other records that we made that beat simply because of the singles and the radio.

Q: Do you… I mean Dire Straits really have made an art form and a touring and when you spend so long touring and it's a natural progression there should be a live album. You know in danger two things, one: burning yourselves out completely, we're spending so much time on the road, because it is a pressure…..Thank you to the circular saw.

Okay I danger a burning your cells out and also saturating the market in that, there could be too much of Dire Straits. At the moment, it's like Dire Straits tickets are one of the most sought-out things, people want to try to find out when you're gonna play, what you're gonna do. But if you keep touring at the level, you have been touring. Those two factors could come into play and that the week too much of a good thing.

A: Oh yeah, I mean I wouldn't do it to the same extent as we have done anymore now. I mean it just seemed like the best way of doing it at the time, and playing lies a very important part of being a musician. Other people can think what they like, there's nothing like being there playing to a crowd, and it's a very important part of What It Is. It's what you dreamed about when you were kid, and fans around, the world let you know how happy they are that you've bothered to turn up. That's really all I would say about it, I mean I don't I never think about saturation or anything else like it, I mean you just plan a tour and go off and do it. And if you're gonna do it you might as well do it properly. You have got an obligation to people, but when you see it, when you actually go to France and see it, or go to Germany and see it, you realize what it is means to people. So there's a relationship that's set up, you have to put a value on it.



Q: Do you think when you see these holes full of people and you think that there's a tremendous responsibility there? Yeah, these people have welcomed to see, and you've got to play well that night. It's got to be a good night, you've got to do your job. Does that give you a pressure or just being happy being a musician? Does that come across on stage, do you see what I'm getting it?

A: I used to feel pressed for a lot more than I do now, and I think that just comes from time spent in the driving seat. The more you do it, the more you can pay attention to other things that are going on. And you're not just caught up in in the performance itself or in what you're up to yourself, and that's the sort of thing comes with time spent doing it.

But it's an interesting thing pressuring, people always ask me about that. And when I was a kid, I used to get to me a lot more. When I was 15 and I went to see Chuck Berry at City Hall in Newcastle, I thought that the City Hall was the biggest place I'd ever seen, it seemed like a cathedral to me. A few years later, you go back and look at it, and it's just like a small room to you. So you grow into the big places without realizing it, it's just time spent you grow into and you got to be able to do, to handle bigger crowds, without going over the top or changing anything too much, and altering what you would do too much, still make it somehow intimate at times. Without it… not that too much of the expense of the show, the performance.



Q: Have you had anything on to this, because it must be very tempting, if you're listening to a live album, thinking that was just a dreadful note, that was awful. If you docked it or played with it at all, or how was it happened?

A: Oh no you have to know, I think that one of the problems apart from anything else is that when you're recording, a band's loud as that one was on the last tour, they get leakage coming in, and all sorts of problems coming in from monitoring and certain the other. And you do end up with live albums, all live albums have to be repaired here and there, the important thing is to try to preserve as much of what really happened. And mistakes, you know, after a while mistakes start sounding right, like Chet Atkins.

I was once doing an interview with Chet, and we were talking to the interviewer together, and I'd said something about how On Every Street album I tried to get the whole band to play together, and if I had a cold or something, you just had to learn to live with it, or there was leakage, a lot of leakage. Because I was playing a guitar and singing into the same mic, in same booth and you know, one was leaking onto the other which can be an engineer's nightmare. I like leakage, and I like mistakes on recordings, and something comes to the air when you're all playing together which is… I think it's worth having on records if you can get it. So I've made all my mistakes in public, before the separation and everything else. And the mistakes, if you have a mistake, that doesn't really matter too much, then just leave it in. And it's like Chet says, "for a while the mistakes they start sounding right".



Q: Ha-ha! I'm interested, did you ever get to produce an Everly Brothers album? Because there's really strange connection now is that Albert Lee plays guitar with Everly Brothers, and he played Setting Me Up on a live Clapton album. So there's a real weird (connection) because I think Albert Lee is just one of the great musicians, and that he now plays with the Everly's. Did you get to do the Everly's album?

A: No I haven't managed to get that up. I've talked to the Everly's about doing a record at some point and I'm making a little list of possible things that we can do. And I don't know when it could possibly be actually, I'd love to get stuck in it, something like that. I mean the Everly's was so important to me. You know when I started playing, I had a little friend Vince, and he was Don and I was Phil, I suppose, or the other way around. I think he got higher than I could.

It was so… it's all very important, but I didn't know then that Chet had made those records and it was wonderful arrangements on those records. But it's important to me and we have talked about it, and they would like permitted to get something going. I think their management recently wanted them to rerecord some of their old hits which I think is a big mistake, and I hope fervently that they don't go that route. I think they should be doing new things which still have that very special color and that only they can get.




Q: You've been very interested in country music, and you talk about country music. And yeah, I just think that a lot of your arrangements, a lot of your songs could be countrified if you will. You could actually, but a country arrangement, Walk of Life, for example, could have a country rise, it is getting there. Have you ever thought you might do a country album or doing it with very strong country feel to it?

A: Well I mean if we've just been talking about the Everly Brothers. I mean… they that's country music really in a way it just becomes something else here and there. And you have R&B elements and the Blues is really is how I came up with as well. So a lot of my songs have been recorded by people in Nashville, but when you hear them sometimes there's a lack of attitude. I mean, if you hear a country version of Tim Buckley or something they've taken the R&B out, if you hear a country version of Walk of Life, they've taken the R&B out and things can flatten out quite a bit. I mean my only criticism of a lot of the current Nashville music is in fact that that kind of digging in and R&B attitude is missing. But there you know then again some things that get recorded, there are recorded, there are absolutely great still and on and on it goes. A lot of country, so-called country artists are making records now that are very bluesy and rock influenced if you like.

So it's all a bit of a jumble really, you know just listening to the new Wynonna Judd record the other night, and you can hear all these influences coming in, there's getting to be a lot more R&B influence to say, and it's great you know that so that's somebody like Bonnie Raitt is influencing, somebody like Wynonna. It's a wonderful thing, it's to be happening. So I don't really know how to… and listening to John Anderson's new record that well. You know, John recorded one of the songs from On Every Street record. Listening to his new stuff as well, you can hear them more and more R&B creeping into so-called country music.

A lot of country artists have got to be quite careful over there because country radio which is probably where they get a lot of their bread and butter from is quite a conservative setup, and they can't really get people saying things like…hmmm, where's a pedal steel guitar ain't no fiddling in that song so you've got to be quite careful how they approach things. I mean there are people who really come from more of a rockabilly background, like Mark Collin(?) and people like that. But then they're in some ways that maybe being forced into a more well behaved area, just in order to get played on the country radio stations, there are so many of them around the country. And that doesn't happen to rock and roll acts, and certainly never happened to me, you can please yourself the way that should go. Again, you know, if you're doing something in a countryish kind of vein can put a big heavy distorted guitar over it. So that wouldn't really wash with country radio, which was why my version wouldn't really be played over there, and they would want something a little more well behaved.



Q: You say these people are adhering to the country format and the country formula that you have been accused on various occasions of playing safe of sticking with a tried and tested Mark Knopfler formula. Now do you feel that valid criticism or not?

A: Absolutely no. I mean nobody's ever… I've never done anything for the radio. In fact all of my songs usually far too long or don't fall into that radio ability at all. And in fact, I remember one time being told that "we can get this song down to so soon minutes"(?) and it works. Because they've done it, you know, and you just have to say no one. I mean I wrote it that way and I don't want to edited or shortened to the regulation length, I mean there are all kinds of horror stories, you can go over there and hear your record being played faster to get it into timeframes and all the rest of it.

No I don't think that rock and roll has been subject to let anything like as much as country artists have that kind of control, I mean there are lots of drawbacks to entering into this particular arena, you find that because of these radio consultancies so-called over in America and playlist that DJ's have now become just puppets who play what they're told to play, they have a playlist and so on and so forth.

But now I got used to that fairly quickly in a way and I remember when they wouldn't play Sultans of Swing in England for ages. It was a hit all over the world but it was the last place… it was a hit in England because there was a committee then, a woman called Doris or something at the head of it, who said it had too many words which is properly right, and it properly does, but it was just the way that it was. And I think it only really became a hit in England after Paul Gambaccini was playing it as part of his in American. So people heard it and realized eventually that it was a British effort and it sort of took off in England miles behind the rest of the world.



Q: Do you find a lot of these situations that you build up okay, make you quite rebellious? People might think you were quite arrogant because you do stand up for your music, like you just said, it's a speeded-up artists bits(?) to cut out of thing. And people might get the wrong attitude about a guy who just believes that… I'm sorry, but that was the way it was recorded and that was the way it should be heard.

A: No I mean you can't be too pleased with yourself about any of that, but the only reason I've been allowed to meander about relatively unscathed is the fact that we were successful from the beginning. I think acts who have a more of a borderline, thing happening from them at the beginning can be subject to a lot more bullying from record companies. People who don't really know what they're talking about. And that's when you get damaged when people are telling them what to do instead they can't just necessarily follow their heart.

So at that point when that starts to happen, you lose sight of the truth and what actually moves people ultimately is some kind of truth, isn't it? It's something that reverberates through the artist into them and they don't necessarily sit around and analyze it, they just like it there's some kind of recognition of
something. And the more you start messing about with that and trying to push it into some formula for radio or for whatever, you can run into problems.

But I do think that one of the diseases that there's been allowed to happen is, it probably would apply to me now if I was starting off now is that a lot of artists encouraged to write everything themselves. This doesn't happen in Nashville and so that you get probably more good tunes on a record and then you get with a lot of rock and roll records. I think a lot of kids are being encouraged to write everything themselves, now whether it's financial, it's partly that they can get publishing money to bolster their recording money, in order to stay alive. That can be part of it that the publishing advances can look quite
attractive to them, or it's the idea of being an artist you know, I'm an artist, I do all my own writing and I think some people… You can see that some people have actually suffered for that whereas there's a far less pretentious atmosphere that goes on in somewhere like Nashville where people just take(还是dig) songs and they don't really care who's written them.



Q: So when did Dire Straits last record somebody else's song?

A: Well I know I mean it should've actually, I think you're quite right. I think I could have made better records half the time by sticking in songs by other people, to be quite honest with you.



Q: I'm interested too about the track listing you said that you know it's all stuff on there, and who do you think a bit more upset if Walk of Life and Brothers In Arms were not on this live album? You, the fans, or the record company?

A: Well, I wouldn't mind Bob was on it, I don't know what the record company would say, because I'm just informed occasionally of what they think through management company. It's kind of a fan thing really, I mean I had a couple of little kids in the management office the other week, gotta cancel and stuff…(?) And anyway I'm showing them some of the video that we've done and showed them a list of songs, I said, well would you like to see and they both said at the same time: Money For Nothing! I don't really have much of an emotional attachment to that particular song, but there's a sense when you see that, you know there's a sense in which you think… well they wanted that, let them have that.



Q: Ha-ha! Bless them! I mean, the only thing you think, yeah I really wish that was because you obviously had to listen to hours and hours of tapes of this thing, you must have done with all the shows. And is there anything you thought, well you know I really would have liked to put that on there, but maybe it's a little bit off the wall?

A: Well there was a couple overcome the things I mean, I would have liked to have had a Sultans on there but I never played one that I thought was any good, and that was my… I was just down to me. I just didn't think I played one that people would particularly want to have. And also we did this little thing where we made it a four piece(?) for quite a lot of this song, and we have little drum kit that came down onto the floor behind. So it was a bit like playing in the original club band, but the sound off that kit was so bad, we couldn't actually… it was too big of a problem to record it that way.

It was good fun playing it live, but we couldn't really get anything that I just thought I never played one that was any good so. And also you know people have got live recordings of it anyway so I thought maybe not that, and so that's why that's not on there, but that's all. And you can't listen to all, I mean I  literally couldn't face listening to all the recordings, so we're about ten of them, ten different nights. And I just couldn't so, so I slid out of it and sneaked it off, and got Guy from the band and the endorsement to do a lot of listening to that sort of thing. I mean in the end, I suppose I had to listen to a fair bit of it. But I'm not very good at it. I mean if you've saw it so in other words I haven't really been involved in this album anything like as much, I know it really to, to Guy and Neil and more than anything else. I haven't actually put much time on it, I've been nipping off really, and riding my motorbike. I haven't been a very good boy on it. Come in you know, late in the evening, see is everything going alright, cross my fingers and hope that nothing was too far gone.

But I can't actually bring myself even back with Alchemy, I couldn't listen to the tape in 1984, I couldn't listen to the tapes. I started doing it and after 10 minutes as I can't listen to 10 nights of this arena. So I said, wow what was the good, hmm, Saturday Night seemed a pretty good night. I was in the Hammersmith Odeon, and we're just do that, just take it from that. But and it was literally just laziness, and if I'd been really retentive about it, I would have probably waded through a conscientious I would have probably created through it all. But I just couldn't face it.



Q: Did you get easily poured these days for things? Do you find that you really would love to be out like producing an Everly's album, or you know just, it's a bit too much of drag sometimes?

A: Yep I know, actually I'm sure that my attention span as has gone off as certainly as far as my own stuff is concerned. It certainly has and I don't… what to do about that I really don't know, I mean I just like to have a sofa and an acoustic guitar and please myself, playing a bit of mandolin at the moment.

I can't get that excited about what I've done already in a way, and I mean it's the same with rehearsing, really, it's the most exciting time for me. Writing is very it's exciting when you've got something, and then it's exciting rehearsing it, and it's exciting to recording, and you've got to really want to do it obviously. I mean, you wouldn't be able to take these tours on a few, unless you loved it and you really wanted to do it. I suppose I'm lucky in a sense that I like of all the bits of the cycle, if you like. But I'm always looking ahead to the new thing really, that's what turns me on is, then is the thing that you want to record and the other thing that's coming up. Oh yes, I mean a Nashville session or a blue session, a Buddy Guy thing or something like that, it's great, just to go off and just do a one-off like that.

The things coming up I'm going to play with the Chieftains so, or maybe get stuck into another film, or thinking about everything from uillean pipes to fiddles, is exciting to me. Talking to somebody about a theatre production it's exciting to me, because it's different. I think when you come off these long tours that you need a variety to keep you alive to it, or you know, to keep you excited about it all. And I've got some good friends around the place, and one pal of mine in Nashville, they sends me these… he's got a huge record collection and he's a songwriter over there, and he sends me these little care packages of cassettes with them, with music on, has these lovely titles and more cool stuff, or all sorts and this and
that. And there's Appalachian music mixed up with obscure hillbilly rockers jukebox hits, blues R&B things, Cajun music, French stuff, anything, you name it, just things that turn him on. And that's what keeps me alive, that kind of spread and that kind of involvement were the roots of music as well. I mean, as well as new stuff. So it's a good time as well, when you're away from the tour to get back and enjoy music in that redirect way and it reminds me certainly that a lot of my favorite music. Really, it comes from… however complicated, you might end up getting… my favorite stuff is really very simple music.



Q: So after 16 years then, is it time to say, well it's been all very nice and very cool, but you know now I think I'd like to do something else, for example, work a lot more with Brendan Croker?

A: I'm not quitting, I'm gonna make records and just play with, yeah, different outfits and go on with it. It's an endless thing, and I love it, and a very lucky boy to be able to do it, and that's all I can tell you. I'm still just as in love with the whole thing as always. I wouldn't tour again or anything like the same length, that's not going to help me anymore, but you just get to a stage when you know that's your last shot around the world in a way at that level, that kind of intensity. So you might as well go and do it properly, but that's not going to be happening now. There are too many other exciting things to do.



Q: You think if you weren't in the band, you just be… If we go back many many years, we used to be a strolling minstrel, just going around and playing a guitar or mandolin, or whatever, and that would give you similar rewards to what you're getting now?

A: Oh yes, absolutely. I'm better in some ways, I think, yes, I think that's exactly what the deal would have been. That's exactly what would have happened and in a way that's what you still are, and it's a lot of the things that you end up doing, it's you're just going off to play the blues, it's basically what you're doing. And a lot of the rest of it is nonsense and outside people's perceptions, things that become confused with that. I mean that there. For example, a success. Yes I love it, I'd recommend it to anybody, but Fame, which is a is a completely different thing from success, has nothing to recommend it whatsoever. I mean in fact if there isn't an equation, you could say that fame is the price that you pay for success. Fame itself doesn't have anything particularly, nothing in fact, I can't see anything that's that great about that. But success or love, I mean success is great, because I've been able to meet so many fabulous people through it and to share their music, and to have their friendships.

And that's what's important to you. I mean that's one of the success and you know being able to move around the world in that way, and to be able to buy a tape machine that you need, or something like that. Or to work with Paul Franklin for example, or something like that. This is never-ending source of joy to me you know. But ultimately, there's no difference. What we're feeling now is when I'm sitting in… like I was last week with Steve from the Hillbillies, and were just sitting playing to an audience of one or two in our case, and laughing and drinking and playing. I mean there's not enough of that when you're out on the road on tour, and that's what you hunger to get back to, and that never goes away, never will go away.


Q: Interesting, and there's one interesting, edit possibly in the album, that Heavy Fuel to Romeo and Juliet, sort of goes boom! And then, "it comes!" and I think, I wonder if that was the same night, it doesn't seem to work so.

A: Well, it was just one of those tough corners that you have to negotiate, and we did go that way in fact, that's how it went on the stage yet. And I think it might well have been from the same night, and if it sounds like a mistake, I'm sorry.



Q: Ha ha ha! I mean… Why isn't it a Mark Knopfler solo album? When you've done the sound tracks, you've produced, why isn't the solo album? Do you need that band? All the songs are written by you, and so we read anyway, the credits are always yours. So why not a solo album, why do you have to have that band?

A: I don't actually, I'm gonna do one. That's good question. You know I love bands, because it grew up wanting to be in a band, and I mean, to make a solo album, I'll have to get a band together, to make it. So you're doing the same thing, really, it's just a name, and that's all it is. And I like the idea of hiding in a band in a way, it's a childhood schoolboy thing, you love bands, and you wanted to be in a band, you wanted to have a band. But what I'm gonna do… a record is just the same, the nice thing about… you know, probably being able to go into your own record to, and you can play about with the personnel a lot for different songs, and that's really what I want to be able to do.



Q: Would you also play about with the songs? Would you do other people's material, because that would give you the opportunity to do that, wouldn't it?

A: Yeah, it would be able to do that too or that, I'd really love to do a record of entirely. But you know other people's things, and it's a… I'm forever doing it, I mean that's what I do when I'm at home. I was just playing other music, so eventually I'll get something like that together. Like it covers kind of thing or aversions, I swing at an attempt be great. Actually if you went to this, that's all it is. So it would be fun if you go at the theater, and you're seeing Macbeth, it would be great if somebody came out and said: "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, we're about to have a swing at Macbeth. You know we're taking a stab at King Lear or something that's all." That's all it is. It's just when you record anything or attempt to play anything, there's no such thing as a definitive, it's just an attempt on the day.



Q: Charlie Glass said on the sleeve notes to the Honky Tonk Demos which has got the original thing, he made a little comment about the band where he said, he felt a sense of responsibility when you said you'd given up your previous careers, and would commit yourself to music, and these note was especially with the name like Dire Straits. I mean do you feel it's been worth it?

A: Oh yeah, of course, the music was pushing so hard, you know. For me to do it, I was in, I had to do it. I couldn't go back to anything else. It's a wonderful thing to doing the thing that you like, to do more than anything else, it's what I would say to any child or to any kid. I know, because I spent a lot of years doing the opposite. You know, to play safe is it's not the way, you have to find what it is that you like, doing more than anything else and then try to do it as well as possible. And if you can make a living at that, that's great. The thing about music is you don't have to be a professional musician, the thing about music and or the guitar or something, it is that it will be a friend to you all your life. And when other things can let you down or other people might even let you down, it will be there for you. It's a great source of comfort to you. And the other thing is, of course, that you never get to the bottom of it. You realize you've just tickled it, there's a universe of material earth of information there, that you never really will be part of it. It's an endless thing.



Q: You said… you hmm, and about you are on a motorbike, doesn't you want a privilege(?) to know what type of motorbike this is without making a wild stab?

A: It's a triumph Trident.



Q: Ha-ha! So it's not the holiday recently. Brilliant, I keep my enough well, thank you very much indeed.

A: Thank you.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but where did you find the transcription? I did the transcription couple days ago, and your post seemed exactly as same as my version, including those question marks that I put in for the words I wasn't sure.

[Pottel]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but where did you find the transcription? I did the transcription couple days ago, and your post seemed exactly as same as my version, including those question marks that I put in for the words I wasn't sure.

just wondering, as this is your first post here, where did you post your work then?

[Jeremiah_Dixon]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but where did you find the transcription? I did the transcription couple days ago, and your post seemed exactly as same as my version, including those question marks that I put in for the words I wasn't sure.

just wondering, as this is your first post here, where did you post your work then?

In a Wechat group chat. I was looking for someone who could emend it for I wasn't really sure a few words(or phrases). That's why I haven't post it here. A dude called Allen Knopfler can prove that, he's also in that group chat.

[Pottel]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but where did you find the transcription? I did the transcription couple days ago, and your post seemed exactly as same as my version, including those question marks that I put in for the words I wasn't sure.

just wondering, as this is your first post here, where did you post your work then?

In a Wechat group chat. I was looking for someone who could emend it for I wasn't really sure a few words(or phrases). That's why I haven't post it here. A dude called Allen Knopfler can prove that, he's also in that group chat.

Aaaah, He shared it with us.that is where it comes from. No worries thnx for your hard work!!

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

[Jeremiah_Dixon]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but where did you find the transcription? I did the transcription couple days ago, and your post seemed exactly as same as my version, including those question marks that I put in for the words I wasn't sure.

just wondering, as this is your first post here, where did you post your work then?

In a Wechat group chat. I was looking for someone who could emend it for I wasn't really sure a few words(or phrases). That's why I haven't post it here. A dude called Allen Knopfler can prove that, he's also in that group chat.

Aaaah, He shared it with us.that is where it comes from. No worries thnx for your hard work!!

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

No worries. but at least the dude who post the transcription could make some attempts to give references I guess

[Pottel]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but where did you find the transcription? I did the transcription couple days ago, and your post seemed exactly as same as my version, including those question marks that I put in for the words I wasn't sure.

just wondering, as this is your first post here, where did you post your work then?

In a Wechat group chat. I was looking for someone who could emend it for I wasn't really sure a few words(or phrases). That's why I haven't post it here. A dude called Allen Knopfler can prove that, he's also in that group chat.

Aaaah, He shared it with us.that is where it comes from. No worries thnx for your hard work!!

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

No worries. but at least the dude who post the transcription could make some attempts to give references I guess

The dude is an admin on here, and the nicest knopfler fan I know,  so I am pretty sure he did. Allen?

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

[Jules]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but where did you find the transcription? I did the transcription couple days ago, and your post seemed exactly as same as my version, including those question marks that I put in for the words I wasn't sure.

just wondering, as this is your first post here, where did you post your work then?

In a Wechat group chat. I was looking for someone who could emend it for I wasn't really sure a few words(or phrases). That's why I haven't post it here. A dude called Allen Knopfler can prove that, he's also in that group chat.

Aaaah, He shared it with us.that is where it comes from. No worries thnx for your hard work!!

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

No worries. but at least the dude who post the transcription could make some attempts to give references I guess

Sometimes we do these things in a hurry excited to share information with the rest as far as we can and we forget to reference some informations...

I'm sure Allen didn't want to pretend it was done by him and that he just forgot to mention, he's a good chap.

By the way, Thanks for the transcription and welcome to AMIT!