New DS Live Box Set, 3rd November 2023!

[dustyvalentino]

The video is quite obviously from different nights. Even without the microphone you can easily tell from the lighting that some shots are far darker.

[Chris W]

Chris, you are probably right in general, but Brunno, I think, claims that guitar licks can be traced to other specific nights.

Mark played the same licks in some songs every night of the tour. So if he played it on anther show, he can also play it in the studio when mixing the live album.

[2manyguitars]

Chris, you are probably right in general, but Brunno, I think, claims that guitar licks can be traced to other specific nights.

Mark played the same licks in some songs every night of the tour. So if he played it on anther show, he can also play it in the studio when mixing the live album.

Guys answer....

"I don’t believe we did any overdubs although my recollection of it is blurred, probably due to the immense task of dealing with/editing 96 tracks of audio WITHOUT the use of a modern DAW. I am looking at some multitracks from that tour now and so far I haven’t seen any evidence of overdubs. We did of course take different sections from different nights."

[Chris W]

Hmm, the people I know said overdubs were done.
99.99% of live albums have overdub fixes. If a guitar solo is amazing apart from one bar, they go in and fix that bar on the album mix.
If John plays one wrong bass note, you don't edit in a whole new section from a different show, you just overdub the correct bass note - it takes 5 minutes to do.
I very highly doubt nothing was fixed by Mark while they mixed OTN.

[Rolo]

Hmm, the people I know said overdubs were done.
99.99% of live albums have overdub fixes. If a guitar solo is amazing apart from one bar, they go in and fix that bar on the album mix.
If John plays one wrong bass note, you don't edit in a whole new section from a different show, you just overdub the correct bass note - it takes 5 minutes to do.
I very highly doubt nothing was fixed by Mark while they mixed OTN.

Yes!
I am not criticizing Guy Fletcher, but he is expert to tell a lot without sayng anything.
He is a good lier and keeps the "magic" about the band alive.

Thank You, Chris.

[2manyguitars]

Hmm, the people I know said overdubs were done.
99.99% of live albums have overdub fixes. If a guitar solo is amazing apart from one bar, they go in and fix that bar on the album mix.
If John plays one wrong bass note, you don't edit in a whole new section from a different show, you just overdub the correct bass note - it takes 5 minutes to do.
I very highly doubt nothing was fixed by Mark while they mixed OTN.

Yes!
I am not criticizing Guy Fletcher, but he is expert to tell a lot without sayng anything.
He is a good lier and keeps the "magic" about the band alive.

Thank You, Chris.

It really amuses and amazes me that you wont take the word of the person involved in its creation, one of the actual people in the control room during its creation.

But of course you're entitled to your opinion....

[quizzaciously]

Hmm, the people I know said overdubs were done.
99.99% of live albums have overdub fixes. If a guitar solo is amazing apart from one bar, they go in and fix that bar on the album mix.
If John plays one wrong bass note, you don't edit in a whole new section from a different show, you just overdub the correct bass note - it takes 5 minutes to do.
I very highly doubt nothing was fixed by Mark while they mixed OTN.

Yes!
I am not criticizing Guy Fletcher, but he is expert to tell a lot without sayng anything.
He is a good lier and keeps the "magic" about the band alive.

Thank You, Chris.

It really amuses and amazes me that you wont take the word of the person involved in its creation, one of the actual people in the control room during its creation.

But of course you're entitled to your opinion....

With all honesty, one may also think after 3 months of rehearsals and 8 months of touring by the time of the On The Night recordings or whatever, nearly a year of playing nearly the same set of songs, you won't need to sit in the studio for hours replaying and overdubbing stuff, so I trust Guy Fletcher's on this.

[Brunno Nunes]

Hmm, the people I know said overdubs were done.
99.99% of live albums have overdub fixes. If a guitar solo is amazing apart from one bar, they go in and fix that bar on the album mix.
If John plays one wrong bass note, you don't edit in a whole new section from a different show, you just overdub the correct bass note - it takes 5 minutes to do.
I very highly doubt nothing was fixed by Mark while they mixed OTN.

Yes!
I am not criticizing Guy Fletcher, but he is expert to tell a lot without sayng anything.
He is a good lier and keeps the "magic" about the band alive.

Thank You, Chris.

I don't rule out the possibility that overdubs were done in the studio when they were creating OTN in 1993, Mark may not have been satisfied with some guitar licks he did on one of the nights used and created something that he deemed appropriate in the studio, in order to correct . One thing is a fact, the CE recording on OTN has guitar licks from different nights and I remember that when I was analyzing the bootlegs of the shows used for OTN, (Nimes and Rotterdam), I also noticed that there were licks that were not in any from these shows, that is, I identified the licks that were used to put together this track and realized that there were some passages that could only have been created in the studio.

I'll try to identify it again, this is a bit of work, but it's good to demystify things and try to understand how what was released was actually done.

[dmg]

Hmm, the people I know said overdubs were done.
99.99% of live albums have overdub fixes. If a guitar solo is amazing apart from one bar, they go in and fix that bar on the album mix.
If John plays one wrong bass note, you don't edit in a whole new section from a different show, you just overdub the correct bass note - it takes 5 minutes to do.
I very highly doubt nothing was fixed by Mark while they mixed OTN.

Yes!
I am not criticizing Guy Fletcher, but he is expert to tell a lot without sayng anything.
He is a good lier and keeps the "magic" about the band alive.

Thank You, Chris.

I don't rule out the possibility that overdubs were done in the studio when they were creating OTN in 1993, Mark may not have been satisfied with some guitar licks he did on one of the nights used and created something that he deemed appropriate in the studio, in order to correct . One thing is a fact, the CE recording on OTN has guitar licks from different nights and I remember that when I was analyzing the bootlegs of the shows used for OTN, (Nimes and Rotterdam), I also noticed that there were licks that were not in any from these shows, that is, I identified the licks that were used to put together this track and realized that there were some passages that could only have been created in the studio.

I'll try to identify it again, this is a bit of work, but it's good to demystify things and try to understand how what was released was actually done.

Bear in mind we don't have ALL the shows available to us on bootleg.  It may come from a night we don't have.

I think personally we're dissecting this a little too much.  I'm all for finding out which track is from which night - that's quite interesting.  However, dissection to this degree doesn't really do any good. 

[Rolo]

It really amuses and amazes me that you wont take the word of the person involved in its creation, one of the actual people in the control room during its creation.

But of course you're entitled to your opinion....

The situation here is that all musicians can make overdubs, except MK and Cia.
What matters its the record/the product itself.
Not matters how many overdubs they do.
It's a very common practice. Even for MK

[Brunno Nunes]

In 2021 I published on my blog about this aspect of CE on OTN, I ended the article by writing: The audio is basically a tremendous edit, a lot of mixes here, a lot of audio is from Nimes FRA 21. 05.92, but a lot of other parts are a lot of unknown mixes.

I made comparisons between the OTN CL with the Audio CL of Bootlegs Nimes FRA 21.05.92 and Rotterdam, Netherlands 5/31/1992, to complement my research and reach this conclusion.

So here is some data, (a lot of audio is from Nimes FRA 21. 05.92, but a lot of other parts are a lot of unknown mixes.)

The closest versions to the CE version of OTN are Nimes FRA 21.05.92 and Rotterdam, Netherlands 5/31/1992, having these bootlegs as a starting point, just analyze and compare, it is possible to identify the licks and notice that there are licks that they were probably made in the studio, or, it was taken from some other show, but, I point out that I analyzed all the bootleg recordings from Nimes and Rotterdam in May 1992 and only the dates I mentioned above have licks and vocal performances that are on OTN, with the exception of Mark's greeting with a "hey, Alright!" at the beginning of the song, that was taken from some other show, probably Paris in April 92.


Here is the link to the article I wrote.

https://universodirestraits.blogspot.com/2021/06/calling-elvis-on-night-performance.html?m=0

[2manyguitars]

It really amuses and amazes me that you wont take the word of the person involved in its creation, one of the actual people in the control room during its creation.

But of course you're entitled to your opinion....

The situation here is that all musicians can make overdubs, except MK and Cia.
What matters its the record/the product itself.
Not matters how many overdubs they do.
It's a very common practice. Even for MK

This has got absolutely nothing to do with MK himself. Its simple logic.

The person who was partly responsible for putting together OTN says it is highly unlikely that there were any overdubs. Simple. I choose Guy as a better source of information about this than you Rolo, sorry.

This is not some blind devotion to MK, if Guy had a different answer, or if new  info comes to light in the future then I'll re-evaluate. Until then Occams razor suggests that the person who was actually responsible for the recordings might know a bit more than any of us here.

I am more tha happy to be proven wrong.....

[Pierre]

I can't remember when and where but I read that Alchemy had never been overdubbed in any ways, they had kept the raw footage so to speak, whereas On the Night had been through some tampering before seeing the light, and that notion has remained with me ever since. I'm still convinced something has been done to make each song flawless. 
I can't imagine the Fade to Black we got now would have made the cut back in 1993. Now it's history so it can be published with all its mistakes and rushed licks and we still love it.
 
When you listen to any Dire straits bootleg, there's always, here and there a small mistake by one or the other, and it's fine, but when you listen to On the Night (the 1993 version), there's nothing, it's a long blissfull experience.

And before anyone think I'm being critical of the Box set I am not all that, I simply point something I believe to be true. On the night was overdubbed, probably in very small parts but it was, I read it, and the source may as well be MK himself in his usual matter-of-fact way: "we did some overdubs in the studio..." but I'll have to find my source back

[Matchstickman]

It thus seems very likely that there were overdubs in the studio, and that they used bits and pieces from various performances for Calling Elvis at the very least 

If the shots are from different nights, and the playing matches the shots, then the audio must be from different nights also, or overdubbed to match the footage to the T.

[Matchstickman]

By the way, these are on constant repeat from the box:

When it Comes to You
I think I love You Too Much

It's very nice to get all of the soloing on these, but also to hear the rhythm guitars on ITILYTM.