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Well he used to be interested because he had to be convinced to include WOL on BiA.And he was outvoted (wrongly) about My Parties on OES.
Quote from: dustyvalentino on August 16, 2024, 04:46:02 PMWell he used to be interested because he had to be convinced to include WOL on BiA.And he was outvoted (wrongly) about My Parties on OES.Never have heard that about My Parties. Did he really not wanted to include it? Thank god and kudos to the others then. It's one of the best songs on the album. LE
Taken from Q magazine, 1991. DIRE STRAITS ARE BACK IN TOWN "It's a right here, John," Mark Knopfler says."No, it's not," John Illsley replies, turning his car left."Go up here and make a U-turn," Knopfler suggests."It's one way, " Illsley responds."I think..." Guy Fletcher begins."Now! A right, John!" Knopfler interrupts."No, that doesn't go through," Illsley snaps."I think I'll keep quiet," Fletcher sighs. Dire Straits are driving through the alleys and back streets of London's Soho, looking for their dinner. Bassist Illsley is at the wheel of his Honda Accord, singer/guitarist Knopfler is riding shotgun, and keyboard player Fletcher is crammed in back with the toys and baby seat. Fletcher (like pianist Alan Clark) has been promoted to partnership in Dire Straits on their new album. But Mark and John are the only two charter members, the only two contractual members, and right now, the only two trying to drive this small car. What's that smell?" Fletcher asks politely. "Dirty diapers," Illsley responds, pulling out onto a main street "Quick, John, make a U-turn," Knopfler urges. For once Illsley agrees. Wait!" Fletcher says, "Look at all the police!" Sure enough, both sides of the street are lined with bobbies, holding back crowds of people with cameras and autograph books. Dire Straits, among the most famous and (if you believe the British tabloids) wealthiest stars in England, have emerged in the middle of a big movie premier. "Go ahead," Knopfler says, "these cops won't care." Illsley swings his car around in the middle of the road and zooms off. In a few minutes he and his co-pilots have found the restaurant where they have reservations. Illsley wants to drive around looking for a legal parking space but Knopfler urges him to park in front and risk the ticket. They pull up at the restaurant's front door, right behind a sleek Jaguar. Stepping into the restaurant, Illsley tells the tuxedoed headwaiter that he has parked illegally out front. The waiter nods and glances toward the Jaguar. "No," Illsley says, "the Accord." The waiter looks again, turns back to Illsley and says, "Good luck." State the obvious: Dire Straits don't seem like big rock stars. They seem like regular guys who drive their own cars with baby seats in the back and suffer the condescension of snooty headwaiters. The joke is, they are the most successful band England has. Their first album, "Dire Straits," sold eight million copies. Their last album, 1985's "Brothers in Arms", sold 20 million. Tonight's dinner follows a playback of their next album, "On Every Street," which is just about finished. There are still a few mixes to go, Fletcher is still fixing a flam or two on the Synclavier, but by and large the first Dire Straits album in six years is complete. Since finishing the "Brothers in Arms" tour in 1986, Mark Knopfler has composed the film soundtracks for the fairy tale "The Princess Bride" and the grim "Last Exit to Brooklyn." He and Fletcher were half of the rootsy Notting Hillbillies, and Knopfler and Chet Atkins recorded a duo guitar album called "Neck & Neck." No one, including Knopfler, was sure there would be another Dire Straits record; his taste seemed to be moving farther and farther from rock 'n' roll. Knopfler reconvened Illsley, Fletcher and Clark last September and suggested they record his newest songs live in the studio, with minimal over-dubbing. They brought in session drummer Jeff Porcaro (who declined joining Dire Straits out of loyalty to Toto-de gustibus non disputandum est) and Hillbillies steel guitarist Paul Franklin and started to play. The songs that rolled out combined everything Knopfler had picked up in his travels - the dynamics and arranging tricks of film orchestration, the earthiness of his folk and country side trips - with the essence of Dire Straits. Songs such as "Calling Elvis," "The Bug" and "When It Comes to You" have the loping country-blues groove of the Straits' earliest work. There is also a great emphasis on rhythm - tracks hold off on Knopfler's guitar solos and let the groove stretch out. There are several moody late-night ballads, one of which - the title song - returns Knopfler to the bittersweet romance of "Romeo and Juliet" and "Hand in Hand." "Heavy Fuel" and the B -side "Kingdom Come" are hard rockers in the "Money for Nothing" mode, and a few songs defy categorization - "Ticket to Heaven" is a lush ballad with strings sung by a sad soul who sends all his money to a TV preacher, and "My Parties" is a cross between Randy Newman and Rodney Dangerfield-a singing tour of a rich moron's house: "Step inside my home/That's a brass toilet tissue holder with its own telephone/That's a musical doorbell-it don't ring, I ain't kiddin'/it plays `America the Beautiful' and `Tie a Yellow Ribbon.' " Knopfler has decided to drop "My Parties" from the album because he thinks the joke will get old after a couple of listens. This is appalling to the others, who consider "My Parties" a great track. The final decision's not open and shut; for this album, Knopfler has for the first time shared record production with Illsley, Fletcher and Clark. That's important to the others for more than financial reasons. Dire Straits made their first two albums as a quartet. In 1980 rhythm guitarist David Knopfler left and they made two more LPs as a trio. Then drummer Pick Withers quit; by the time of Brothers in Arms Dire Straits was really a two-man show-Knopfler and Illsley. The promotions of Clark (who has been with the band since 1980) and Fletcher (who worked with Knopfler on all of his recent projects) to partnership marks the expansion of Dire Straits after a long contraction. "It feels more like a band now than it ever did," Fletcher says. "Especially the way we recorded, the way we were all involved. It's not just Mark sitting behind the desk making all the decisions." Fletcher laughs. "Now he to hold Alan and me back. He's forever saying, `It's a guitar band.' I say, 'How can it possibly be a guitar band when you've got two keyboard players?" But it is, of course." During the playback at Air Studios in Oxford Circus, Illsley moved around the control room, standing in front of one speaker, then another, listening from every position including out in the hall. Fletcher sat stock still off to one side, unmoving, hardly blinking, eyes fixed straight ahead. Knopfler rocked back and forth in the producer's chair, eyes closed, nodding and smiling to the music. After more than an hour, when the last note faded, he looked up happily and said, "Yeah. It's good work." The next afternoon Knopfler is overseeing the mix of "Kingdom Come," a hard rocker about a hunter who uses heavy artillery to kill rabbits. He tells engineer Chuck Ainlay there's too much echo. John Illsley walks in, says hi, listens for a moment and says, "Too much echo." After 14, years, Illsley and Knopfler are two sides of the same doubloon. Illsley walks out into the London lunch time crowds and finds a quiet wine bar on a back street. "I was quite happy with the knowledge that there wouldn't be another Dire Straits album," he says. "In a sense Brothers in Arms felt like a signing-off. And yet it doesn't take very long to realize that it could just be beginning again The level of intensity in Mark's song writing is still there, it's even greater in some ways. I don't think we would have gotten anywhere near making this record unless he got those songs. It had to be very positive move on his behalf to make it happen again. Even I'm surprised at the strength of the material." Illsley orders a glass of wine and continues. "I still respond very much to the way Mark plays a guitar. And like it was 15 years ago, if he sits next to me and plays I fall into a kind of response. It's not questioning, it's not a problem, it's more an automatic dialogue going 'round and 'round. You hear that rhythmic feel of the guitar and the bass and the pulse underneath. It's basic rock 'n' roll." There are a lot of jokes around Dire Straits and a very strong sense of ease about playing music. The band has no patience for prima donnas or self-important statements of creative anguish. Yet one gets a sense that, although he would rather swallow a brick than admit it, Knopfler does believe that his music has lasting value. It is a subject Knopfler always manages to avoid, deflect or joke his way out of. Asked if his old friend sometimes hides his most serious ambitions under the camouflage of camaraderie and high spirits, Illsley picks his words carefully: "I think one has to be a bit cautious in the way one analyzes it all really. Because what you say obviously has an element of truth in it. A very strong element of truth. In a sense artists live a life of isolation, but they want to be part of what's going on, too. Because that sense of isolation is almost too much to bear. You know, you don't write good songs out of being in a normal happy middle-class- environment. You don't paint good pictures if you sit and watch TV every night. You live on the outside of all that sort of stuff. If you don't live on the edge, you don't live. "The majority of true artists are pretty lonely people, actually. Because they're essentially isolated from normal society. They have to be. And they are, just by circumstances, isolated from reality. Mark's a bit like that, I think." On the third day, in an empty studio, Knopfler sat down to talk. Musician: Was it easier to face the bigness of finally making another Dire Straits album by saying, "Let's cut it fast, Let's play live" - in effect, "Let's not make such a big deal of it"? Knopfler: I wasn't aware of that being a problem. I never thought it was an enormous task. It's been a breeze. I think playing together has been a big lift for everybody. Nobody's gotten bogged down over-dubbing in a lonely or isolated sense. At Brothers in Arms time people were saying, "It's the biggest band in the world blah blah blah." I remember thinking that maybe that was a reason to give it a rest for a while. Just because of the inherent dangers of that sort of scale and that sort of talk floating around. A lot of talk about popularity and sales, with all the nonsense that throws up. If anything, that would make me want to take a step back from it. If starting the monster rolling again had been on my mind, it would have affected what we've been doing. But it hasn't It wasn't on my mind. Musician: There must be a part of you that says when you've written "Heavy Fuel," "Ah, there's my "Money for Nothing," that'll take care of that." Knopfler: But it's not. It's probably not as good a song. It's probably not as aurally attractive or whatever. That's just the way it came out. I've never been able to write to order particularly. Except for films. I suppose if you were completely commercially motivated and in our case I can think of every reason why we shouldn't be; me doing anything for money now would be absolutely pointless - then you'd say, "Okay, `Heavy Fuel' is gonna be the next `Money for Nothing,' that'll be the first single, get the album rocketing off." Well it's not. I don't think of it that way. In fact up until two weeks ago I was going to leave it off entirely because I didn't think that it was part of the soul of the record. Same as "My Parties." Now I think it is. Musician: What inspired "Calling Elvis"? Knopfler: My wife Lourdes' brother Bobby said one day that trying to get through to Lourdes on the phone was like trying to call Elvis. [laughter] But it was all applicable as far as I could see: problems of getting through, problems of communicating. Musician: Last year you made an album with Chet Atkins, you recruited Vince GIll to sing on this album and you've added Paul Franklin to Dire Straits. Nashville's become your new hangout. Knopfler: I've been there a lot in the past few years. For different things. I made very good friends with my publisher down there. There was an unforgettable night round at Waylon's. Waylon and Jesse invited Chet and myself and Don Gibson, who'd just come out of hospital, and Roger Miller and we all sang and played. Don sang "Oh Lonesome Me" and "Sweet Dreams." It was real hair-stand-on end time. So emotional. Another great moment was when we were all playing another one of Don's songs-"Just One Time"-and Waylon picked up a guitar and ripped out the solo from the record. It was a perfect illustration of part of Waylon's roots and the hours that he spent listening to that music. I mean, it's a complicated piece of playing. It was a great night, and in the morning Waylon gave me 1950 Chevy pickup. So it was altogether a memorable experience. It was a privilege to be there. I like the sense of humor and the musicianship in Nashville. And they cover a lot of my tunes, too! Musician: When you started this Dire Straits album you obviously brought back a lot of the Notting Hillbillies, a lot of "Neck and Neck," as well as the earliest Dire Straits - the "Southbound Again" style. Did you ever doubt that everything you'd been doing in those more traditional styles would be applicable to Dire Straits in 1991? Knopfler: I've always loved a place where country meets the blues, basically. I think the songs I write are as varied as ever, but I found myself writing what would appear to be more simple things. Doing simple things has its own built-in set of complications. I'd always loved the pedal-steel guitar. I thought it would be a good idea to get pedal-steel on the Hillbillies record and got to meet Paul Franklin, who's the major man in Nashville in that area. And we clicked immediately. It occurred to me that this had to become part of the band. In the context of country based songs like "How Long" or "Ticket to Heaven," steel guitar comes out in a form that our ears accept as a genre. But in other tunes like "On Every Street" or "Planet of New Orleans" or "You and Your Friend"-steel playing becomes something else. Also, getting Paul involved in blues-based things has been very exciting and I dare to say it's been exciting and beneficial to him. In the Hillbillies we played a lot of blues-based stuff. After that he went back to his Nashville sessions with a set of different licks and a different approach. So it's a two-way thing. Obviously I will borrow from them, but they take from me too, and it feeds itself back into so-called country music. It may be where the third is, or an absence of the third altogether, or how you play the lick-country or blues or a tantalizing blend of the two. Obviously you do try to avoid clich. Musician: There was a lot of doubt about whether there would ever be another Dire Straits album. Knopfler: Yeah, I think when you get to the end of a long tour you might feel like that. But it didn't take me that long to come back around to wanting to do it all over again. There's an acceptance that this is who you are and what you do and what you like. And I'm happiest with my band. I love everything else. I wanted to branch out and do a bunch of other stuff. You need variety and you need the break. It's almost the same as going to Nashville for me; it's a break it is a lovely change, it's a refueling. Also, the pressure's off. Everything that I've been doing has been just relaxation. Except for some of the serious incidental music for films. Under the heading of Things I don't Really Want to Do Anymore would be chases through castles, fights with giant rats and seven-minute riot scenes. Because I've done it, taken the time to learn to do it, full orchestra going on the Synclav-and it's not music to me. But under the heading of Things I Would Still Like to Do would be movie themes. I'm just not so interested in doing the falling down the hill or scaling the Cliffs of Insanity. If you spent all day scaling the Cliffs of Insanity it's quite hard to switch into something that's more fun just like that. I was doing "Last Exit to Brooklyn" and working on a gang rape scene all day. At that time I was playing with Eric Clapton for the sheer fun of it, just to keep a hand in gigging. And I found it was getting kind of schizophrenic. I'd be doing horrific stuff on a screen all day and then wandering down to the Albert Hall to have a good time. That I found kind of difficult. 'Cause you have to get into the scenes. There was a murder in "Cal" that I found disturbing all the time I was doing it I'd never got used to. Musician: It seemed like you dropped off the map for a while in there. Right after the "Brothers in Arms" tour ended you produced and did press with Randy Newman. Then you reappeared with "Last Exit", Notting Hillbillies, "Neck and Neck" and now Dire Straits. Was there a period in the middle when you were home baking bread. Knopfler: I think I was just touring with Eric or something. I was writing a lot last summer, getting a lot of these songs sorted with a guitar and notebook. I've gone so far as to buy a microphone and stuff but it doesn't work. I'm much better off with just a guitar and a notebook. I do forget a lot of stuff but then I figure, "Well, if I forgot it..." Musician: Wait a minute, you don't even tape songs as you go. Knopfler: No. I keep forgetting stuff. Sometimes I think, "Oh damn! it's gone!" It's a bit like a dream you wake up from and don't bother to remember. Musician: A songwriter has that conflict when he's drifting off to sleep and an idea comes into his head He has to decide whether to force himself to get up and find a pencil, or just let that one go. Knopfler: I enjoy inspiration as much as anybody, it's a fantastic feeling, but to be jumping up in the night hunting for a pen and paper always struck me as being a little bit ludicrous. You can call it laziness or you can call it self-preservation. It's another reason I don't do drugs. What that would do would be to set off the pulse and the creative thing and I'd just exhaust myself doing the stuff. Of course, you don't know how much the stuff would be worth anyway. I just know that from smoking dope 12 years ago. It would blow my head off now. I don't necessarily welcome that concentrated rush. Musician: Many creative people feel so insecure about their gift that anytime it shows up they drop the baby and chase it. Knopfler: Well then, maybe I'm not insecure. [laughs] Maybe. I really just don't think I am. Perhaps that's a failing. I'm aware of the fact that I'm not particularly prolific. But I suppose it's partly because I hide myself in these other things. And it's relevant to balance the ego gratification of being a singer/songwriter, doing your own songs and telling people what to do, with doing something for other people sometimes as well Musician It seems that as your musical vocabulary has become wider, your guitar playing has become bolder. There is a casualness to the way you'll fall into your solos on this album, as if you're not sure where the solo's going to end up, but it'll be an interesting trip. Your earlier solos seemed more composed. Knopfler: Maybe. I don't know what I'm going to play. When you're playing live it's different, you might have a little phrase that the band will recognize as a marker to get into another section. You learn more licks as well. I learn a new lick from Chet or from Paul, he goes off and uses a lick he learned from me. There's a lick in "When It Comes to You" that I learned from Chet a few months ago, stole it and put it straight into the song. On the Hillbillies tour I'd learn a lick from Paul Franklin and stick it into my improvisations. I hope to always be able to steal a lick and add it to my little bag of tricks. That increase in vocabulary is just a potent thing. There's no point in trying to mystify it. It's how you use it! Musician: None of your outside projects allowed you to play the sort of heavy guitar that comes in during "Calling Elvis" and runs all through "Heavy Fuel." Knopfler: I enjoy that tension you can set up between that and something like "How Long." It's a big tapestry, a wide variety. The non-cliched tension between the two sets up the heavy guitar. And that's why it wouldn't be played on country radio, but that's what I like. Apart from anything else, it hasn't really been done. Musician : "Iron Hand" is about British security forces beating striking miners. Knopfler: Yeah, it was just something I saw on television a few years ago. The BBC said, "The queen was reported to have been shocked by today's scenes," which is basically a way of saying that the government had gone over the top. I'm not taking a political position. If you think that the sole intention of some of those pickets in the fields was to overthrow the government, or they were anarchists who just wanted to upset the system, then that's up to you. All I'm saying is that it was unacceptable to me, as it was to the queen to see a cavalry charge and heads being cracked open as a way of resolving a situation. Foot soldiers with helmets and shields approached in a line, they split open, and through that split galloped men on horses with four-foot swordsticks. It was medieval. And the queen fit, in a way. It seemed to go with the knights in armor. It was an ancient scene. I was just so appalled to see it. And I felt sorry for a lot of the ordinary policemen who'd been ordered to do that. It was a government position, a political decision passed on, I'm sure, to the chief of police from the Home Office. Musician: The song begins with the acoustic guitar and could be any Appalachian folk song, could be "Hollis Brown." Then the synths come in, still very simple, very pure. The bagpipe sounds introduce a British mood to it. And it occurred to me that while keeping the music very direct, you've brought together elements of different cultures and different times, which really underscores the point of the song... Knopfler: "We haven't changed since ancient times." That's completely live, all the synths. That's just what everybody played. That's why the guitar and vocals sound kind of rickety. Musician: Did you use kettle drums for the cannon sound? Knopfler: Just a roll on the toms with an echo on it. Musician: You often slip in musical sound effects. The tinkling on the hi-hats like ice cubes in a glass on "My Parties." Knopfler: Like glasses tinkling together! Jeff Porcaro's unbelievable. Musician :Yesterday you boosted the guitar pick clicking on the string on "Kingdom Come" so it would sound like a trigger being cocked. Even if no one notices consciously; it creates a nice sonic environment. Knopfler: A "sonic environment"... Musician: Sounds like a waterbed ad, doesn't it? Knopfler: "Psycho-acoustics - our specialty." Musician: There's a joke character you sometimes slip into in conversation - the slow talking macho American lunkhead. This album you've got him singing some songs - "Heavy Fuel," "Kingdom Come." He's not the same character as the "Money for Nothing" guy... Knopfler: No, but he's still there a little bit. In "My Parties." Musician: He's come into some money? Knopfler: Yeah. He's probably even got a band there with frayed suits. [laughs] I like a lot of those guys. I love people. I'm sorry. I think there are bits of those characters in me. Definitely. I read "Money" by Martin Amis. The character John Self inspired "Heavy Fuel," That road of excess leading to a palace of mediocrity. I actually dropped off a note to Amis' publisher and asked if he wanted to be a face in the "Heavy Fuel" video. I haven't heard any reply. I'm not surprised. I hope he treats it with the contempt it deserves. Musician: "Money's" the nastiest book I ever read. My wife would ask me why I was laughing so hard, so I'd read her a passage and then she'd make me go sleep on the couch. Knopfler: I'd be a liar if I said I was setting myself up as some kind of saintly opposite. I've got very little time for saints, I don't trust 'em. But the whole picture doesn't, I hope, make me a modern cynic or anything of the sort. Musician: Almost all the songs have two perspectives - the character's voice and what the listener also sees going on that the character misses. Each song has a twist. Knopfler: They're all different - he said, immediately reverting to clich=E9 . They're just a bunch... Don't you dare say they're just songs. I'm not gonna say they're just a bunch of songs. You have to use your imagination if it's not you specifically. "Planet of New Orleans," for instance. I've never waited for "Marie Ondean" in New Orleans. It's just a name that rhymes with "Dauphine." I did wake up on a bus on the corner of Toulouse and Dauphine one morning ten years ago and for some reason I wrote it down. So there's a combination of truth and something you made up. Fragments can turn up in a song years after you've written them down. Musician: In the winter of 1980 you told me you had heard a bus driver say to a kid, "Hey, maestro!" and you were sure it would find its way into a song. Then next summer you played me "Expresso Love" and there it was. Knopfler: There's a line in my head now that I haven't written down, but it'll turn up in a song sometime: It's an imaginary song called "Wheelbanging" by an imaginary band called the Fake IDs. At some point, in two or three or five years, it'll be in a song. That's what's playing in that scene: "Wheelbanging" by the Fake IDs. Musician: "On Every Street" is the only song with a New York setting. "Fireworks over Liberty" is a great phrase - it's a vivid picture for a New Yorker but for someone who doesn't know of Liberty Island it will sound like a description of an argument about someone wanting out of a relationship. The song has the same sensibility as "Making Movies," but the romance is giving way to disillusion. Knopfler: You just get to where you learn to put yourself in a frame of mind where you can approach life with more confidence, you can bring more to it. And there's a sadness that's involved with that. [long silence] Big subject. It's just getting older, I suppose. Bringing more experience to bear. Also, I'm not saying you become desensitized, but if you have had pain in your life you perhaps have less energy to give it when it pops up again. Musician: You know where it fits and that it ends. Knopfler: Exactly. And you can then help other people with their pain a little bit. So given that the best situation to be in is one where you are subjective and objective at the same time, I think all that age and experience gives is the ability to be there quicker and easier. Musician: It's good that even when you get close to territory you've worked in before, like "Every Street," you don't try to get back the perspective you had at 29. Knopfler: It's just different. I'm not saying it's better. What satisfies you is really a personal thing. You have to train yourself to listen to things and you can't expect everybody to appreciate the level of it. I'm not trying to suggest that this is a wine of an extremely fine and rare vintage. However, if I did have a wine of a rare vintage I wouldn't start a 17-year-old off on it. It took me a long time to be able to distinguish between average and good saxophone playing, because I hadn't been conditioned to know the difference. A lot of people who first hear country blues are fairly unmoved because they're not geared up to understanding its complexities and its message. You have to listen to a lot of music, you have to taste a lot of that wine, before you get the full measure of it. Going back to Robert Johnson when you're 40, you listen to it differently than when you're 17. You bring something new to it obviously, you bring all those years to it. But at root it's the same response. Even though I might see something new and great that I love, probably I would get more satisfaction out of re-experiencing Muddy Waters without having heard him for 6 months. There's lots of really musical people about all the time. But I'm continually being made aware how great people were. It's the same thing when you go back and read a book that you've read before and you're not the same person you were when you read it the first time. You get more out of it. And a lot of things that knocked you over when you were 17 don't knock you over to quite the same extent later on. Whether there's an improvement, I'm not sure. Sometimes deadening goes on, too. But generally speaking it would fall under sophistication. Musician: Do you write for your own age group? Knopfler: No, never bothered about writing for an age group, writing for anybody. You have to please yourself. And you have enough reaffirmations of mutual feelings to know that if it gets you going it's going to get other people going, too. Musician: And it has nothing to do with age? Knopfler: Nothing at all, absolutely not. [Mock pompous voice] Good God, man! Were you invited or are you paying for this privilege? [Normal voice] That smacks of demographics or something. But if you think kids won't relate, won't understand, then I would have to say, "Well, I hope you're not right but if you are, then too bad." Musician: "You and Your Friend," "When it Comes to You" and "Fade to Black" remind me of the sensibility of "Where Do You Think You're Going?" The line "If you ain't with me, girl, you're gonna be without me" could slide into any of those new songs. Knopfler: "You and Your Friend" - I just liked the line. About the time we recorded the first record I had a song called "Me and My Friends." It was a Southern boogie thing about playing in the band. I never recorded it because it never really... "You and Your Friend" just has that thing. I like keeping it open for people to use in a way that they want. If you make it specific you spoil it. The song could be just a solitary cry for some kind of support-are you going to come around to my way of thinking? It could be sexual. One of the guys saw it as a complicated love triangle. It could be anything. But in fact that came from just the resonance of "You and Your Friend" instead of "Me and My Friends." Musician: There's one hazy area in your biography I wish you'd clear up. Everyone knows that when you were in your early 20s you were a reporter and that you taught college for a while. But wasn't there a period when you were briefly married and worked on a farm? Knopfler: I married my sweetheart from high school when I was at university. When I left school I did one year's journalism training and two years on the paper, that's three years, then three years in university. So I was 23 when I got married. When I left university, I got a job in a professional band down here in London. I passed my first audition and played for a couple of months, then the band went bust. I didn't have a job, couldn't survive playing rock 'n' roll. So I went back home. She was a farmer's daughter from up there. Part of my surviving was just working on the farm for a bit. I'd done a lot of farm work, I used to work on the harvest there. The teaching happened after that period. I actually enjoyed the farm work. It toughened me up a lot. I've always done manual work, since I was a kid. Worked on building sites and in warehouses. Being unemployed when you want to work is the worst feeling in the world. Musician: You must have been terribly discouraged when you had to pack up and leave London and music behind. Knopfler: It was terrible. Musician: What was the band you joined? Knopfler: Brewer's Droop. They were a Cajun-based R&B band on RCA. But they lost their contract. I actually recorded a couple of things with them. They put it out later. I never heard it. They spent all their time just being nasty to one another. Which shocked me as a young kid - that you could actually be in a band with somebody that you really hated! [laughter] Musician: John Illsley and I were talking yesterday about the tendency to say, "It's just a song, just rock 'n' roll." John Mellencamp said once that when anybody tries to write a song or paint a picture or get up on a stage, it's your pals, your family; the people closest to you who make fun of the idea and say, "Who do you think you are?" As much as a guy in your position gets a lot of backslapping, there's a tendency for the people who know you best to say "Oh, it's just rock 'n' roll." Whereas that fan outside who has all your albums might actually be closer to your private wavelength. Knopfler: The method of working that I like, that we have, is one of mutual insults and joke telling, falling about laughing. A lot of the time it's just a bunch of extended adolescence. Maybe it helps you just get through it. You never ever think about the importance of what you're doing or this is rock history. It never gets pompous. If you haven't got a sense of humor with a band, you're dead meat, I reckon. It's the single most important thing to have. A novelist wouldn't have that he's just on his own, working away. When you're actually writing a song it can be solitary business. It's just you and the guitar. But then when you bring it to the band.. Musician: Bringing it to the band is just the beginning of a process that ends with you playing it to an arena - which is a completely different talent. We don't expect the novelist to star in the movie made from his work, but we do expect the rock songwriter to get up on-stage and perform. That must put you both a the center of the circus and, at the same time, a little outside. Knopfler: Absolutely. And conscious of the broadcast to a certain extent Conscious of the live possibilities. Sometimes when a song's going down in the studio you say to yourself, "The lighting guy will have fun with this!" Musician: Do you listen to rock music for pleasure these days? Knopfler: No. Do you? Musician: Yes. Knopfler: Good. I'm always flipping around the stations till I find something I like-some jazz, some boogie-woogie or something. Then it stays there. Musician: You produced Bob Dylan's "Infidels" in 1983 Dylan removed the song "Blind Willie McTell" before it was released and it just came out on his "Bootleg Series" box. Knopfler: I've been reading about it. I read in a couple of serious newspapers that according to some people that's supposed to be the best thing he ever did in his life. I haven't heard it. It's Bob on piano and me on guitar? We played it a couple of ways. Musician: That whole box is a good reminder of the fierceness of Dylan's creativity. That there are so many great songs that never made it onto albums... Knopfler: What you're saying is just a variation on, "So-and-So has made an album, everybody's playing the right stuff, it's on 4,8 tracks, they've all been mixed." and my reaction to that is usually, "So What?" It really doesn't matter to me that So-and-So has made a record. I'm not saying it should matter to them that I've made a record. Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't But "the fierceness of his creativity" is absolutely applicable as far as Bob's concerned. If that's a reminder of that, then great. But what I'm reminded of continually when I hear these works of art by so many people, immaculately engineered et cetera, is so what? The vast majority of this stuff doesn't enrich the world one iota in my view. Musician: But isn't there a chance you'd just enjoy listening to it? Knopfler: I don't enjoy listening to the stuff that most people do. No, I don't. Musician: Do you still enjoy listening to "Highway 61" and "St. Dominic's Preview?" Knopfler: Oh, that's different! I'm not talking about those people. I'm talking about a lot of pop and rock, a lot of people who see themselves as being serious artists - windswept and interesting individuals who've got something to say about the way we are and live and go to tremendous lengths to get the picture right on their album covers. I find that kind of seriousness debilitating. For everything, for the industry for everyone. It's just tiring dealing with all that shit. You know what I'm talking about and you probably know who I'm talking about, I can't look at a picture like that or listen to a track like that and not laugh. I mean, you've got to be able to laugh at it. Musician : Sure, but at the same time that Dire Straits don't take themselves seriously, and have lots of running jokes, at the same time that it's only rock 'n' roll and your manager likes to remind us that no rock 'n' roll will be remembered by history no matter what anybody thinks - still, there is a part of you that does have serious creative ambitions, no matter how much humor and fun goes along with it. Knopfler: I need an aspirin. [Gets up, looking for aspirin] Do you think having been witness to all of this stuff for so long has affected you? Musician: I try not to let it. You have to laugh about all the egos and hype and baloney, but at the same time you have to avoid becoming cynical, you have to protect your love for what's best in the music. Have you lost your romance for New York? Knopfler: Partly. Not altogether. Same for London. Partly but not altogether. I think you have to retain certain teenage conceptions to some extent. Or even childlike ones sometimes. I would hope I could always go back and write a song similar to something I'd written in the beginning. I would hope that Ray Davies could still write another "Waterloo Sunset." We were talking of cynicism. If he could give us another one of them, it would be great. Even though you've grown up now. Some of the romanticism might have...the paint stripper of time has been at work. It's an interesting question. Musician: As you said before, you hope that as your experience and sophistication grows, it doesn't harden your heart. Knopfler: Well, I heard some boogie - woogie piano on the way home in the car yesterday. Every time I hear boogie-woogie piano it makes me happy, glad to be alive. And I remember when my Uncle Kingsley was playing boogie-woogie piano and how it turned me on when I was a little kid of nine. Basically, that's when I first heard rock 'n' roll. I heard the 12-bar and this logic banged into place. Crunch, crunch, "This is for me!"
There is an error in the lyrics posted here, I belive the certain verse goes as it follows:A parcel of preachersTalking heaven and hellThey never quit the speechesThey're always doing wellI got nothing to sell you**If you don't want to deem**But I'll be sure to tell youIf your diamonds ain't for real
^^^What an absolutely brilliant interview that was. I've read it a long time ago, but Mark was so ON in those days. So sharp and eloquent. So many interesting thoughts on a variety of subjects.
Couple of lines amongst the other I like to put an emphasise on:"You know, you don't write good songs out of being in a normal happy middle-class- environment. You don't paint good pictures if you sit and watch TV every night. You live on the outside of all that sort of stuff. If you don't live on the edge, you don't live" (John)
Quote from: Stanko on August 17, 2024, 08:43:40 PMCouple of lines amongst the other I like to put an emphasise on:"You know, you don't write good songs out of being in a normal happy middle-class- environment. You don't paint good pictures if you sit and watch TV every night. You live on the outside of all that sort of stuff. If you don't live on the edge, you don't live" (John)John Illsley LIVING ON THE EDGE lols
