Rough and Rowdy Ways

[stratmad]

Dire Straits are my favourite band but I would never try to argue that they were the greatest band ever.

You're probably in for trouble for saying this here! 
But I think I know what you mean. There are (few) "greater" bands, and they lasted longer, too.
But DS (live) around the time of Alchemy/BIA, with MK in wizard mode, was probably the hottest thing on the planet because they were so different, so tight, so full of energy.

[Robson]

In the 80s, it was often said that Dire Straits was the biggest band in the world. I know, it's a journalistic slogan. But I buy it and I always liked these words.

[dustyvalentino]

I was around in the 80s. DS were the biggest band in 85.

But even then they weren’t as big as solo acts like Michael Jackson, Madonna and Bruce Springsteen.

[Robson]

I was around in the 80s. DS were the biggest band in 85.

But even then they weren’t as big as solo acts like Michael Jackson, Madonna and Bruce Springsteen.

Yes, I was thinking about 1985:)

[stratmad]

In the 80s, it was often said that Dire Straits was the biggest band in the world. I know, it's a journalistic slogan. But I buy it and I always liked these words.

Agree.
But honestly I can't think of many 80s _bands_ that were in the same league. There were a few superstars, Prince, Madonna, Jackson etc. And then there there were the great bands from the 70s that were still around, but some had split or reformed or whatever. In terms of bands, I think it was mainly Genesis (without Peter Gabriel), Pink Floyd (without Roger Waters) and the Police (split), at that level of success.
DS kept going, they appealed to a wider "pop" audience and to the music enthusiasts and guitar nerds, people of any age and class.
I read somewhere that almost every British household had a copy of BIA at the time. Quite a phenomenon, considering that MK never wanted to be a rock star.   

[quizzaciously]

In the 80s, it was often said that Dire Straits was the biggest band in the world. I know, it's a journalistic slogan. But I buy it and I always liked these words.

Agree.
But honestly I can't think of many 80s _bands_ that were in the same league. There were a few superstars, Prince, Madonna, Jackson etc. And then there there were the great bands from the 70s that were still around, but some had split or reformed or whatever. In terms of bands, I think it was mainly Genesis (without Peter Gabriel), Pink Floyd (without Roger Waters) and the Police (split), at that level of success.
DS kept going, they appealed to a wider "pop" audience and to the music enthusiasts and guitar nerds, people of any age and class.
I read somewhere that almost every British household had a copy of BIA at the time. Quite a phenomenon, considering that MK never wanted to be a rock star.   

I know Dusty Springfield will hate me for saying this, but if you crank numbers DS was not the biggest band in the world at any point in time, it wasn't even the biggest band in the UK

[stratmad]

Sure, there were a lot of acts that were selling a lot more records/tickets!
But financial success alone doesn't make for a "great" band.
Some bands even got too commercial, like Genesis, which made some critics say that they weren't as good as the "old" Genesis. I think that's nonsense, because they were just different.
Sometimes I wish I could go back to the eighties, just because of the music! But then I remember re-winding the tape on my walkman, dealing with recalcitrant VHS tapes and fax machines, seeing neon-coloured clothes and smelling hairspray all over the place... 

[dustyvalentino]

In the 80s, it was often said that Dire Straits was the biggest band in the world. I know, it's a journalistic slogan. But I buy it and I always liked these words.

Agree.
But honestly I can't think of many 80s _bands_ that were in the same league. There were a few superstars, Prince, Madonna, Jackson etc. And then there there were the great bands from the 70s that were still around, but some had split or reformed or whatever. In terms of bands, I think it was mainly Genesis (without Peter Gabriel), Pink Floyd (without Roger Waters) and the Police (split), at that level of success.
DS kept going, they appealed to a wider "pop" audience and to the music enthusiasts and guitar nerds, people of any age and class.
I read somewhere that almost every British household had a copy of BIA at the time. Quite a phenomenon, considering that MK never wanted to be a rock star.   

I know Dusty Springfield will hate me for saying this, but if you crank numbers DS was not the biggest band in the world at any point in time, it wasn't even the biggest band in the UK

With respect, I was there, BiA was EVERYWHERE.

But please, crank the numbers and tell me which band was bigger than DS in 1985.

[Robson]

"seeing neon-coloured clothes"

But Money For Nothing video was and is fantastic

[Robson]

In the 80s, it was often said that Dire Straits was the biggest band in the world. I know, it's a journalistic slogan. But I buy it and I always liked these words.

Agree.
But honestly I can't think of many 80s _bands_ that were in the same league. There were a few superstars, Prince, Madonna, Jackson etc. And then there there were the great bands from the 70s that were still around, but some had split or reformed or whatever. In terms of bands, I think it was mainly Genesis (without Peter Gabriel), Pink Floyd (without Roger Waters) and the Police (split), at that level of success.
DS kept going, they appealed to a wider "pop" audience and to the music enthusiasts and guitar nerds, people of any age and class.
I read somewhere that almost every British household had a copy of BIA at the time. Quite a phenomenon, considering that MK never wanted to be a rock star.   

I know Dusty Springfield will hate me for saying this, but if you crank numbers DS was not the biggest band in the world at any point in time, it wasn't even the biggest band in the UK

With respect, I was there, BiA was EVERYWHERE.

But please, crank the numbers and tell me which band was bigger than DS in 1985.

None. Everyone wanted to see them.

[quizzaciously]

In the 80s, it was often said that Dire Straits was the biggest band in the world. I know, it's a journalistic slogan. But I buy it and I always liked these words.

Agree.
But honestly I can't think of many 80s _bands_ that were in the same league. There were a few superstars, Prince, Madonna, Jackson etc. And then there there were the great bands from the 70s that were still around, but some had split or reformed or whatever. In terms of bands, I think it was mainly Genesis (without Peter Gabriel), Pink Floyd (without Roger Waters) and the Police (split), at that level of success.
DS kept going, they appealed to a wider "pop" audience and to the music enthusiasts and guitar nerds, people of any age and class.
I read somewhere that almost every British household had a copy of BIA at the time. Quite a phenomenon, considering that MK never wanted to be a rock star.   

I know Dusty Springfield will hate me for saying this, but if you crank numbers DS was not the biggest band in the world at any point in time, it wasn't even the biggest band in the UK

With respect, I was there, BiA was EVERYWHERE.

But please, crank the numbers and tell me which band was bigger than DS in 1985.

None. Everyone wanted to see them.

Haha! Well, I guess I'm just terribly inclined to diminish everybody's success, whether mine (especially) or someone else's. If you say so, then that's true!

I can imagine Brothers In Arms coming "from every iron" as we say in Russia, though Mark always says they simply got lucky with being at the right place at the right time, the boom of CD, the boom of MTV, technology, having great punchy singles, all that. I think it's at least partly true and they really got lucky there.

Sure the songs were strong and iconic, but again I don't think it's as ubiquitous as many of the bands mentioned here. And speaking of punchy singles, most fans of "Money For Nothing" I encountered in my life listen to the drums intro, then the guitar riff and turn off the song.

[Robson]

There are different measures of success. The basic question is: what is success? It's certainly a complex and long topic, but I think history has shown that in the mid-80s,  Dire Straits band was big and very successful. It's a fact. There is no dispute between enthusiasts and critics of Dire Straits here.

[Love Expresso]

There the original topic goes...

LE

[qjamesfloyd]

By the mid 80's Dire Straits were HUGE which is amazing because they started as a pub rock band, playing to a handful of people. The argument of saying they were the biggest band in the world is that Bob Geldof asked them to headline Live Aid, and they couldn't do that because they were in the middle of one of the biggest ever tours by any band, touring one of the biggest selling albums ever, an album that is still in the top 10 best selling albums ever in the UK ahead of Michael Jackson's Bad and Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of The Moon and 25th best selling album of all time in the world, quite a feat.

[Love Expresso]

While doing some rechearch last night, I was astonished about pretty bad early reviews about Brothers in Arms:

Scource is Wikipedia again:

Initial reviews of Brothers in Arms from the UK music press in 1985 were generally negative. In a scathing review for NME, Mat Snow criticised Knopfler's "mawkish self-pity, his lugubriously mannered appropriation of rockin' Americana, his thumpingly crass attempts at wit". He also accused the album of the "tritest would-be melodies in history, the last word in tranquilising chord changes, the most cloying lonesome playing and ultimate in transparently fake troubador sentiment ever to ooze out of a million-dollar recording studio".[40] Eleanor Levy of Record Mirror dismissed the "West Coast guitars reeking of mega bucks and sell out stadium concerts throughout the globe. Laid back melodies. Dire Straits – summed up... This is like any other Dire Straits album quarried out of the tottering edifice of MOR rock."[37]

The reviews from other UK music papers were less harsh, with Jack Barron of Sounds feeling that "it's only a halfway decent album because it has only halfway decent songs... Knopfler has distilled his sonic essence, via blues, to appeal to billboard romantics with cinemascope insecurities. And he can pull it off well... but not often enough here."[38] Melody Maker's Barry McIlheney observed that Knopfler had recently explored different creative directions with his work on movie soundtracks and on Bob Dylan's Infidels, and bemoaned that "this admirable spirit of adventure fails to materialise... Instead it sounds just a bit too like the last Dire Straits album, which sounded not unlike the last one before that, which sounded suspiciously like the beginning of a hugely successful and very lucrative plan to take over the world known as AOR". He concluded, "the old rockschool restraints and the undeniably attractive smell of the winning formula seem to block out any such experimental work and what you end up with is something very like the same old story".

LE