Dire Straits

November 2nd, 1984. On the day that in Italy is set aside for remembering the dead, in the land of Albion there comes the official revival of a band that hadn't been making headlines for a while, so much so that some had feared it too had passed on to a better life, or at least that it was no longer in perfect health. It's a low-key comeback, though, one that most people only learn about after the fact, since in real time few know that on that Friday the core of Dire Straits reconvenes, having vanished from radar for about a year and a half, that is, since the end of the promotional tour for their latest studio effort, "Love Over Gold", released in September 1982.

That tour, incidentally, yielded a document of its own, the excellent live album "Alchemy", released partly to make up commercially for the band's long (by the standards of the time) absence from the scene, a period during which founder and leader Mark Knopfler's focus on his own solo projects had raised fears that the outfit he'd coined might be finished for good. That's why its reformation in the heart of autumn 1984 is anything but a foregone conclusion, and true to its founder's low-key style, it happens without fanfare, not least because the band chooses a spot that's anything but around the corner to get back to work together: the Caribbean Sea. The reunion takes place on Montserrat, in the Lesser Antilles, an island that is part of the British Overseas Territories. Here, more precisely in the town of Salem, the island's most populous settlement, George Martin, the legendary "fifth Beatle", had, in the early 1970s, built the AIR (Associated Independent Recording) studios, named after the record label of the same name that the British producer had founded with some colleagues about five years earlier.

It should be said that when they get back together, Dire Straits are no longer quite the same band as before, not entirely at least. Of the line-up that recorded "Love Over Gold", the only survivors, besides Knopfler himself of course, are Alan Clark on keyboards and trusty John Illsley on bass. The new faces are Guy Fletcher, stepping in on keyboards and synths, and Terry Williams as an additional percussionist, oddly credited as a full member of the official line-up despite the fact that his contribution to the record will be limited to the sole, extremely famous, drum intro on "Money For Nothing", after which he's set aside in favour of session player Omar Hakim for every other part. The official line-up also includes another member who appears on just a fragment of one song, New York guitarist – and Knopfler's long-time friend – Jack Sonni (who will replace Hal Lindes after the latter's departure in December), credited solely with the guitar synth passage on "The Man's Too Strong". Sonni will nonetheless join the band for the tour supporting the album and, as rhythm guitarist, will earn himself the nickname of the group's "other guitarist" for the whole of the following year. Then again, it's hardly surprising: on the six-string, the lion's share of the work can only fall to the captain of the ship, that Mark Knopfler who is also the band's principal songwriter. There is, in truth, one other element of continuity with the previous Dire Straits album, and that's Neil Dorfsman, promoted to co-producer alongside the frontman from his earlier role as sound engineer.

The English band arrives in the recording studio with all the songs not only already written but already rehearsed as an ensemble, evidently during some informal session held just before departing for the Caribbean. The material is then recorded digitally, a technique that had only recently emerged, using the brand-new DASH (Digital Audio Stationary Head), a reel-to-reel digital audio tape format just introduced by Sony. Dorfsman himself would later say on the subject: "One of the things I respected most about Mark Knopfler was his interest in technology as a means of improving the sound of his own music. He always wanted the best possible quality when it came to equipment". But even the best can sometimes let you down. "Three weeks into being in the studio," Illsley would recall, "we had a problem with the digital recorder, which overnight decided to wipe about 70% of everything we'd recorded. It was the early days of digital and we had to start recording all over again".

The band stays in Salem until February 1985, then returns to England, only to fly off again, this time to New York, where the second batch of recording sessions takes place (and where Sonni is brought "on board"). The band will end up bringing in a huge number of additional musicians for these sessions, with Knopfler this time going all out and calling on around a dozen outside contributors – with a few surprises too, as we'll see – whereas in the past he had been far more sparing when it came to "outsourcing". The result is one of the most collaborative pop-rock albums ever made, certainly the most collective effort in the London band's catalogue, even featuring a cameo from Sting on backing vocals for the aforementioned "Money For Nothing", the second track on the record as well as the second single (after "So Far Away") to be lifted from the album, and destined to become one of the biggest hits Dire Straits ever had. This collective spirit runs so deep that two of the album's most iconic riffs – the keyboard line in the buoyant "Walk Of Life" and the sax line in the aching "Your Latest Trick" – are respectively down to the aforementioned Clark and American jazz musician Michael Brecker, one of the record's guests. Still, as noted, Knopfler remains the centre of gravity: he's the commander steering the mission; but like any good commander, he doesn't claim all the credit and shies away from the medals, preferring to share the burdens and the glory with his fellow soldiers.

Work wraps up at the end of March, and about a month and a half later, Dire Straits' fifth full-length studio album, "Brothers In Arms", finally hits the shops, destined to become one of the most celebrated records in rock history, and one which, on May 16, 2025, exactly forty years after its original release, will return in a brand-new Anniversary Edition, including its first vinyl reissue since the year of its original release, with some tracks re-edited to fit the vinyl format.

Not that Knopfler has ever cared much for celebrations. That he's always felt uneasy in the spotlight is no secret. His character, after all, is well known: reserved, little inclined to compromise or to putting on a fake smile, averse to preambles and flourishes, resistant to trends, and ironic, if not outright scornful, towards the music business (which in the 1980s was practically sacrilege).

"I love success," he would say, "it means I can buy myself a 1959 Gibson Les Paul and a motorcycle. But I hate fame: it gets in the way of what you do and there's nothing good about it". And again, a few years later: "The press says we're the biggest band in the world. But that has nothing to do with music, only with popularity". And the music made by his band, to which Knopfler gives everything of himself, starting with lyrics that are deeply personal and decidedly uncool, is like a piece of clothing that he tailors onto himself with real craftsmanship, but in a style that cares only about substance and pays no mind – metaphorically, but not only – to a torn sleeve or an unstitched pocket. And it's not a pose: this rough-edged streak is anything but calculated.

Naturally, all of Knopfler is present in "Brothers In Arms" too, whose now-famous cover perhaps not by chance recalls the equally legendary artwork of Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells". The album surprises from the very start. After the experimentation and near-prog structures of "Love Over Gold", a record that, despite the length and complexity of its five tracks, still managed to sell ten million copies, the catchy keyboard intro of "So Far Away" sounds almost surprising – a sinuous, polished yet lively midtempo, exquisitely pop, with keyboard and guitar up front and marked by a shrewd use of effects, echo and reverb above all. The track – as already mentioned – had already been out for about a month by the time the album was released, having been chosen as the lead single. And all things considered it didn't do badly in that role, reaching number 19 on the UK chart (in Italy it peaked at number 33), the fourth Dire Straits single to break into the UK Top 20.

Climbing much higher up the charts, though, starting with its release at the end of June, is "Money For Nothing", which would become one of the decade's most iconic singles (and videos): number one for three consecutive weeks on the Billboard Top 100 and number four in the UK, but above all a promo clip that was among the first to make use of computer graphics, one that went into heavy rotation on that very Mtv so derided in the lyrics. The song, driven by a powerful hard/southern rock-style guitar riff – specifically a fuzzy tone reminiscent of ZZ Top – dominated by the sound of overdrive and played with Knopfler's usual fingerpicking technique, is written from the point of view of two workmen watching music videos and trading comments along the lines of: "We're stuck working, and look at these guys playing on TV, that's how they make their money". "That ain't workin'/ That's the way you do it", the lyrics declare, not unreasonably. "The main character of the song," Knopfler would explain, "is a guy who works in the appliance section of a hardware store. He's the one singing the song, which I wrote when I actually was in a shop like that. I picked up pen and paper and started writing it right there, using that guy's language, a very real language". Sting also appears in the song's credits: "He used to come to Montserrat to go windsurfing," Illsley would recall, "and he'd often join us in the studio for dinner. We played him the song and he was blown away. He told us: 'You bastards, you've done it!'. At which point Mark came out with the remark that if he really thought it was that good, maybe he could add something of his own to it". The "something of his own" that Knopfler had jokingly asked for is the falsetto line "I want my Mtv" heard in the intro and echoed throughout the song as backing vocals, which reproduces, note for note, the melodic line of "Don't Stand So Close To Me", a hit by The Police and the opening track of "Zenyatta Mondatta", their 1980 album. In truth, Sting couldn't care less about the copyright issue, as he himself would explain: "Mark asked me to sing this line, gave me the melody, and I thought: 'Oh, great, "Don't Stand So Close to Me" is a nice reference, funny'. So I sang it and didn't think anything more of it, until my publishers, Virgin – with whom I've been at war for years and for whom I have no respect whatsoever – decided that song belonged to them. They said they wanted a percentage of the song, much to my embarrassment. So they took it".

Overall, "Brothers In Arms" sounds poppier than Dire Straits' previous studio albums, and perhaps that's partly why it became their stylistic manifesto, presenting in a more easily digestible form the band's whole classic sonic universe, from folk to blues to rock'n'roll, the latter beautifully paid tribute to in its classic touchstones by the third track on the record, and third single, "Walk Of Life", both musically and lyrically. The Johnny at the heart of the song is a busker playing in a subway station, a tribute to the troubadours who in the 1950s moved from city to city to make a living by playing music. "I once saw a photo of a young guy playing guitar down in the subway, his face turned towards the wall to get a good reverb. It reminded me of myself, because when I started playing guitar, since I didn't have an amplifier, I used to rest the neck of the instrument on the arm of a chair and put my head against the body to get some sound out of it". The lyrics also run through a whole litany of explicit references to rock'n'roll landmarks such as "I Got A Woman", "Be-Bop-A-Lula", "What'd I Say", "My Sweet Lovin' Woman" and "Mack The Knife", and is, all things considered, especially thanks to its iconic keyboard riff, the only genuinely joyful track on the record – one, incidentally, added to the tracklist at the last minute (Knopfler had initially wanted to use it as the B-side of some future single) – in a sequence otherwise steeped in melancholy.

Another gem that fits right into this picture is "Your Latest Trick", which also happens to be the latest single from the album, a romantic track, thrilling in its emotional intensity, the ideal soundtrack for an intimate moment between lovers, on par with Stevie Wonder's finest ballads, with the sax playing a leading role and Knopfler's vocals — hoarse, whispered — certainly no less impressive in what is perhaps his best vocal performance ever. Initially the song was meant to have a faster tempo and a jazz be-bop feel, but the band's manager, Ed Bicknell, suggested slowing it down and turning it into a bossa nova to better suit the generally melancholy mood of the album, in keeping with other tracks like "Why Worry" (a tender lullaby with a devastating instrumental coda and rarefied, nocturnal tones), "Ride Across The River" (with its tribal, cosmopolitan flavor arising from the combined use of a pan flute, a mariachi trumpet, a brass-based rhythmic bed alongside a more reggae-inflected drum part), "The Man's Too Strong" (folk-leaning, marked by sudden electric outbursts that reinforce the harsh ideas expressed in a pacifist-toned lyric) and "One World" (perhaps the least significant track of the bunch). What emerges is a dark, crepuscular picture, reflecting a sadness that is also a product of its times.

The Eighties are commonly remembered as the decade of hedonism and political disengagement. Yet the other side of the coin is the political and social turmoil gripping society at large, tensions fueled — if not outright created — by the imperialist, hyper-liberal political and economic course charted by the world's two greatest powers, the United States and Great Britain, whose conservative leaderships, embodied by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, both began their long tenures at roughly the same time. Sticking to Great Britain, "Brothers In Arms" came out at the height of the Thatcher era and also deals with war, as heard in the closing, heart-wrenching title track, a grandiose and gorgeous anti-militarist ballad stamped with Knopfler's electric guitar and written in 1982 (indeed, its style is closer to "Love Over Gold"), the very year the Falklands conflict broke out — the war fought between the United Kingdom and Argentina over the islands in the South Atlantic. The song's lyrics are written from the point of view of a soldier wounded in battle and on the verge of death. In the final moments of his life the man finds himself surrounded by his comrades in uniform and addresses them: ⟦Q1⟧, runs a lyric that pairs perfectly with its harrowing musical counterpart. Great Britain would emerge victorious from the Falklands War (or Malvinas, as the Argentines call it), but it's likely that Knopfler too — perhaps not as a British citizen, but certainly as a free artist — took some pleasure in watching Argentina's Maradona "avenge" his country's military defeat by scoring his handball goal against England at the 1986 World Cup. After all, the Mano de Dios, in its musical form, is something Knopfler can rightfully claim for himself as heir to Eric Clapton's slow hand, being, in the opinion of many, the most worthy successor to the former Cream ace.

In terms of numbers, "Brothers In Arms" would prove to be a massive success, selling more than 30 million copies worldwide and spending a total of 14 (non-consecutive) weeks at the top of the UK chart — where it would become the eighth best-selling album of all time — and 9 weeks at the top of the US chart. It would also become the first album to sell over a million copies on CD, a format that in 1985 was still relatively young and one that Dire Straits were considered among the most skilled at exploiting to the fullest, both in terms of sound and recording technique.

The album would be followed by a sprawling world tour of 248 dates, including an appearance at Live Aid on July 13, 1985, where the band performed "Money For Nothing" with Sting himself, as well as an older track, "Sultans Of Swing". Among other things, Dire Straits' performance on the Wembley stage would be remembered for immediately preceding what was probably the most memorable set of the entire day: Queen's. The moment when the closing notes of that same "Sultans Of Swing" can be heard as Freddie Mercury and co. prepare to take the stage was even highlighted in the famous biopic dedicated to them, "Bohemian Rhapsody".

After kicking off in Yugoslavia and moving through Europe, with dates also in Hungary (worth noting here that Knopfler's father, Erwin, was a Hungarian Jew) and Czechoslovakia, both then part of the Soviet bloc, the Live 85/6 tour continued on to North America before returning to the Old Continent in the fall, and finally landing in Oceania. "The 'Brothers In Arms' tour was certainly a huge success. We realized the band had reached a unique point, and overall, we enjoyed it," John Illsley would later say. After the final show, held in Sydney on April 26, 1986, Dire Straits once again stepped away from the spotlight, this time for a good five years, which Knopfler filled in part with a handful of solo projects, including a couple of film scores (recorded in the studio with Guy Fletcher), one of his longtime passions: the soundtrack for the fantasy film "The Princess Bride", released in September 1987, and the one for the drama "Last Exit to Brooklyn", which hit theaters roughly two years later (this latter soundtrack, although composed entirely by Knopfler, would feature only one track actually performed by him, with the rest played mostly by Fletcher). These last two film-related albums would be, respectively, Knopfler's fourth and fifth, following his earlier work scoring "Local Hero", "Cal" and "Comfort And Joy".

Truth be told, during the five-year hiatus that followed "Brothers In Arms", Dire Straits briefly reunited on a couple of special occasions: the tribute concert for Nelson Mandela's 70th birthday, held once again at Wembley on June 11, 1988 (with Clapton himself joining the band on stage), and a benefit show in Newcastle (the city where Knopfler, born in Scotland, grew up from the age of seven) in May 1989. It would take another year or so before the band truly reformed, and twice that long before they released another album — the last one for real, this time. "On Every Street", released in September 1991, would in fact be the closing chapter of a Dire Straits discography that, in a sense, would carry on in spirit, under a different guise, through Mark Knopfler's proper solo career.

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22/03/2026