dire straits

Dire Straits took their melancholy pub rock across the pond before it became a success in their home country.  The group started with brothers Mark and David Knopfler and bass player John Illsley.  David remembers:   "I was sharing a flat with the bass player, who had taken to rehearsing with a singularly loud punk band of an evening. The only solution I could conceive to the racket was to wean him back to something more in keeping with what I liked. So I told my brother I’d found the perfect bass player for our duets, and introduced my brother to my flat mate."

Mark had been teaching at  Loughton College and playing with bands in pubs at night.  After getting divorced, he went to live with his brother:   "John and David were living in a hovel in sort of a condemned lump of ancient Victorian flats down in Depford which the armpit of south London and there were a lot of students who were living in these places where normal families would have nothing to do with.  Anyway, they were all living there and I went down there to sort of get the band together.  What happens when you play on the sofa is you start to play and you start to slide down, i used to fall asleep playing...but anyway you end up on the floor...John came in in the morning-he'd been out all night-that's how we met, with me fast asleep with the guitar." 

Illsley illucidates:   "I was playing in blues bands and rock bands and all sorts of music, some jazz occasionally.   So I come across Mark, who was in a band called Caf Racers in Essex doing sort of college gigs. I was in a blues band at my college, and he asked me to come over and play the bass in his band. So that's how I actually got to play with Mark in a band. He was just a guitar player then. Then he moved into my flat because he was Dave's brother, so we would just sit around and play together. That's how we developed the Dire Straits sound, sitting around in a flat in South London. " 

With the addition of drummer Pick Withers, the group took on the name Dire Straits due to their pitiful financial situation.  They recorded a demo and brought it to  DJ Charlie Gillett, who had a radio show called "Honky Tonk" on BBC Radio London.  Gillett was so impressed, he played their song 'Sultans of Swing' on the air.  'Dire Straits' was recorded at Basing Street studios in West London with producer Muff Winwood.  The sessions featured Mark Knopfler on vocals, lead guitar, and rhythm guitar; David Knopfler on rhythm guitar and vocals; John Illsley on bass and vocals; and Pick Withers on drums.  When it was first released on Phonogram subsidiary Vertigo Records, it was overlooked in the heyday of punk rock.  In the US, the album caught the attention of  Warner Bros. Records A&R representative Karin Berg, who helped the band get a distribution deal.  

'Dire Straits' made it to number seventeen in Austria, ten in Norway, six in Sweden, five in the UK, three in Germany and the Netherlands, two in New Zealand and the US, and number one in Australia.  The album was eventually certified double-platinum in the UK and the US.  Mark considers:   "On the first two Dire Straits albums the narrator never spoke to anyone. He was always standing in the background watching the woman on the train, the Chinese merchants, the Sultans of Swing...To crystallize: If you can turn negative energy into positive, turn a dire straits situation, excuse the term, into one that is positive, you're not going to go under, you're creating. Like someone who could write a book in prison. The songs are linked in that sense. It wasn't conscious, but I see the Sultans, Les Bouys, the roller skate girl, and Romeo all change disadvantage into advantage. Rather than leave it they make something with it. I'm not advocating adverse circumstances, but if they come you have to create from it."





http://www.direstraits.co.uk/



http://www.markknopfler.com/





'Dire Straits'
full album:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3HhqbXKuJU



1."Down to the Waterline" 3:55
2."Water of Love"  5:23
3."Setting Me Up"  3:18
4."Six Blade Knife"  4:10
5"Southbound Again"  2:58
6."Sultans of Swing"  5:47
7."In the Gallery"  6:16
8."Wild West End"  4:42
9."Lions"          5:05





'Sultans of Swing' was inspired by Knopfler seeing a band in a south London pub playing to a practically empty room.   The single slowly climbed the charts after being re-released six months after the album came out.  As the song made it into the US top ten, it started to gain momentum in the UK.  It eventually charted all over the world, going to thirty-six in France,  twenty in Germany, fourteen in Belgium, twelve in Italy and New Zealand, eleven in the Netherlands, eight in the UK, six in Ireland, four in Canada and the US, and three in South Africa.  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB3b1W6rEDw


You get a shiver in the dark, 
It's raining in the park, but meantime: 
South of the river, you stop and you hold everything. 
A band is blowin' Dixie, double-four time. 
You feel alright when you hear that music play. 

You step inside, but you don't see too many faces. 
Comin' in out of the rain to hear the jazz go down. 
Competition in other places... 
But the horns, they blowin' that sound. 
Way on down south, 
Way on down south, London-town 

Check out Guitar George, he knows all the chords. 
But it's strictly rhythm; he doesn't want to make it cry or sing. 
If any old guitar is all he can afford, 
When he gets up under the lights to play his thing. 


And Harry doesn't mind if he doesn't make the scene. 
He's got a daytime job, he's doing alright. 
He can play the honky tonk like anything, 
Savin' it up for Friday night. 
With the Sultans, 
With the Sultans of Swing 

And a crowd of young boys, they're fooling around in the corner, 
Drunk and dressed in their best brown baggies and their platform soles. 
The don't give a damn about any trumpet playing band. 
It ain't what they call rock and roll. 
And the Sultans, 
Yes the Sultans play Creole. 

And then the man, he steps right up to the microphone. 
And says at last, just as the time bell rings, 
"Goodnight, now it's time to go home." 
And he makes it fast, with one more thing: 
"We're the Sultans, 
"We are the Sultans of Swing."