making movies

Dire Straits took a low ride to be the story in the solid rock of this cinematic streetsuss serenade.   The group had formed in 1977 and their first album Dire Straits slowly gained momentum as their second Communiqué  was released in 1979.  Bandleader Mark Knopfler began writing songs with an ambitious new vision for their sound:  "Just for the record, Communiqué did sell three million copies. In a lot of countries it did better than the first. The hang-up about Communiqué was an American thing. But having said that, I still don't think it was a very good record. Making Movies was closer to what I like to do. On that record I was determined I would not be immobilized by anything. I was going on, to do what I knew I could do. I just kept on working. I decided against being waylaid, to be a survivor instead of casualty. That break gave me the time to consider all that had happened and to express it in terms of music. Retrospect's a really good thing. Time to think and write it down. Some of those songs were written during a period of turbulence. I wasn't felling good or collected when I wrote "Solid Rock"; I deliberately wrote and recorded that and "Expresso Love" fast. I took more time to record "Romeo and Juliet" because it took more time to write and demanded special attention.  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 thay make something with it. I'm not advocating adverse circumstanses, but if they come you have to create from it."

Work on 'Making Movies' began in June of 1980; but there was tension between Mark and his brother David.  David reveals:    "I founded the band to be a vehicle for my song-writing and as events progressed, it became apparent that the band was becoming a conduit, almost exclusively, for Mark's song-writing. There simply wasn't enough oxygen left to do anything more than perform set parts ad-nauseum in sports stadiums converted for the night to music venues... and the possibility of enjoying a show in those conditions is very limited. It wasn't the life I wanted and strained relations with my brother provided me with the tipping point to call it a day and leave. It was three years of intense work that revolutionalised my life though arguably, spiritually speaking, not much of it for the better. It did however provide me with a second education after my formal degree which I think did ultimately provide me with the tools to pick up, where I'd left off, and get on with making my own work...I quit in New York in August 1980, several weeks into recording our third album Making Movies, over the usual personal and musical tensions that beset all bands. By then we'd sold enough records to give me a shed full of neglected platinum discs that sadly I felt no pride or respect for...[Mark] was the bloke I had shared a bedroom with.  How could I be deferential to him? Mark and I had a different vision of what we were up to. I was building a democracy and Mark was making an autocracy. Everything put a strain on us...I spent a lot of time doing therapy and dealing with my issues and ghosts and demons."

The sessions continued at The Power Station in New York with Mark Knopfler co-producing with Jimmy Iovine.  Iovine remembers:   "I love doing third albums.  A group makes its first album, and then the record company rushes them into the studio to make their second album. After that, they go, 'Whoa, wait a second.' They get a little more confident. They step back and say, 'Okay, now we're gonna do it.'...I think he wanted to take Dire Straits to that next step, especially in terms of the songs, and to have the album really make sense all together, which I think it does.  It's a really cohesive album. He stunned me, as far as his songwriting talents. The songs on that album are almost classical in nature...It basically happened on the first six days of the sessions. The right people were in the room together. It really was making a record in the pure sense of the term. The whole thing sounds like one song. But you know what that is? That's the writing, the guy who wrote it. He wrote the album like that; he wanted to make the album like that."

'Making Movies' features  Mark Knopfler on vocals and guitar;  John Illsley on bass and vocals;   Pick Withers on drums and vocals;   with the addition of  Sid McGinnis on guitar  and E Street Band member Roy Bittan on keyboards.   Bittan says:  "Mark was real excited, because it was the first time he expanded Dire Straits in a way that has been consistent since then.  It was a seminal album for them in that respect...[These were] work sessions where we went in and really took time to capture the emotion and paint the picture.... They were not very straightforward songs. The subtleties of emotion that he was trying to capture was something real special — it reminded me of Bruce, you know?"

'Making Movies' skated to number nineteen in the US, fifteen in Austria, seven in Germany, six in Australia and the Netherlands, four in Sweden and the UK, three in New Zealand, and number one in Norway.  







http://www.markknopfler.com/


lyrics:
http://dire-straits.org/Lyrics_Making_Movies.html





Tunnel of Love




Romeo and Juliet




Skateaway 








'Making Movies'
full album:



All songs were written by Mark Knopfler, except where indicated

Tunnel of Love - 0:00  (Extract from "The Carousel Waltz" by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II)
Romeo and Juliet - 8:06
Skateaway - 13:59
Expresso Love - 20:38
Hand in Hand - 25:49
Solid Rock - 30:38
Les Boys - 34:04

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."

brothers in arms

dire straits found an antidote for blues with their worldwide number one smash brothers in arms. the themes of love and war mix despair with destruction; the personal with the political; and war criminals with survivors. in this shrinking 'one world' where "there's no such thing as sanity, and that's the sanest fact"; we prostitute ourselves to the man. yet, in all of this darkness, "there should be laughter after pain" and "sunshine after rain." the war-weary heart of darkness still seeks sanctification. "just when this world seems mean and cold, our love comes shining red and gold."

it was the first album to have the compact disk outsell the vinyl version. i remember that we played it all the time at record town and that the cd version had much longer versions of some of the songs than the lp.





http://www.markknopfler.com/

the syrupy reggae blues of 'so far away' starts the album off with the idea of being on the other side of the world from loved ones in a "mean old town".

SO Faraway from Me- Dire Straits from Denny on Vimeo.

'money for nothing' was a huge hit on the radio and on mtv (celebrating and lampooning it at the same time). it also won a grammy for best rock performance. sting got a writing credit for his "i want my mtv" line (since it was set to the tune of 'don't stand so close to me', his publishing company insisted). it funny to think that it was groundbreaking computer animation at the time.

"that ain't workin' that's the way you do it

you play the guitar on your mtv"

Watch Dire Straits - Money for Nothing in Music  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

'walk of life' was top ten hit about a subway musician finding redemption in his "dedication" and "devotion" to the "oldies, goldies". producer neil dorfsman wanted to leave it off of the album; but the band vetoed that decision.

'ride across the river' blurs the lines between the "soldier of fortune" and "soldier of freedom" as "right becomes wrong, the left becomes the right."

'brothers in arms' is about the falklands war between argentina and england.

'Brothers in Arms'
full album:






All songs were written by Mark Knopfler, except where indicated. 


1. "So Far Away"   5:12
2. "Money for Nothing" (Mark Knopfler, Sting) 8:26
3. "Walk of Life"   4:12
4. "Your Latest Trick"   6:33
5. "Why Worry"   8:31
6. "Ride Across the River"   6:58
7. "The Man's Too Strong"   4:40
8. "One World"   3:40
9. "Brothers in Arms"   7:00