Latest news with #MarkKnopfler
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The 5 classic Dire Straits songs that aren't on their No. 1 album 'Brothers in Arms'
Along with U2 and The Police, Dire Straits were among the most successful bands from the British Isles in the 1980s. Their fifth studio album, 1985's Brothers in Arms sold in staggering numbers, earning Platinum or Diamond status in 10 countries, storming to the No. 1 spot on album charts each and every time. Yet, in many ways, it was a last gasp for the beloved band; they'd take six years to record and release a followup, and by that time, popular tastes had changed, with grunge all the rage. (1991's On Every Street still made it to No. 1 in eight countries, no mean feat.) The overwhelming success of Brothers in Arms tends to overshadow the catalog of fine work Dire Straits had already created. So on the 40th anniversary of the release of Brothers in Arms, here are five great Dire Straits tunes from the records that came before it. 'Once Upon a Time in the West' from (1979) After the slow-burn success of Dire Straits' self-titled debut LP, Communiqué was met with a more modest reception. But the album arguably built on the first record's strengths. The understated 'Once Upon a Time in the West' added some reggae textures to the band's rootsy approach. The song would remain a staple of Dire Straits' live set; it featured prominently in an epic version, opening their 1984 live album (see below). 'Tunnel of Love' from (1980) Opening with the strains of Rodgers and Hammerstein's 'Carousel Waltz,' Dire Straits' 'Tunnel of Love' signaled Mark Knopfler's move toward grand, sweeping musical works. The evocative song showcases emotional depth, exceptional instrumental work and some of Knopfler's finest lyrics, rivaling Bruce Springsteen (who would write a 'Tunnel of Love' of his own a few years later). 'Telegraph Road' from (1982) Mark Knopfler's gift for creating wide-screen, epic songs continued on Dire Straits' fourth studio LP. The album's single, 'Industrial Disease' would be the only tune on the five-song album to come in under six minutes. Yet at fourteen minutes plus, 'Telegraph Road' never wastes a second. Knopfler's lyrics were inspired in part by the Nobel Prize winning novel Growth of the Soil by Norwegian author Knut Hamsun. 'Twisting by the Pool' from (1983) Brothers in Arms displayed some playful humor in songs like 'Money for Nothing,' but the MTV hit wasn't Dire Straits' first tune with a bit of whimsy. A three-day recording session in Fall 1982 yielded four new songs for the group, including this fun and uptempo track. The uncharacteristic 'Twisting by the Pool' made it onto the singles charts in the U.S., UK and New Zealand; it reached the No. 1 spot in the latter. 'Going Home: Theme of the Local Hero' from (1984) While guitarist and songwriter Mark Knopfler formally launched his solo career after Dire Straits broke up in 1995, he had already been active outside the band for more than a decade. His first recorded work outside the group was composing, recording and producing the soundtrack for the well-received 1983 film Local Hero. On tour, Dire Straits featured the movie's stirring instrumental theme song in a full-band version; it's a highlight of the Alchemy album. Visit the Goldmine store for vinyl, CDs, box sets, collectibles, music history books and limited-edition, Goldmine-only exclusives. An online store specifically for music collectors. Click HERE!
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Legendary ‘70s Rocker, 75, Celebrates 47th Anniversary of Beloved Hit Song
One of the most distinct bands to come out of the '70s and '80s was Dire Straits. The band had an incredibly unique sound, propelling them into the history books of rock music. Albums like their self titled debut, and their commercial smash hit "Brothers in Arms," which is one of the ten best-selling albums in UK history. The band have created countless hits, the two most notable being "Money For Nothing," and "Sultans of Swing." The latter song was their first big hit, propelled by the vocals and unique guitar playing of Mark Knopfler. Knopfler has been the driving force of the band's sound, and his unique finger-style guitar technique has provided his playing an unmistakable sound. "Sultans of Swing" is an instantly recognizable, classic song because of Knopfler, so of course, he deserves to celebrate the song's anniversary. The song is incredibly important in rock history, and fans recognized this in the comments. "We just do not get stuff like this anymore. Incredible." "What a song." "A glorious masterpiece." It's safe to say that the song has stood the test of time. We'll all be rocking out to this classic for many years to come. 🎬SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox🎬
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How Guy Fletcher and a classic ‘80s synth became Dire Straits' secret weapon on Brothers In Arms
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Set to celebrate its 40th anniversary on Saturday 17 May, Dire Straits' Brothers In Arms is many things - not least the album that's viewed as the one that turned the world on to the compact disc. A synth record, though? Surely not. This after all, was a band helmed by Mark Knopfler, who in 1985 was one of the most famous guitarists in the world (though not quite as famous as Marty McFly, obviously). And just look at that Brothers In Arms album cover - it's got a photo of a guitar on it, for crying out loud! Dig a little deeper, though, and you discover that there was another sheriff in town - Guy Fletcher - and he was packing a rather different kind of music-making pistol. Then an up-and-coming keyboard player, Fletcher had worked with Knopfler on his two most recent soundtrack albums, Cal and Comfort and Joy. Taken from the films of the same name, these were both released in 1984. "Guy had turned up at my house one day in a Hillman Hunter," Knopfler tells Paul Sexton in the liner notes for the new 40th anniversary edition of Brothers In Arms. "He knocked on the door with a synthesizer under his arm and we started working together." It was around this time that Knopfler got his hands on a New England Digital Synclavier, the digital synth/sampler/workstation keyboard that was taking the music industry by storm. Its sounds came to define the '80s, being used on huge albums by Michael Jackson (Thriller, Bad), Genesis (Invisible Touch) and - thanks to Trevor Horn - Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Yes and Grace Jones. Owning it was one thing, though: mastering it was quite another. "I used to look at it dubiously and wonder if I'd ever learn how to use it," says Knopfler. Dire Straits bassist John Illsley, meanwhile, remembers that "Everybody was going 'Does anybody know how to work this thing?'' Help, though, was at hand. 'Guy had joined by then,' says Illsley. 'Without him there, we would have probably been completely lost." "It was part and parcel of what Guy was doing, and he managed to get it to make sense,' confirms Knopfler. Fletcher, meanwhile, suggests that it was partly his technological know-how that got him into the band. "I guess I sort of proved to Mark that I could handle something that was like an airbus manual," he says. "It was a quite a complicated thing, but we did those two films together, with a few other musicians, so joining the band wasn't really even talked about. It was just 'We're going into rehearsals next week, see you there' and next thing we know, we're in Montserrat." It was here, on a Caribbean island, that Brothers In Arms was recorded. The location was George Martin's Air Studios, which later fell victim to both a hurricane and volcano eruption, and now lies derelict. Back then, though, it was state of the art, with a Sony 24-track digital tape machine providing the opportunity to make pristine recordings. As Fletcher, explains, though, this presented another potential problem. "We had digital, and it was a new format at the time,' he remembers. 'We were, like everybody, a bit blown away by what digital can do, but it also had its difficulties in reining it in, because it was very easy to get carried away. Neil Dorfsman [producer] did an amazing job in retaining the analogue feel of the album, and being faithful to the songs." Those songs, though, definitely sound of their time, and the Synclavier's influence was huge. The video below from ElectronicSupersonic, which features remakes of some of the most famous synth parts on Brothers In Arms using Arturia's Synclavier-V emulation and some other software instruments, confirms that the machine is all over it. Pretty much every song features some of that New England Digital sauce: check out the intro to Money For Nothing and lead sound on Walk Of Life if you want to hear just a couple of very famous examples. In fact, the Synclavier is there right from the start, during the intro and throughout album opener So Far Away, and it sticks around until the end, on the title track. Let's give thanks to Guy Fletcher and his synth mastery, then: Dire Straits' secret weapon. We'll never know how many of Brothers In Arms' 30 million sales he was responsible for, but without him and the Synclavier, we can say that the album would have sounded very different.
South China Morning Post
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Dire Straits' Knopfler, Illsley tell story of recording Brothers In Arms as album reissued
Mark Knopfler and John Illsley have differing memories of the creation of Dire Straits' most successful album. 'It was like any other album,' says the former frontman and songwriter Knopfler, 75, almost stoically. In contrast, bassist Illsley, also 75, and still close friends with his former bandmate, said he immediately recognised that the band's fifth studio album could be something special. 'I knew instinctively we had some great material here,' he says. 'We were going to have a really good album.' Play Illsley was proved right. Brothers In Arms, featuring classics like 'Money For Nothing' and 'Walk Of Life', became a global success, selling more than 30 million copies and becoming one of the bestselling albums in music history. A new edition is now being released to mark its 40th anniversary.
Telegraph
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Brothers In Arms and the Compact Disc revolution that never was
Forty years ago this week, the British rock band Dire Straits released their fifth album Brothers in Arms, a glossily-produced rock masterpiece. But the album's music would arguably become its second most important cultural legacy. Brothers in Arms heralded the start of the Compact Disc revolution, kick-starting a quarter-century-long boom for the music industry and introducing five-inch silver discs into homes around the world. Brothers in Arms, released on May 17 1985, became the first ever album to sell over a million copies on CD. It spawned five hit singles including Money for Nothing, spent 14 weeks at number one in the UK – and nine in the US – and won a Grammy. In a metaphorical 1980s time capsule, the sky-blue CD case with image of Mark Knopfler's National Resonator guitar nestles alongside a Rubik's Cube, a pair of shoulder pads, a 'Frankie Says Relax' t-shirt and a Filofax as a signifier of the decade. 'Huge,' was how Knopfler recently described the album's impact. Brothers in Arms was everywhere. At school as an 11-year-old boy, we had a craze for jumping off desks and walls at the moment that Money for Nothing's crunching guitar riff interrupted the song's cascading drums. It was a track we loved because Sting was on it, singing 'I want my MTV' to the tune of The Police's Don't Stand So Close to Me. The song's video featured cool computer graphics and, again, lots of references to the nascent MTV. It all felt shiny and new. But not half as shiny and new as the medium on which most people bought it. CDs arrived in the UK in 1983 having been jointly developed by Sony in Japan and Philips in Holland. The discs worked by storing music as digital data (encoded as ones and zeroes) in tiny pits arranged in a spiral, as on a vinyl record, beneath a smooth plastic surface. This data was translated back into music by a laser within the CD player as the disc spun. It was speculated that the running length of a CD was made to match the duration of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (74 minutes) as this was the favourite music of then-Sony chairman Norio Ohga. Promises came thick and fast. We were told that CDs had huge advantages over vinyl (which scratched or jumped) and cassette tapes (which tangled or snapped). CDs allowed for a greater so-called dynamic range – the difference between the lowest and highest volume within a recording – than analogue vinyl, and they had crisper sound that could include any noise audible to the human ear. While records and cassettes would degrade after repeated listens, CDs would last forever, went the, er, spin: you could pickle a CD in a vat of Quatro and it would still work. The discs were small, neat and portable, and listeners could skip through tracks at the touch of a button. Very sci-fi. The world was intrigued, with CDs' apparent indestructibility proving a novelty. An 1981 episode of BBC science programme Tomorrow's World showed presenter Kieran Prendiville scratch a CD with a stone before playing it. (Prendiville wasn't overly convinced, saying it 'remains to be seen' whether there's 'a market for this kind of disc'.) Two years later, on the day that CDs were officially launched, Frank Bough introduced a segment on BBC Breakfast Time in which a CD was smeared in honey and doused with coffee. It still played. Brian McLaughlin was man responsible for introducing CDs to UK shoppers. In 1983 he was operations director of HMV with sole responsibility for launching the new format in the music chain's stores. 'The industry was in need of a boost, and when I first saw the CD I knew instinctively this could provide the answer,' McLaughlin, 75, tells me. 'It was much smaller than the LP and it was definitely sexier to look at. In my opinion the sound quality was superior. On the downside, because of its size, the sleeve notes, much loved by the LP-buyer, would be sacrificed.' Still, things got off to a slow start as record labels were unsure of CDs' potential. In 1983 just 250,000 discs were bought in the UK. Then along came Knopfler. 'The Dire Straits album Brothers in Arms just took off in 1985 and the huge sales encouraged all the major [labels] to release new product on CD as well as the album format,' says McLaughlin. In 1985 sales rose to 3.1 million. The following year, the first ever edition of Q magazine came with a booklet naming the best 100 records to buy. By then, 10,000 titles were available. Sales in 1986 hit 8.4 million. Change had arrived. In 2000, CD sales topped 200 million. It was entirely fitting that Dire Straits were at the vanguard: not only was Brothers in Arms one of the first albums recorded on a digital tape machine (in AIR Studios on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, where Sting happened to be holidaying, hence his involvement) but the album's sound seemed to chime with this new format. Both were slick and luxuriant, both spoke of aspiration and taste. Brothers in Arms became the go-to 'test' CD in stereo shops: the hi-fi equivalent of Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water in guitar shops. McLaughlin reveals a comedic side issue to the CD's invention: packaging wars. The five-square-inch size of a CD's case was not compatible with the 12-square-inch size of the album display racks in record shops. And penny-pinching US music retailers were unwilling to invest in costly new shelving systems for this upstart new format. So the American record industry invented a thing called a 'longbox' to house CDs. Longboxes measured six by 12 inches, meaning that two could sit side-by-side in pre-existing vinyl racks. Each box contained one CD and a lot of air. 'It looked hideous,' says the former HMV man, who refused to countenance longboxes in the UK. Hideous… and ludicrous too. What the US industry saved on new shelves it spent on cardboard. David Byrne released his 1992 album Uh-Oh with a sticker saying 'This is garbage', referring not to his own music but to the wasteful expanse of packaging surrounding it. Peter Gabriel refused to use longboxes. Others took the micky. Joke heavy metal band Spinal Tap released their 1992 album Break Like The Wind in what they called an 'extra-long box' measuring 18 inches tall, which was both a phallic dig at the music industry's ridiculousness and a clever way of making their album stand out from the crowd. Political indie janglers REM used the excess cardboard on the CD version of 1991's Out of Time to house a petition about voter registration. Some 10,000 fans signed theirs and sent them to the US Congress. (Longboxes were phased out in the US in 1993.) Over here, HMV demanded that CDs were displayed in their original, smaller packaging. The chain even invested £500,000 in new shelves, an investment it 'never regretted' says McLaughlin, who has written a book called His Master's Voice: The Man Who Changed the Face of Music Retail. But as we all know, many of the CD's promised advantages were illusory. They scratched easily. And the honey thing was hokum. I vividly remember smearing Duran Duran's hits compilation Decade with a blob of jam to see if it still worked. It skipped for evermore (although the glitches occurred during the godawful Skin Trade. Every cloud). CDs were also hugely expensive. They cost £10 back in 1983 (£33 in today's money). In 1993 MPs launched a probe into whether CDs were too expensive. The Select Committee for Culture and Sport decided that the record industry was profiteering and referred the case to the higher Consumer Affairs Committee for investigation. The committee found no evidence of profiteering. Yet I'm still staggered when I recall paying £16.49 for a CD of Hole's Celebrity Skin in 1998. That's £31 today, equivalent to a three month subscription to Spotify, which allows unlimited access to practically every song ever written. Were CDs a rip-off or has music become grossly devalued in recent years? Somewhere in between? Answers on a longbox. 'The long and short of it is that although CDs were far more expensive than LPs, the public wanted to have the new technology with its superior sound. This led to over 25 years of uninterrupted growth in music sales in the UK alone,' says McLaughlin. Record labels cashed in, rushing out 'remastered' versions of classic albums, many of which were dubbed from old master recordings and sounded awful. Morrissey compared CDs to gimmicky household product Shake n' Vac according to Bob Stanley's book Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!. Then the so-called 'loudness wars' broke out. Rather than take advantage of CDs' wide dynamic range, engineers would eschew subtlety and simply make everything as loud as possible. All the instruments, in Spinal Tap parlance, were turned up to 11. Oasis, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Metallica were prominent offenders. Things didn't last. The CD's decline was as precipitous as its rise. From peak sales in 2000 – when almost a billion CDs were sold in the bellwether US market – the format almost halved in popularity by 2007, hammered by the next wave of technological progress: digital downloads, illegal fire sharing and, later, streaming. Fans moved on. Last year, just 11 million CDs were sold in the UK. But let's not be totally dismissive of the CD. It fared way better than other 'ground-breaking' formats like the eight-track cartridge, the L-cassette, quadrophonic records (one record, four audio channels, required special kit, popular in the 1970s) and minidiscs. Besides, there are signs of life in this most hardy of formats. Despite the relatively low numbers, there has been 'retro bounce' in CD sales in recent years as music fans have turned their back on digital music to embrace old physical formats. CD sales rose for the first time in two decades in 2023, according to trade body the Entertainment Retailers Association (with Take That's This Life being the biggest seller). The CD still accounts for around seven per cent of the industry's recorded music income, says the BPI. So, scarecrows rejoice, we shouldn't give up on the little plastic discs quite yet. Dire Straits' legacy lives on. Just avoid the jam. The 10 CDs that are still worth owning 1. Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon (1973) Already the audiophiles' favourite, the best CD versions of Pink Floyd's prog rock opus are the Japanese versions pressed in 1983 or 1984. These were produced at one of the first CD pressing plants in the world in Japan's Shizuoka region, and the sound quality is exceptional. 2. Björk, Homogenic (1997) An album on which Björk sings about the 'emotional landscapes' of her native Iceland, Homogenic is bold, weird and cinematic – and it sounds fantastic. What Hi-Fi? reviewer Harry McKerrell still uses it as his test record when trying out new hi-fis. For me, the original CD version remains unbeatable. 3. Wu-Tang Clan, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin (2015) Good luck getting your hands on this one. Only one copy of this CD was created by the Staten Island rap collective, and it was bought directly from the band for $2 million by pharmaceuticals boss Martin Shkreli, who was later jailed for securities fraud. The courts seized Shkreli's assets and the album was sold on to a group of non-fungible token collectors. 4. Michael Jackson, Thriller (1982) The crispest CD version of Jackson's classic album is the 2001 remaster, released on the superior Super Audio CD format that was introduced in 1999. Remastering was done by legendary audio engineer Bernie Grundman – who mastered Steely Dan's Aja – under the auspices of original Thriller producer Quincy Jones. 5. Miles Davis, Kind of Blue (1959) Recorded for a few thousand dollars on three-track magnetic tape over just nine hours, Kind of Blue is a jazz gem. Released in 2009, this 50 th anniversary Legacy Edition was remastered by Grammy-winner Mark Wilder. The sound is so bright it could have been recorded yesterday. 6. Tears for Fears, The Seeds of Love (1989) Massive production, a million pound budget, eight-minute songs, heavy Beatles influences… Tears for Fears' third album encapsulated peak late-1980s excess. But the sound is stunning. I'm told that the Oleta Adams-featuring Woman in Chains is used to this day by battle-hardened sound engineers to test PA systems in massive stadiums because it ticks all the sonic boxes. 7. AC/DC, Early Australian CDs (1985-88) The Aussie rockers' albums were first released on CD in their homeland in the mid-to-late 1980s on the Alberts record label. These versions presented the album tracks as the band intended – i.e. before their international labels meddled with the running orders. They're now rare and expensive (£60 on eBay). 8. Daft Punk, Random Access Memories (2013) Beautifully mixed, with fat bass yet crystal clear sound and a phenomenal groove, this final album by the French dance music duo was made for the CD format. Recorded (using real instruments) both digitally and onto analogue tape, the final mix melded the clarity of digital with the warmth of analogue. 9. Runner, Falling Hearts (1991) This album by Chicago heavy metal band Runner was only initially released in Korea. Although it was reissued in 2022 on CD, original copies of the Korean CD are extremely rare. A collector recently paid $3,000 for a copy, according to Discogs. 10. Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Welcome to the Pleasuredome (1984) Frankie's label ZTT released the Liverpudlians' album in a dizzying array of CD versions, with different tracks, mixes and running orders. Some CDs have no Ferry Across the Mersey but a nine-minute mix of Two Tribes, others don't. I'd buy the version with Ferry and Do You Know the Way to San José.
