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That Ain’t Workin’: How a Deliveryman’s Rant Became Dire Straits’ Only American Number One
That Ain’t Workin’: How a Deliveryman’s Rant Became Dire Straits’ Only American Number One The most famous music video of the 1980s opens with two blocky, computer-drawn workmen — all right angles and pixelated frowns — complaining about their lives while a wall of televisions plays rock stars at them. Then a voice cuts through,…
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Mark Knopfler: The Quiet Genius Behind the Guitar
He is one of the greatest guitarists who ever lived, the voice behind “Sultans of Swing” and “Brothers in Arms,” a songwriter of rare literary grace whose fingerpicked lines are instantly recognizable from the first note. And yet Mark Knopfler has spent his entire career avoiding the spotlight — a reluctant star who would rather…
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How Dire Straits Made “Love Over Gold”: The 14-Minute Epic That Defied the Eighties
In 1982, the music industry had a simple formula: short songs, big videos, synthesizers, hair. Dire Straits responded with an album of five songs, one of them over fourteen minutes long, full of fingerpicked guitar, marimbas, and literary references. “Love Over Gold” should have been commercial suicide. Instead it became the band’s first British number…
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The Untold Story of Dire Straits: The Reluctant Superstars Who Walked Away
Dire Straits never wanted to be the biggest band in the world. That was rather the point of the name: when Mark Knopfler, his younger brother David, bassist John Illsley, and drummer Pick Withers started playing together in 1977, they were, quite literally, in dire straits — sharing a Deptford flat and struggling to pay…