The story of Dire Straits

Newcastle, Leeds and a flat in Deptford

Mark Knopfler was born in Glasgow on the twelfth of August 1949. His father Erwin was a Hungarian Jewish architect and chess player who had fled his homeland in 1939 to escape the Nazis, and his mother Louisa was an English teacher. When Mark was about seven the family moved to Newcastle upon Tyne, near his mother's home town of Blyth, and he and his younger brother David went to Gosforth Grammar School. Mark caught the music bug from an uncle who played harmonica and boogie woogie piano. He begged his father for a red Fender Stratocaster like the one Hank Marvin of the Shadows played, but it was far too expensive. He settled for a Hofner Super Solid that cost fifty pounds.[1] [2] [3]

At thirteen Mark took a Saturday job at the Newcastle Evening Chronicle, where one of the copy editors was the poet Basil Bunting. Journalism stuck. After a year studying it at Harlow College, he became a junior reporter on the Yorkshire Evening Post in Leeds in 1968. One of his first jobs was writing Jimi Hendrix's obituary in September 1970, because he was the only person in the office young enough to know who Hendrix was. Another assignment was interviewing a local blues guitarist called Steve Phillips. The two became friends and played folk and blues clubs as a duo, the Duolian String Pickers. Mark then went back to study, and graduated in English from the University of Leeds in 1973.[1] [2]

Straight after graduating, Mark moved to London and answered an advert to join a pub rock band called Brewers Droop. It did not last, and his first marriage, to his school sweetheart Kathy White, also came apart around the move. He took a job lecturing at Loughton College in Essex for three years and kept playing pubs with a band called the Cafe Racers. It was in this period, at a friend's house, that the only guitar to hand was an old acoustic with a badly warped neck. The only way he could get a tune out of it was to pick it with his fingers. Knopfler later said that was where he found his voice on the guitar.[1] [2]

Meanwhile David Knopfler, who had studied economics at Bristol Polytechnic, moved to London to work as a social worker in Deptford, south east London. He shared a council flat with John Illsley, a bass player from Leicester who was studying sociology at Goldsmiths College. Illsley later remembered coming home early one morning to find Mark asleep on the lounge floor with a guitar across his legs and an ashtray beside him. In April 1977 Mark moved in with them. The three began jamming after the pubs closed, and Mark invited Illsley to join the Cafe Racers. David was keen to start a proper band, and he had his big brother in mind as the frontman.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The missing piece was a drummer. Pick Withers, also from Leicester, was already a ten year veteran of the music business. He had been the house drummer at Rockfield Studios in Wales and had played on records by Dave Edmunds and Gerry Rafferty, and he had briefly played with Mark in Brewers Droop. The four rehearsed in the cramped Deptford flat, padding the walls and hoping the neighbours would be forgiving. The band soon took the name Dire Straits. That summer they played their first gig on a patch of grass behind the council block, running a power cable out from the flat to a makeshift stage. Squeeze topped the bill.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Sultans of Swing

Mark Knopfler wrote Sultans of Swing in 1977. The story came from a night he ducked into an almost empty pub in Deptford and watched a tired jazz band playing Dixieland to nobody in particular. At the end of the set the singer announced, with a straight face, that they were the Sultans of Swing. Knopfler loved the gap between the grand name and the dowdy reality. He first wrote the song on a National steel guitar, and he thought it was dull. Then he bought his first Fender Stratocaster, a 1961 model, and the new chord changes fell into place. John Illsley remembered Mark telling him he had completely redone the song, and this time it sounded pretty good.[1] [2]

On the twenty seventh of July 1977 the band recorded a five song demo at the small Pathway Studios in north London. It was paid for with five hundred pounds that John Illsley had inherited from his grandmother. Alongside Sultans of Swing were Wild West End, Down to the Waterline, Water of Love and a David Knopfler song called Sacred Loving. They wanted advice, so they took the tape to Charlie Gillett, who presented a show called Honky Tonk on BBC Radio London. Gillett loved it and put Sultans of Swing on the air. Illsley recalled him announcing that he would keep playing it until somebody signed the band. By the time the song finished, record company scouts were already phoning the studio.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

About two months later Dire Straits signed to Vertigo, part of Phonogram, through the A and R man John Stainze. Stainze invited a booking agent friend, Ed Bicknell, to see them at the Dingwalls club in Camden. Bicknell saw Knopfler's red Stratocaster and asked who managed the group. Then, walking into the dressing room, he caught the guitar with the hem of his long coat and knocked it to the floor. The band forgave him. Bicknell booked them as the opening act on a British tour with Talking Heads, and by January 1978 he was their manager. He stayed with them for the rest of their career.[1] [2] [3]

The debut album, simply called Dire Straits, was recorded at Basing Street Studios in Notting Hill in February and March 1978 with producer Muff Winwood, the older brother of Stevie Winwood. It cost twelve and a half thousand pounds. Songs like Down to the Waterline looked back at Newcastle, while In the Gallery was a tribute to Harry Phillips, a Leeds sculptor and the father of Mark's old duo partner Steve. The album came out in Britain in June 1978, and at first almost nothing happened. It took off in the Netherlands, then across Europe, and when the single was pushed again in early 1979 it finally spread to America and back home.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In early 1979 Sultans of Swing climbed to number four on the Billboard Hot 100 and number eight in Britain, and the album reached number two in America. The band crossed North America playing fifty one sold out concerts in thirty eight days. Bob Dylan came to one of their shows in Los Angeles and afterwards asked Mark Knopfler and Pick Withers to play on his next album, Slow Train Coming. Knopfler, who had seen Dylan play Newcastle City Hall in 1966, remembered driving to the session in an open top car, getting sunburnt, and thinking this was it. In 1980 Dire Straits were nominated for the Grammy for Best New Artist.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Communique, Making Movies and a brother's exit

The record company wanted a follow up fast. Straight after their first tour ended in November 1978, the band flew to Compass Point Studios in Nassau in the Bahamas to record with the veteran producers Jerry Wexler and Barry Beckett. Wexler had famously recorded Ray Charles. The result, Communique, came out on the fifth of June 1979, just eight months after the debut reached America. It entered the German chart at number one while the first album was still sitting at number three. Critics were cooler, and some felt it was a copy of the debut, but Lady Writer and the opening track Once Upon a Time in the West became fan favourites.[1] [2] [3]

The pace was relentless, with a hundred and sixteen concerts across Europe and North America in 1979 alone, and the strain showed most between the two brothers. David Knopfler later said everyone was exhausted, drinking too much and wrecking their health the way bands did then. He also said he had been trying to build a democracy while Mark was building an autocracy. Ed Bicknell saw it more bluntly. In his view the arguments were never really about music. He remembered John Illsley telling him the problem had been going on since the day David was born. Mark wrote nearly every song, sang them and played lead, and by 1980 he was clearly in charge.[1] [2] [3]

For the third album Mark hired Jimmy Iovine, after hearing his work on Patti Smith's Because the Night. Recording began at the Power Station in New York in June 1980, with Bruce Springsteen's pianist Roy Bittan added on keyboards. The atmosphere was tense. In August, after heated arguments and almost immediately after the band had filmed interviews for a BBC Arena documentary, David Knopfler walked out. Mark re recorded his brother's guitar parts, and a session player, Sid McGinnis, filled in on rhythm guitar without a credit. David went home to start a solo career. The brothers became estranged, though Mark and John Illsley did play on David's first solo album in 1983.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Making Movies came out on the seventeenth of October 1980, and critics called it a leap forward. The songs were longer, the arrangements bigger, and the writing more personal. Romeo and Juliet, a song about a love affair that ended when the girl found fame, reached number eight in Britain. It was written after Mark's break up with the American singer Holly Vincent. Ed Bicknell said that when Mark first played it to him he could only stare at the floor in disbelief. Tunnel of Love opened with the Carousel Waltz by Rodgers and Hammerstein and was set at the Spanish City funfair in Whitley Bay. It later turned up in the Richard Gere film An Officer and a Gentleman.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

To take the new songs on the road, Dire Straits grew into a five piece. Alan Clark, a keyboard player from the north east of England who had started out playing Hammond organ in working men's clubs, joined on keys. The Californian guitarist Hal Lindes took David's place. Clark's arrival changed the band's sound for good, opening the door to long, cinematic arrangements. The On Location tour ran from October 1980 to July 1981 across Europe, North America and Oceania. Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan were among the famous faces at a show at the Roxy in Los Angeles. Rolling Stone later placed Making Movies at number fifty two among the best albums of the eighties.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Love Over Gold and Local Hero

Dire Straits recorded their fourth album at the Power Station between March and June 1982, with Mark Knopfler producing on his own for the first time and Neil Dorfsman as engineer. Love Over Gold had just five tracks. The opener, Telegraph Road, ran past fourteen minutes. Knopfler got the idea on the tour bus, riding for miles along Telegraph Road in Detroit while reading Knut Hamsun's novel The Growth of the Soil, and wondering what that endless road had looked like when it began. The title came from graffiti he had seen from the window of his old council flat, a phrase lifted from a Captain Beefheart album sleeve.[1] [2]

Released on the twenty fourth of September 1982, Love Over Gold went to number one in Britain for four weeks. Private Investigations, a moody, almost seven minute piece of musical film noir, reached number two, the band's first British top five single. Knopfler had insisted it come out unedited. In America the short, satirical Industrial Disease, about strikes and the decline of British industry, did the work on rock radio. One song was left off. Knopfler had recorded the backing for Private Dancer, then decided it needed a woman's voice. He gave it to Tina Turner, and members of Dire Straits played on her version, which became the title track of her comeback album.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Soon after the sessions, in the summer of 1982, Pick Withers left. Years later he said the band was getting too loud, he was tired of the treadmill and he wanted to try new things. His replacement was the Welsh drummer Terry Williams, from Swansea, who had played with Dave Edmunds in Rockpile and with the rock band Man. In January 1983 the band released a four song EP, ExtendedancEPlay, and its lead track Twisting by the Pool became a top twenty hit in Britain and a number one in New Zealand. That year Dire Straits also won Best British Group at the Brit Awards.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Knopfler had told his manager he wanted to write for films. Early in 1982 Ed Bicknell wrote to several directors, and the producer David Puttnam replied. The film was Bill Forsyth's Local Hero, about an American oil man sent to buy up a Scottish fishing village. Knopfler said he deliberately avoided bagpipes and tartan cliches. The soundtrack came out in April 1983 and earned a BAFTA nomination. Its closing instrumental, Going Home, became one of his best loved pieces, and Newcastle United still play it as the team runs out before every home game. More scores followed, for Cal and Comfort and Joy, and in 1983 he produced Bob Dylan's album Infidels.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The Love Over Gold tour ran for eight months and ended with two sold out nights at London's Hammersmith Odeon on the twenty second and twenty third of July 1983. The band had grown again, with King Crimson saxophonist Mel Collins and a second keyboard player helping Alan Clark cover his increasingly detailed parts. Those final shows became the double live album Alchemy, released in March 1984 and reportedly issued without studio overdubs. It reached the top three in Britain. Its cover used part of a painting by the Australian artist Brett Whiteley. Knopfler said at the time he wanted to try something different next, perhaps acoustic guitar or all brass. What came next was far bigger than anyone expected.[1] [2] [3]

Montserrat and Brothers in Arms

In November 1984 Knopfler took the band to AIR Studios, George Martin's studio on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, to record their fifth album with Neil Dorfsman as co producer. The line up now included a second keyboard player, Guy Fletcher, who had worked with Roxy Music and on Knopfler's film scores. The island was beautiful, but the recording room was tiny and offered almost no separation between instruments. Dorfsman had to build little rooms out of baffles and blankets. What saved it, he said, was the studio's superb old Neve mixing desk. The album was among the first recorded on a Sony twenty four track digital machine, because Knopfler was obsessed with sound quality.[1] [2] [3]

The sessions were troubled. Hal Lindes left early on. John Illsley said Lindes was spending too much time with his girlfriend and not enough with the band, while Lindes himself pointed to his growing interest in film scoring. Knopfler played most of the guitar himself. Then a faulty batch of digital tape destroyed recordings, and parts of the album had to be redone. Six weeks in, the drums became the big problem. Dorfsman felt Terry Williams's parts were not working, and Knopfler eventually agreed. The jazz drummer Omar Hakim was flown in from New York and re recorded almost every drum part in about two and a half days. Dorfsman said it quite literally saved the project.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Williams was not fired. He kept his place in the band, appeared in all the videos and played the whole world tour, and his wild tom tom build up still opens Money for Nothing. Knopfler also brought in a new rhythm guitarist, Jack Sonni, an American friend he had met years earlier in a New York guitar shop. After Christmas the band returned to Montserrat, and then moved to the Power Station in New York for overdubs, adding the Brecker Brothers on horns. When Illsley sprained his wrist after a fall while jogging in Central Park, session bassists Tony Levin and Neil Jason stepped in on a few tracks. Sonni's only recorded part was guitar synthesiser on The Man's Too Strong.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Money for Nothing began in an appliance shop in New York. Knopfler overheard a deliveryman in a baseball cap watching a wall of televisions tuned to MTV and mocking the rock stars on screen. He borrowed paper and wrote the lines down on the spot. He built it on a fuzzy, ZZ Top style riff, and its famous guitar sound was an accident. Microphones left half set up from the night before happened to catch the tone, and Knopfler's guitar tech shouted not to touch anything. They could never recreate it in New York. Sting, holidaying on the island, dropped by, sang the falsetto I want my MTV line to the tune of the Police's Don't Stand So Close to Me, and was done in about an hour.[1] [2] [3]

Brothers in Arms came out in May 1985. British reviews were mostly harsh, and the NME savaged it. It did not matter. The album went to number one in Britain and spent fourteen weeks there in total, topped the Billboard chart for nine weeks, and held number one in Australia for thirty four weeks. It has sold more than thirty million copies. It was also the first album to sell a million copies on compact disc, and record shops used it to demonstrate the new format. The anti war title song was written in 1982, during the Falklands conflict. Walk of Life, meanwhile, very nearly stayed a B side until Ed Bicknell heard it and insisted it go on the album.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The biggest band in the world

The Brothers in Arms tour opened on the twenty fifth of April 1985 in Split, then in Yugoslavia, and went on to Israel, with a show at Sultan's Pool in Jerusalem. With Jack Sonni on rhythm guitar, Terry Williams back on drums and Chris White on saxophone, Dire Straits played close to two hundred and fifty shows in more than a hundred cities, and well over two and a half million people bought tickets. Ed Bicknell sent the band a weekly report of chart positions and sales figures, slipped under each hotel room door. He was sure Mark Knopfler threw his straight in the bin. The tour ended in Sydney in April 1986 after a record twenty one nights at the Sydney Entertainment Centre.[1] [2] [3] [4]

On the thirteenth of July 1985 Dire Straits were in the middle of a thirteen night run at Wembley Arena in London. That afternoon they walked down the road to Wembley Stadium and played Live Aid, slotted between U2 and Queen in front of a global television audience reported at close to two billion people. They opened with Money for Nothing, with Sting joining them on stage, and followed it with Sultans of Swing. John Illsley later called it a unique privilege and a fabulous memory. In Australia and New Zealand the tour sold around nine hundred thousand tickets, the biggest tour in Australasian history until Ed Sheeran overtook it more than thirty years later.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Money for Nothing reached number one in America for three weeks. Its video was one of the first to use computer animated human characters, and Knopfler hated the idea at first. He thought videos cheapened songwriting. The director Steve Barron flew to Budapest to talk him round, and it was Knopfler's girlfriend who spoke up for the concept. The clip won Video of the Year at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards, and the song won a Grammy in February 1986. The lyrics also caused trouble. The character in the song uses a homophobic slur, and some listeners objected. Knopfler said he was voicing an ignorant man, not himself, and at one Wembley show he changed the word.[1] [2]

The success came at a price. Knopfler later said the band got so big that it stopped being real or manageable, and that as a songwriter he had gone from observing the world to being observed by it. After the tour he stepped away. He wrote the score for The Princess Bride, released in 1987, and that year his twin sons were born. Dire Straits came back together on the eleventh of June 1988 to headline the Nelson Mandela seventieth birthday tribute at Wembley Stadium. Jack Sonni could not come because his twin daughters had just been born, so Eric Clapton filled in on rhythm guitar and sang Wonderful Tonight with the band.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In September 1988 Mark Knopfler announced that Dire Straits were finished. He told Rolling Stone that the press kept calling them the biggest band in the world, that the attention was on popularity rather than music, and that he needed a rest. A greatest hits album, Money for Nothing, went to number one in Britain in October 1988. The band played one more charity show on the ninth of October 1989 at the Mayfair Ballroom in Newcastle, for Joanne Gillespie, an eleven year old who had written a book about her fight against cancer. It raised more than thirty five thousand pounds. It was also Terry Williams's last concert with the band.[1] [2] [3]

On Every Street and the end of the road

Away from the machine, Knopfler went back to his roots. He formed the Notting Hillbillies, a country and folk band with Guy Fletcher, the singer and guitarist Brendan Croker and his old Leeds friend Steve Phillips, with manager Ed Bicknell on drums. Their only album came out in March 1990, and they appeared as the musical guests on Saturday Night Live. That same year he made Neck and Neck with his hero Chet Atkins. Then, in 1990, Knopfler, Illsley and Alan Clark played as Dire Straits alongside Eric Clapton at the Knebworth festival. Early in 1991 Knopfler, Illsley and Bicknell decided to bring the band back.[1] [2] [3]

The core was now Knopfler, Illsley, Clark and Fletcher, with session players including the pedal steel guitarist Paul Franklin, saxophonist Chris White and guitarist Phil Palmer. Drums were split between Jeff Porcaro of Toto and Manu Katche. On Every Street came out on the ninth of September 1991, six years after Brothers in Arms. It went straight to number one in Britain and across much of Europe, and reached number twelve in America, but reviews were mixed and the audience was noticeably smaller. The lead single Calling Elvis had a video based on the puppet series Thunderbirds. Iron Hand looked back at the violent clash between police and striking miners at Orgreave in 1984.[1] [2] [3]

The On Every Street world tour began in August 1991 and ran until October 1992. It sold about seven point one million tickets across well over two hundred shows, which makes it one of the most attended tours ever staged, but almost nobody involved enjoyed it. Ed Bicknell called it utter misery and said whatever moment the band had been part of had passed. John Illsley said personal relationships were in trouble and that the strain changed everyone, emotionally and physically. The writer Bill Flanagan noted that by the end both Knopfler's marriage and his band were gone. His second marriage, to Lourdes Salomone, ended in 1993.[1] [2] [3] [4]

At ten past ten on the night of the ninth of October 1992, Mark Knopfler said goodnight to forty thousand people in Zaragoza, Spain, and walked off stage. It was Dire Straits' last concert. Alan Clark later recalled saying that night that it would be the last gig they ever played. A live album from the tour, On the Night, recorded in Nimes and Rotterdam, came out in May 1993. The final release, Live at the BBC, arrived in June 1995, mostly from a 1978 radio session, and was issued because the band still owed the label one more album. Then, quietly, in 1995, Knopfler put the band to rest.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Knopfler explained later that he ended it to get back to some kind of reality, calling it self protection and a survival thing, and saying that kind of scale was dehumanising. He spent about two years recovering. Illsley remembered them all as mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted, with marriages falling apart and children barely seen. Still, he said they had both enjoyed the success. He recalled Knopfler's line that success is great, but fame is what comes out of a car's exhaust pipe. Illsley also said Dire Straits was never formally broken up. As he put it, they simply called it a day as far as making records and touring was concerned.[1] [2] [3] [4]

After Dire Straits

Knopfler's first solo album, Golden Heart, came out in March 1996, and Guy Fletcher has played on almost everything he has made since. On Valentine's Day 1997 he married the actress and novelist Kitty Aldridge in Barbados. He scored Wag the Dog, and his 2000 album Sailing to Philadelphia became his most successful solo record. In March 2003 he was riding a Honda motorbike in Belgravia, London, when he collided with a car. He broke his collarbone, a shoulder blade and several ribs, and a tour was cancelled. He was back on the road in 2004. In 2006 he made the duets album All the Roadrunning with Emmylou Harris.[1] [2]

The question of a reunion never went away. In 2008 John Illsley told the BBC he thought the band had one more tour and probably another record left in them, but Knopfler was not interested. Knopfler had said the band just got too big, and that if anyone could tell him one good thing about fame he would like to hear it. In December 2009 there was a rare, happy gathering. Mark, David and John went back to the Deptford flats where it all began to unveil a heritage plaque from PRS for Music. Mark remembered that John was the only one with a car, so he drove the gear while the rest of them caught the bus.[1] [2] [3]

In April 2018 Dire Straits were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Mark Knopfler did not go. John Illsley, Alan Clark and Guy Fletcher accepted the honour, and Illsley told the audience it was a personal thing and to leave it at that. Earlier he had said Mark simply did not feel like coming, despite several appeals. The band became the first act ever inducted without anyone introducing them, and they did not play. Meanwhile former members including Alan Clark, Jack Sonni and Mel Collins toured as Dire Straits Legacy, and Illsley published his memoir, My Life in Dire Straits, in 2021.[1] [2] [3] [4]

On the thirtieth of August 2023 Jack Sonni died at the age of sixty eight. After leaving music when his twin daughters were born in 1988, he had become a marketing executive, and had recently been playing again with Dire Straits Legacy. Knopfler wrote that Jack took to life on the road like a fish to water and made friends wherever he went. Less than two weeks later, Notting Hillbillies singer Brendan Croker died of complications from leukaemia at seventy. That November, John Illsley said the band had turned down huge sums of money to reunite, and admitted he had been pretty happy when it ended, because they were all exhausted.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

In January 2024 more than a hundred and twenty of Knopfler's guitars and amplifiers sold at Christie's in London for over eight point eight million pounds, with a quarter going to charity. In March he released a new version of Going Home recorded by more than sixty guest musicians, including Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, for the Teenage Cancer Trust. It was produced by Guy Fletcher. His album One Deep River followed in April, and around its release he said he did not expect to play with Dire Straits again. In 2025 Brothers in Arms turned forty, with a reissue that added a full 1985 concert from San Antonio. As of 2026 there is still no reunion.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The people around Dire Straits

Mark Knopfler and David Knopfler. The brothers grew up sharing a bedroom in Newcastle, and David helped start the band with Mark as frontman. Their rivalry ended with David walking out in 1980. Mark played on David's first solo album, but they became estranged. A 2015 interview reported they were still not speaking, and David said there were cousins in the family who did not know each other. They did stand together at the Deptford plaque unveiling in 2009.[1] [2] [3]

Mark Knopfler and John Illsley. Illsley and Knopfler were the only two members who lasted the whole run. Illsley said they rarely disagreed about how things should be. After the split Illsley kept hoping for one more tour and told the BBC it was up to Mark. Knopfler kept saying no, and skipped the Hall of Fame night, yet Illsley still calls him a close friend and speaks warmly of him.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Dire Straits and Ed Bicknell. A booking agent who fell in love with Knopfler's red Stratocaster, Bicknell managed Dire Straits from January 1978 to the end and stayed with Knopfler solo until 2000, parting on friendly terms. He rescued Walk of Life from B side status, suggested the bossa nova feel of Your Latest Trick, and even played drums in the Notting Hillbillies.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Dire Straits and Charlie Gillett. Gillett was a music historian and BBC Radio London presenter whose show Honky Tonk played Sultans of Swing from a demo tape. Record scouts were calling before the song ended, and the band always credited him with starting their career. Later Knopfler introduced his girlfriend Holly Vincent to Gillett, who signed her band. He died in March 2010, aged sixty eight.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Mark Knopfler and Holly Vincent. The American singer Holly Vincent met Knopfler in London in the seventies and moved in with him in 1979, when she brought her band Holly and the Italians to Britain. The romance ended bitterly. He resented his name being used to promote her career, and she broke up with him by phone while he was on tour. Romeo and Juliet is about their failed affair.[1] [2]

Dire Straits and Sting. The two bands had played gigs together in Germany. While holidaying on Montserrat, Sting dropped by the studio, heard Money for Nothing and sang the I want my MTV line. Knopfler remembered him arriving and asking what was wrong, because nobody was fighting. Sting then joined them on stage at Live Aid in 1985, and the jazz drummer who saved the album, Omar Hakim, went on to play in Sting's band.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Mark Knopfler and Bob Dylan. Dylan saw Dire Straits in Los Angeles in 1979 and recruited Knopfler and Pick Withers for Slow Train Coming. In 1983 Knopfler produced Dylan's Infidels, though he disowned the reworked version that was released. The two later toured Europe together in 2011 and America in 2012, and Knopfler's songwriting has often been compared with Dylan's.[1] [2] [3]

Mark Knopfler and Guy Fletcher. Fletcher first worked with Knopfler on the Cal and Comfort and Joy scores, joined Dire Straits in 1984 and stayed to the end. He then became the one constant of Knopfler's solo career, co producing albums up to One Deep River in 2024 and producing the Going Home charity single. Their partnership has outlasted every Dire Straits line up.[1] [2] [3]

Mark Knopfler and Eric Clapton. Clapton stepped in for Jack Sonni at the 1988 Mandela concert, by which time he and Knopfler had become close friends. Knopfler briefly played in Clapton's band, keyboard player Alan Clark spent three years with him, and in 1990 Dire Straits shared the stage with Clapton at Knebworth. Clapton also played on the 2024 Going Home charity single.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Neil Dorfsman and Terry Williams. Dorfsman engineered Love Over Gold and co produced Brothers in Arms. He pushed Williams hard from day one and later admitted his bedside manner was not the best. When Knopfler agreed the drums had to go, Williams was reportedly on his way to the airport just as Omar Hakim flew in. Williams stayed in the band and played the whole world tour.[1] [2] [3]

Mark Knopfler and Steve Phillips. Knopfler met the Leeds blues guitarist Steve Phillips while working as a reporter, and learned much of his early blues from Phillips's record collection. They played as the Duolian String Pickers, and In the Gallery honours Phillips's father, the sculptor Harry Phillips. Decades later Phillips joined him in the Notting Hillbillies.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Rare facts about Dire Straits

• As a young reporter in Leeds, Mark Knopfler wrote Jimi Hendrix's obituary for the Yorkshire Evening Post. In September 1970 the job fell to him because he was the only person in the office young enough to know who Hendrix was.[1]
• Knopfler is left handed but plays the guitar right handed. He also plays with his fingers rather than a pick, a style he credits partly to Chet Atkins and partly to a warped old acoustic that could only be fingerpicked.[1]
• At thirteen, Knopfler's Saturday job at a Newcastle paper put him beside the modernist poet Basil Bunting. Bunting worked as a copy editor at the Newcastle Evening Chronicle. In 2015 Knopfler wrote a song in tribute to him.[1]
• Dire Straits' first demo was paid for with five hundred pounds John Illsley inherited from his grandmother. The July 1977 session at Pathway Studios produced five songs, including Sultans of Swing, and the tape went on to change their lives.[1] [2]
• The band's first gig was on a patch of grass behind their Deptford council block. They ran a power cable out from their flat to a small stage, and Squeeze headlined the afternoon.[1]
• When Ed Bicknell first met the band, he knocked Knopfler's red Stratocaster to the floor with his coat. The hem of his long suede coat caught the guitar as he walked into the dressing room at Dingwalls. He became their manager anyway.[1]
• For a while, the band considered releasing the original demo of Sultans of Swing as the single. Illsley said they could not get the studio version to sound as good as the demo, until a re recording finally won everyone over.[1]
• The debut album cost just twelve and a half thousand pounds to make. Ed Bicknell said producer Muff Winwood essentially recorded a live album without the audience. It went on to sell millions.[1] [2]
• In the Gallery, on the debut album, honours the father of Knopfler's old duo partner. The song is a tribute to Harry Phillips, a Leeds sculptor and artist whose son Steve had played with Mark as the Duolian String Pickers.[1] [2]
• Communique entered the German album chart at number one while the band's debut was still at number three. The second album came out in June 1979, and Germany had taken to the band early, putting both records near the top at once.[1] [2]
• Tunnel of Love is set at the Spanish City, a seaside amusement centre in Whitley Bay. The song also name checks nearby Cullercoats, and its opening borrows the Carousel Waltz from Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical Carousel.[1]
• Roy Bittan's piano part on Romeo and Juliet borrows from his own playing on Springsteen's Jungleland. Bittan, from the E Street Band, guested on Making Movies after producer Jimmy Iovine brought him in.[1] [2]
• Twisting by the Pool was first tried during the Making Movies sessions, years before it became a hit. Four songs recorded in 1980 went unreleased at the time. A new version of Twisting by the Pool came out on a 1983 EP and reached the British top twenty.[1] [2]
• Private Dancer was written for Dire Straits before Tina Turner made it famous. Knopfler recorded the backing during the Love Over Gold sessions, then decided a woman should sing it, and several band members played on Turner's version.[1] [2]
• Telegraph Road was inspired by a real road in Detroit and a Norwegian novel. Knopfler was riding the tour bus along Telegraph Road while reading Knut Hamsun's The Growth of the Soil, and put the two together.[1]
• Newcastle United play Knopfler's Going Home as the team runs out before every home game. The instrumental closes the 1983 film Local Hero. It is also played at Aberdeen home games.[1]
• The guitar on the Brothers in Arms cover is Knopfler's 1937 National Style O resonator. The photograph was taken by Deborah Feingold, and the same guitar opens Romeo and Juliet.[1] [2]
• The Money for Nothing guitar sound came from microphones accidentally left out of position. Knopfler's guitar tech heard it and told everyone not to touch anything. Later attempts to recreate it in New York failed.[1] [2]
• Omar Hakim met Sting for the first time at the Money for Nothing session, and soon joined Sting's band. Hakim had been flown to Montserrat to replace the album's drum parts, which he did in around three days.[1]
• John Illsley sprained his wrist jogging in Central Park during the Brothers in Arms sessions. Session bassists Tony Levin and Neil Jason covered some of his parts in New York.[1]
• When Sting walked into the Brothers in Arms session, he asked what was wrong, because nobody was fighting. Knopfler told the story on Ultimate Classic Rock Nights, adding he was glad he had no say over the Money for Nothing video.[1]
• Ed Bicknell was the reason Your Latest Trick became a bossa nova. It began as a bebop style jazz number with no groove. Bicknell suggested a bossa nova feel with a beat taken out, and it worked.[1]
• The keyboard intro to Walk of Life was Knopfler's attempt to recreate the organ of the Animals. Bicknell said Knopfler had watched the Animals at Newcastle City Hall as a kid and wanted Alan Price's Farfisa sound.[1]
• One Walk of Life video was filmed in the Tyne pedestrian tunnel. It shows the busker Johnny playing fifties songs in the tunnel while the band plays in concert.[1]
• Money for Nothing was the first video shown on MTV Europe when it launched. The channel opened on the first of August 1987, and the computer animated clip had already won Video of the Year in America.[1]
• Dire Straits still hold the record for most consecutive nights at the Sydney Entertainment Centre. The Brothers in Arms tour ended there with twenty one nights in April 1986.[1]
• Brothers in Arms was so popular on CD that it overwhelmed world manufacturing capacity. A record label founder recalled struggling to get discs pressed in 1985 because factories were busy with that single rock title.[1]
• A charity walk from London to Khartoum in 1985 called itself The Walk of Life. Dire Straits gave the famine relief walkers their gold disc for Brothers in Arms.[1]
• Calling Elvis had a music video based on the puppet show Thunderbirds. The 1991 single flopped in Britain but went top ten across Europe and reached number one in Italy.[1]
• Vince Gill was invited to join Dire Straits full time and said no. He sang backing vocals on The Bug from On Every Street, then chose his own solo country career instead.[1]
• In 1999 Dire Straits reunited to play at John Illsley's wedding, with their manager on drums. Knopfler, Illsley, Alan Clark and Guy Fletcher played five songs, including Chuck Berry's Nadine, with Ed Bicknell behind the kit.[1]
• Former rhythm guitarist Jack Sonni named and designed the shape of the Line 6 POD amp modeller. After leaving music he became a marketing executive, and later vice president of marketing at Guitar Center.[1]
• A guitar signed by Knopfler, Clapton, Jimmy Page and Brian May was lost in the post in 2007. It was meant to raise up to twenty thousand pounds for a children's hospice. Parcelforce paid fifteen thousand pounds instead.[1] [2]
• Knopfler's 1959 Gibson Les Paul sold for six hundred and ninety three thousand pounds in 2024, a record for the model. It led a Christie's sale of more than a hundred and twenty of his guitars and amps that raised over eight point eight million pounds.[1]
• Dire Straits were the first act inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame without anyone introducing them. At the 2018 ceremony they also did not perform, and Mark Knopfler stayed away.[1] [2]
• Keyboard player Alan Clark once played in a line up of Geordie with future AC/DC singer Brian Johnson. Clark later composed the music for the long running paranormal television show Most Haunted.[1]
• Guy Fletcher is the cousin of children's television presenter Justin Fletcher. His father Ted designed audio equipment named after the producer Joe Meek, and his mother was a session singer.[1]
• David Knopfler stood unsuccessfully for his local council in Devon in 2023. He ran for Teignbridge District Council for the South Devon Alliance, and has released solo albums steadily since leaving the band.[1]
• Saxophonist Chris White missed a Pink Floyd tour because of a motorcycle accident. The 1993 crash came after he had spent both final Dire Straits world tours on saxophone, flute and backing vocals.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.