Dire Straits “On Every Street”
Years ago, I got a call from the assistant to one of the powerful and colorful men in the music industry. At the time, this man was the C.E.O. of the company that had just bought my little start up. He’d gotten wind of the acquisition and had heard a few, presumably nice, things about me. He wanted to meet. I was given a date, a time and an address. Nothing else.
Anxiously, I took the subway uptown and walked over to a beautiful townhouse along Fifth Avenue and Central Park. I announced myself and was soon escorted into a kitchen that was abuzz with assistants, chefs, drivers and entourage. The very important man I had come to meet was on a call in the next room over. I could see him but he did not look in my direction. I sat, uneasy and confused, like I was trespassing, for thirty minutes. Finally, he walked towards me, still on his call, and hand signaled for me to follow. I walked with him out of the kitchen, out of the house and into a waiting black Land Rover. I rode shotgun while he continued on his call. We drove through Central Park to the East and parked (illegally) outside of a famous, old Jewish deli. We spoke exactly zero words on the ride over. I followed him, while he continued his call, to a back room where he gestured for me to sit down next to him. The waiters brought us cups of coffee (I don’t drink coffee) and a bagel with cream cheese. About five minutes later, or about an hour after I first arrived to meet this semi-legendary music man, he finished his call and leaned in towards me. Vexingly -- vaguely threateningly -- the first words he said to me were: “Be careful what you wish for.”
So many things about that moment -- but especially the noir-ish cloak and dagger and the foreboding oracle -- remind me of Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits. Part of it is Knopfler’s voice -- wry, observational and without affect. His singing is often compared to Bob Dylan’s but, to me, he sounds more like the narrator in a pulpy crime novel, with an unusually slow drawl (by way of England). Plus, so many of his songs, both with Dire Straits and solo, are cinematic in tone. The guitars can sound like fog at night and the rhythms like narrative propulsion. A former journalist and lecturer, Mark Knopfler knows how to write and unfurl a good mystery. There is a gumshoe quality to his songs and, frankly, to his whole career. You can hear him searching, patiently for the next line, the next sound, the next innovation. It was this quality that made his music a slow burn and his career that of a grower. Dire Straits was a band that kept chipping away at the mystery, getting closer with each successive album. One clue at a time, Knopfler’s investigation led him to stardom and to innovation. It led him to digital recording, the compact disc format and to MTV. And, with that, he learned the real horror of his investigation: that he loved to make music and demanded success, but that he despised fame. By then, it was too late. It was the mid-80s and Dire Straits were possibly the most successful Rock band on the planet. “Brothers in Arms” was the first and most ubiquitous album in every CD section of every music store in the world. It was a pioneering achievement of technology. It was an excellent album. It featured two, accidentally iconic music videos. And everyone could agree on it. With each of the thirty million copies that it would sell, a piece of Knopfler’s heart died. He solved the mystery and found that he was both detective and victim. Be careful what you wish for.
Dire Straits started as an anomaly of New Wave. They were Pub Rock in design but more Folk and Country in engineering. They had a singer who couldn’t properly sing but who sounded great, and happened to be an elite guitarist and gifted songwriter. The rest of the band included the singer’s brother and friends. But within a few years, it would become clear that Dire Straits was Mark Knopfler’s band. Over several albums and line-up changed, the band made critically and commercially beloved albums. They achieved great success, without the trappings of fame. Their songs remained subtle and literary in subject while they were deft and clean in performance. In spite of the many trends that beckoned, they just did their own thing. Knopfler sang a half beat behind the rhythm. The songs added some boogie. Their audiences grew. But they were decidedly not Rock Stars. You got the sense that Knopfler thought of himself as a writer first and a guitarist second. Then came “bandmate” and, somewhere very low on the list was “famous person.” All of this was well and good until 1985, when Dire Straits accidentally bumped into a technological innovation, MTV and Sting.
Quite literally, the rest almost was history. In 1988, at the very peak of their stardom, Mark Knopfler put Dire Straits on the shelf so he score films and make modest, Country-inspired not-rock-star fare with the Notting Hillbillies. In interviews from that period, he looks bored, frustrated and resentful. He is very clear in every story: he loves music but abhors the music business. He loves success but resents fame. The Sophie’s choice, however, was not so easily resolved. A few years after disbanding Dire Straits, they reunited. It’s unclear whether the reformation was born out of affection or loyalty or inertia or obligation or fan service. Whatever it was, Mark Knopfler felt that there was unfinished business.
Though the mystery likely persists to this day, the business of Dire Straits was officially finished on “On Every Street” in 1991. The band was trimmed to four members, of which only Knopfler and bassist John Illsley were in the first incarnation. As if there had ever been any question, this was Mark Knopfler’s band. In fact, this was, in many ways, a “Mark Knopfler and band” album. However, released as a Dire Straits album, the twelve songs on “On Every Street” had their work cut out for them. In some parts, they are in direct conversation with their iconic predecessor, “Brothers in Arms.” In other ways, these songs eschew comparison, settling into a very tight and modest, Country boogie, played only the way Mark Knopfler can play it. The singles sound obligatory, like they were created to appease the label and fill slots on radio and MTV. And, in between, there are increasingly literate, cinematic ballads and atmospheric jams. The sum of these parts sounds mostly like the work of Mark Knopfler, the solo artist, trying to leave his fame behind without leaving a mess. If it were Lou Reed, this would have been an album of him shitting into his guitar. If it were Van Morrison, it would sound like him reading Yates’ poems for an hour over a single saxophone note. Mark Knopfler seems both too professional and too exhausted to muster that sort of bile. That being said, there is a sense that “On Every Street” was purposely designed to underwhelm.
And yet, in spite of those efforts, the album went on to sell over ten million copies around the world and spawned two top five singles on the U.S. Rock charts. Most of that gargantuan success was a byproduct of “Money for Nothing” and “Walk of Life.” However, in spite of his almost masochistic desire to hide, “On Every Street” managed to reveal a great deal about Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits. From the opening pert, Sun Records’ groove of “Calling Elvis,” we hear quite clearly that Knopfler has been dreaming of Tennessee and wrestling with fanaticism. The song itself is both cynical in its view of fandom and very earnest in its desire to conjure The King. The last three minutes of the song combine a Johnny Cash-style chugga chugga with a celestial combination of slide guitar and hum. By the end of six and a half minutes you almost believe that the band and the character in the song have actually contacted Elvis.
In almost every way, “Calling Elvis” was an unlikely first single. It’s modest, sonically divergent from previous Dire Straits singles and more a groove than a tune. Knopfler mutters and whispers more than he sings the song. And yet, they were Dire Straits. Their label required singles for radio and MTV. And this was the second closest thing that Mark Knopfler offered them. The closest, of course, was “Heavy Fuel,” which significantly reconstituted the riff and the rock star from “Money for Nothing,” but featured Knopfler rapping the verses. Lacking the punch of “Money For Nothing’s” chorus and the puncture of Sting’s vocals, the second single feels more like a response to their 1985 smash hit than it does an earnest attempt at much more.
Surrounding the singles is a vibe that could be accurately described as cinematic. Between his slide guitar and the custom Pensa guitar, which perfectly combined the tones of his beloved Fenders and Gibsons, Knopfler is able to switch from a clean boogie to a tight, clean lead in an instant. The hum of synthesizer and the slide add an air of mystery and his slow but succinct phrasings root the songs somewhere between Nashville and Northern England. Most of the songs are economical in their verses and leave extensive room for guitar interludes and pensive outros. And, like the reticent singer himself, these Dire Straits songs are sonically mysterious. If “On Every Street” were released as a Mark Knopfler solo album, it could have been favorably compared to 90s albums from Richard Thompson or Daniel Lanois producing Randy Newman. Served as a Dire Straits album, it was unfavorably and unfairly contrasted with “Brothers in Arms.”
“On Every Street” is an exceedingly character and story driven album. “Iron Hand” is a beautiful and powerful song about the police attack on striking English miners in the 1980s. Rendered mostly with acoustic guitar, it is stark and simple in a very similar way to REM’s “Drive.” “When it Comes to You” is similarly modest in its familiar Country boogie. It features a terse riff that necessarily bites at the un-love song about a guy who is unable to find his way out from a doomed, circular relationship.
When the album gets small and empathetic, it succeeds. And nowhere does it get smaller or more empathetic than it does on the title track. Beginning as simply a understated, wistful piano ballad and evolving into a sentimental guitar outro, the song is built like an inverse “Layla.” He again evokes his friend and collaborator, Randy Newman, in the simplicity of the piano’s melody, but, unlike Newman, who famously hides away under distant characters, the person in this song seems decidedly first person. Knopfler’s character is a detective and a man in love. He’s been looking for the woman who’s gone missing. He’s looking for clues -- yesterday, today and all the days. He’s looking every day and on every street. While it may not be among the best Dire Straits songs, it could easily be their most beautiful.
The album falters when it tries to be cute and when it meanders out of the Southern film noir and into a Romantic Comedy. Knopfler’s guitars can be so beautiful that they can verge on sentimentality if he is not careful. The occasional addition of the David Sanborn-esque saxophone does not help matters. Similarly, when the character or idea becomes a punchline, as they do on “Heavy Fuel” (Rock Stars), “Ticket to Heaven” (televangelists) and “My Parties” (suburban nouveau riche), Knopfler can sound misanthropic.
When he is right, however, as he frequently is on “On Every Street,” Knopfler sounds like almost nobody else. He can elicit Jimmy Page but soaped up and dialed down. He can elicit Bob Dylan but with more humor and less absurdity. And, in middle age, he discovered a musical compound that was part Country music and part something cinematic that had not been heard before. He quite literally names it on “Fade to Black,” a slow, Country Blues number that could roll at the credits of a great Noir film that doesn’t end well. It is not the final track to “On Every Street,” but it would have made a fitting one. When the record does end, with the modest but smart groove of “How Long,” we get the feeling that we were invited in for an ungratifying farewell. Be careful what you wish for.
In 2018, Dire Straits were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Mark Knopfler famously demurred the invitation, leaving his fans and bandmates sufficiently confused. Left without a star presenter or a great explanation, bassist John Illsley, the lone original Strait, simply announced: “I’ll assure you it’s a personal thing. Let’s just leave it at that.” In many ways, Dire Straits was always a bit puzzling. The guitars were slippery. The lyrics were muttered. They were not Arena Rock. They were not Folk Rock. And they were not New Wave. Dire Straits was a case that Mark Knopfler set out to solve as a young man. But, with each new discovery, he seemed to have also lost something deeper and more personal. Eventually, he had no band. He ignored his fame. And he made lyrical scores for films and mature, expertly played, but decidedly less rocking, solo albums. By most accounts, he does exactly what he pleases. He has been married for several decades. He collects and races classic cars. He roots for Newcastle United. And he never has to make music videos or hit singles. Maybe he cracked the case, after all.