Mark Knopfler: A Life in Songs Page #2

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# I was taught and brought up there The laws to abide.

# And the land that I lived in has God on its side. #

Obviously, your childhood influences, they all help, but what they all did,

they all made a song person and not an instrumental type person.

They made me much more of a song person.

Not somebody who wanted to play in an orchestra.

# Southbound again

# Don't know if I'm going or leaving home. #

After finishing school at 18,

Knopfler left home and journeyed south to Essex to train as a journalist,

only to return north a year later

when he was offered a job in Leeds as a cub reporter on the Yorkshire Evening Post.

Musically, I was slowly starting to put together a couple of songs.

But the journalism was a really great thing for a kid to do,

because it toughened me up and it meant that you had to get yourself organised half way.

Not that I ever really did.

In fact, I don't know whether I was tough enough to be a newspaper man.

I didn't have the printer's ink running in my veins and I think it has to.

During the six years Knopfler spent in Leeds, he continued to play music in various line ups.

He also enrolled at Leeds University to continue his studies in English.

This would lead to Knopfler accepting a teaching job in Essex.

But the desire to get his songs recorded wouldn't go away.

The songs had been pushing and pushing.

But they pushed harder and harder.

And I suppose I was writing more of them.

So it was just adding to their weight to the door frame.

# Sweet surrender. #

Against the background of a now emerging punk rock scene,

Knopfler, aged 27, along with brother David on guitar,

John Illsley on bass and Pick Withers on drums,

formed the group that would become Dire Straits.

By the time I actually managed to get Dire Straits together, the little line-up we had,

the songs had been pushing so hard

that they actually pushed me out of a job

and at last I had what I could see was the way ahead just to get these songs recorded.

Radio London DJ Charlie Gillett was persuaded by the group to play their demo tape on his radio show.

This led to them being signed by Vertigo Records.

Finally Knopfler had found an outlet for his songs.

On 16th May 1978, Dire Straits made their TV debut playing the song that would become their calling card.

# 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 blowing Dixie double-four time.

# Feel all right when you hear the music ring... #

Sultans of Swing is like a kind of situation tune I suppose.

I was living in Deptford at the time.

And there was a little pub round the corner, a dingy little place.

# Coming in out of rain I hear the jazz go down... #

There was nobody in, except some lads playing pool in the corner

and a little Dixieland jazz band playing on a little stage at one end.

# Way on down south

# Way on down south, London Town... #

Because nobody was applauding or anything.

The guy announced, "We're the Sultans of Swing, good night."

And they couldn't have been less Sultans of Swing.

# We are the Sultans

# We are the Sultans of Swing. #

Having been a kid reporter, I think, really did help me organise material,

be able to make sense out of what I was looking at.

For some reason, something reverberates with a writer

and they note it, they mark it and it goes into the junk yard

and it may or may not find a home somewhere.

A lot of the things that you improvise in the studio

become part of the furniture of the thing.

Certainly with Sultans, the stuff at the end...

All that stuff. If you don't do that, it's not Sultans of Swing anymore

and people would feel that's not why I spent all that money on the ticket.

Sultans, I think, was a massive hit all over the world

and the first album was a massive hit all over the place

and it was a real avalanche of activity.

The idea never was to do it to make a million dollars.

It never was that in the first place.

What happens to a lot of successful acts is that the business starts to channel them along

and you're out there touring and you're getting used to playing

in bigger places and it's all experience, all that stuff.

But it comes at the expense of something.

After the worldwide success of the first album, the group's second album, Communique,

and its single, Lady Writer, was viewed by many as a disappointment.

# Lady writer on the TV

# Talking about the Virgin Mary

# Reminded me of you

# Expectation left to come up to, yeah. #

You're out there playing live, but all the time you're doing that, you're not writing.

And all the time you're doing that you're not even really practising, not that much anyway.

So it didn't take me long to realise that I wasn't having enough time

to develop properly as a player or as a writer or anything.

So, of course, the second album, like a lot of second albums, a lot of acts are compromised that way.

By the time of their third album, Making Movies, in 1980, Knopfler had returned to form.

Having moved from London to New York, this new environment would influence his song writing.

No more so than on the classic Romeo and Juliet.

I suppose I was thinking along more of a West Side Story kind of a life,

rather than a Wild West End kind of a line.

I was playing my national with this guitar and just maybe fiddling around with it in the key...

It's like, it's almost like a semi banjo-y kind of thing.

And I started from somewhere else.

Instead of starting there, I started there

and I was trying to find a way in to the lyrics for Romeo and Juliet.

I sort of saw the Romeo figure as a kind of figure of fun.

So there...

is the key and that's where the guitar's tuned to.

I always get people saying, how did you do that?

It's really just a kind of happy accident.

# So you're a love-struck Romeo

# Got a serenade

# Laying everybody low

# With a love song that he made

# Finds a street light

# Steps out of the shade and says

# You and me babe, how about it?

# Juliet says goodness me it's Romeo You nearly gave me a heart attack

# He's underneath the window

# She's singing Hey-la, my boyfriend's back.

# You shouldn't come around here Singing up at people like that

# Anyway, what you going to do about it?

# Juliet, the dice was loaded from the start

# And I bet, then you exploded in my heart

# And I forget, I forget The movie song

# When you going to realise it was just that the time was wrong?

# Juliet. #

I enjoy playing the song now.

Some of those songs, they just seem to want to go on

and as long as they've got a life, I'll enjoy playing them.

I've got to find something in it for myself when I do it

just to try and make sure that there's something real

in it happening for me all the time.

# And the dream was just the same

# You dreamed your dream for you And o now your dream's real

# How can you look at me as if I'm just another one of your deals?

# When you can fall for chains of silver

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