Mark Knopfler, 40 years after Dire Straits’ groundbreaking album: ‘I’m not good enough to improvise like a jazz musician’

Mark Knopfler wrote the lyrics for Money for Nothing half-hidden behind a stack of microwave ovens, sitting next to the window of an appliance store. He wanted to capture the bizarre scene he was witnessing: a delivery boy, taking a break — and perhaps annoyed by his mundane life in contrast to the glamour emanating from television — was ranting while watching an MTV music video broadcast on a wall of screens. Knopfler was inspired by the situation; he asked for a piece of paper and a pen and, discreetly (he was already a very popular musician in the mid-1980s and didn’t want the guy to notice and cut his rant short), he went to that corner to write the lyrics for a new song.

“If I’d been a playwright, I would have written it in much worse language,” he says, laughing, during a video call with EL PAÍS from London. “The guy was saying things about the guitarist in the video like, ‘He’ll get a blister on his little finger,’ and it was funny. A lot of the lines I included in the lyrics were just like that. It was one of those times when you were in the right place and you knew what it was capable of.”

Knopfler himself links that quick, instinctive creativity to the one he showed when composing his first big hit, Sultans of Swing (1978). “It was a rainy night. I was in a pub in Greenwich [London] where a group called Sultans of Swing was playing. When one of the musicians mentioned the name, I laughed, because they weren’t exactly sultans of swing: they looked like geography teachers in sweaters and baggy trousers. They were playing Dixieland jazz [a style of jazz from New Orleans in the early 20th century]. I asked them to play The Creole Love Call [Duke Ellington, 1927] and they were surprised that anyone knew the song. For me, Sultans of Swing is a similar song to Money for Nothing: both are situational. That’s part of the fun of being a songwriter.”

Money for Nothing ended up being one of the essential tracks on Brothers in Arms, Dire Straits’ fifth studio album that went on sale 40 years ago, in May 1985, and has just been re-released. Much can be said about this album — its massive commercial success (over 30 million copies sold, making it one of the best-selling records in history), its groundbreaking sound quality, its role in popularizing the then-new CD format, the three or four timeless tracks it includes, and its unexpected partnership with MTV, which completed the circle and continues to generate solid royalties for its creator.

A set of milestones that Knopfler says he didn’t expect. “I had no idea, I couldn’t even imagine it,” he admits. “I thought it would be just another album. But several factors intervened that helped make it what it was.”

Among these, he highlights the collaboration with the multinational audio company Philips: “They invented the CD, and they promoted Brothers in Arms to demonstrate what could be done in that format.”

A handful of hit songs: “In the United States, there were two or three hit singles, and that generated a huge desire to see the band live, which is always a better experience than listening to the albums,” and the solid confidence with which the group approached the studio: “We didn’t have to record many takes of the songs. The recording time was very short.”

Continuing with the details that made Brothers in Arms a memorable album, there’s Money for Nothing itself, which features Sting’s vocals. “While we were recording the song, I said to the guys in the studio, ‘It would be great if Sting could sing the melody of Don’t Stand So Close to Me [by The Police] but change the lyrics: ‘I want my MTV.’ The studio was on the island of Montserrat [the AIR studio, co-founded by George Martin, producer of The Beatles]. It turned out Sting was there on vacation, surfing on the beach... and he just showed up. We knew each other; we’d performed together. He showed up at the studio and sang on that song.”

The similarity in the melody didn’t go unnoticed by executives at Sting’s publishing company, who swiftly demanded that their client be credited as a co-lyricist — and receive a share of the song’s (substantial) royalties. Nor could Knopfler have imagined that a casual mention of the music network — drawn from the anecdote of an irate delivery man—would lead to a lucrative deal with MTV: the U.S. channel, which would launch in Europe in 1987, ended up using the melody as a programming jingle.

“They keep doing it,” says Knopfler, “until they change it again and pay someone else. That’s fine. Music is popular art; songs become part of people’s lives. I don’t mind when a petrochemical company or whoever wants to take Walk of Life [another track on the album] and turn it into something that celebrates life. It’s not the end of the world. People enjoy it.”

He continues: “A friend of mine plays in a pub band in London. He told me that when people finished work, they would go out to the pubs for a couple of drinks… and when Walk of Life came on, everyone would get up, push their tables out, and start dancing. That makes me very happy. The music does its job and reaches everyone. I feel very lucky that that’s happened.”

Other songs on Brothers in Arms also began as personal diaries. Like So Far Away, about long-distance love. “Yeah, I experienced those kinds of relationships,” he explains. However, the title track Brothers in Arms isn’t, as it might seem, a veiled response to Dire Straits co-founder David Knopfler’s departure during the recording of their third album, Making Movies (1980).

“No, no, no,” he clarifies. “It was about the Falklands War [1982]. My father told me it was ironic that the Argentine generals formed a fascist junta in Buenos Aires and were allies of the Russians. He said the line, ‘Brothers in arms,’ and I realized I had something to work with. In the studio, I played those first four notes, but later I tried to change them, just to have the freedom to do so. And those four notes didn’t want to change. When a song grows solidly, it’s hard to improve it.”

That old feud between the Knopfler brothers confirmed once again the difficulty of reconciling blood ties with professional aspirations in rock bands. “David is a songwriter,” says Mark. “He writes his own songs. But you have to want to make rock and roll. And I don’t think David wanted it as much as I did. We all have to want the same thing. That’s why John [Illsley, Dire Straits’ bassist] is still a great friend of mine: our goals and the energy we put into achieving them are exactly the same. I spoke to John yesterday; I do that often. I’m not trying to criticize anyone, because you can only be what you are. David is trying to be a singer-songwriter, and he’s succeeded.”

He gives another example: “Pick Withers [the band’s first drummer] wanted to be in a jazz group. He said, ‘If I can’t play in a band like Weather Report, I might as well give up.’ That’s what he wanted to do. These are unpleasant things you discover when you become a bandleader.”

That was precisely Knopfler’s role in Dire Straits: undisputed leader, singer, songwriter, and, most importantly, guitarist. He is unanimously considered one of the greatest guitarists in the annals of rock, possessing a unique style characterized by plucking the strings with his nails, rather than a pick, and the relatively clean sound he extracts from his instrument. The 1980s were a fertile decade for guitar heroes, though the era was dominated by a very different breed of virtuosos — heavy rock militants, explorers of extreme distortion and sweaty, pyrotechnic solos.

“I like a lot of those guys, a lot,” he admits. “Musicians enjoy each other’s music more than people think. It’s wonderful when Jeff Beck or Hank Marvin [of The Shadows] played, because they were so different. If we all played the same, it would be terrible. I think Peter Green [The Bluesbreakers, Fleetwood Mac] was just a magnificent musician. It’s not about playing too much, just playing the right thing. When you listen to Stevie Ray Vaughan, you’re hearing the right thing. And even if it gets complicated, you know there’s a care and attention that goes into great musicians, which is a wonderful thing. I’ve never tried to play like that, but I think it’s great. Blake Mills is fabulous, and I listen to him a lot. When you start at 15, you try to copy, but after a certain amount of time, your own style starts to emerge. That’s part of the beauty of it.”

Knopfler was impervious to the incendiary guitar playing of the 1980s. “For me, the most important thing in a solo is the melody. I value simplicity over complexity. I’m not good enough to improvise like a jazz musician.” But what’s his favorite guitar solo he’s recorded? “There’s something about Going Home, from Local Hero [the soundtrack to Bill Forsyth’s 1983 film], that seems to work. It’s a cheap guitar, it sounds very direct, I did everything wrong, but I think they’re perfect notes [laughs]. I think it turned out well because I didn’t take it to the extreme of getting into trouble. I just said what I had to say. I didn’t go too far. I tried to portray the place, the people, the rocks, and the water. For me, it was a portrait of a place, an idea, a local hero.”

Brothers in Arms was the first CD to sell over a million copies. It reached number one in the U.S. (nine weeks) and the U.K. (14), where it remains the eighth most-sold album of all time. It was a huge success. It took Dire Straits six years to release their next record, On Every Street (1991), and it would turn out to be their last. The group disbanded in 1993, and Knopfler, who had already begun recording as a solo artist, continued on that path, exploring other styles, such as country, and collaborating with legends of the genre such as Chet Atkins and Emmylou Harris.

Unlike other legendary bands that broke up, hardly anyone expects Dire Straits to reunite. The likely reason: even during the band’s heyday, audiences saw Knopfler as a solo artist backed by other musicians — musicians who could be swapped out without affecting the band’s sound or spirit. In other words: Dire Straits was Mark Knopfler. “Yeah, that’s probably the reason. Possibly. I don’t know,” he humbly mumbles.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition