Brothers Mark and David Knopfler were born in Glasgow, Scotland, and grew up in Blyth in the northeast of England, and with Leicester-based John Illsley and Pick Withers they formed Dire Straits in Deptford, south east London, in 1977. Withers was already a 10-year music business veteran, having been a session drummer for Dave Edmunds, Gerry Rafferty, Magna Carta and others through the 1970's, and he'd played with Mark previously in the pub-rock band Brewers Droop around 1973. The new band was initially known as the Café Racers, and the name Dire Straits was coined by a musician flatmate of Withers, allegedly thought up while they were rehearsing in the kitchen of a friend, Simon Cowe, of Lindisfarne. In 1977 the group recorded a five-song demo tape which included their future hit single 'Sultans of Swing', as well as 'Water Of Love' and 'Down To The Waterline', and after being turned down by MCA Records they sent a tape to DJ Charlie Gillett, presenter of Honky Tonk on BBC Radio London, and following the DJ playing 'Sultans Of Swing' on his show the band signed a recording contract with the Vertigo Records division of Phonogram Inc. In October 1977 the band recorded another set of demos, including two songs which have yet to make an appearance on record. The group's first album, 'Dire Straits', was recorded at Basing Street studios in Notting Hill, and was produced by Muff Winwood, coming out on Vertigo in June 1978. That same year, Dire Straits began a tour as opening band for Talking Heads, and after the re-released 'Sultans Of Swing' (backed with the 1977 demo 'Eastbound Train') started to climb the UK charts, the band were picked up by Warner Bros. Records for a US record deal, and this increased exposure resulted in the album topping the charts in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and going top 10 in every European country.
Recording sessions for the group's second album, 'Communiqué', took place in December 1978 at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas, and it was released in June 1979, peaking at No. 5 in the UK album charts. Featuring the single 'Lady Writer', it continued in a similar vein to their debut and displayed the expanding scope of Knopfler's lyricism on the opening track, 'Once Upon A Time In The West'. In July 1980, the band started recording tracks for their third album, to be produced by Jimmy Iovine along with Mark Knopfler, and 'Making Movies' was released in October 1980. During the recording sessions, tensions between the Knopfler brothers reached a point where David Knopfler left the band for a solo career, and the remaining trio continued recording the album with session guitarist Sid McGinnis on rhythm guitar. After the recording sessions, keyboardist Alan Clark and Californian guitarist Hal Lindes joined Dire Straits as full-time members for the On Location tour of Europe, North America, and Oceania. 'Making Movies' received mostly positive reviews and featured longer songs with more complex arrangements, a style which would continue for the rest of the band's career, and although a title track was recorded it was omitted from the record. Dire Straits' fourth studio album, 'Love Over Gold', filled with lengthy passages that featured Alan Clark's piano and keyboard work, was well received when it was released in September 1982, going gold in America on the strength of the FM rock radio single 'Industrial Disease'. The title was inspired by graffiti seen from the window of Knopfler's old council flat in London, with the phrase being taken from the sleeve of an album by Captain Beefheart. Love Over Gold was the first Dire Straits album produced solely by Mark Knopfler, and its main UK chart hit, 'Private Investigations', gave Dire Straits their first top 5 hit single in the United Kingdom, where it reached the number 2 position, despite its almost seven-minute length. 'Love Over Gold' also featured the 14-minute 'Telegraph Road', which has since become a live favourite, and although Knopfler wrote 'Private Dancer' during this time, a Dire Straits recording of the song has never been discovered, eventually being given to Tina Turner for her comeback album of the same name.
Shortly after the recording sessions of 'Love Over Gold', drummer Pick Withers left the band, and his replacement, Terry Williams, formerly of Rockpile and Man, played on their January 1983 EP 'ExtendedancEPlay'. It featured the hit single 'Twisting By The Pool', plus three new tracks, and reached the Top 20 in the UK and Canada. During 1983 and 1984, Mark Knopfler was also involved with other projects outside of Dire Straits, and expressing his interest writing film music, producer David Puttnam responded, and he wrote and produced the music score to the film 'Local Hero'. The album was released in April 1983, receiving a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Original Film Music the following year, and Clark, Illsley, Lindes and Williams all played on the track 'Freeway Flyer', while Gerry Rafferty sang lead vocals on 'The Way It Always Starts'. At the end of 1984 the band began recording tracks at George Martin's AIR Studios in Montserrat for their upcoming fifth studio album, to be titled 'Brothers In Arms', and with the addition of Guy Fletcher as second keyboardist, he was able to add broader synthesizer tones to Clark's piano and organ. Released in May 1985, 'Brothers In Arms' entered the UK Albums Chart at number 1, spent a total of 228 weeks in the charts, and sold over 4 million copies. The album featured a more lavish production and overall sound than Dire Straits' earlier work and spawned several big chart singles, with 'Money For Nothing' reaching number 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and number 4 in the UK Singles Chart, and the other singles all breaking into the top 20 in the UK and US. 'Money For Nothing' was the first video to be played on MTV in the UK, and featured guest vocals by Sting, who is credited with co-writing the song with Mark Knopfler, although it was the inclusion of the melody from 'Don't Stand So Close To Me' that triggered the copyright credit, as no lyrics were written by Sting. After the Brothers in Arms tour, Mark Knopfler took a break from Dire Straits, and during 1987 he concentrated on solo projects and film soundtracks, and the following year he announced the dissolution of Dire Straits.
In 1990, Dire Straits reunited, with Knopfler, Illsley, Clark and Fletcher being joined in the studio by saxophonist Chris White, steel guitarist Paul Franklin, percussionist Danny Cummings and guitarist Phil Palmer, with drums split between Jeff Porcaro of Toto and Manu Katché. The band released their sixth studio album, 'On Every Street', in September 1991, which turned out to be their final studio release. It was met with more moderate success and mixed reviews, as well as a significantly reduced audience, although it still went straight to number 1 in the UK Albums Chart. Several singles were released from it, achieving some success in Europe, Australasia and the US, although none charted in the UK. The group embarked on a world tour to promote the album, and this lasted until October 1992, but it was not as critically acclaimed nor as commercially successful as previous tours, and this proved to be too much for Knopfler, leading to the second and final break-up. During their 1992 tour they took time out to visit Timothy White's radio show, where they played a new song, 'The Long Highway', and they also performed 'I Think I Love You Too Much', a song written in 1990 but never recorded, on the 1992 tour. Similarly. 'Secondary Waltz' was also written around this time, but it's earliest recording is a demo by Mark Knopfler from 1995, which he later reworked for his 'Kill To Get Crimson' album in 2007. All of these songs are on this album, along with David Knopfler's 'Bernadette', sung by him in 1979, the missing 'Making Movies' title track from their 'Arena' film, a few live recordings of songs which never made it to the studio, a smattering of b-sides, and one surprise, with a recording of 'Private Dancer' by Laszlo Buring, done as he imagines it would have sounded had Dire Straits recorded it in 1982.
Track listing
Disc I - 1977-1983
01 Eastbound Train (b-side of 'Sultans Of Swing' 1978)
02 Real Girl (Honky Tonk demo 1977)
03 Sacred Loving (Honky Tonk demo 1977)
04 What's The Matter Baby (live in Rotterdam 1978)
05 Me And My Friends (previously unreleased 1978)
06 Bernadette (live in Boston 1979)
07 In My Car (live in Boston 1979)
08 Making Movies (from the 'Arena' film 1980)
09 Private Dancer (recreation by Laszlo Buring)
10 The Way It Always Starts (from the soundtrack to the film 'Local Hero' 1983)
11 Freeway Flyer (from the soundtrack to the film 'Local Hero' 1983)
Disc II - 1983-1995
01 Twisting By The Pool (from the 'ExtendeDancEPlay' EP 1983)
02 Badges, Posters, Stickers, T-Shirts (from the 'ExtendeDancEPlay' EP 1983)
03 Two Young Lovers (from the 'ExtendeDancEPlay' EP 1983)
04 If I Had You (from the 'ExtendeDancEPlay' EP 1983)
05 I Think I Love You Too Much (live in Nimes, France 1992)
06 The Long Highway (from the Timothy White sessions 1992)
07 Millionaire Blues (b-side of 'Calling Elvis' 1991)
08 Secondary Waltz (demo from the Golden Heart sessions 1995)
09 Kingdom Come (b-side of 'Heavy Fuel' 1991)
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