The Dire Straits album that always disappointed Mark Knopfler: “I still don’t think it was a very good record”
The moment Dire Straits released their first album, it was clear that they were a band that would continue turning heads and cementing themselves as ones to watch. Their sound was infectious, heavy and catchy. People had a lot of fun listening to it, and it’s evident that Mark Knopfler put plenty of time and consideration into everything he wrote.
Knopfler didn’t get into the business for any particular reason. He enjoyed making music, engaging with his creativity and putting those parts of himself out there. There was never any intention for Dire Straits to be a commercial band, but that’s what happened, as tracks like ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘Money For Nothing’ got a reaction from people worldwide.
What set the group apart in those early days was the restraint woven into their sound. While many contemporaries chased bombast, Knopfler leaned into space and subtlety, letting his fingerpicked guitar lines do the talking. It gave the music a conversational quality, as though each track was being told rather than performed.
It ended up being the success that made Knopfler want to quit the band. He became tired of moving on, committing to tours, and being treated like a piece of meat whose only job was to perform. He felt that he was becoming too disassociated from the music he was making, and it all became too much like an oiled machine.
He once said in an interview, “I had an absolute ball for as long as it lasted until it got so big that I didn’t know the names of all the roadies; it was just getting big.”
Knopfler liked to take his time to engage with his music and turn the negatives in his life into positives. If he didn’t feel like he could connect with his work, he tended not to be a fan of what he was writing. This is reflected in his attitude towards the end of the band and the tours they were doing and in the albums that he liked and disliked.
The band’s second album, Communiqué, was more or less finished by the time the first album gained traction. Knopfler didn’t feel like he could take his time with it, and as such, despite its commercial success, he isn’t a fan.
“Communiqué did sell three million copies. In a lot of countries it did better than the first. The hang-up about Communiqué was an American thing. But having said that, I still don’t think it was a very good record,” he said before talking about how he likes to make music. “Making Movies was closer to what I liked to do. On that record I was determined I would not be immobilised by anything.”
Knopfler continued: “That break gave me the time to consider all that had happened and to express it in terms of music. Retrospect’s a really good thing. Time to think and write it down. Some of those songs were written during a period of turbulence.”
That sense of reflection became central to his craft. Knopfler has always written like a chronicler, observing the world with a novelist’s eye and filtering it through melody. When afforded the time to do so, his songs carry a lived-in quality, shaped as much by patience as by inspiration.
Talking specifically about his songs, Knopfler admitted that some were given more or less time depending on their complexity; however, when he knew a track well, he could determine how much time it should take to record it. “I wasn’t feeling good or collected when I wrote ‘Solid Rock’; I deliberately wrote and recorded that and ‘Expresso Love’ fast. I took more time to record ‘Romeo and Juliet’ because it took more time to write and demanded special attention.”
Throughout Knopfler’s career, the most important aspect of everything has been having the ability to connect with the music he was making. If anything ever felt like a set-in-stone process, he didn’t like it. That’s why he’s not a fan of Communiqué, as it didn’t feel like a record he connected with, for good or bad. The same applies to touring, as he stopped gigging when it started to feel like too much of a machine.
