Dire Strait's "Brothers in Arms" (1985): Track by Track!

<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Surely for Nothing, A dramatic reading. Oh look
<v Speaker 1>at those oakings. That's the way you do it. You
<v Speaker 1>create a podcast focused primarily on the nineteen eighties. No,
<v Speaker 1>that's not working. That's the way you do it. The
<v Speaker 1>episodes cost nothing, but the Patreon isn't free.
<v Speaker 2>All right, I'm super excited this week. I have been
<v Speaker 2>working all week on Brothers in Arms.
<v Speaker 3>That ain't working. That's the way you do it. You
<v Speaker 3>do your podcast and you call it Shirley.
<v Speaker 2>There we go.
<v Speaker 3>Welcome everybody back to the Surely You Can't Be Serious podcast.
<v Speaker 3>We are here live and in living color, covering dire
<v Speaker 3>Straits album Brothers in Arms.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and if you missed it, last week, we covered
<v Speaker 2>Heart's nineteen eighty five album. We are comparing these two.
<v Speaker 2>Do they have a lot in common?
<v Speaker 3>Maybe? I think they don't. Really. They're both a really
<v Speaker 3>big and nineteen eighty nineteen eighty five. Yeah, they're both
<v Speaker 3>celebrating their fortieth anniversary. How about that. That's it.
<v Speaker 2>Both hit number one in the fall of nineteen eighty five.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, and they were inescapable if you were listening to
<v Speaker 3>top forty radio in nineteen eighty five.
<v Speaker 2>That's right, that's right.
<v Speaker 3>You know.
<v Speaker 2>The interesting thing about this particular album, Yeah, this is
<v Speaker 2>at the birth of CDs. Yeah, the incredible time when
<v Speaker 2>people were moving away from vinyl for sure, moving away
<v Speaker 2>from tapes and actually buying CDs, and it actually produced
<v Speaker 2>a sort of large uptick and money going to record
<v Speaker 2>companies and bands.
<v Speaker 3>Ultimately, Yeah, the record companies were probably more powerful at
<v Speaker 3>this stage of history than they had ever been before,
<v Speaker 3>and probably that they will ever be again because there
<v Speaker 3>was the downfall in the late nineties. Allah Napster and
<v Speaker 3>LimeWire and all that other stuff. But these albums are
<v Speaker 3>both they're both by bands who formed in the seventies.
<v Speaker 3>Art formed in mid seventies. Dire Straits formed in nineteen
<v Speaker 3>seventy seven. I mean they formed about a year apart really,
<v Speaker 3>and then had both had kind of lulls in between
<v Speaker 3>their debut albums, and then this nineteen eighty five album
<v Speaker 3>that they both had, so they get a little more
<v Speaker 3>in common than you might think.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so before we dive into the history, yeah, I've
<v Speaker 2>got just a few overview facts I want to give
<v Speaker 2>you on Brothers in Arms. Okay, so number one, this
<v Speaker 2>is the first album to sell one million.
<v Speaker 3>CDs, cdsds in nineteen eighty five.
<v Speaker 2>In nineteen eighty five, wow.
<v Speaker 3>So like I didn't have a CD player I like
<v Speaker 3>in the household, like my brother bought my parents like
<v Speaker 3>a big gift of a CD player in nineteen eighty nine.
<v Speaker 3>I think service merchandise, by the way, if you remember that.
<v Speaker 2>Old store service merchandise, I love service merchant.
<v Speaker 3>By the way, Guys, if this is your first time
<v Speaker 3>here and you remember as a kid having a swatchwatch
<v Speaker 3>or a Cassio watch, then you're in the right spot.
<v Speaker 3>I gotta tell you. I was. I was at the
<v Speaker 3>pharmacy the other day and the girl is like checking
<v Speaker 3>my stuff, and she's got this little gold Cassio watch,
<v Speaker 3>and I was like, oh, whoa nice Cassio. And she's
<v Speaker 3>like thanks. All the older adults noticing, and I'm like, well,
<v Speaker 3>screw you there, taking my compliment back, ma'am. Right, But
<v Speaker 3>if you had a gold Cassio or a Cassio, maybe
<v Speaker 3>even a Calculator watch, you're in the right spot.
<v Speaker 2>Or a calculator uh well, forget that.
<v Speaker 3>You know, I had something that in nineteen eighty five,
<v Speaker 3>you might be able to tap into the flux capacitor
<v Speaker 3>and tend yourself back to the future.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, I had a mister calculator like a cartoon face that. Yeah. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>so this album first album, so one million CDs, right,
<v Speaker 2>I've been fourteen weeks at number one in nineteen eighty five.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah in the UK, seven in the US.
<v Speaker 3>It's still not bad. I mean it's killing it, right.
<v Speaker 2>Thirty million albums sold in nineteen eighty five. Do that
<v Speaker 2>is smashing it. And the company that owned the record label, Phillips,
<v Speaker 2>used this album as like a benchmark, saying you've got
<v Speaker 2>to get a CD player because technology and sounds like
<v Speaker 2>this will be soon coming out of your speakers.
<v Speaker 3>It was essentially their demo CD for the CD player.
<v Speaker 2>It's one of the reasons why it sold so many copies. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>people wanted to hear this coming out of their new speaker.
<v Speaker 2>You got to have the benchmark CD.
<v Speaker 3>And I think once we've listened to a few of
<v Speaker 3>the songs, we can discuss the other possibilities on why this,
<v Speaker 3>of all albums, was such a big seller for CDs.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, let's dive into it, man, Let's do it.
<v Speaker 3>Man, I'm ready.
<v Speaker 2>Do we want to dive into the first song or
<v Speaker 2>do you want to go history?
<v Speaker 3>How do we want to do this? I would say,
<v Speaker 3>let's dive in the first song and I'll talk history
<v Speaker 3>as we go through it.
<v Speaker 2>All right. First song on the album is a song
<v Speaker 2>called so Far Away.
<v Speaker 3>M Tired of making out on the telephone. This song
<v Speaker 3>is fantastic, right, this is this is it's it's mellow,
<v Speaker 3>but it's got a groove. The sound you can hear
<v Speaker 3>the awesome sonic sound to it, and then the you know,
<v Speaker 3>it's I'm tired of having bone sex with you, honey,
<v Speaker 3>I want to I want.
<v Speaker 2>To see you for real.
<v Speaker 3>You're so far away from me?
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, so far I just so far away.
<v Speaker 2>So here's the interesting thing. I think. This album was
<v Speaker 2>released May seventeenth, nineteen eighty five. Okay, this was the
<v Speaker 2>first single released in the UK.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, but the.
<v Speaker 2>Third single released in the US. All Right, I don't
<v Speaker 2>really understand why they do that.
<v Speaker 3>Well, so their history is really interesting and I'll get
<v Speaker 3>into more of that later. But there's it's this. They're
<v Speaker 3>really I mean, they are a grassroots band from I mean,
<v Speaker 3>from the get go, they're just as regular a bunch
<v Speaker 3>of guys as you could ask for. They're all just
<v Speaker 3>guys who are barely scraping by until they happen to
<v Speaker 3>make it, which I'll talk about in a minute. But
<v Speaker 3>then once they did make it, like they I mean,
<v Speaker 3>making it is not an instantaneous thing. It's a it's
<v Speaker 3>a build. And so the first place that they had
<v Speaker 3>that they sent their album was the Netherlands because it
<v Speaker 3>was apparently a good gauge of how the album would
<v Speaker 3>perform worldwide. It depending on how it performed in the
<v Speaker 3>Netherlands did well, there wasn't doing so well in Germany,
<v Speaker 3>but they did some work in Germany, and then they
<v Speaker 3>started to catch popularity and became even more popular in Germany,
<v Speaker 3>and they were they were starting to it more and
<v Speaker 3>more popular in different countries in Europe, and weren't even
<v Speaker 3>that popular in the UK yet. And it's just like
<v Speaker 3>it's this kind of weird matter of how one country
<v Speaker 3>will have a different taste than another country. And you
<v Speaker 3>will hear over and over with these guys that everyone says,
<v Speaker 3>we thought you were an American band because their sound
<v Speaker 3>is an American z ound.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I heard John Illsley yeah say
<v Speaker 2>that they sent the album to the Netherlands hoping to
<v Speaker 2>sell five thousand copies. Yeah, and when word came back
<v Speaker 2>that they had already sold twenty five thousand copies, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>they were like, we might be onto something.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it might be time to start touring, right yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Right, So this song in particular reached number nineteen in
<v Speaker 2>the States in April of eighty six. Yeah, I got
<v Speaker 2>your top five that week. Oh yeah, okay, and this
<v Speaker 2>is a Shirley top five. This is a strong top five.
<v Speaker 3>It's nineteen eighty five. Of course it's a Shirley top
<v Speaker 3>Well it's eighty six, but oh okay, right, yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So number five is why Can't This Be Love? By
<v Speaker 2>Van Halen, the first single with Sammy hay Right. Number
<v Speaker 2>four is Manic Monday.
<v Speaker 3>The Beautiful Bengalsana.
<v Speaker 2>Has number three West End Girls by the pet Shop.
<v Speaker 3>You couldn't I couldn't get enough of that banger, right yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Number two Addicted to Love by Robert Palmer YEP and
<v Speaker 2>number one Kiss by Prince Pretty solid right there.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, Yeah, definitely great list.
<v Speaker 2>This album was recorded at George Martin's AI R Studios
<v Speaker 2>in Montserrat. Yeah, and I want to talk more about
<v Speaker 2>that later. Yeah, but I think already you can feel
<v Speaker 2>the influence of the island on this song.
<v Speaker 3>It does have. I mean this song especially has a
<v Speaker 3>very beach relaxed kind of feel to it. For sure.
<v Speaker 3>It's way to it. It's a groove you can you
<v Speaker 3>can almost see the palm trees waving in the breeze.
<v Speaker 2>No doubt. You know, I read that they had these
<v Speaker 2>songs all written and rehearsed before they got to the island. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>but I still believe that the island impacted the sound.
<v Speaker 3>Of this this album, no doubt, no doubt.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, lovely So I love it. It's one of the
<v Speaker 2>I mean, top twenty hits.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah song, huge song, great, great one out of the gate.
<v Speaker 3>I wouldn't I'd say it's more than an appetizer. It's
<v Speaker 3>it's it's a solid appetizer.
<v Speaker 2>But oh my gosh, should we get to the to
<v Speaker 2>the meal.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, you can leave everything else behind just I
<v Speaker 3>I know what you're gonna do, like you're gonna start
<v Speaker 3>the You're gonna start the music right about here as
<v Speaker 3>I'm talking. Because it's it's a nice Yes, it's just
<v Speaker 3>a nice it's a nice bill. That's the understatement of
<v Speaker 3>the year. This is arguably one of the best builds
<v Speaker 3>in all of music history, and we didn't get it
<v Speaker 3>hot half of the time. Whenever we would hear the song,
<v Speaker 3>they would start after the build, right, And it's so good,
<v Speaker 3>it's so powerful, it's so perfectly timed. And to have
<v Speaker 3>sting just happen to be next door and hey, would
<v Speaker 3>you like to come and sing a little bit on
<v Speaker 3>this song? Build? Build, Build, And then you come crashing in.
<v Speaker 2>With one of the great guitar intros of all time.
<v Speaker 3>It's fantastic. And I mean, even if you skip that
<v Speaker 3>whole intro, that that boom of a guitar coming in
<v Speaker 3>with Mark Knopfler's incredible fingerpicking style, the unique combination of
<v Speaker 3>chords that he's got going on, it's just it is remarkable.
<v Speaker 3>It is overwhelming. I cannot say enough good about this,
<v Speaker 3>this intro and this song.
<v Speaker 2>So the genesis of the song is super interesting. But
<v Speaker 2>almost as interesting is what happened while they're recording this song. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>so the genesis if you don't know this, and you probably,
<v Speaker 2>I mean I know you do because you've studied. But
<v Speaker 2>Mark Knopfler was looking for the zz top sound for
<v Speaker 2>this right. Yes, he even reached out to Billy Gibbons. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>he's like, hey, Billy, I wanted to do this zz
<v Speaker 2>top sound. And Billy Gibbons later said, you know, he
<v Speaker 2>did a really good job it. Scenes how I didn't
<v Speaker 2>tell him a gd thing. But they had this happy
<v Speaker 2>accident when they were recording the song. Well, let me
<v Speaker 2>back up. The genesis of the song is Mark Knopfler
<v Speaker 2>was living in New York City and he was at
<v Speaker 2>a department store like I don't know where it was exactly,
<v Speaker 2>like Sears or something.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, this probably was when they were recording their third
<v Speaker 3>album because they were at the power station recording it.
<v Speaker 3>That's when Dave ended up leaving the band was when
<v Speaker 3>they were doing their recording in New York City. So
<v Speaker 3>my guess is it was around that time.
<v Speaker 2>He's in there and he's buying a refrigerator okay, microwave oven.
<v Speaker 2>He's buying a refrigerator. He's standing there in front of
<v Speaker 2>this wall of TV's that's playing MTV and there's a guy,
<v Speaker 2>like a delivery guy who comes up and he stands
<v Speaker 2>next to him. He's like, that ain't working. What is
<v Speaker 2>that Hawaiian noises?
<v Speaker 3>So that little queenie, Yeah right, So there's there's obviously
<v Speaker 3>some language that has has not lasted things through the
<v Speaker 3>through the PC of time. Yeah, that's but you got
<v Speaker 3>to keep in mind this is he is, he's playing
<v Speaker 3>a part here. This is not These are not the
<v Speaker 3>words that he would use. I mean, I know these
<v Speaker 3>having studied these guys, they hung out with that type
<v Speaker 3>of folk all the time and would never use it
<v Speaker 3>on their own. But he's he's playing the part of
<v Speaker 3>this radio you know, refrigerator installer. Right. But the I
<v Speaker 3>think the most fascinating thing that we covered this a
<v Speaker 3>long time ago, the band that was that they were
<v Speaker 3>watching on all those TVs Smartley Kurz, I know.
<v Speaker 2>Right, how about that he's looking at them saying, that
<v Speaker 2>guy's a millionaire. Come on, what is this?
<v Speaker 3>I mean probably they were watching the Home Sweet Home
<v Speaker 3>video that you referenced in our top five of eighty five.
<v Speaker 3>I mean wow, I mean because because you know, you
<v Speaker 3>got the almost the top almost coming off. Look at
<v Speaker 3>her putting it in the camera. Man, the guys ain't dumb, that's.
<v Speaker 2>Right, that's right. Chicks for free.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, So he.
<v Speaker 2>Was so impacted by this conversation he had with this
<v Speaker 2>delivery guy.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, umps, Look at that Mama gonna limit camera man?
<v Speaker 5>What's that Hawaiian noises on the boosh away?
<v Speaker 2>That he went around looking for a pin? In a
<v Speaker 2>piece of paper he's writing down and I wrote down
<v Speaker 2>things that he got from this guy. Okay, yeah, so
<v Speaker 2>he actually got that ain't working, he got sticking in
<v Speaker 2>the camera. Yeah, and look at that f f yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Oh and also what are those Hawaiian noises? Which I
<v Speaker 2>think is a hilarious line.
<v Speaker 3>Right right, because there's not a Motley Cruise song that
<v Speaker 3>I can think of that has anything like a Hawaiian
<v Speaker 3>noise at all.
<v Speaker 2>It doesn't matter that ain't working. Maybe you get a
<v Speaker 2>blister on your little.
<v Speaker 3>Finger, maybe you get a blister on your thumb.
<v Speaker 2>So that's an interesting story to me. But really the
<v Speaker 2>fascinating part of this song is they're in Montserrat, which
<v Speaker 2>is British West Indies. It's an island basically of isolation.
<v Speaker 2>They move you there so you can concentrate on recording
<v Speaker 2>and they're working on this song and one of the
<v Speaker 2>ways that they get this incredible sound with the guitar
<v Speaker 2>and he's trying to mimic Zzy Top. They leave the studio,
<v Speaker 2>they come in one day and the microphones are all
<v Speaker 2>messed up. Do you hear the story? No, So they
<v Speaker 2>come in. One mic is pointing at the floor and
<v Speaker 2>one one's like moved out over here and there and
<v Speaker 2>kind of scattered, but it's making an incredible sound. And
<v Speaker 2>so they're like, don't touch anything. Wow, it's a they
<v Speaker 2>called the happy accident. It so literally they're like, somebody
<v Speaker 2>moved all this stuff around, don't touch it.
<v Speaker 3>Little microphone fairies came out of the night and right.
<v Speaker 2>Cray And so he's writing this song from the perspective
<v Speaker 2>of this guy watching MTV talking about how ridiculous MTV is, right,
<v Speaker 2>and they're playing too MTV and Mark Knopfler makes the comments,
<v Speaker 2>I'm sure wish Sting was here, Yeah, he'd be great
<v Speaker 2>to sing this party. And they're like, what are you
<v Speaker 2>talking about? Sting is here. Sting's windsurfing right now. They're
<v Speaker 2>like what. And so Sting was in Montserrat because he
<v Speaker 2>loved the island and had recorded Ghost in the Machine
<v Speaker 2>and Synchronicity and was just there hanging out on holiday.
<v Speaker 3>They had just finished with Synchronicity just a couple of years,
<v Speaker 3>I mean maybe a year too before this album was
<v Speaker 3>being recorded.
<v Speaker 2>He's windsurfing, just hanging out.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, sure, we're not.
<v Speaker 2>So he came in and they invited him to come
<v Speaker 2>up to dinner. They played Money for Nothing for him
<v Speaker 2>and said, hey, what do you think He's like. The
<v Speaker 2>comment was you bustard, You've done it right, And Mark
<v Speaker 2>Knopfler's like, well, if you love it so much, why
<v Speaker 2>don't you sing on it?
<v Speaker 3>Well, if you love it so much.
<v Speaker 6>When she's singing right, so Sting is like, fine, I
<v Speaker 6>will uh huh right, and he sings the I Want
<v Speaker 6>my MTV line to the tune of Don't Stand so
<v Speaker 6>Close to Me.
<v Speaker 3>Now, listening audience, you must know, don't Stand so Close
<v Speaker 3>to Me is my favorite Police song. It is my
<v Speaker 3>favorite Police song. And this song is my favorite dire
<v Speaker 3>straight song. Sultan's have Swing a near second, but this
<v Speaker 3>one is top of the list. And not until you
<v Speaker 3>told this to me about a week ago that I go,
<v Speaker 3>don't stand so don't stand so, don't stand so close
<v Speaker 3>to me. I want my I want my I want
<v Speaker 3>my MTV. I was just like, wah, what yes, So
<v Speaker 3>there's so no problem. Sting said, you guys can use.
<v Speaker 2>It right, right, except the record company is like, no, no, no, no, no, no no,
<v Speaker 2>that belongs to us. They've got to pay us a
<v Speaker 2>percentage of their song. What a crock and Sting was
<v Speaker 2>very embarrassed by that. He's like, of course, saying, I
<v Speaker 2>mean just asked me to sing a line.
<v Speaker 3>I sang a line, right, And it's not like it's
<v Speaker 3>a super complicated melody right right, that's crazy.
<v Speaker 2>Rolling Stone goted this the ninety fourth greatest guitar song
<v Speaker 2>of all time, and a problem with that. Yeah, okay,
<v Speaker 2>so let's talk about the music video. Okay, yes, okay.
<v Speaker 2>Mark Knopfler hates music videos, but MTV is like, listen, dude,
<v Speaker 2>this song plays to us. We will love it. We
<v Speaker 2>want to play the heck out of it, but we
<v Speaker 2>have to have a great music video to make this work. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>So they send some executives to go meet with him,
<v Speaker 2>and he's not receptive to it at all. They later
<v Speaker 2>go back a second time, but this time his girlfriend
<v Speaker 2>is with him and they're like, we have to have
<v Speaker 2>a creative video to go along with this awesome song,
<v Speaker 2>and he's still like basically arms crossed, looking at his shoes,
<v Speaker 2>says nothing. So they leave and his girlfriend, who happened
<v Speaker 2>to be there the second time, was like, you know,
<v Speaker 2>they're right, They're absolutely right. You have to make a
<v Speaker 2>video worthy of this song. He's like, all right, fine,
<v Speaker 2>they hire Steve Baron, mister music video, right, and they
<v Speaker 2>come up with this idea of like like computer coloring,
<v Speaker 2>you know, making those wild colors while they're playing this incredible.
<v Speaker 3>Song, right, kind of a takeoff on the take on
<v Speaker 3>Me style.
<v Speaker 2>It's sort of rotoscoping. Yeah right, we're going to talk
<v Speaker 2>about that here in just a second. Yeah, but this
<v Speaker 2>song is the first song aired on MTVu August first,
<v Speaker 2>nineteen eighty seven. Okay, I mean that's as monumental as
<v Speaker 2>video Killed the Radio Star.
<v Speaker 3>You know in Europe.
<v Speaker 2>Sure, So this video goes on to win MTV's Music
<v Speaker 2>Video of the Year for nineteen eighty six.
<v Speaker 3>And beats out Take on Me by Aha. Oh really yes,
<v Speaker 3>really yeah. The other ones you had cry by Goodley
<v Speaker 3>and Cream, which we've talked about multiple times. You have
<v Speaker 3>Addicted but to Love by Robert Palmer, which you mentioned
<v Speaker 3>as the what was the number two song Number.
<v Speaker 2>Two songs this week? Yep, And they got all the
<v Speaker 2>babes in the background.
<v Speaker 3>And then Rode nowhere by the Talking Heads, which the
<v Speaker 3>Talking Heads was the first group that Dire Straits toured
<v Speaker 3>with when they very first started doing a European tour.
<v Speaker 2>That's cool.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, actually made good friends with them. Cannot say the
<v Speaker 3>name for Sticks Sticks. When they were touring with Sticks,
<v Speaker 3>it went.
<v Speaker 2>Very badly interesting. Okay, yeah, okay, I hate to be
<v Speaker 2>done with this one.
<v Speaker 3>It's so freaking good.
<v Speaker 2>That's the way you do it.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, you play the guitar on MTV.
<v Speaker 2>Okad. So, the next song on the album is a
<v Speaker 2>song that was really big early nineteen eighty six, and
<v Speaker 2>I loved it in particular because the music video was
<v Speaker 2>nothing but NFL football bloopers. Third song on the album
<v Speaker 2>is a song called Walk of Life. Okay, I've got
<v Speaker 2>some stuff for you on this song, Okay, all right yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So third single release released October fourteenth, nineteen eighty five,
<v Speaker 2>right around the same time the Super Bowl Shuffle came out. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>go back and check out our Super Bowl chuff episode.
<v Speaker 3>Very popular.
<v Speaker 2>Episode reached number two in the UK, reached number seven
<v Speaker 2>in the US Top ten hit here the top six
<v Speaker 2>from so number seven is Walk of Life. Number six
<v Speaker 2>is my hometown. Number five as I'm Your Man by
<v Speaker 2>George Michael. Number four is talk to Me by Stevie Nicks.
<v Speaker 2>Number three is Burning Heart by Survivor from.
<v Speaker 3>The the Vital.
<v Speaker 2>Rocky four Rocky four soundtrack. Number two is Say You
<v Speaker 2>Say Me by h Liona Richie, and then number one
<v Speaker 2>That's what Friends Are For with Dion Worwick, Stevie Wonder,
<v Speaker 2>Gladys Knight and the Pips and Elton John, which I've
<v Speaker 2>got a funny Monster Rat story to tell you about
<v Speaker 2>Elton John. I'm gonna throw it in real quick, let's
<v Speaker 2>do it. So they recorded in monts Rat. So just
<v Speaker 2>some other artists that recorded in Monster Rat, Jimmy Buffett,
<v Speaker 2>Jerry Rafferty, right.
<v Speaker 3>Check go check out our top five of nineteen at
<v Speaker 3>seventy eight.
<v Speaker 2>Seventy eight, that's right, Yeah, the police recorded, I mean
<v Speaker 2>goes to the machine and synchronousity. Elton John recorded there
<v Speaker 2>which I want to tell you here in a second
<v Speaker 2>Black Sabbath Rush Keith Richards and the last album recorded
<v Speaker 2>there was Steel Wheels by the Rolling Stones. But the
<v Speaker 2>interesting thing so monserrat not much to do basically windsurfing
<v Speaker 2>or swimming at the pool, which they had a.
<v Speaker 3>Pool there or recording a top two hundred album.
<v Speaker 2>Or recording a top two hundred album, or you know,
<v Speaker 2>staying up late with the locals and drinking. Okay, well,
<v Speaker 2>Elton John and his crew stayed up way late one
<v Speaker 2>night drinking. Everybody called in sick because they were all hungover,
<v Speaker 2>like you know, still recovering from the night before. And
<v Speaker 2>Elton John is standing there and he's mad that his
<v Speaker 2>whole crew is not there, and he's like, well, you
<v Speaker 2>know what's going on here? We're here to do some work.
<v Speaker 2>Where is everybody? Well, you know, Jimmy's hungover and this
<v Speaker 2>guy's puking in the toilet whatever, And like one guitarist
<v Speaker 2>is like, hey, I'm still standing And guess what that
<v Speaker 2>turns into a kit song?
<v Speaker 3>Wow, don't get still nice?
<v Speaker 2>Back to Walk of Life. Yes, this song mentions Johnny
<v Speaker 2>down in the tunnels trying to make it pay, which
<v Speaker 2>is referencing busking on the subway right. It also references
<v Speaker 2>old songs like I Got a Woman by Ray Charles
<v Speaker 2>b Bapa Lua, which is a song by gene Vincent
<v Speaker 2>from nineteen fifty six. I Know what I'd Say by
<v Speaker 2>Ray Charles and Jerry Lee Lewis my Sweet by Robert
<v Speaker 2>Knighthawk and Mac the Knife by Bobby Darren. I say,
<v Speaker 2>I kind of love it when they kind of do
<v Speaker 2>this little throwback thing. You know, def Leppard did that
<v Speaker 2>with Rocket exactly.
<v Speaker 3>You know, that's what I was thinking of.
<v Speaker 2>What are you thinking of this song?
<v Speaker 3>Love it? I mean they've toe taber right. They have
<v Speaker 3>come out of the gate with three absolute smashes, no
<v Speaker 3>question about it. Fantastic first three songs, and songs that
<v Speaker 3>were all over the radio and all over MTV for
<v Speaker 3>nineteen eighty five and nineteen eighty six.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, and one of my favorite music videos just because
<v Speaker 2>of the NFL bloopers. Right next song on the album's
<v Speaker 2>called Your Latest Trick.
<v Speaker 3>All Right, I feel like we just took a hard left. Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>I felt like we were going in a very specific
<v Speaker 3>direction and all of a sudden, we are no longer
<v Speaker 3>going south, we are going east. What happened?
<v Speaker 2>I don't really know. This song sounds like a Moonlighting
<v Speaker 2>episode where Maddie is mad at David.
<v Speaker 3>I was thinking, it sounds it's like the it's like
<v Speaker 3>in Mister Mom whenever he's depressed about a state of life.
<v Speaker 3>That's what it sounds like to me.
<v Speaker 2>That's right. Yes, chef's gone to bed.
<v Speaker 3>So these guys are flexing their musical muscle here. All right.
<v Speaker 3>So we've just we've known since nineteen seventy eight that
<v Speaker 3>they can crank out some killer rock hits, and they
<v Speaker 3>decide on song number four to go, Hey, guess guess
<v Speaker 3>what else we can do?
<v Speaker 2>They throw on the jazz and it hit you like
<v Speaker 2>a cold bucket of water. Yeah, this one doesn't do
<v Speaker 2>it for me at all, right, but there is a
<v Speaker 2>certain contingency of folks out there that love this kind
<v Speaker 2>of music, right.
<v Speaker 3>Sure, I mean that and a ton of them were
<v Speaker 3>buying CDs, yeah in nineteen eighty five, probably right, Sure,
<v Speaker 3>I mean, if any group of folks really wanted to
<v Speaker 3>hear each instrument and every instrument as clearly and beautifully
<v Speaker 3>as possible, it's the folks listening to jazz. Right.
<v Speaker 2>So here's what I will say about this particular song. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>so we've already heard pop, we've heard rock. This is
<v Speaker 2>now jazz. I think we'll hear some hints of reggae
<v Speaker 2>here in a second, We'll hear country here in a minute.
<v Speaker 2>There's nine songs on this album, and that's five genres
<v Speaker 2>of music. Yeah, these guys are just offering something to everybody. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>this is not my particular thing. Yeah, but hey, what
<v Speaker 2>do I know.
<v Speaker 3>In the in the right time, you know, playing a
<v Speaker 3>game of pool late at night maybe, or you know,
<v Speaker 3>having a relaxing drink by the pool side something like that.
<v Speaker 3>This is very kind of chill out kind of music.
<v Speaker 2>This was the fifth single released April twenty fifth, nineteen
<v Speaker 2>eighty six. Wasn't released in the US, which is why
<v Speaker 2>we don't know it. Yeah, but it was released in
<v Speaker 2>the UK as the fifth single.
<v Speaker 3>So John Illsley, yes, the basis for the for the
<v Speaker 3>band right right, So long before they were ever famous,
<v Speaker 3>he graduated from college, he didn't have much money and
<v Speaker 3>he and his girlfriend decided to start a record shop. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>And so he didn't know, I mean he knew, he
<v Speaker 3>knew a limited amount of music, right like he had.
<v Speaker 3>He had grown up and was blown out of the
<v Speaker 3>water by the new music that was coming out of
<v Speaker 3>Radio Luxembourg and as many Europeans were of, like, wow,
<v Speaker 3>you know this new rock music is our music, right,
<v Speaker 3>do you remember.
<v Speaker 2>The last time we talked about Radio Luxembourg.
<v Speaker 3>I remember that we talked about it, but was it
<v Speaker 3>was it Trevor Horn.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it was Trevor Horren. Okay, it was our Patreon
<v Speaker 2>episode we did on Video Killed the Radio Star.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I think it was. I think that Radio Luxembourg
<v Speaker 3>was a huge moving factor for all of those guys
<v Speaker 3>born in the late forties and early fifties listening to
<v Speaker 3>music at the time. As a matter of fact, John
<v Speaker 3>used to he said that his brother actually the radio,
<v Speaker 3>would buy the records or he haven't even got a
<v Speaker 3>kit radio so that they could tune into Radio Luxembourg.
<v Speaker 3>And his job was to stand guard at the door
<v Speaker 3>so that if their parents were coming by, he was like,
<v Speaker 3>and they would throw the pillow over their head and
<v Speaker 3>turn the radio off. And then his brother was cool
<v Speaker 3>enough to go, Okay, you go listen to it for
<v Speaker 3>a little bit. I'll keep an eye on the door.
<v Speaker 3>And so that's really how he learned to fall in
<v Speaker 3>love with music. I love it. So he graduates from school,
<v Speaker 3>decides to start this record business, but he doesn't he
<v Speaker 3>knows his music taste has got limitations, and so he's like,
<v Speaker 3>how do I know what records to buy? So there
<v Speaker 3>was a guy named Charlie Gillett that was he did
<v Speaker 3>Radio London, and he was the guy that was always
<v Speaker 3>playing new music, like, Hey, every Sunday, this is the
<v Speaker 3>new new music. So he was just like, I wonder
<v Speaker 3>if I wrote him a letter. I just wrote him
<v Speaker 3>a letter, if he might give me some advice on
<v Speaker 3>what records I should get for the record shop. Nice,
<v Speaker 3>And so that's what he did, wrote him a letter
<v Speaker 3>at Radio London, and Charlie wrote back to this, I mean,
<v Speaker 3>young twenties kid starting a record shop, and gave him
<v Speaker 3>some ideas, just like, hey, you know, here's do this,
<v Speaker 3>do that. The record shop only lasted a few months, okay,
<v Speaker 3>But what was interesting was that he had made that connection.
<v Speaker 3>He realized, Hey, I just I wrote a letter to
<v Speaker 3>this world famous disc jockey and he wrote back to me.
<v Speaker 3>And so he's poorer than dirt. He ends up catching
<v Speaker 3>a roommate that's a friend of a friend who's just
<v Speaker 3>started as a social worker. His name is Dave Knopfler.
<v Speaker 2>Davefler, Yeah, okay.
<v Speaker 3>And so one day he comes home late at night
<v Speaker 3>to his roomy passed out asleep in his bed and
<v Speaker 3>some guy passed out next to a guitar on the
<v Speaker 3>floor in the living room. And that was Mark Knoeffler,
<v Speaker 3>and so these I mean legitimately working stiff guys said hey,
<v Speaker 3>let's let's put the band together there, let's see what
<v Speaker 3>we can do. They picked up a guy named Pick
<v Speaker 3>for drums. So it was Dave and Mark, John and Pick.
<v Speaker 3>And the first show that they did it was nineteen
<v Speaker 3>seventy seven. It was in the lawn at their apartment flat.
<v Speaker 3>That was their first show. There is now a plaque
<v Speaker 3>there that said Dire Strait's first gig played here.
<v Speaker 2>That is cool. I love it.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it's really great. So the Pick is a guy
<v Speaker 3>named David Withers that was a friend of Mark's, and
<v Speaker 3>they play their first show, but they don't have a
<v Speaker 3>band name. And so there's a guy named Simon cow
<v Speaker 3>It was Simon Cowell, not Cowl Okay, not the British
<v Speaker 3>idol American idol guy. No Simon cow it was. It
<v Speaker 3>was Pick's roommate and he was like, you guys never
<v Speaker 3>have any money, You're always in dire Straits. And so
<v Speaker 3>they thought that that sounds like a good name for
<v Speaker 3>the band, and they all just felt like old friends
<v Speaker 3>from the beginning. And they played their first show at
<v Speaker 3>the Farer House lawn and he said, we're all just misfits,
<v Speaker 3>but we were with misfits doing our own thing at
<v Speaker 3>the time. Wow, I love it. I had to use
<v Speaker 3>another band's PA sounds familiar.
<v Speaker 2>That's right, all right, So let's go on to the
<v Speaker 2>next song on the album.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, sounds good.
<v Speaker 2>Next song on the album is called why Worry?
<v Speaker 3>So this is a beautiful little guitar piece. It's almost
<v Speaker 3>like a lullaby, has a you know, I think Jeff
<v Speaker 3>Buckley probably borrowed this sound whenever he did Hallelujah. Has
<v Speaker 3>a very similar style to the tone of the guitar
<v Speaker 3>on this and the fingerpicking style that they both do.
<v Speaker 3>It's lovely easily fall asleep in a hammock on Montserrat.
<v Speaker 2>I totally agree. Right, it's slow, it's beautiful, it's very long.
<v Speaker 2>It's over eight and a half minutes, and this is
<v Speaker 2>one of those songs I believe had to be influenced
<v Speaker 2>by Montsrat.
<v Speaker 3>Right.
<v Speaker 2>So, here's the interesting thing. I told you that Steel
<v Speaker 2>Wheels by the Rolling Stones was the last album made
<v Speaker 2>at this studio.
<v Speaker 3>That's a long time ago.
<v Speaker 2>Nineteen eighty nine was when that was released. Yeah, okay,
<v Speaker 2>so here's the deal. Hurricane Hugo hit direct hit on
<v Speaker 2>montster Rat in nineteen eighty nine. Okay, okay, George Martin
<v Speaker 2>was on TV. I was watching an interview with him.
<v Speaker 2>He said, there's twelve thousand people on the island. Eleven
<v Speaker 2>thousand people lost their homes. It was a absolute punch
<v Speaker 2>in the face, devastation, nearly irre unrecoverable for anybody on
<v Speaker 2>the island.
<v Speaker 3>So what happened with the studio?
<v Speaker 2>So the studio was hit hard. George Martin couldn't get
<v Speaker 2>to the island for six weeks after the hurricane, and
<v Speaker 2>when he got there, he was going through looking at
<v Speaker 2>the damage. He said, when he opened the piano, he said,
<v Speaker 2>the ivories were covered with like mold. He said that
<v Speaker 2>that was the moment he said, We're done here. Can't
<v Speaker 2>we cannot recover from this. Oh my god, there's no
<v Speaker 2>island to go back to.
<v Speaker 3>So that recording studio had a knave board, which if
<v Speaker 3>you've if you've seen the movie Sound City, or you're
<v Speaker 3>familiar with the recording studio Sound City, the knave board
<v Speaker 3>was the penultimate board to have if you're recording an album,
<v Speaker 3>which is why there were so many great albums in
<v Speaker 3>Montserrat and in Sound City. Did they's just still there
<v Speaker 3>rotting away thirty five years.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know the answer that question, but I'd be
<v Speaker 2>willing to go with you to check it out if
<v Speaker 2>you wanted.
<v Speaker 3>To go, Buddy fly down there.
<v Speaker 2>You know you mentioned that need board, yeah, right, which
<v Speaker 2>was the main mixing instrument for all these wonderful albums.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>If you go watch the video for every little Thing
<v Speaker 2>she does its magic, Yeah, please, you will see Andy
<v Speaker 2>Summers dancing barefooted on this board, like without care. I'm like, dude,
<v Speaker 2>that's the soundboard. What are you doing?
<v Speaker 3>Wow? I get mad at my kids for throwing their phones. Wow. Achievement. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Here's the other thing. Hurricane Hugo, like I said, destroyed
<v Speaker 2>home eleven thousand people's homes out of twelve thousand. Right,
<v Speaker 2>and that was not the worst thing that happened to
<v Speaker 2>that island.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, what happened?
<v Speaker 2>Well? Montserrat is there because it's a volcanic island. Oh
<v Speaker 2>and in nineteen ninety five it blew its top and
<v Speaker 2>the town of Plymouth where all it was recorded. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>it's just it's buried in ash now like that. The
<v Speaker 2>town is no longer there basically. Huh So, the hurricane
<v Speaker 2>Hugo was the the you know, the right hook, and
<v Speaker 2>then the volcano blowing up was the uppercut.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah for the count yep So, has there been any
<v Speaker 3>development there since then?
<v Speaker 2>There has been. Yeah, I mean there's been some uh
<v Speaker 2>huh so, but Plymouth as a city, it's not not
<v Speaker 2>the thriving metropolis that it once was.
<v Speaker 3>Twelve thousand people metropolis. But so, but the recording studio
<v Speaker 3>is just given up to the weeds.
<v Speaker 2>That it is being taken back by the jungle.
<v Speaker 7>Wow.
<v Speaker 2>Can you imagine?
<v Speaker 3>No, really, I really do want to go down there
<v Speaker 3>and look. Go. Wow.
<v Speaker 2>We need some more Patreon members.
<v Speaker 3>By the way, if you would like to support our
<v Speaker 3>trip to montster Rot, you can go to patreon dot
<v Speaker 3>com Shirly Podcast and for as little as five bucks
<v Speaker 3>a month, you get access to all our one Hit
<v Speaker 3>Wonder episodes and some other fan favorites.
<v Speaker 2>Join us on Patreon.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah absolutely, and uh if if if we get enough
<v Speaker 3>people to send us down to Montserrat, we will.
<v Speaker 2>We'll go.
<v Speaker 3>One of our patreons will go with us. We'll have
<v Speaker 3>a lottery system and let one of the patreons go there.
<v Speaker 3>You go yeah, and.
<v Speaker 2>We'll go check out what looks like at the studio.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, fantastic, all right.
<v Speaker 2>D hit stop on your tape deck, kick it out,
<v Speaker 2>flip it over for side to and we start off
<v Speaker 2>with a song called right Across the River.
<v Speaker 3>So now I feel like we're going through the jungle
<v Speaker 3>with Michael Douglas and Romancing the stone, right. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I think this is another sort of reggae, kind of
<v Speaker 2>island feel to it. Yeah, I'm gonna say something, tell
<v Speaker 2>me if I'm crazy. I think this song was influenced
<v Speaker 2>by the song Wrapped Around Your Finger by the Police.
<v Speaker 3>I can hear in that drum beat now that you
<v Speaker 3>say that it's got a it's got a similar rhythm
<v Speaker 3>to it. Yep. I can see that.
<v Speaker 2>Kay also recorded on Monsrat right right, yep.
<v Speaker 3>So these guys, as I said, working stuffs, really just working,
<v Speaker 3>you know, for a living. But they had this they
<v Speaker 3>had this pub that they would go to called the
<v Speaker 3>Oxford Arms that was there in Deptford, England, where they
<v Speaker 3>were all from, right, I mean they grew up in
<v Speaker 3>different places. Knopfler was and his brother of course were.
<v Speaker 3>Jordie actually had a guy who had played with the
<v Speaker 3>band Jordie that had Brian Johnson in it. Come play
<v Speaker 3>keyboards with them, okay, but you know they're they're scraping by.
<v Speaker 3>They of course are going to see other bands play.
<v Speaker 3>And one rainy night, Mark Knopfler walks into a basely
<v Speaker 3>deserted pub. You know, there's and but there's a band playing,
<v Speaker 3>and you've got a couple of kids over in the
<v Speaker 3>corner who could care less about the band. They're into
<v Speaker 3>rock and roll, not some trumpet playing band. And these
<v Speaker 3>guys on stage are treating it like it's this big performance,
<v Speaker 3>even though there's only three people in the whole pub.
<v Speaker 3>And then at the end of the show, the lead
<v Speaker 3>singer says, thank you good night. We are the Sultans
<v Speaker 3>of Swing, and that's where he gets the idea for
<v Speaker 3>this song. So that song, Sultan's of Swing, is one
<v Speaker 3>of five songs that they have down pat like they're
<v Speaker 3>just like, we've got these songs down, we need to
<v Speaker 3>have a demo. They're playing the clubs hoping to be found.
<v Speaker 3>But you know, the way John Illsley put it was,
<v Speaker 3>you could be found that way. But it's like being
<v Speaker 3>a beautiful woman in hope that some age and find
<v Speaker 3>you walking along in the supermarket. It's not impossible. It's
<v Speaker 3>just not very likely. And what they realize is that
<v Speaker 3>they needed to have a demo. So after playing gig
<v Speaker 3>after gig after gig and not really getting anywhere, there's
<v Speaker 3>some unrest in the band. It's like, man, guys, you
<v Speaker 3>know we're getting into be our late twenties now, maybe
<v Speaker 3>it's time to be done. And John Ilsley gets a
<v Speaker 3>letter from his dad and he's reading a letter and
<v Speaker 3>it says, oh, by the way, your grand passed away.
<v Speaker 3>She left all the grandkids five hundred pounds.
<v Speaker 2>WHOA just in time, thanks Graham.
<v Speaker 3>And so he's thinking, Okay, with five hundred I can
<v Speaker 3>pay my rent for this many months, and I'll have
<v Speaker 3>food for this many months and I'll be able to
<v Speaker 3>I'll be set for quite a while. Or we can
<v Speaker 3>make our demo. And he knew what the answer was
<v Speaker 3>to that question right off the bat. And he goes
<v Speaker 3>to the other guys and he's like, guys, I want
<v Speaker 3>to do the demo. And they were they're elated, you know,
<v Speaker 3>They're like, we will pay you back. If we ever
<v Speaker 3>make any money as a band, we will pay you back.
<v Speaker 3>And as it turned out, after they sold their first album.
<v Speaker 3>He got paid back that five hundred bucks. I love it.
<v Speaker 2>Take your shot, and it pays off in spades. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I mean huge dividends on that investment.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. Absolutely. So they do their demo. It includes Sultan's
<v Speaker 3>of Swing on it. It's actually a great version of
<v Speaker 3>the song, arguably better than the one that came out
<v Speaker 3>on the album that they ultimately re recorded later. It's
<v Speaker 3>a tiny recording studio. It's basically a closet for the
<v Speaker 3>sound booth. The guy who is helping them isn't even
<v Speaker 3>a producer, he's just a sound engineer. And his name
<v Speaker 3>is Chaz Harrington. All right, okay, and they make friends
<v Speaker 3>with ch Has right off the bat, just get along
<v Speaker 3>with him great. But he records. I mean, it's basically
<v Speaker 3>like five mics, you know, three of them go on
<v Speaker 3>the drum set, one of them goes for you know,
<v Speaker 3>backing vocals, and then they double Mark's vocal. Right, But
<v Speaker 3>they do this incredible version of Sultan's Swing and then
<v Speaker 3>four other songs. And so now they have the demo
<v Speaker 3>and they're like, okay, so do we send this to
<v Speaker 3>record companies? And they start thinking about it, and these
<v Speaker 3>guys have the wisdom of being over twenty five, right,
<v Speaker 3>their brain is now fully developed, and so they're like, listen,
<v Speaker 3>record companies get dozens of demo tapes a day. Day. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>Like it's just like, are we really gonna are we
<v Speaker 3>gonna bet our five hundred quid on that? You know?
<v Speaker 3>And so they're thinking about it and thinking about it,
<v Speaker 3>and they're listening to the radio, and the guy on
<v Speaker 3>the radio it's Sunday is Charlie Gellette, and Mark knows
<v Speaker 3>the story of John writing to him about his record shop,
<v Speaker 3>and he's like, wyonn't you just write to Charlie Gellett
<v Speaker 3>again and see if he'd be interested in listen to
<v Speaker 3>our demo. It's your pal, you know, he's your buddy,
<v Speaker 3>he's your pen pal. And so he's like, okay, I'll
<v Speaker 3>give it a shot. And so he just he doesn't
<v Speaker 3>even send the demo tape, right, He just sends him
<v Speaker 3>a letter at the studio at at the radio station, right,
<v Speaker 3>And Charlie responds and he's like, sure, guys, here's my address.
<v Speaker 3>Come on over to the house. And so they show
<v Speaker 3>up and Charlie Gillette is like gives them tea and
<v Speaker 3>biscuits or cookies as we call them here in America.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, can you imagine, Like just Casey Kasem says, sure, Jason,
<v Speaker 3>come on over, would you like some tea and some marios?
<v Speaker 3>This is incredible story, right, And so he's like, guys,
<v Speaker 3>I'm excited to listen to this. I don't ever listen
<v Speaker 3>to people's demos in front of them. It just kind
<v Speaker 3>of saves embarrassment for both of us here. But I
<v Speaker 3>will listen to this, and I'll be honest with you. You know,
<v Speaker 3>whatever it is, whether I love it or hate it,
<v Speaker 3>I'm gonna be honest with you about what. If I
<v Speaker 3>think it just needs something, I'll tell you what I
<v Speaker 3>think it needs, right, Okay, good? And they're like okay, well,
<v Speaker 3>thank you, and then they leave and they're thinking maybe
<v Speaker 3>we'll get a phone call or a letter a little
<v Speaker 3>bit later on from Charlie. And so that Sunday, these
<v Speaker 3>working stiffs had a buddy who is moving furniture, and
<v Speaker 3>he said, hey, i'll give you I'll give you ten
<v Speaker 3>quid if you help me move today. So they spent
<v Speaker 3>the entire Sunday moving furniture in and out of a
<v Speaker 3>moving van and moving it to a different place. And
<v Speaker 3>so they go to their pub, the Oxford Arms that
<v Speaker 3>night with their ten quid so that they can drink
<v Speaker 3>it away. And as they walk in, they get this
<v Speaker 3>kind of hey, hey from the guys there. I mean
<v Speaker 3>it's all their friends that they know, but they're like,
<v Speaker 3>it's a little warmer than usual, you know. They belly
<v Speaker 3>up to the bar, they order their pint, and this
<v Speaker 3>as soon as they sit down, this guy slapping them
<v Speaker 3>on the back and he's like congratulation, guys, amazing stuff amazing.
<v Speaker 3>And they're like, what are you talking about? And they're like,
<v Speaker 3>Charlie Gillette, he played your song on the radio this morning.
<v Speaker 3>And they're like what. They had no idea that he
<v Speaker 3>had played the song and that was not even the
<v Speaker 3>best part. He goes, no, he didn't just play it.
<v Speaker 3>He said this is the best new music he has
<v Speaker 3>heard in years, and he is going to play it
<v Speaker 3>every single Sunday until you guys are signed. WHOA like
<v Speaker 3>W like you're expecting this and you get that. I mean,
<v Speaker 3>it's just incredible.
<v Speaker 2>Wow, that's incredible.
<v Speaker 3>And so when he did play it, when Charlie played
<v Speaker 3>it that morning, the A and R guys listened to
<v Speaker 3>him because he's the guy who knows what's going to
<v Speaker 3>be popular. He's the guy that can pick the good music.
<v Speaker 3>And he said one of them was in a shower,
<v Speaker 3>like they were calling him as soon as the song
<v Speaker 3>was done. Like the board lit up as soon as
<v Speaker 3>the song was over, and it was mostly A and
<v Speaker 3>R guys. One was in the shower got out of
<v Speaker 3>the shower so he could be sure and hear the song.
<v Speaker 3>And when he heard it, he was like, I get
<v Speaker 3>a call. The other guy was driving down the road
<v Speaker 3>listening on the radio. He pulled over to find a
<v Speaker 3>phone booth, found a phone booth, called him from a
<v Speaker 3>phone booth. Wow and so literally, with one play on
<v Speaker 3>one radio station on one Sunday morning, these guys had
<v Speaker 3>the A and R guys from every record company calling
<v Speaker 3>them up try to get them signed.
<v Speaker 2>Oh, that's an incredible story.
<v Speaker 3>Now, one of those record companies was Virgin Records. I'll
<v Speaker 3>tell you that story in a minute.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, let's go on to the next song.
<v Speaker 8>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>The next song is called the Man's Too Strong.
<v Speaker 7>I'm just an age and drummer boy, and then the
<v Speaker 7>wars I used to play and I've called you too
<v Speaker 7>many adult decisions MM hmmm. Now they's see I'm a
<v Speaker 7>criminal and I'm fade in a way.
<v Speaker 2>What does that sound like to you? Sounds like a
<v Speaker 2>impersonation of Bob Dylan.
<v Speaker 3>Well when they hit when they after they played the Roxy,
<v Speaker 3>they go up to the you know, the executive bar area,
<v Speaker 3>right and they're like, hey, there's Rod Stewart leaning against
<v Speaker 3>the bar, and hey there's Linda Ronstadt and oh she's
<v Speaker 3>got her boyfriend, the governor of California and Jerry Brown
<v Speaker 3>and is that Bob Dylan? And by that evening Bob
<v Speaker 3>Dylan and Mark Knopfler were playing together. And by that
<v Speaker 3>morning Dylan had said, would you come over, I'm doing
<v Speaker 3>this album. He was in his big Christian phase at
<v Speaker 3>that point. I'm doing this new album. I'd love for
<v Speaker 3>you guys to work with me. And so Mark went
<v Speaker 3>over and played with Bob Dylan.
<v Speaker 2>I love it. I love it. Okay, before you tell
<v Speaker 2>us the rest of the story, huh, Yeah, I've got
<v Speaker 2>a little nugget I've got to throw at you.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, okay.
<v Speaker 2>So at a charity event in two thousand and seven, Okay,
<v Speaker 2>there was a Fender Stratocaster that was signed by Mark Knopfler,
<v Speaker 2>Eric Clapton, Brian May and Jimmy Page.
<v Speaker 3>Wow.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, And it was going to auction and they expected
<v Speaker 2>to get about twenty thousand pounds for this guitar. Keep
<v Speaker 2>in mind some of the best guitars of all time. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>like it's it's the best England has to offer ever
<v Speaker 2>given us. Yeah right, Yeah, it got lost in the mail.
<v Speaker 2>The guitar was lost in the mail.
<v Speaker 3>That means stolen.
<v Speaker 2>Oh somebody out there has this guitar hanging on their
<v Speaker 2>wall but can't really say anything anybody.
<v Speaker 3>Wow.
<v Speaker 2>So the company that was in charge of shipping this guitar,
<v Speaker 2>Parsal Force, agreed to pay fifteen pounds to that charity
<v Speaker 2>in lieu of that guitar. How about that.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I think it would have gotten a lot more
<v Speaker 3>money than that, And I think that's probably exactly what happened.
<v Speaker 2>If you own this guitar, we want to hear from you.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, we will not. Your name will be kept in confidence.
<v Speaker 3>We just want to see a picture. So they've got
<v Speaker 3>A and R guys calling them off the hook right now.
<v Speaker 2>Of course.
<v Speaker 3>Charlie Charlie Gillette has his own record label and they
<v Speaker 3>hanging out with him a little bit after this too,
<v Speaker 3>you know, and they're at a party with him and
<v Speaker 3>he's like, you know, guys, I have a record label. Listen.
<v Speaker 3>We love what you've done for us. You've changed our lives.
<v Speaker 3>But it's kind of small. He's like, I understand, I understand.
<v Speaker 3>I mean they're getting there, getting all kinds of offers.
<v Speaker 3>As a matter of fact, they didn't have the voicemail.
<v Speaker 3>They didn't have even answering machines back in the seventies,
<v Speaker 3>so they had to write down the numbers of the
<v Speaker 3>A and R guys that would call them so they
<v Speaker 3>could call them back. And these guys, being twenty year
<v Speaker 3>old guys living on the they wrote it on the wall.
<v Speaker 3>There's the phone on the wall. He wrote it on
<v Speaker 3>the wall. They had so many numbers up there, they
<v Speaker 3>lost the number of the weed dealer up there. That's funny.
<v Speaker 3>So one of the guys who was courting them was
<v Speaker 3>Richard Branson from a relatively new record label called Virgin Records. Right, No,
<v Speaker 3>I called you this morning. I'm like, do you know
<v Speaker 3>the story? Like, yes, I do, Like awesome you telling well.
<v Speaker 3>So they're getting they're getting guys who are like, hey,
<v Speaker 3>we will give you fifteen hundred pounds, and they're like,
<v Speaker 3>are you kidding right now? You know that we've got
<v Speaker 3>like eight hundred people calling us, like, let's be realistic.
<v Speaker 3>They again had that benefit of age, right, And the
<v Speaker 3>other benefit of age is they were thinking with the
<v Speaker 3>right head when they're talking to people. Because Richard Branson
<v Speaker 3>played his cards wrong in this scenario, like they the
<v Speaker 3>way Branson tells it, they were going to sign with
<v Speaker 3>him the next day, but he decides the night before
<v Speaker 3>to have them come meet him at a Greek restaurant.
<v Speaker 3>When they come into the Greek restaurant, he is surrounded
<v Speaker 3>by women scantily clad and looking good, ready to rock.
<v Speaker 3>As they sat down, he said, there was a lot
<v Speaker 3>of hand motion under the table, and it wasn't our hands.
<v Speaker 3>And then they picked up the food plate and under
<v Speaker 3>the food plate was a whole pile of joints. And
<v Speaker 3>let's get there right what No, this was Greek, And
<v Speaker 3>so Richard Branson thinks, Okay, I'm going to get these
<v Speaker 3>guys stoned. I'm going to get these guys laid, and
<v Speaker 3>they're going to be signing my record deal. But they
<v Speaker 3>said they were asleep in their own beds, by morning
<v Speaker 3>that morning, So it did not happen because they're not
<v Speaker 3>going to be fooled.
<v Speaker 2>Don't mix business and pleasure.
<v Speaker 3>So they end up going with a guy named Johnny
<v Speaker 3>Strains who's with poly Graham, and they said the reason
<v Speaker 3>they went with him was because he didn't do any tricks.
<v Speaker 3>He just was very straightforward. He said, we believe in
<v Speaker 3>you guys. We've got the money to invest in you guys.
<v Speaker 3>We want to give you time, and we want to
<v Speaker 3>take that time with you to make sure that you're
<v Speaker 3>a success. And that was what's sold them. Genuinely, good guy,
<v Speaker 3>legitimate deal.
<v Speaker 2>You told me today what Richard Branson said of that deal?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, he later said, that was the night that I
<v Speaker 3>lost a billion dollars. Wow.
<v Speaker 2>Next song on the album is a song called One World.
<v Speaker 3>This is eighties blues at its best. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I think Crockett's taken the testarosa and he's rushing
<v Speaker 2>to Tubbs's aid somewhere right.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, So obviously they have to re record a full album.
<v Speaker 3>I can't just use their demo reel. They re record
<v Speaker 3>several of the songs from the demo though, including Sultan's
<v Speaker 3>of Swing Okay, and then they end up having an
<v Speaker 3>argument about which should be the first single, whether it
<v Speaker 3>should be the demo version or the one they recorded
<v Speaker 3>for their debut album. It's also called Dire Straits, and
<v Speaker 3>basically the record label won and Sultan's Swing really didn't
<v Speaker 3>do that well when it first came out, okay, but
<v Speaker 3>later versions and of course they're touring. Oh, this is
<v Speaker 3>a great story. So before they did the album, they
<v Speaker 3>toured with the Talking Heads, who I mentioned they loved,
<v Speaker 3>They got along with swimmingly, had a great time with them.
<v Speaker 3>And then their next tour was supposed to be with Styx,
<v Speaker 3>but Sticks showed up in the UK and they were
<v Speaker 3>not touted as well as they had been being touted
<v Speaker 3>over in America. And so just like two or three
<v Speaker 3>shows in, one of them faked being sick and they
<v Speaker 3>canceled the rest of the shows on the tour, and
<v Speaker 3>so here Dire Straits is. They're like, well, I guess
<v Speaker 3>we're just going to have to do a tour on
<v Speaker 3>our own. So their first show on their first tour
<v Speaker 3>was on the first Tuesday in June at the Club
<v Speaker 3>Lafayette in Wolverhampton. They got paid fifty bucks, well fifty quid,
<v Speaker 3>which is you know, fifty British bucks.
<v Speaker 8>Right.
<v Speaker 3>They walk in, they set up their stuff and they
<v Speaker 3>look around and there's one security guard and that is
<v Speaker 3>all in the entire place and they're like, is it
<v Speaker 3>what's going on? And they're like, ah, we'll treat it
<v Speaker 3>as a practice session. It'll be fine. So then the
<v Speaker 3>security guard goes to open the door to let the
<v Speaker 3>crowd in. The crowd in being two guys who are
<v Speaker 3>both stinking drunk, and he said, so, three songs into
<v Speaker 3>our set for these two guys, one half of the
<v Speaker 3>crowd leaves to go use the facilities. He comes back
<v Speaker 3>a little bit later and before the fourth song can start,
<v Speaker 3>he and the other half of the crowd or engaged
<v Speaker 3>in a full on fist He was like, is not
<v Speaker 3>that kind of you know, random drunken brough. This was
<v Speaker 3>a full on, I want to hurt you fistfight between
<v Speaker 3>these two guys. Fortunately the security guard was still there,
<v Speaker 3>escorted both of them out and they finished the show
<v Speaker 3>to the security guard. Then two weeks later they got
<v Speaker 3>the return check which had bounced for that fifty quid
<v Speaker 3>that they were supposed to get paid.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, nice, I love it. I love it all right,
<v Speaker 2>let's go to the last song on the album, last song,
<v Speaker 2>Let's do it. This song is called Brothers and Arms.
<v Speaker 8>These missed cons. Someday you is and you know longer
<v Speaker 8>about to be brother.
<v Speaker 3>So this one, I feel like you could slip this
<v Speaker 3>into the wall by Pink Floyd and nobody wouldn't even
<v Speaker 3>know it is. It's got such a pink Floyd the
<v Speaker 3>wall feel. I mean, even to me, even Mark Knoppolo's voice,
<v Speaker 3>it's it's similar to Roger Waters. I mean, it's just
<v Speaker 3>it's very pink Floyd to me, and I don't really
<v Speaker 3>enjoyed it. This was a new one. I had not
<v Speaker 3>heard this before. I know it was a single that
<v Speaker 3>was a release, but it kind of missed my radar.
<v Speaker 3>But I really really really like Brothers in Arms the song.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I agree. I think this is a great song.
<v Speaker 2>This song was written in nineteen eighty two, the year
<v Speaker 2>that Britain invaded excuse me in nineteen eighty six.
<v Speaker 3>Wow, how about that? Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>This one that Grammy for Best Music Video in February
<v Speaker 2>of nineteen eighty seven.
<v Speaker 3>Yep, and I watched the video.
<v Speaker 2>Did you watch the video for this? So if you've
<v Speaker 2>ever asked yourself. Why didn't they do more videos like
<v Speaker 2>take on Me with all that cool animation and drawing
<v Speaker 2>and scheduling. Well, this is your video because it's it's
<v Speaker 2>like the sequel to take on Me.
<v Speaker 3>That's right. I have seen this video and know what
<v Speaker 3>you're talking about.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, a lot of rotoscoping and it looks very similar.
<v Speaker 3>Right.
<v Speaker 2>This song has been played on the West Wing and
<v Speaker 2>during many military funerals Brothers in Arms. Yeah, yeah, but
<v Speaker 2>I love the song. I think it's a great one. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I've kind of an undiscovered gym for me.
<v Speaker 3>So tell me a little bit about I mean, this
<v Speaker 3>album obviously just absolutely blows up, right, I mean million
<v Speaker 3>CDs sold, thirty million albums. They do just a couple
<v Speaker 3>more albums and then they're done. Maybe one more.
<v Speaker 2>Well, they don't do another album until nineteen ninety one.
<v Speaker 3>Right, so they go six years.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, they just fizzle out. And the thing I can't
<v Speaker 2>really put my finger on is every time they talked
<v Speaker 2>Knapfhler about it, he's like, it just got too big,
<v Speaker 2>got too big, and I became uncomfortable. And the guy
<v Speaker 2>I saw interviewing him was like, could you give me
<v Speaker 2>a specific example, like what bothered you, He's like, well,
<v Speaker 2>we would go to eat dinner, like at catering and
<v Speaker 2>we'd see people we didn't recognize.
<v Speaker 3>That bothered me.
<v Speaker 2>He was just uncomfortable with that size of success.
<v Speaker 3>Based on what I read, that actually makes sense, so
<v Speaker 3>I understand it. Mark is a very quiet guy, very
<v Speaker 3>contemplative guy, you know, even though he's center stage with
<v Speaker 3>the lights on him on stage. Yeah, he's not that way,
<v Speaker 3>and he gets awkward whenever people want to talk to
<v Speaker 3>him about how good, how good his music is. It's
<v Speaker 3>interesting to me. Obviously, this group started with Mark and
<v Speaker 3>his brother. This their like second to last album, it's
<v Speaker 3>called Brothers in Arms. When Dave has been gone for
<v Speaker 3>a while and they don't I don't think they still
<v Speaker 3>get along very well. It's kind of a tragic story.
<v Speaker 3>But Dave was He just wasn't learning the songs and
<v Speaker 3>wasn't doing well with the recording, and the producer would
<v Speaker 3>be like, go out, you know, go outside, learn this song,
<v Speaker 3>come back tomorrow or we'll figure it out, and they
<v Speaker 3>would come back and he's still not know it. He
<v Speaker 3>just wasn't doing it, and he just I think got
<v Speaker 3>tired of living in Mark's shadow. He actually did they
<v Speaker 3>sent John, you know, his roommate from when they were
<v Speaker 3>both dirt poor, to talk to him and go, hey, man,
<v Speaker 3>just you got to learn the music, you know, because
<v Speaker 3>if you don't, you can't be in the band anymore.
<v Speaker 3>I'm going to go home. Yeah, I'm out. So yeah,
<v Speaker 3>it's it's just kind of weird to me that you
<v Speaker 3>have this breakdown of the brothers and then their biggest
<v Speaker 3>hit is called Brothers in Arms.
<v Speaker 2>So I think it's weird that this album sells thirty
<v Speaker 2>million copies and they're like, that's it, We're out of here,
<v Speaker 2>We're done. Fizzle now. They did have a lot of
<v Speaker 2>solo projects. They even formed a country band, or Knoffler did,
<v Speaker 2>So they've done stuff and had success.
<v Speaker 3>Well, and don't forget Mark Knopfler did soundtrack for The
<v Speaker 3>Princess Bride. How can we forget that gorgeous? Right?
<v Speaker 2>So he's he's done a lot of stuff. Yeah, but
<v Speaker 2>I heard John Illsley. They're like, do you think I
<v Speaker 2>mean we'll dire straits ever He's like probably not.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, Marks the same way, unless there's some big reason
<v Speaker 3>to do it, there's not a reason to do it.
<v Speaker 3>It was that was a thing for that time, and
<v Speaker 3>that time is over and we all would rather have
<v Speaker 3>our own thing now.
<v Speaker 2>I told you I watched a video where Mark Knopfler
<v Speaker 2>met up with Brian Johnson from ac DC right right right,
<v Speaker 2>and they were in this specific town where they both
<v Speaker 2>had common memories of playing and sort of success and
<v Speaker 2>blah blah blah. And they're both you know, wearing jeans
<v Speaker 2>and you know hats, and they look like a couple
<v Speaker 2>of old tarts, old farts who are super excited to
<v Speaker 2>see each other. There's really a sweet video, but there
<v Speaker 2>are people walking by and have no care that they're
<v Speaker 2>walking by the singer to one of the greatest rock
<v Speaker 2>bands of all time and maybe the greatest guitar player
<v Speaker 2>of all time, and have no idea.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, no clue, just a couple of old dudes. Who.
<v Speaker 3>Why's the camera filming those old dudes? Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>I think we're time for final judgment.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, So here we are. We're at final judgment. We
<v Speaker 3>have to decide walking out the door. Are we picking
<v Speaker 3>up heart by heart? Are we picking up brothers in
<v Speaker 3>arms by dire straits? You may go first. Okay.
<v Speaker 2>So I talked to our buddy James Buckley today and
<v Speaker 2>I asked him. I was generally call him before we record,
<v Speaker 2>and I say, hey, do you have any anecdotes for
<v Speaker 2>me for this what we're doing today? And he's like,
<v Speaker 2>I remember going on a camping trip with some of
<v Speaker 2>my friends and a couple of my cousins, and he goes,
<v Speaker 2>the fire was dying and we were listening to this
<v Speaker 2>tape and it was time to go to bed, and
<v Speaker 2>one of my cousins the last second decided to throw
<v Speaker 2>an extra log on the fire and burned his eyebrows off.
<v Speaker 2>He said, that's my memory of this album, which I
<v Speaker 2>thought was funny. But if you're asking me to compare
<v Speaker 2>the Heart album with all those sort of rock aquinet
<v Speaker 2>covered hits that we had and compare to you know this,
<v Speaker 2>you know one of the best selling albums of the eighties.
<v Speaker 2>For me, I don't think Brothers in Arms was addressed
<v Speaker 2>to me at age twelve. I think that's more had
<v Speaker 2>somebody my uncle's age in mind. But for me, I'm
<v Speaker 2>walking out the door, Spike the football. I'm grabbing Heart's
<v Speaker 2>album over Brothers in Arms.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, okay, so let me mention Kevin Davis also good friend,
<v Speaker 3>also Patreon.
<v Speaker 2>What's up?
<v Speaker 3>Vin, how you young? Butte Kevin is a huge Dire
<v Speaker 3>Straits fan. Remember talking to him about Sultan's of Swing
<v Speaker 3>in detail when we did our best of seventy eight,
<v Speaker 3>seventy nine whichever it was, and those songs. There's there's
<v Speaker 3>the songs from the seventies, and then there's this this album.
<v Speaker 3>I look at the Heart album and as I said
<v Speaker 3>when we did the episode, seems like literally every single
<v Speaker 3>song on the album could have been a single, right
<v Speaker 3>And some of them are fantastic nostalgia for me, like
<v Speaker 3>I'm going to turn them up every single time that
<v Speaker 3>they come on. But with the Brothers and Arms album,
<v Speaker 3>as I said, we've got three just absolute killer songs
<v Speaker 3>sang out of the gate yep. Then you take a
<v Speaker 3>hard left turn into some way different kind of music.
<v Speaker 3>And it's not that I don't like that music. It's
<v Speaker 3>just that, like you said, it's it's a different demographic.
<v Speaker 3>It wasn't ten year old me back in nineteen eighty five,
<v Speaker 3>but I'm not ten year old me anymore. I'm nearly
<v Speaker 3>fifty year old me now, and so I'm listening to
<v Speaker 3>it with a new ear. And those the songs that
<v Speaker 3>are not the first three songs and not the last song.
<v Speaker 3>They don't rank to the level that the Heart songs do.
<v Speaker 3>All of those Heart songs could have been singles. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>but if I look at this like across country, team
<v Speaker 3>and Heart has has a strong pack, brothers in Arms,
<v Speaker 3>has the leader that is so far ahead of everybody else,
<v Speaker 3>that's time is so much better than everybody else that
<v Speaker 3>it doesn't really matter what you got because this guy
<v Speaker 3>just blew it out of the water. And Money for
<v Speaker 3>Nothing is that song. It is the song. I mean,
<v Speaker 3>I will I will disregard every single Heart song for
<v Speaker 3>that song alone. And it's not only that song on
<v Speaker 3>the album. I've got another. I got another four on
<v Speaker 3>there that I really enjoy and another three and a
<v Speaker 3>half that I can go I this could grow on
<v Speaker 3>me over time. So because Money for Nothing is so strong,
<v Speaker 3>so incredible, so ahead of every other song on these
<v Speaker 3>two albums, it's the winner for me. Picking Dire Straits, okay,
<v Speaker 3>I love it.
<v Speaker 2>I love it well, Guys, we want to hear from you.
<v Speaker 2>Which one do you grab you're walking out the door?
<v Speaker 3>Is it?
<v Speaker 2>Heart is a dire straits? We want to hear from you.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, Guys, hit us up on Twitter now X hit
<v Speaker 3>us up on Facebook. We're at Shirley Podcast on both
<v Speaker 3>of those. You can email us Shirleypodcast at gmail dot com.
<v Speaker 3>If you do want to join our Patreon page, we
<v Speaker 3>would love to have you. Those are some of our
<v Speaker 3>best episodes and the other great part is we're a big,
<v Speaker 3>happy Shirley family over there and we engage in fantastic
<v Speaker 3>discussions on all of our threads over there. So go
<v Speaker 3>check out our Patreon page, sign up for free, and
<v Speaker 3>you can listen to the episodes for as little five
<v Speaker 3>bucks a month.
<v Speaker 2>Next week d we have the John Cusack matchup of
<v Speaker 2>Better Off Dead versus one Crazy.
<v Speaker 3>Summer Cannot Wait Savage Steve Holland at his best.
<v Speaker 2>I want my two dollars come back for that awesome matchup.
<v Speaker 3>See you guys. Then where are those guys? They were
<v Speaker 3>supposed to be here like an hour ago.
<v Speaker 2>Somebody called a Shirley you can't be serious podcasts.
<v Speaker 3>I'm looking for a couple of guys named Dan Jason.
<v Speaker 2>I'm sitting here waiting for my Color TV and my
<v Speaker 2>refrigerator to be delivered.