Dire Staits? I always thought they were stodgy middle-of-the-road bores with a highly skilled guitar player who wanted to be Bob Dylan but failed the requisite charisma test. The London band—which finally packed up shop in 1995, not that I noticed—trucked in low intensity songs played with consummate taste, and delivered on some classic rock staples starting with 1978’s “Sultans of Swing.” On the positive side they were more exciting than Eric Clapton. On the negative side they weren’t that much more exciting than Eric Clapton.
Dire Straits’ singer/ guitarist/ songwriter Mark Knopfler fashioned himself a musical auteur and seemed to look upon his songs as little movies, which I suppose they were. The problem was the movies weren’t very exactly thrillers and were quaintly old-fashioned; Knopfler’s is an inherently conservative vision, heavy on nostalgia, hackneyed romanticism and ham-fisted social satire that makes clear his disapproval of anything that doesn’t fit into his narrow and Tory worldview.
On songs like “Money for Nothing” he came across as a privileged and elitist crank who holds the working class gits who are right about his pampered lifestyle in contempt, and to make things worse you get the uncomfortable sense that he shares their homophobia. The Village Voice’s Robert Christgau skewered him as “An active member of the Fraternal Order of Old Farts since birth,” and it’s as apt a description as any I’ve run across. There’s something every bit as antique about him as the Sultans of Swing themselves.
The title of Dire Straits’ third album and best album, 1980’s Making Movies, makes explicit Knopfler’s view of himself as auteur, and illustrates both his strengths and his weaknesses. If I was to actually purchase a Dire Straits LP—which isn’t going to happen—this is the one I’d choose. The majority of Making Movies’s seven tracks—a miserly bastard, our Mark, although I’m dead certain he thinks his seven are worth mere mortals’ ten or eleven—hold up. That said, closer “Les Boys” is reprehensible, and a perfect example of Knopfler’s biggest failing—he’s the real life equivalent of Bob Dylan’s Mr. Jones. Something’s happening but he don’t know what it is. All he knows is he doesn’t like it.
The eight-minute and change “Tunnel of Love”—which happens to be an “extract” from Rodgers’ Hammerstein’s “The Carousel Waltz”—opens the album on a pretentious note. Who does this guy think he is? A roots rock Emerson, Lake & Palmer? Fortunately the song isn’t what it purports to be—sure, it opens with organ and piano playing carousel music, but just when all seems lost the band goes into rock mode. The song proceeds at a fair clip before slowing down, giving Knopfler the opportunity to show off his formidable and always tasteful axe chops in an extended instrumental passage that is melodic indeed and takes the song out. The lyrics are sub-par Springsteen (“Tunnel of Love” indeed) and Knopfler has a knack for the telling cliche: “And the big wheel keep on turning”? Seriously? Ditto “she was a victim of the night.” But hold your nose and try to tune them out and it works, and works well.
“Romeo and Juliet” is a pretty little thing with its acoustic guitar and piano, no way to hate this one, but I find loving it hard because let’s face it, the whole Romeo and Juliet thing is such a tired trope you’d have to be a genius not to turn it into a string of cliches, and Knopfler is no genius. Once again Springsteen comes to mind, but Springsteen IS a genius and he’d know enough to never name names, or to serve up hackneyed lines like “Juliet, the dice was loaded from the start” or “When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong?” And the line “Juliet, when we made love, you used to cry” is a laugh when it shouldn’t be. Let’s face it: “Don’t Fear the Reaper” is the only song ever to get Romeo and Juliet right, and they were joking.
“Skateawy” is a real good ‘un, has a slinky rhythm that captures his roller girl’s phantom passage through the city with her headphones on, lost in her own private movie set to the beat of the rock ’n’ roll dream, and the rhythm is perfect for Knopfler’s Dylanesque vocal stylings. It’s always been my favorite Dire Straits song, love the way he says, “Hallelujah, here she comes,” and if you wonder why that piano sounds so Springsteenesque it’s because the E Street Band’s Roy Bittan is sitting on the bench. Bittan’s playing on the album makes explicit the fact that Making Movies is very much a Bruce move on Knopfler’s part—the baroque romanticism, the idealized song scenarios—this is England’s answer to The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle and Born to Run. Knopfler’s no street poet, but you have to hand it to the guy—he could have settled on a much worse model.
“Expresso Love” works musically in large part due to the piano and organ work of Bittan, a cool guitar riff, and the rock solid bottom of bassist John Illsley and drumming of Pick Withers—if it’s a simple rocker with muscle you’re looking for, this may just be your cup of high-classed joe. But the lyrics are hackneyed—you’ve heard of the banality of evil? “Expresso Love” is a classic case of the evil of banality. And I’ve never been able to figure out whether that “expresso” is simple bad spelling or he’s using the French spelling because he’s a pretentious git—I’m betting on the latter—or how strong coffee figures in the song in the first place. And who’s this maestro he keeps talking to? A Starbucks barista even more pretentious than he is? Oh, the questions.
“Hand in Hand” is a ballad and reeks of Asbury Park thanks to the eighty-eights of Bittan, and is MOR AOR at its most DOA. Okay, so that’s a bit harsh; the song has a pulse, but it doesn’t exactly set your hair on fire—it’s too enervated to do much of anything but sprawl across almost five minutes worth of grooves and take a nap. “Solid Rock,” different story—on it Knopfler gives up on the precious conceits and artistic pretensions and instead whups you upside the head with his guitar. This is stripped-down rock’n’roll—direct, punchy, and no nonsense. For one wonderful moment Knopfler says to hell with his “art” and goes primitive, or as primitive as this auteur ever gets. Call it slumming if you will, but if so, Knopfler should have done more slumming—”Solid Rock” comes at you with the simple power of a Bad Company song, and good for it.
Closer “Les Boys” is more than just the album’s problem child—it’s a laid-back slice of mock cabaret that reeks of hardly closeted homophobia and a symptom of the Dire Straits’ frontman’s old-fashioned prejudices. Knopfler’s observations on the leather crowd at a Munich club has a mocking “let’s all have a good larf at the animals in the zoo” feel to it, and what I hear when I listen to Knopfler’s vocals is sneering contempt—they’re S&M freaks and he’s the voice of bourgeois sanity.
The gay men in “Les Boys” are every bit as repulsive to him as the faggots with the earrings in “Money for Nothing” and the “young boys” in their “platform shoes” who “don’t give a damn about any trumpet-playing band” in “Sultans of Swing.” Probably because they’re debauched libertine sissies who prefer the End of Western Civilization sounds of David Bowie, Marc Bolan, and Lou Reed. Why, you basically HAVE to be a pervert to wear platform heels, don’t you? Hell, they probably wear eyeliner too, the cretins. I’ve never heard Knopfler offer up his opinion of Glam rock but I’m betting it’s about as low as his opinion of Ornette Coleman. He’s more of a Dixieland kind of guy, our Mark.
Making Movies is as good as Dire Straits got, and I don’t mean that as a backhanded compliment—its winners to losers ratio is nothing to sneeze at. But there’s no overcoming my dislike for Knopfler—he’s a hidebound, dyed-in-the-wool voice of conservatism, both musically and morally. He’s an old fogey, a stodgy member of the old school who can’t hide his bitterness and contempt for anything that doesn’t adhere to his middle class sensibilities. On “In the Gallery” from Dire Straits’ eponymous 1978 debut he sings about a sculptor who is unfairly snubbed by the “trendy boys” (another dig at gays, no doubt) who own the art galleries because his work is unfashionably old-fashioned—he leans towards bareback riders and dancing ballerinas. In short, pre-modernist kitsch. And that’s Knopfler to the T. He’s a philistine and a prude, or worse. No French New Wave cinema for him. The movies he makes all date back to the 1930s.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
C+
