Dire Straits: Making Movies

Looking sleepy, friendly and Englishman-pale alongside the beach-sunned office workers, Mark Knopfler, centrifugal force of Dire Straits, and bassist John Illsley are wandering the corridors of Warner Bros. Records in New York. They're on holiday from the making of Making Movies, their third album, recorded in a scant few weeks at Nassau's Compass Point studios. Coffee is thrust into their hands; radio stations phone incessantly, demanding over-the-phone interviews.

"There's difference in the rhythm now," songwriter Knopfler says of the album. "Pick (Withers, drummer) and John've become my favorite rhythm section. I don't feel I've come on like they have. There're few rhythm sections I like--Fred Smith and Willie Nile, maybe, and Tom Verlaine's Television, they're good. But we've got the same level now. It's a tightness in the sound and feel."

The Straits are an eccentric lot among megabuck band peers. They're not only studio nimble, they love to tour--at least this half does.

"The clubs here are marvelous," raves Knopfler and Illsley nods emphatically. "There's nothing like an American club; you can rock the hell out of the place."

"We don't go out to play to make money--you don't make any money. Money and music don't really go together. If you can cover costs that's fine. That's what we do."

On last year's European tour with two trucks, two buses and 20 people, they spent $16,000 a day without trying.

"We played 300 shows in less than two years and never pulled out," offers Illsley in a completely matter of fact tone.

"At the end of last year we were getting a bit pickled," put in Knopfler.

"Frazzled, that is," concurred Illsley.

"What got really knackering," Knopfler continues, "was two shows a night. Not enough time to have a shower and stop shiverin.' It's exhausting. The show's always a bit leaden at the start, then the adrenalin pulls you through.

"I get soaked. It's almost embarrassing, you know, and John gets splattered. I've even gotten notes from the audience about it. It's a bit tiring for Pick and everybody up there."

So this tour is set up for one long show per night, instead.

Meanwhile, the bristling machinery of Warner Bros. Records produces thousands, soon to be millions, of the new LP. With awesome precision, the album will surface in record stores mid-tour.

They will, however, be down one man this tour--Mark's brother David Knopfler, who's gone in search of his own career.

When asked where the other Strait had gone, Knopfler said Pick was in London with his pregnant wife. A short silence followed.

Since Roy Brittan, former Bruce Springsteen pianist, and Sid McGinnis, recently on guitar with Peter Gabriel, guested on Making Movies, it's likely they might appear on the road.

What about the album title? Funny you should ask.

From New York, the group would head to London for two appointments -- a BBC documentary on the group and a date with filmmaker Lester Bookbinder.

"It's a daft idea," says Knopfler.

"Kind of an experiment," adds Illsley.

"Very expensive," they chorus.

We groaned together for a moment, thinking simultaneously of yet another rock group on two hours of videotape.

Then, Illsley hastened to explain, "It's had its day, that sort of thing. Very boring. This is a film, you know, with a plot. We considered videotape but the people using film use it with a bit more sensitivity."

They'll be acting in this "experiment," in small roles--a bartender here, a crowd scene there. It is to be based on four songs, all in the new LP: "Tunnel of Love," "Romeo and Juliet," "Skateaway," and "Expresso Love."

Because New York was then bubbling and oozing Democratic conventioneers from every access point, it seemed derelict not to inquire if they were headed toward Madison Square Garden.

Fairly hooting with laughter they declared themselves not much for American politics.

Spokesman Knopfler, however, did have one comment for American collegiates, offered after a pantomime of his tidy solution to world affairs, which was regularly scheduled one-on-one boxing bouts between international leaders.

"What we can't understand," he said, "is why your students are sitting still for the draft--complacency instead of resistance. It's almost un-American, that being like sheep."