The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 161

whole area of creation plays all kinds of tricks on the writer but the singer was front and centre in Hand In Hand, Romeo and Juliet and Expresso Love. Solid Rock was Knopfler's declaration of independence a pronouncement that he was taking full responsibility, nothing was going to get in his way, and those who wanted to come along on his terms were welome to share the ride. "When you point your finger 'cause your plan fell through," Knopfler sang, "you got three fingers pointing back at you." Mark saw that as an image of accepted responsibility. Brother David took the other three fingers to be the other three Straits. The last song Mark added to the Making Movies album was Hand In Hand: If I been hard on you I never chose to be I never wanted no one else I tried my best to be somebody you'd be close to Hand in hand like lovers are supposed to Maybe it was unintentional that the song worked as well for "brothers" as for It was at the same time the summer of 1980 that Mark met and fell in love with Lourdes Salamoni who was working at the Manhattan recording studio, Power Station.

When Mark announced their betrothal there were mumbles among some of his distant north country relations. Who was this woman who wanted to marry their rich grand-nephew? An American golddigger? Well those suspicious aunties were set back in their rockers by the revelation that Lourdes was herself from New World wealth and had been working for her money not because she had to but because she wanted to. Kind of brings to mind a Randy Newman song; the one where the groom comes out of the bathroom on his wedding night and tells the startled bride, I ain't no negro, I'm a millionaire! Knopfler says he always thought he'd live in America eventually. "Just because of rock 'n' roll music," he explains. "America's made up of Everyman, and in some ways I feel I'm made of Everyman, too." Knopfler's taught college, worked on a farm, been a reporter and thinks he fitted in pretty well at each stop.

"I feel I have things in common with almost every place I am," he says. "The only time I feel really at odds with all the people around me is when I'm anywhere near a mob. That's when I really feel like an outsider. I remember once going to a anything else. We're all different people.

There are similarities, obviously, but it's a mistake to start identifying with your fathers or your brothers. "On The Man's Too Strong I was just trying to get into the mind of somebody who's lived his life that way. It's an experiment in character, in play-writing I suppose. Brothers In Arms is written from the point of view of a soldier dying on the battlefield. To write something like that you can't just write off the top of your head.

You have to dig deep if the thing's going to be realistic. You're an outsider but to do it properly you're also digging inside. I don't think you can get away scot-free. If you do the song's not going to work. "The whole area of creation plays all kinds of tricks on the writer.

It can fool him into thinking it's easier than it is; it can fool him into thinking it's harder than it is; it can fool him into thinking it's working when it's not, or not working when it is." So which Dire Straits songs are completely from the inside? Which are Mark Knopfler speaking in his own voice? "I suppose Hand In Hand," Knopfler answers. "And Water Of Love because I was so fed up. I felt I was going no place. I could see my future stretching out in front of me long and Every writer has some subject that eludes him. "I've never felt moved to Knopfler: a weird business football match where the guys liked to fight one another, and feeling so utterly separate from that.

Maybe they were kids who were made to feel like rejects, and this was their way to release all that energy. "I got into plenty of fights growing up in Glasgow and Newcastle. I enjoyed playing all the war games as a kid. But I still fear it and feel terrible about it that so many people are not averse to waving a broken bottle in somebody's face; so many people walk around with guns; so many people feel it's perfectly all right to send armies into places to shoot 'em up. What the hell is that? In World War I my grandfathers were probably fighting in the British and German armies.

If they'd killed each other there'd have been no strummin'." His empathy for the downtrodden and Knopfler's political sympathies have resulted in a whole suite of anti-war songs on Brothers In Arms. The Man's Too Strong is delivered in the voice of an aging war criminal, apparently a Nazi. "It's a study in guilt, hatred and Knopfler explains. "It could be a Hesslike figure in the depths of Spandau Prison, or anybody who's not at peace with himself." Could this new subject matter be connected to the fact that Knopfler, now in his mid-30s, is the same age his father was when he fled the Nazis? "I don't think so," Knopfler says. "If you're involved in poetry and music, that's different from being involved in write about particularly obscene people," Knopfler says.

This upright impediment presented a problem when the songwriter put together Money For Nothing, a lyric inspired by an appliance store employee Knopfler heard mocking Music TV rock stars shining down on him from a row of display televisions. "I borrowed a bit of paper and actually wrote that song while I was in the store," Knopfler recalls. "I wanted to use the language the guy really used. It was more real. I did use 'that little but there were a couple of good which mean nothing to you in a hardware store in New York City, but which might mean something to people who live in Tallahassee.

There's no way I could expect people to receive that in the spirit it's intended. They'd probably think I was just being vulgar. Still, if we have time I might record a version with the real language, just to have it for myself." Knopfler figures the logic of the songwriting process becomes apparent only in retrospect. "It's always based on music you like to play," he says. "It's a weird business.

It has to have a whole harmonic balance. You try to create something that will work on a number of levels it's functional, it's beautiful, it makes a point, it has its own reality. You try staying outside while being inside too. You can't just enter into the depths of the thing and have bits of paint flying GOOD WEEKEND.