In the documentary Mark Knopfler: Guitar Stories, Knopfler and Dire Straits bassist John Illsley discuss guitars recall how they had missed that live broadcast because they were helping someone move. The record companies showed no interest until legendary radio DJ Charlie Gillett played a Dire Straits demo tape in his Honky Tonk BBC show, a track called 'Sultans of Swing.' Even before the last bar had been played, several record labels called the station to find out who had written the song. The band name referred to its members' initial financial situation. While he was a student, Knopfler worked first as a reporter and farm hand and later as an English teacher, until he founded Dire Straits with his younger brother David in 1977. His uncle's piano playing sparked his passion for music, and his parents gave him his first guitar. His mother was a teacher, his father was a Hungarian architect who had fled his country in 1939 because he was close to the Communists. The successful British band Dire Straits' frontman, who now turns 70, finds looking back as unpleasant as life in the limelight. Listening again now, the momentum of a band firing on all cylinders is unbroken, from the opening moments of “Once Upon A Time In The West” to the valedictory “Going Home.Nostalgia is not guitarist Mark Knopfler's strong suit. Saturday, he remembered, had been a good night – so that’s what was used for the Alchemy release. After two epic performances, the recordings of both were delivered to Knopfler at his home, but he was too exhausted from touring to listen to them. When Dire Straits gathered at Hammersmith Odeon, they were at the end of an extensive European tour that had included another London date at the Dominion Theater two nights earlier. He completed the soundtrack to Bill Forsyth’s charming comedy Local Hero and won an Ivor Novello Award in the process for its “Going Home” theme. As this writer observed in the liner notes for the 2010 reissue of Alchemy, the London performances followed a period of solo endeavours in which Mark Knopfler laid the groundwork for the solo career he follows with such distinction today.

Dire straits album live