Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms

1985 was a hell of a year for cool music. Dire Straits was right there in the mix with some of the best songs of the year. Dire Straits was still Dire Straits flitting on the periphery of what was in vogue while somehow managing to be at the centre of things. A year that saw albums by The Cult, Talking Heads, Tears for Fears, John Cougar Mellencamp along with a host of others that are too numerous to mention without taking up most of this post. This album was huge - it would move over a million copies in Canada, nine in the States topping out at over thirty worldwide.

Of course to twenty two year old me, it was "Money for Nothing" that floated my boat. Much like "Industrial Disease" did from Love Over Gold. I was at best "a sort of fan" but didn't have their records. My roommate had the band's live album Alchemy (which I heard after Brothers in Arms) and "Telegraph Road" remains to this day one of my favourite songs by Dire Straits.

I'll get back to "Money for Nothing" in a bit.

I almost didn't get the record because I couldn't stand "Walk of Life" there was something about the song that just irritated me. Back in '85 it seemed to be on the radio all the time. Now of course it's settled into the pillowy realm of nostalgia and it's just another song on the album. However the redemption song to me was "So Far Away" a song that just made me happy. I know that the order of the singles is probably out of sync with reality but my memory seems to give added weight to "Walk of Life" and the other songs that were better were probably earlier. Who knows, maybe it was later and it erased the goodwill earned from the two better songs.

Does it really matter? Listening to this now Brothers in Arms is without a doubt a crowning achievement, but it's also one where the two sides of the record appealed to different tastes. Side one was the hits, starting with the opening track "So Far Away" that sets the hook, and it's firmly set with "Money for Nothing" and then the band starts to reel things in. "Walk of Life" is catchy now and most of (not all) my youthful vitriol had dissipated with the passage of time. The last two tracks on side one are more contemplative, "Your Latest Trick" and "Why Worry" are good pieces of music, and I still remember at the time being okay with the change in direction from the more pop oriented songs. Side two was underplayed back in the day. The songs (which I am not going to list off, despite doing so for side one) never resonated with me, although the album's closing and title track "Brothers in Arms" is a masterclass in pop awesomeness, and is truly the centrepiece of the album. Listening to them now they feel new. It's interesting to me now because over the ensuing decades these are the songs that defined Dire Straits, not the radio friendly pop songs.

Speaking of radio friendly "Money for Nothing" is probably the song that has had to shed the most baggage. Writing a song as a third person narrative Mark discovered like Randy Newman before him, that singing as a character can go over the head of the listener especially when all you see is Mark Knopfler singing the song. It wasn't long before a whole verse was altered and then dropped (cancelled?). It is what it is, and while I'm partial to hearing the song in it's original format as a skewering of a homophobic character, but if all you hear are the words and not context it can be easy to take offence.

This is one of those albums that was a remarkable feat at the time. It was a complex album that included just enough ear candy to appeal to the kids, of which I was one at the time. Much like hiding a pill inside a cookie I ended up being exposed to much more than I ever expected. 

As good as the candy was, it was the meat and potatoes that ended up being the most satisfying.