Album of the Day — June 25
Dire Straits — Making Movies
Dire Straits — Making Movies
25.June.2020
Dire Straits
Making Movies
1980
Long before he was getting money for nuthin’ and chicks for free, Mark Knopfler was just another guitar player in a band … albeit a very good guitar player.
Mark Knopfler, for all of his amazing talent, and his band Dire Straits had the misfortune of releasing their debut album the same year as another very good guitar player, Edward Van Halen.
The self-titled debut albums by both Dire Straits and Van Halen were in 1978. And while Knopfler and Van Halen are stylistic opposites, it was Eddie Van Halen who got the lion’s share of the attention.
But that didn’t mean people weren’t paying attention to Knopfler. Their Muff Winwood produced debut album and it’s single “Sultans of Swing” threw a middle finger to the two big trends at the time — making that album was the perfect antidote to disco and punk.
For their second album, Communique, Dire Straits enlisted legendary producers Jerry Wexler (Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett) and Barry Beckett (The Swampers — The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section).
Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits may not have had the immediate trajectory that Eddie Van Halen and his band did, but Communique continued their upward climb.
Before he was an A-list producer, label head, entrepreneur, and eventual billionaire, Jimmy Iovine was just another rock and roll hustler. In 1978, he was coming off producing two Bruce Springsteen albums (Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town) as well as producing Patti Smith’s breakthrough single “Because the Night” (co-written by Springsteen).
It was the latter that caught Mark Knopfler’s ear.
When it came time to record their third album, Knopfler tapped Iovine to produce what would eventually become Making Movies.
Mark Knopfler was the songwriter, lead singer and lead guitarist and when he and the rest of Dire Straits (John Illsley on bass and Pick Withers on drums) entered New York City’s Power Station in June of 1980, he would add producer to his duties; leaving little doubt who was in charge of the band’s sound and vision.
Making Movies would find the band solidifying their sound — a sound that married the wide berth of Knopfler’s, and the bands, influences: country, folk, blues, roots rock, and a healthy dose of British pub rock.
By this third album, Knopfler had perfected both his lackadaisical vocal style and the ease at which he played his guitar.
Both the lyrics and the music belie the complexities that Knopfler brought to them.
The albums second track, “Romeo and Juliet”, opens with introductory arpeggios and melody are played on a National Style “O” guitar — the same guitar featured on the album artwork for their monster album, Brothers in Arms.
The lyrics of “Romeo and Juliet” then go on to not only reference Shakespeare but also West Side Story and ’60s hit song “My Boyfriend’s Back”:
A lovestruck Romeo sang the streets of serenade
Laying everybody low with a love song that he made
Finds a streetlight, steps out of the shade
Says something like, “You and me, babe, how about it?”
Juliet says, “Hey, it’s Romeo, you nearly gave me a heart attack”
He’s underneath the window, she’s singing, “Hey, la, my boyfriend’s back
You shouldn’t come around here singing up at people like that
Anyway, what you gonna do about it?”
An almost toss away reference to the long storied play, the song is deeply personal for its author. The song was inspired by Mark Knopfler’s failed romance with Holly Vincent.
He’s stated that he believes Vincent was using him to boost her career. The song’s line: “Now you just say, oh Romeo, yeah, you know I used to have a scene with him,” refers to an interview with Vincent in which she said: “What happened was that I had a scene with Mark Knopfler … ‘
The album’s single, “Skateaway” was far from a “hit” but gained popularity for its video. The song peaked at #58 on Billboards Hot 100 but the video was wildly popular on the upstart network, MTV.
The imagery that Knopfler uses to portray “Rollergirl” in the song paints a modern woman who is both aware of her sexuality and its power … unafraid to use it. The people who do notice her are in awe:
I seen a girl on a one-way corridor
Stealing down a wrong way street
For all the world like an urban toreador
She had wheels on on her feet
Well the cars do the usual dances
Same old cruise and the kerbside crawl
But the roller girl she’s taking chances
They just love to see her take them all
No fears alone at night she’s sailing through the crowd
In her ears the phones are tight and the music’s playing loud
Hallelujah here she comes queen rollerball
Enchante what can I say don’t care at all
You know she used to have to wait around
She used to be the lonely one
But now that she can skate around town
She’s the only one
No fears alone at night she’s sailing through the crowd
In her ears the phones are tight and the music’s playing loud
She gets rock n roll a rock n roll station
And a rock n roll dream
She’s making movies on location
She don’t know what it means
But the music make her want to be the story
And the story was whatever was the song what it was
Roller girl don’t worry
D.J. play the movies all night long
She tortures taxi drivers just for fun
She likes to read their lips
Says toro toro taxi see ya tomorrow, my son
I swear she let a big truck grease her hip
She got her own world in the city
You can’t intrude on her
She got her own world in the city
’cause the city’s been so rude to her
The album was both critically and commercially successful. Critics like Stephen Thomas Erlewine at AllMusic said that it “ranks among the band’s finest work.”
In his initial review in Rolling Stone form 1980, David Fricke sums it up best:
Making Movies is the record on which Mark Knopfler comes out from behind his influences and Dire Straits comes out from behind Mark Knopfler. The combination of the star’s lyrical script, his intense vocal performances, and the band’s cutting-edge rock & roll soundtrack is breathtaking — everything the first two albums should have been but weren’t.
I’m not exactly sure what this guy likes, but the self-proclaimed “Dean of American Rock Critics” Robert Christgau didn’t like it, giving Making Movies a C+ rating:
If any up-and-coming rock-and-roller aspires to auteur status it’s Mark Knopfler, and among those with a taste for his rather corny plots (Romeo and Juliet, fancy that) this establishes his claim. Me, I note that this third album closes with his second gay-baiting song, and that I wasn’t surprised [I’m unclear on the first]. Better he should work on somebody else’s stories — his guitar has emerged from Eric Clapton’s shadow into a jazzy rock that muscles right past Larry Carlton and ilk. Steely Straits, anyone? Or would that be Dire Dan?
Musically, Iovine and Knopfler found a way to build on the Dire Straits sound. A noticeable progression, but not so much to alienate anyone. Knopfler and band would reach their apogee of sound with Brothers In Arms.
Lyrically, the album is both smart and clever but doesn’t break any new ground. And sometimes that’s enough — no one is looking to re-invent the wheel.
It’s the lyrics that make Fricke’s assessment the best, “if Making Movies were a film, it might win a flock of Academy Awards.”