45 Years Later: Revisiting Dire Straits’ Career Defining Self Titled Debut Album

Even without the benefit of hindsight, It’s not hard to understand how the debut of Dire Straits hit such a responsive chord with music lovers around the world forty-five years ago. The absolutely infectious nature of the “Sultans of Swing” aside–it became a hit single in America and the band’s native England some months after the album came out–this literate, deceptively subdued blues-rock reminded of nothing so much as a combination of Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton, both of whose artistic reputations were suffering somewhat at the time.

Notwithstanding the references to those icons, Dire Straits also sounds like the work of the most extraordinary bar band imaginable. As earthy as it is insinuating, this album produced by Muff Winwood (brother of Steve) is one bereft of flash, but replete with deceptive depth. 

Like so many other tracks of these nine, the vivid imagery of people and places of “Down to the Waterline” might well be a sketch for a movie proposal. Besides those cinematic pieces, there’s also the vivid likes of “In The Gallery” and “Wild West End”), on top of which Straits’ chief songwriter and lead guitarist Mark Knopfler also found a place for symbology in the form of “Lions.” 

There’s more articulate observation than emotional eloquence as in “Six Blade Knife” and “Setting Me Up.” But “Water of Love” is something else again, the acoustic flavor balancing the sly ardor expressed in the lyrics: it’s a continuation of an emotional theme permeating Dire Straits and effectively balancing its often cerebral air.

The combination of words with the author’s sly vocal delivery is similarly offsetting as it matches the fretboard work of the quartet’s titular leader. Meanwhile, the restrained understatement of the Knopfler sibling David on rhythm guitar, John Illsley on bass, and Pick Withers on drums is perfectly complementary backing; the bluesy bounce of the band during “Southbound Again,” for instance, simultaneously posits well-schooled genre references to the blues and country along with more than just a tacit invitation to dance. 

Dire Straits never really made another album like this first one. There’s no question the initial single from the 1979 follow-up Communique, “Lady Writer,” sounded like a deliberate rewrite of “Sultans of Swing,” but it hardly fared so well commercially and rightfully so: the performance on the latter sounds effortless rather than forced, the band riding the very momentum the propulsion of their musicianship created.

Given the sophomore album’s recording location in Nassau, it’s perhaps not surprisingly most of the second Dire Straits LP is such an exercise in languor. The heat of the Bahamas so infuses the music, most of it sounds like its closer, “Follow Me Home,” a dreamy set of alternate takes from earlier sessions rather than an authoritative extension of the foursome’s clearly source but still fairly distinctive approach.

Perhaps it’s that very nagging sense of repetition that moved Mark’s brother to leave the group early in the sessions for the third effort, 1980’s Making Movies. Leading directly to the more expansive concepts of Love Over Gold, where the writing and production took precedence over the readily identifiable imprint of the musicians, the 1982 record foreshadowed Mark Knopfler’s future work writing for films (beginning the very next year with Local Hero).

Under those circumstances, the eventual departure of idiosyncratic instrumentalist Withers may have been a fait accompli. Illsey remained through Brothers In Arms–the sales of which consolidated the market for compact discs in 1985–and indeed til the group finally disbanded a decade later after On Every Street. 

That sixth and final Dire Straits album would seem to have little in common with its 1978 predecessor, but the extended perspective of four and a half decades affords some keen perspective on exactly how much the two have in common. Both benefit from intelligent original material, savvy musicianship, and astute technical skills, all of which Mark Knopfler filtered through a natural aptitude for creating records that are a world unto themselves.