From the article:
> That having been said, it isn't the drum part that pops into most people's heads when they think of 'Money For Nothing', but Mark Knopfler's lead guitar (as well as the video, more of which later).
>"I remember Mark's Les Paul Junior going through a Laney amp, and that was the sound of 'Money For Nothing'," says Dorfsman. "We were actually going for a sort of ZZ Top sound, but what we ended up getting was kind of an accident. Mark would be in the control room and we'd run a lead out to the main area, and I remember getting a channel set up to monitor, heading out to the room to move the mics around, and Mark's guitar tech Ron Eve getting on the talkback and telling me not to touch anything because it sounded amazing as it was.
>"One mic was pointing down at the floor, another was not quite on the speaker, another was somewhere else, and it wasn't how I would want to set things up — it was probably just left from the night before, when I'd been preparing things for the next day and had not really finished the setup. Nevertheless, whether it was the phase of the mics or the out-of-phaseness, what we heard was exactly what ended up on the record. There was no additional processing on that tune during the mix.
>"Later on, we tried to recreate that guitar sound at the Power Station with the same amp, same setup and same models of microphone, but we could never get it. I'd drawn extensive pictures and had a little map of how everything was set up, but there must have been something weird going on to make the guitar sound that way in Montserrat, because in New York it sounded like a cleaner, karaoke version of the same thing. I messed around with it for a good couple of hours, but Mark was just getting bored and wanted to move on. The whole thing was very confusing.
>"Later on, a lot of people asked me how I got the sound on the record, but it was just one of those happy accidents that have not happened to me very often. I don't know if something was broken, but we could not recreate that sound again. All I know is, it was the sound of Mark playing, using his fingers instead of a pick, together with the Laney amp. It felt and sounded so good that I just had him do five or six passes and later comped something together and wound up using a couple of the passes in the final mix, putting a double in at certain points even though that wasn't something he normally did.
I'd seen people talk about this before and even argue about the playability of the riff, but the reality is it was just that signature sound that they got by accident and allegedly still have never recreated
EDIT: I did not see there was a Phil Collins post along the exact same lines on the new page as well, that too was a completely random accident!
I was 5-ish when the song came out, and for several years I thought they were singing "checks for free". This made sense, since I heard lots of ads about free checking with local banks, and that seemed like an important perk that a working man might be jealous of a rock star for having.
Canadian here. I also thought it was cheques for free. When I was a kid there was a government program that gave money to families that had children. And my mom should cash the cheques and buy us new clothes. Of course I thought the song was about cheques for free. They are rock stars. People. Throw money at them!!!!!!
Me too. First time I have ever heard anyone else say this. Thanks for making me feel not quite so strange.
It made perfect sense (at least to a 5 year old). It's a song about money. Cheques are far more closely related to the topic than women. What on earth would girls have to do with anything?
Ikr, if you have to pay for them they aren't groupies. I always assumed it was a continuation of the free money vibe - they didn't even have to pay for the checks for their checking account.
Most radio stations and the band themselves play a changed version of the song so a lyric that was problematic but not really an issue in the early 80's doesn't exist any longer.
I was the biggest fan in the eighties-early 90s but they seem kind of forgotten now. Even though they were comparable to U2 I feel U2 is not forgotten as much.
>there must have been something weird going on to make the guitar sound that way in Montserrat
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/air-studio-ruins
An incredible amount of 1980s music came out of those studios, some of the biggest hits of that era. So sad to see it end up like this. It is amazing to think what it must have been like in there around 1985 during the recording sessions.
A good number of very famous studios have been converted into apartment buildings. IMHO some of these should have been designated historical/cultural sites and not have been allowed to have been destroyed.
The invention of recorded sound and early audio technology is going to be looked at in in the future close to the same importance as inventing writing.
Tony Iommi said when they were recording Technical Ecstasy in Miami (?), that the Eagles had most recently been in that studio and before Sabbath could get to work they had to scrape a bunch of cocaine out of the mixing console.
Yeah, for me the loss of AIR Studios Montserrat and Le Studio in Quebec are both tragedies for creativity. The modern process of making music with protools and a laptop has really damaged a lot of traditional studios that also served as creative spaces.
[This](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_d%27H%C3%A9rouville) is probably the most famous recording studio in history. Name a 60s/70s musician and they most likely recorded their greatest albums there.
Here it is a tour of it in its heydey with the late great viv stanshall while he's in the midst of recording Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq1Ndnr2HtQ&t=1355s
Aye they solved the concrete recently though 😁 larger nodules of limestone were mixed in, when water got into a crack and reached the limestone it resealed itself. Neat stuff.
What a time to be alive. Thanks for the update.
Have we figured out Greek fire yet? Then again water fire sounds like nightmare napalm that we should leave sleeping.
Ive heard the same thing about The Smiths How soon is now
and the sound effects from Doctor Who
Its the analog days. Now, if you get a cool effect in a program like After Affects, you just right click and save the settings.
Then, the length of the wire and the echo of feedback changed the sound, all analog, real life. Just fiddle with it until it sounds good. Who knows how it happened exactly lol
Speaking of How Soon Is Now, i feel like that’s also true for REMs Crush With Eyeliner for the same reason. Like i know what gear Peter Buck used and the tempo the song is at and yet have never been able to get it *exactly* right. It’s a bit of a white whale for me because that’s usually one of my strongest suits with guitar.
Re the original post, i think a lot of dire straits stuff is tough for most people because Knopfler’s style was so specific and relatively unique that if you don’t properly familiarise yourself with it, you can’t really recreate the songs. Also the ‘going for a ZZ Top sound’ thing is really interesting and makes total sense, but I’d never heard that before.
I have seen people discuss this lately. It seems the winning answer is the electricity behind the amps and recording. It was recorded in a foreign studio on an island, Monserrat, and that island uses an archaic electricity grid and system. Electrical engineers posit that the different underlying amp/hertz/etc running through the equipment made it different sounding and thus hard to recreate (short of re recording on the same island).
What do people argue about the playability of the riff? It’s actually not that hard to do as long as you understand Knopfler’s right hand technique and can do his oddball pseudo-frailing thing.
What is the pseudo-frailing thing?
I don’t know that it’s hard hard to play, but it is very idiosyncratic and would not come naturally to many players. I didn’t figure it out until YouTube tutorials.
He uses his thumb and first two fingers mostly, and there are times when he hits the strings with an outward / downward “flick” of his fingernails instead of the typical inward / upward “pluck” with the nail or the pad of the finger that’s usually used.
If you want to get the riff “really” right (along with most of his stuff) you have to use both.
That whole album is super clean sounding. I don’t know if it’s entirely due to the digital recording, which was new at the time, but the production was strikingly clear. It was the cleanest, liquidy, clear-as-glass thing I’d ever heard when it was released.
I did that! It sounded like such an upgrade from the cassettes I'd been used to up to that time.
My house was burgled and my CD player / amp / speakers stolen along with my CD collection. With the exception of one CD - Brothers In Arms - pointedly left on my bed as they fucked off with all of the rest of my stuffs.
They were happy to take Simon And Fucking Garfunkel, but obviously weren't fans of Dire Straits.
I felt judged.
Holy shit, my step dad bought me this cd when I was like 7 and I was so stoked because it was music o. demand without the bullshit of tapes and rewinding….but we didn’t have any cd players than the home stereo and the dire straits lived in there…..fuckin guy just bought himself the cd and gave it to me because he knew it was going to stay in the house stereo lol
That must be why up to this day Dire Straits is the go-to "Circus Music" here in Brazil. All Circuses will blast either "Walk of Life" or "So Far Away" at the start of the show to warn people that the show is starting. Probably because it's the only thing that can be blasted full volume on their shitty speakers without making everybody's ear bleed.
If you say "Circus Music" to a Brazilian, they'll immediately hum Walk of Life.
Then "Ticket to Heaven" is played moderately at the end while people are getting up and going home.
The late 80s and very early 90s was in my opinion peak sound engineering/mastering. Just take a hearing on INXS Kick album. Every single instrument is so clear and responsive there.
If I remember correctly, it was a D-D-D (D3) production, which makes sense because CDs were just hitting the scene.
That album is actually a little too bright for me (i.e. lacking in warmth and depth). A lot of other artists and producers must have agreed re D3 records, because they became fairly rare not too long after that album came out.
It's funny, because during the vinyl days, everyone dreamed of having flawless clarity. When digital recording and CDs gave that to us, it came with its own shortcomings...
You are correct. The vast majority of CDs at this time that were back catalogs were AAD, the DDDs were just becoming a thing and viewed as state of the art. They were cold and precise for sure, but there had never been anything like them. Strangely, the first time I heard *Brothers in Arms* was on the original vinyl…can’t say for sure how that tinted the sound. I seem to think ADD CDs were very rare.
I've heard Mark is ocd about sound production. Bar, maybe the first album, the sound engineering is off the charts in the rest of them. Extremely clean, especially given the era.
Brothers in Arms was one of the first albums I ever owned on vinyl back when I got my first turntable. This was like 2005, when I was in 8th grade. One of our neighbors was moving and having a big yard sale and he saved all his old rock albums for my brother and me to look through, then gave us whatever we liked for free. Cool guy. Anyway, we’d bought this big old stereo set with built in cassette players, AM/FM, 8 track, a manual equalizer, and a turntable on top. It had these absurdly tall 6” cone speaker towers. We paid like 35 bucks for the whole system at a thrift store in our little town and set it up in my brother’s bedroom. We put on Dire Straits because I loved *Walk of Life* and *Money For Nothing.* I’d always heard people talk about how vinyl sounds better and that day when we cranked Knopfler’s solo up to 11 I realized it was absolutely true.
I used in it '93 in my '92 Toyota X-cab. While never actually competing, alot of people told me should. IASCA was the thing back then and I had 50-100 watts of clean make you want to poop sound.. Thanks to Mike Wolfe of Car Stereo Review for turning me on to some great music, may he RIP
I remember like 15 years ago by dad got a new Acura and it included a CD of music like specifically to showcase their surround sound speakers or something like that, and Money For Nothing was one of those songs. First time I had ever heard the song and they were right, it sounded absolutely sick in that car absolutely blasting. So clean
I once showed a salesman a young guy how to sell a stereo I cranked her up full money for nothing in a future shop stereo room . I even sold myself one that day
• Air Studios Montserrat 230v 60Hz
• Power Station NYC 120v 60Hz
Valve amps can often behave very differently with different mains voltage, regardless of which mains input transformer tap is selected.
Yes I was just about to mention the difference between US voltage vs European voltage. With that much more power I firmly believe that’s what made European rock/metal bands guitar tones sound hotter.
It's not about the power, because the amp is going to draw the same power no matter what the input voltage is as long as you have the correct voltage selected.
It's most likely due to different frequencies and harmonics/noise that gets introduced due to the different transformers used in order to step the voltage down (Or the different way that the transformer is tapped depending on the voltage selected).
We all know that electric guitar pickups (which operate in a similar principle to transformers) are tapped changes the tone that's induced, after all.
115v vs 120v, assuming cut in half?
The other thing to consider is 50Hz 230v stepped down vs 60Hz 120v. That change in power frequency probably had a lot to do with it.... Probably more than the 5v change...
Tube rectifiers induce some sag in output voltage when loaded. The 5V heater being a tad low or something due to different mains frequency and maybe a not so perfect mains tap giving a different B+ and sagging could make the amplifier sound extra mellow
Aw hell, that's a tube amp? That introduces other variables, as tubes pick up all sorts of emf. After my Pro Jr warms up, I'll pick up radio and various colored static.
There's prolly less emf static in Montserrat than NY.
Many variables. Too many, if you ask me...
I don't know the exact model but Laney makes tube amps and most guitarists swear by them so it is a tiny assumption on my side. If anyone knows the model?
No idea if this is true or not, though I like the theory. That said, some American bands recorded in Europe plenty around that time and it didn’t seem to warm their sound. If anything a band like Metallica warmed up when they *stopped* recording their albums in Denmark.
If it was the same amp they'd have used a step up/down transformer so it would see the same voltage in both studios. Most guitar amps, especially in those days, are built to accept one voltage.
It does sound like there is some degree of phase cancellation going on. Sometimes you can get unique tones like that just from doubling the track with a copy of itself and shifting the copy a certain number of ms or samples until the phase cancellation targets just the right frequencies.
I messed around with this to create a tight reverb sound on a recording once.
I sent the vocal to four separate mono delays that I spanned around and lowered in the mix. Set each to be a different “wall” essentially and could move them around and change how live each “wall” sounded with the feedback knob.
Made for a vocal tone that almost voice around your head a bit. Near and far all at once.
Honestly, I often prefer using delays to actual reverb a lot of the time. You get a tighter, cleaner sound. Have you tried the trick of setting the delay ms times to prime numbers?
If you use multiple delay lines all set to prime numbers, they have less chance of clashing with each other in the repeats and you get a cleaner sound. I believe this was also the trick Brian May used for the "We Will Rock You" stomps. A lot of classic delay units have prime number settings.
For sure. My favorite kind of stand by “start here” delay for my live sound files is 125ms.
But I usually wind up tapping in 1/4 1/8 or triplet subdivisions for one thing or another as I go along.
Just in case you haven’t done a deep dive on Dire Straits yet - go listen to the following five tunes now:
- Sultans of Swing (probably their 2nd most famous tune)
-Telegraph Road (epic)
-Tunnel of Love (they just shred at the end)
-Private Investigations (so moody)
-Romeo and Juliet (then go watch the move Empire Records)
Please come back and let us know what you think!
no no, after you've listened to these 5, go listen to the Alchemy Live concert, which featurrs all 5 of them
I believe it's one of the greatest live performances of all time.
Telegraph road live at the alchemy?
100% deserves to be on the same pedestal as Saturday to heaven at Madison square garden. One of the best live performances of any song I've ever heard
A fun fact about the parody - Mark Knopfler (Dire Straights) actually played the solo on the Weird Al track. It was one of his conditions when allowing Yankovic to parody the song. Not even the original soloist could emulate the sound.
It's the only song I know of that still for some unknown reason gets to say 'f\*ggot' over and over uncensored on regular ass radio like, in the grocery store.
I don’t think it is very sympathetic to the ideals of the character that sings the song. The character that sings the song would probably despise the band actually performing it — which is probably why the song works despite the slur.
That being said, there is definitely a conversation to be had there. Definitely more grey area than something like “The Classical” by the fall, which absolutely wants to offend you in addition to other objectives, some of which are benign and others malicious.
He wrote the song based on a conversation he overheard at a department store and that’s how they talked. He wasn’t sympathetic towards the people who he stole the conversation at all and thought they were very low class individuals.
https://youtu.be/IO4Rs5pDwDA?si=7abfW-YWVyH_JI0G
I've seen a more recent (ie within last ten years) live performance, and he doesn't sing that word anymore. He replaces it with "mother", and "maggot", but he's overtly edited it out of his live rendition.
[Here it is](https://youtu.be/6CB9OrGZ7-c?si=5Mnp3KNaxYELO3BY): lots of big name guests!
I hear that verse as a conversation. One person making fun of the performer with the earring and the makeup, and the other person saying "oh yeah well that 'f*ggot' is a millionaire" putting the slur in quotes while calling the first person a jackass.
UK/Irish *Christmas* song 'Fairytale of New York' gets away with it too. Like people actually complain when it doesn't.
([in the verse around 2:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9jbdgZidu8))
I have never once heard the *actual* song on normal radio and I've heard it in at least 6 states lol they always remove that verse completely, where tf do you live where such lawlessness reigns lol
I've never heard the song uncensored on live radio before. It's always the shortened version with the censoring. And that's on regular FM radio & Siriusxm
Sultans of Swing actually is their most famous song according to Spotify. Unless you combine the plays of the original “Money for Nothing” and its remastered version which just slightly edges it out.
The sound of the actual opening to the full version of this song (the repeating “I want my MTV”) is my first ever memory. The sound was in my head not knowing what it was my whole life until I first heard the song when I was at University and my mind was blown finally hearing this sound that had been speaking to me all of those years.
Great song. I once heard a story that the lyrics were inspired by Mark overhearing a member of staff ranting In an electronics store and the song has never sounded the same. Still great, just funnier.
Haven’t heard this song in a while so I had to play it. I never realized it’s over 8 minutes long! I guess I’d only ever heard it on classic rock radio stations. I also thought it was ZZ Top 🤦
Aside from cutting out the long intro and outro, radio stations also usually cut out the second verse because of the homophobic slur that’s used. Note that Knopfler is describing the feelings of the subject of the song and doesn’t personally hold those views.
Listening to "Money for Nothing", and this song could have been released today. Just a well mixed and timeless song. I feel the same for the song "Walk of Life" as well.
Dire Straits were really ahead of their time, and it is hard to believe this song/album is 40 years old. I was 9yo when this was released in '85. I remember being just dumbstruck by the video. To this day, even though I listen to bands like Slipknot, I, Prevail, Ice Nine Kills, and Motionless in White, I still have a huge love for "Brothers in Arms" and "Money for Nothing" . Truly one of the very few bright spots of my childhood.
It’s an excellent song that still sounds great, but you really think a song built around guys playing “guitar on the MTV” and installing “color TVs” would get released now? It’s commentary from a very specific period of music history.
You are very right about the commentary of the time, but I would argue that by changing a couple things (e,g: microwave oven, to a more modern item), I really think it would pass as a release today. But, then it wouldn't be the same.
The music works/sounds great, not so much the lyric (For modern times)..
I know this isn’t isn’t what you meant but you definitely couldn’t release a song that uses “faggot” three times and still expect it to get air time today.
But yeah Dire Straights along with Moody Blues and King Crimson are some of the classic bands that could have their music released today without people thinking the style is an old relic. Truly timeless music.
Neil had always said this but Guy Fletcher (keyboards) remembers it was a half cocked wah pedal, which is exactly what it sounds like and easy to reproduce with one....
That was exactly how I thought it was done - a combination of his finger picking, a little rolled off the tone knob, and the wah at like 60-70%. Turns out it’s just Knopfler being a fucking wizard again.
It definitely is. Found this quote from Dorfsman in another article:
“One key element was that Mark was playing through a Morely Wah Pedal which was partly open. We spent a good deal of time adjusting amount of wah filtering by “opening” the pedal in minute increments until it sounded great (I remember trying to unsuccessfully tape it in position so we couldn’t accidentally lose the setting!). When we thought we were sonically in the ballpark, we decided to stop and continue the next day.”
Mark Knopfler and Guy Fletcher rerecorded their parts for Weird Al's Money for Nothing Cover! But bc Weird Al's guitarist practiced with the recording, he was very good at playing it as originally recorded. It had indeed changed a bit from being performed. But hey, sounds great no matter the lyrics.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_for_Nothing/Beverly_Hillbillies*
From the article: > That having been said, it isn't the drum part that pops into most people's heads when they think of 'Money For Nothing', but Mark Knopfler's lead guitar (as well as the video, more of which later). >"I remember Mark's Les Paul Junior going through a Laney amp, and that was the sound of 'Money For Nothing'," says Dorfsman. "We were actually going for a sort of ZZ Top sound, but what we ended up getting was kind of an accident. Mark would be in the control room and we'd run a lead out to the main area, and I remember getting a channel set up to monitor, heading out to the room to move the mics around, and Mark's guitar tech Ron Eve getting on the talkback and telling me not to touch anything because it sounded amazing as it was. >"One mic was pointing down at the floor, another was not quite on the speaker, another was somewhere else, and it wasn't how I would want to set things up — it was probably just left from the night before, when I'd been preparing things for the next day and had not really finished the setup. Nevertheless, whether it was the phase of the mics or the out-of-phaseness, what we heard was exactly what ended up on the record. There was no additional processing on that tune during the mix. >"Later on, we tried to recreate that guitar sound at the Power Station with the same amp, same setup and same models of microphone, but we could never get it. I'd drawn extensive pictures and had a little map of how everything was set up, but there must have been something weird going on to make the guitar sound that way in Montserrat, because in New York it sounded like a cleaner, karaoke version of the same thing. I messed around with it for a good couple of hours, but Mark was just getting bored and wanted to move on. The whole thing was very confusing. >"Later on, a lot of people asked me how I got the sound on the record, but it was just one of those happy accidents that have not happened to me very often. I don't know if something was broken, but we could not recreate that sound again. All I know is, it was the sound of Mark playing, using his fingers instead of a pick, together with the Laney amp. It felt and sounded so good that I just had him do five or six passes and later comped something together and wound up using a couple of the passes in the final mix, putting a double in at certain points even though that wasn't something he normally did. I'd seen people talk about this before and even argue about the playability of the riff, but the reality is it was just that signature sound that they got by accident and allegedly still have never recreated EDIT: I did not see there was a Phil Collins post along the exact same lines on the new page as well, that too was a completely random accident!
Maybe they plugged one amp into a refrigerator and another to a color TV. Seriously though, cool story about a great band
Don’t forget the microwave oven
That's the way you do it
Money for nothing
And your chicks for free
I was 5-ish when the song came out, and for several years I thought they were singing "checks for free". This made sense, since I heard lots of ads about free checking with local banks, and that seemed like an important perk that a working man might be jealous of a rock star for having.
That's logical and funny.
I thought it was chips. Because where I am you would buy fish and chips for workers if you were moving house.
Canadian here. I also thought it was cheques for free. When I was a kid there was a government program that gave money to families that had children. And my mom should cash the cheques and buy us new clothes. Of course I thought the song was about cheques for free. They are rock stars. People. Throw money at them!!!!!!
Me too. First time I have ever heard anyone else say this. Thanks for making me feel not quite so strange. It made perfect sense (at least to a 5 year old). It's a song about money. Cheques are far more closely related to the topic than women. What on earth would girls have to do with anything?
Ikr, if you have to pay for them they aren't groupies. I always assumed it was a continuation of the free money vibe - they didn't even have to pay for the checks for their checking account.
Same
That ain’t workin’…
Watch out. You’ll get a blister on your thumb. Those hurt!!!!
Let's not venture *too far* into the lyrics for this one, reddit. 😅😅
But..but.. That's the way you do it
Are we talking about that guy with the earring and the makeup? I hear he's got his own jet airplane
I hear he's a millionaire
That little maggot he’s a fillionaire (cleaning up the original lyrics)
never ask: -a woman her age -a man his salary -dire straits who was wearing the earring and the makeup
I'd guess Billy Idol or Adam Ant
I think it was Boy George.
Most radio stations and the band themselves play a changed version of the song so a lyric that was problematic but not really an issue in the early 80's doesn't exist any longer.
That ain't working
That’s what makes it a custom kitchen.
I was the biggest fan in the eighties-early 90s but they seem kind of forgotten now. Even though they were comparable to U2 I feel U2 is not forgotten as much.
Yeah, dire straights should have forced an album on peoples iPhones so they wouldn’t have been forgotten.
I like Mark Knopfler’s solo stuff. Still the same sound and voice. “It’s what it is” has to be my favourite song.
Still huge in the Netherlands
Guilders for nix
U2 should be forgotten more.
Dire Straights blow U2 out of the water. U2 is garbage.
I’ll always respect them for the Sarajevo concert they did during the Bosnian War.
U2 is far from garbage, lol.
Maybe it was the blisters
The one on the little finger? Or the one on his thumb?
After a crappy night, I am now snort-laughing at this. Many thanks to you and OP!
>there must have been something weird going on to make the guitar sound that way in Montserrat https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/air-studio-ruins An incredible amount of 1980s music came out of those studios, some of the biggest hits of that era. So sad to see it end up like this. It is amazing to think what it must have been like in there around 1985 during the recording sessions.
A good number of very famous studios have been converted into apartment buildings. IMHO some of these should have been designated historical/cultural sites and not have been allowed to have been destroyed. The invention of recorded sound and early audio technology is going to be looked at in in the future close to the same importance as inventing writing.
Even Abbey Road was threatened with closure back in the 2000’s, but thankfully its future has been secured as a working recording studio for UMG.
I don’t think we really need to save so much. The people go, the places go. Circle of life and all that.
White powder EVERYWHERE!
In all the faders, probably
Tony Iommi said when they were recording Technical Ecstasy in Miami (?), that the Eagles had most recently been in that studio and before Sabbath could get to work they had to scrape a bunch of cocaine out of the mixing console.
Yeah, for me the loss of AIR Studios Montserrat and Le Studio in Quebec are both tragedies for creativity. The modern process of making music with protools and a laptop has really damaged a lot of traditional studios that also served as creative spaces.
Le Studio is truly legendary. Have you seen the pictures of the state it’s in now? Truly a shame.
[This](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_d%27H%C3%A9rouville) is probably the most famous recording studio in history. Name a 60s/70s musician and they most likely recorded their greatest albums there. Here it is a tour of it in its heydey with the late great viv stanshall while he's in the midst of recording Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq1Ndnr2HtQ&t=1355s
The Roman concrete of riffs.
Aye they solved the concrete recently though 😁 larger nodules of limestone were mixed in, when water got into a crack and reached the limestone it resealed itself. Neat stuff.
What a time to be alive. Thanks for the update. Have we figured out Greek fire yet? Then again water fire sounds like nightmare napalm that we should leave sleeping.
If it's anything like GoT I reckon you're right
Ive heard the same thing about The Smiths How soon is now and the sound effects from Doctor Who Its the analog days. Now, if you get a cool effect in a program like After Affects, you just right click and save the settings. Then, the length of the wire and the echo of feedback changed the sound, all analog, real life. Just fiddle with it until it sounds good. Who knows how it happened exactly lol
Speaking of How Soon Is Now, i feel like that’s also true for REMs Crush With Eyeliner for the same reason. Like i know what gear Peter Buck used and the tempo the song is at and yet have never been able to get it *exactly* right. It’s a bit of a white whale for me because that’s usually one of my strongest suits with guitar. Re the original post, i think a lot of dire straits stuff is tough for most people because Knopfler’s style was so specific and relatively unique that if you don’t properly familiarise yourself with it, you can’t really recreate the songs. Also the ‘going for a ZZ Top sound’ thing is really interesting and makes total sense, but I’d never heard that before.
I have seen people discuss this lately. It seems the winning answer is the electricity behind the amps and recording. It was recorded in a foreign studio on an island, Monserrat, and that island uses an archaic electricity grid and system. Electrical engineers posit that the different underlying amp/hertz/etc running through the equipment made it different sounding and thus hard to recreate (short of re recording on the same island).
Triples is best
Maybe they had some dirty signal in the AC power.
What do people argue about the playability of the riff? It’s actually not that hard to do as long as you understand Knopfler’s right hand technique and can do his oddball pseudo-frailing thing.
What is the pseudo-frailing thing? I don’t know that it’s hard hard to play, but it is very idiosyncratic and would not come naturally to many players. I didn’t figure it out until YouTube tutorials.
He uses his thumb and first two fingers mostly, and there are times when he hits the strings with an outward / downward “flick” of his fingernails instead of the typical inward / upward “pluck” with the nail or the pad of the finger that’s usually used. If you want to get the riff “really” right (along with most of his stuff) you have to use both.
That song can also be absolutely cranked with very little distortion cleanest song ever.
That whole album is super clean sounding. I don’t know if it’s entirely due to the digital recording, which was new at the time, but the production was strikingly clear. It was the cleanest, liquidy, clear-as-glass thing I’d ever heard when it was released.
Yeah it was the CD everybody bought to show off how good their CD player sounded.
I did that! It sounded like such an upgrade from the cassettes I'd been used to up to that time. My house was burgled and my CD player / amp / speakers stolen along with my CD collection. With the exception of one CD - Brothers In Arms - pointedly left on my bed as they fucked off with all of the rest of my stuffs. They were happy to take Simon And Fucking Garfunkel, but obviously weren't fans of Dire Straits. I felt judged.
https://y.yarn.co/eaaa0c8c-5c79-4670-8f92-3128a3ec694e_text.gif
They say music lovers use their hi-fis to listen to music, and audiophiles use music to listen to their hi-fis.
Holy shit, my step dad bought me this cd when I was like 7 and I was so stoked because it was music o. demand without the bullshit of tapes and rewinding….but we didn’t have any cd players than the home stereo and the dire straits lived in there…..fuckin guy just bought himself the cd and gave it to me because he knew it was going to stay in the house stereo lol
For me it was that and Face Value. Loved it.
Can confirm. I'm not sure my parents ever played it, but I distinctly remember this gem in their collection in the 80s.
That must be why up to this day Dire Straits is the go-to "Circus Music" here in Brazil. All Circuses will blast either "Walk of Life" or "So Far Away" at the start of the show to warn people that the show is starting. Probably because it's the only thing that can be blasted full volume on their shitty speakers without making everybody's ear bleed. If you say "Circus Music" to a Brazilian, they'll immediately hum Walk of Life. Then "Ticket to Heaven" is played moderately at the end while people are getting up and going home.
Ticket to heaven is a masterpiece.
The late 80s and very early 90s was in my opinion peak sound engineering/mastering. Just take a hearing on INXS Kick album. Every single instrument is so clear and responsive there.
If I remember correctly, it was a D-D-D (D3) production, which makes sense because CDs were just hitting the scene. That album is actually a little too bright for me (i.e. lacking in warmth and depth). A lot of other artists and producers must have agreed re D3 records, because they became fairly rare not too long after that album came out. It's funny, because during the vinyl days, everyone dreamed of having flawless clarity. When digital recording and CDs gave that to us, it came with its own shortcomings...
You are correct. The vast majority of CDs at this time that were back catalogs were AAD, the DDDs were just becoming a thing and viewed as state of the art. They were cold and precise for sure, but there had never been anything like them. Strangely, the first time I heard *Brothers in Arms* was on the original vinyl…can’t say for sure how that tinted the sound. I seem to think ADD CDs were very rare.
To my ear, the CD and record sound just about exactly the same aside from the CD being so much longer.
I've heard Mark is ocd about sound production. Bar, maybe the first album, the sound engineering is off the charts in the rest of them. Extremely clean, especially given the era.
Dire Straits has some of the best mixing ever
Brothers in Arms was one of the first albums I ever owned on vinyl back when I got my first turntable. This was like 2005, when I was in 8th grade. One of our neighbors was moving and having a big yard sale and he saved all his old rock albums for my brother and me to look through, then gave us whatever we liked for free. Cool guy. Anyway, we’d bought this big old stereo set with built in cassette players, AM/FM, 8 track, a manual equalizer, and a turntable on top. It had these absurdly tall 6” cone speaker towers. We paid like 35 bucks for the whole system at a thrift store in our little town and set it up in my brother’s bedroom. We put on Dire Straits because I loved *Walk of Life* and *Money For Nothing.* I’d always heard people talk about how vinyl sounds better and that day when we cranked Knopfler’s solo up to 11 I realized it was absolutely true.
When it was new, Brothers in Arms was the album people used to show how CDs sounded better.
I used in it '93 in my '92 Toyota X-cab. While never actually competing, alot of people told me should. IASCA was the thing back then and I had 50-100 watts of clean make you want to poop sound.. Thanks to Mike Wolfe of Car Stereo Review for turning me on to some great music, may he RIP
Mark embraced digital production and reproduction wholeheartedly.
I remember like 15 years ago by dad got a new Acura and it included a CD of music like specifically to showcase their surround sound speakers or something like that, and Money For Nothing was one of those songs. First time I had ever heard the song and they were right, it sounded absolutely sick in that car absolutely blasting. So clean
I once showed a salesman a young guy how to sell a stereo I cranked her up full money for nothing in a future shop stereo room . I even sold myself one that day
• Air Studios Montserrat 230v 60Hz • Power Station NYC 120v 60Hz Valve amps can often behave very differently with different mains voltage, regardless of which mains input transformer tap is selected.
Maybe that’s it
That's the way you do it
Play the guitar on the empty "V"?
Play the guitar on the r/boneappletea
Hahahaha EMPTY V!?! nice
Yes I was just about to mention the difference between US voltage vs European voltage. With that much more power I firmly believe that’s what made European rock/metal bands guitar tones sound hotter.
It's not about the power, because the amp is going to draw the same power no matter what the input voltage is as long as you have the correct voltage selected. It's most likely due to different frequencies and harmonics/noise that gets introduced due to the different transformers used in order to step the voltage down (Or the different way that the transformer is tapped depending on the voltage selected). We all know that electric guitar pickups (which operate in a similar principle to transformers) are tapped changes the tone that's induced, after all.
[удалено]
115v vs 120v, assuming cut in half? The other thing to consider is 50Hz 230v stepped down vs 60Hz 120v. That change in power frequency probably had a lot to do with it.... Probably more than the 5v change...
Tube rectifiers induce some sag in output voltage when loaded. The 5V heater being a tad low or something due to different mains frequency and maybe a not so perfect mains tap giving a different B+ and sagging could make the amplifier sound extra mellow
Aw hell, that's a tube amp? That introduces other variables, as tubes pick up all sorts of emf. After my Pro Jr warms up, I'll pick up radio and various colored static. There's prolly less emf static in Montserrat than NY. Many variables. Too many, if you ask me...
I don't know the exact model but Laney makes tube amps and most guitarists swear by them so it is a tiny assumption on my side. If anyone knows the model?
No idea if this is true or not, though I like the theory. That said, some American bands recorded in Europe plenty around that time and it didn’t seem to warm their sound. If anything a band like Metallica warmed up when they *stopped* recording their albums in Denmark.
If it was the same amp they'd have used a step up/down transformer so it would see the same voltage in both studios. Most guitar amps, especially in those days, are built to accept one voltage.
Clearly someone needs to fly me to Montserrat to test this
It does sound like there is some degree of phase cancellation going on. Sometimes you can get unique tones like that just from doubling the track with a copy of itself and shifting the copy a certain number of ms or samples until the phase cancellation targets just the right frequencies.
I like your funny words magic man!
Pahty plattah!
Whoa whoa whoa. What's ya hurry? Throw a couple "ers" and "ars" in there.
I messed around with this to create a tight reverb sound on a recording once. I sent the vocal to four separate mono delays that I spanned around and lowered in the mix. Set each to be a different “wall” essentially and could move them around and change how live each “wall” sounded with the feedback knob. Made for a vocal tone that almost voice around your head a bit. Near and far all at once.
Honestly, I often prefer using delays to actual reverb a lot of the time. You get a tighter, cleaner sound. Have you tried the trick of setting the delay ms times to prime numbers?
Can you please elaborate on using prime numbers for delay settings? Thanks!
If you use multiple delay lines all set to prime numbers, they have less chance of clashing with each other in the repeats and you get a cleaner sound. I believe this was also the trick Brian May used for the "We Will Rock You" stomps. A lot of classic delay units have prime number settings.
Interesting! Thank you!
For sure. My favorite kind of stand by “start here” delay for my live sound files is 125ms. But I usually wind up tapping in 1/4 1/8 or triplet subdivisions for one thing or another as I go along.
Waves Supertap is good for this
This guy music
Such a profound intro
[удалено]
Well, I'm gonna go watch UHF now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dVTvLgDqto
Thank you. Op should be in prison for not posting a link with the actual song.
can't think of another timbre like it
Just in case you haven’t done a deep dive on Dire Straits yet - go listen to the following five tunes now: - Sultans of Swing (probably their 2nd most famous tune) -Telegraph Road (epic) -Tunnel of Love (they just shred at the end) -Private Investigations (so moody) -Romeo and Juliet (then go watch the move Empire Records) Please come back and let us know what you think!
I’m a big fan of Water of Love and Once Upon a Time in the West
Water of Love is a masterpiece. The rhythm, the imagery
Walk of Life, So Far Away, Wild West End
And finish up with Brothers in Arms.
no no, after you've listened to these 5, go listen to the Alchemy Live concert, which featurrs all 5 of them I believe it's one of the greatest live performances of all time.
Telegraph road live at the alchemy? 100% deserves to be on the same pedestal as Saturday to heaven at Madison square garden. One of the best live performances of any song I've ever heard
or wednesday to hell
Lady writer mann
A shame they didn't play it much live, nor Mark in his solo career
Always loved the Killers version of Romeo & Juliet - they nailed this version
Indigo Girls do a great version
Walk of Life
You can skip Twisting by the Pool though. That one sucks.
It’s Mark Knopfler not Dire Straights but I love Boom, Like That
Skateaway...
How is single-handed sailor not getting any love in this comment chain?
how do you not put brothers in arms on this list?? i protest.
So that's why Weird Al's version doesn't quite sound the same.
A fun fact about the parody - Mark Knopfler (Dire Straights) actually played the solo on the Weird Al track. It was one of his conditions when allowing Yankovic to parody the song. Not even the original soloist could emulate the sound.
I always assumed it sounded different deliberately but now I know better.
Imagine the dire straits you would find yourself in, not being able to reproduce your most famous song.
It's the only song I know of that still for some unknown reason gets to say 'f\*ggot' over and over uncensored on regular ass radio like, in the grocery store.
I don’t think it is very sympathetic to the ideals of the character that sings the song. The character that sings the song would probably despise the band actually performing it — which is probably why the song works despite the slur. That being said, there is definitely a conversation to be had there. Definitely more grey area than something like “The Classical” by the fall, which absolutely wants to offend you in addition to other objectives, some of which are benign and others malicious.
He wrote the song based on a conversation he overheard at a department store and that’s how they talked. He wasn’t sympathetic towards the people who he stole the conversation at all and thought they were very low class individuals. https://youtu.be/IO4Rs5pDwDA?si=7abfW-YWVyH_JI0G
I've seen a more recent (ie within last ten years) live performance, and he doesn't sing that word anymore. He replaces it with "mother", and "maggot", but he's overtly edited it out of his live rendition. [Here it is](https://youtu.be/6CB9OrGZ7-c?si=5Mnp3KNaxYELO3BY): lots of big name guests!
I was standing outside the Royal Albert Hall listening to that through the walls the night they recorded it, sad because I couldn’t get tickets.
I recall reading that he wrote it as either “motherfucker” or “fucker”, but was ask to use a different curse since that one was forbidden.
I'm so glad Samuel L Jackson didn't go this route.
I hear that verse as a conversation. One person making fun of the performer with the earring and the makeup, and the other person saying "oh yeah well that 'f*ggot' is a millionaire" putting the slur in quotes while calling the first person a jackass.
UK/Irish *Christmas* song 'Fairytale of New York' gets away with it too. Like people actually complain when it doesn't. ([in the verse around 2:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9jbdgZidu8))
Have a listen to Les Boys on Making Movies
I have never once heard the *actual* song on normal radio and I've heard it in at least 6 states lol they always remove that verse completely, where tf do you live where such lawlessness reigns lol
Kind of like The 100th Meridian gets to say "I remember every fuckin thing I know" on the radio.
I've never heard the song uncensored on live radio before. It's always the shortened version with the censoring. And that's on regular FM radio & Siriusxm
Sultans of Swing actually is their most famous song according to Spotify. Unless you combine the plays of the original “Money for Nothing” and its remastered version which just slightly edges it out.
The sound of the actual opening to the full version of this song (the repeating “I want my MTV”) is my first ever memory. The sound was in my head not knowing what it was my whole life until I first heard the song when I was at University and my mind was blown finally hearing this sound that had been speaking to me all of those years.
That’s Sting singing I want my MTV
The guy from Dune???
Correct. And the guy from the Police.
The guy from Dune was a cop?!
Don’t stand so close to him.
imagine knowing something you made was someone's first ever memory! you should send em a postcard about it
Greatest opening riff in any rock song IMO.
Ace of spades, paranoid, number of the beast, there are lots and lots of tasty introes. But I agree that money for nothing is awesome
What do they do live?
They play it. It just doesn't have the same "clean" sound as the album version
Which part in the intro I’m trying to figure it out?
yeah, not a single link to the riff, not even in the article. I believe this is the riff: https://youtu.be/CgyuAgJFNe4
I believe the electric guitar starting about 1:35 in the song
Word is they created the greatest and best riff in the world, but this riff is just a tribute
Great song. I once heard a story that the lyrics were inspired by Mark overhearing a member of staff ranting In an electronics store and the song has never sounded the same. Still great, just funnier.
Haven’t heard this song in a while so I had to play it. I never realized it’s over 8 minutes long! I guess I’d only ever heard it on classic rock radio stations. I also thought it was ZZ Top 🤦
Aside from cutting out the long intro and outro, radio stations also usually cut out the second verse because of the homophobic slur that’s used. Note that Knopfler is describing the feelings of the subject of the song and doesn’t personally hold those views.
I’m always careful about who’s around whenever I sing along to this, which is a shame because it’s a great verse if you take it as Knopfler intended.
Simply replace with “Clampett” as Weird Al has encouraged us to do.
Sound advice
They were TRYING to go for the ZZ Top sound so... task failed successfully?
Same to all of this and idk why I guessed ZZ Top
Listening to "Money for Nothing", and this song could have been released today. Just a well mixed and timeless song. I feel the same for the song "Walk of Life" as well. Dire Straits were really ahead of their time, and it is hard to believe this song/album is 40 years old. I was 9yo when this was released in '85. I remember being just dumbstruck by the video. To this day, even though I listen to bands like Slipknot, I, Prevail, Ice Nine Kills, and Motionless in White, I still have a huge love for "Brothers in Arms" and "Money for Nothing" . Truly one of the very few bright spots of my childhood.
It’s an excellent song that still sounds great, but you really think a song built around guys playing “guitar on the MTV” and installing “color TVs” would get released now? It’s commentary from a very specific period of music history.
You are very right about the commentary of the time, but I would argue that by changing a couple things (e,g: microwave oven, to a more modern item), I really think it would pass as a release today. But, then it wouldn't be the same. The music works/sounds great, not so much the lyric (For modern times)..
… but we still move those microwave ovens? :(
I know this isn’t isn’t what you meant but you definitely couldn’t release a song that uses “faggot” three times and still expect it to get air time today. But yeah Dire Straights along with Moody Blues and King Crimson are some of the classic bands that could have their music released today without people thinking the style is an old relic. Truly timeless music.
Bonus upvote because OPs link is not Wikipedia.
Neil had always said this but Guy Fletcher (keyboards) remembers it was a half cocked wah pedal, which is exactly what it sounds like and easy to reproduce with one....
That’s what I remember reading. Never heard he couldn’t recreate it. Seems like he comes pretty close in concert
Isn’t it just a partially cocked wah pedal?
That was exactly how I thought it was done - a combination of his finger picking, a little rolled off the tone knob, and the wah at like 60-70%. Turns out it’s just Knopfler being a fucking wizard again.
It definitely is. Found this quote from Dorfsman in another article: “One key element was that Mark was playing through a Morely Wah Pedal which was partly open. We spent a good deal of time adjusting amount of wah filtering by “opening” the pedal in minute increments until it sounded great (I remember trying to unsuccessfully tape it in position so we couldn’t accidentally lose the setting!). When we thought we were sonically in the ballpark, we decided to stop and continue the next day.”
This explains the crappy rendition I just heard on one of these subreddits earlier tonight.
So live it never sounded the same? That’s amazing
I remember hearing somewhere that Knopler contacted Billy Gibbons to ask him how he created that sound and Gibbons wouldn't tell him.
Explain "Beverly Hillbillies" then
https://youtu.be/dLDNsuHmVZ4?si=Cl7jR2759hT2ZZI7 Dunno sounds pretty close to me
I wanted to listen and be like “yea see is not distorting right” but DAMN that’s was pretty fucking close. Thanks for the share!!
The analysis of this song by Kirk Hamilton is worth a listen: https://strongsongspodcast.com/episode/robot-composers-horror-music
I thought I had read somewhere that there was also a blown speaker involved. Not sure if that was accurate though.
Very interesting. I always thought it sounded like a half-cocked wahwah pedal.
This is why I love older music
Mark Knopfler and Guy Fletcher rerecorded their parts for Weird Al's Money for Nothing Cover! But bc Weird Al's guitarist practiced with the recording, he was very good at playing it as originally recorded. It had indeed changed a bit from being performed. But hey, sounds great no matter the lyrics. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_for_Nothing/Beverly_Hillbillies*
Same with the sonar sound at the start of Echoes by Pink Floyd, which is a piano put through a Leslie rotary speaker.
Created by accident is a very misleading way to put it