Even if you don't share my healthy skepticism for high-definition remasters, no high definition remaster will put back what wasn't there to start with. So be very wary of any "super duper high definition it's just like you're there better than CDs" remaster which might come out at some point, blagging you for money to re-purchase what you already own. Borthers In Arms was recorded and mixed entirely in the digital domain, though I don't know if it was Dire Straits' first album to be so.īack in the 80s, digital recording meant 16 bit / 44.1 on 24 track tape, mixed down to 16/44.1 on a two-track. It’s like a saxophone, you can’t do it on a synth.Funnily enough Mark Knopfler was one of the first mainstream musicians to 'come out' in huge support of digital recording. Knopfler demanded the use of the real thing, though, not the increasingly fashionable organ ‘plug in’, “Despite all of the work done on a synthesiser, you can’t get the flexibility out of a Hammond program because the organ swoops and changes, interacting with the Leslie speaker.
The album is full of top quality tracks such as Walk Of Life that is dominated by an organ riff, “The organ has always been important to me via songs like Del Shannon’s Runaway and The Animals’ House Of the Rising Sun. The fact that this small haul of notes was used in the song which prompted the lawyers to step in hasn’t caused problems for Knopfler, however, “Not at all, I don’t care about money or anything like that.” So I asked him if he would come up and sing it and he was there like a shot and sang beautifully on it.” It was perfect because Sting was the perfect MTV creature.
Sting happened to be on holiday in Montserrat, at the time. That’s why he gets a co-credit for writing it but he didn’t actually write it, I just stole five notes. So I stole some notes from Don’t Stand So Close To Me, for which Sting’s publishers demanded 15-20% of Money For Nothing. Money For Nothing, supposedly the iconic video that celebrated MTV was anything but… As songwriter and lead singer, Mark Knopfler said, “At the time, they were running some Ads saying something like ‘I Want My MTV’ with the Police or somebody saying that. Then Alan (Clark, keyboards) wanted to carry on and better his time so we said, ‘No, no, let’s quit while we are ahead’!” Then someone didn’t show up and, eventually, we went down the road to look for them and they’d gone off the road and over the side and been stopped by a couple of trees. A stopwatch was taken out and everyone was screeching up the hill. We were recording Brothers In Arms and, one night, we got bored so we timed each other to see who could drive up the hill the fastest to the studio. Then everyone would get into jeeps and drive flat out back to wherever you were. Now, you wouldn’t normally catch me down at a disco to save my life. The album was, in fact, recorded in George Martin’s tropical studio in Montserrat before a volcano partly destroyed the island, “I used to go down to the disco there. You really can’t get upset and if you haven’t got a sense of humour then… you… are… dogmeat.” While the album launched the group into the stratosphere and stardom, the exposure didn’t sit well with songwriter and lead singer, Mark Knopfler, “The preconceptions that people have about you, the rubbish that is written about you, you have to come to terms with it. Twenty years later, the LP won another Grammy as the best surround sound album. Brothers In Arms pushed the band’s established work into a pop setting and became immensely successful, quickly becoming the biggest selling LP in the UK during the 80s, a double Grammy award winning album in 1986 and spending nine weeks at No 1 in the US charts, while the single, Money For Nothing, was a worldwide No 1 single.