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All of this is backed up by the wonderful peppy “Walk Of Life” cadence.Īnd here is Mark Knopfler in a live performance of Walk of Life. But the final minute includes some amazing successful plays. The first 3 minutes of the song present a “blooper reel” of flubs, failures and fumbles. Secondly, for some reason the producers decided to intersperse live video of Dire Straits performing with clips from American sporting events (baseball, basketball and football). First, the vocals are much easier to understand in this video. It accompanied the single release in 1985.Įven though this is not really a live performance, I include it for two reasons. First, here is the “officlal music video” of Walk Of Life. The song is presented in a rockabilly style. He do the song about the sweet loving woman Here comes Johnny singing oldies, goldiesĭown in the tunnels trying to make it pay Apparently he is currently singing oldies ( Be-Bop-A Lula, What’d I Say, I Got A Woman, Mack The Knife, …) and talking blues, while busking in subway tunnels. The song describes a rock and roll singer, Johnny, trying his best to gain some fame.
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lists (making it the highest-charting Dire Straits single ever in the U.K.). Walk Of Life eventually reached #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts and #2 on the U.K. However, Dorfsman was out-voted by the band.
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The success of this tune is somewhat surprising, since producer Neil Dorfsman urged the group to drop it from the Brothers In Arms album. Despite the fact that it had been issued as the “B” side of the single So Far Away, Walk of Life was (re-)released as a single in 1985. One of the songs on Brothers In Arms was Walk of Life. It is the 4th-best selling album ever in the U.K. That album won the group two Grammy Awards and is frequently included in “all-time greatest album” lists. The group’s biggest album was the 1985 release Brothers in Arms, which by now has sold 30 million records and spawned a string of pop hits, particularly Money for Nothing. At left is the image of Knopfler’s beautiful National Guitar that appears on the cover of their Brothers In Arms album.įollowing their initial break-out in 1979, Dire Straits continued to be successful until 1998. In addition to solos on his Fender Stratocaster, Knopfler also uses a National Guitar to great effect. Mark Knopfler followed this up with a string of songs that featured his creative and imaginative guitar work.Ĭover of the 1985 Dire Straits album Brothers In Arms. Sultans of Swing placed Dire Straits on the rock ‘n roll map, and they rapidly developed a cult following. From L: Alan Clark, John Illsley, Mark Knopfler, Terry Williams, and Hal Lindes. This was my first introduction to the band Dire Straits, a quartet that emerged from Newcastle, England to become one of the great rock groups of that period.īelow is the lineup of Dire Straits circa 1981. I was so entranced that I pulled over to the side of the road to hear all 5:50 of the tune. Although a rock song, the guitar solos also incorporated classical and jazz elements. Mixed into the guitar licks were awesome trills and arpeggios, combined with soaring high notes. The song, Sultans of Swing, was creative and catchy. The singer sounded vaguely like Bob Dylan and the electric guitar solos were riveting – like nothing I had heard before. Suddenly I heard a new song, one that I did not recognize. I was driving along a highway in 1979, listening to rock music on the radio. So here we will provide a brief history of that band. We reviewed Mark Knopfler and his band Dire Straits in our blog post on the song Sultans of Swing. We will next discuss covers of Walk of Life by Shooter Jennings and Brad Paisley. We will start with a brief review of the career of his group Dire Straits. This is a lovely, bouncy rock ‘n roll song composed by Mark Knopfler. Hello there! This week’s blog entry is Walk of Life.