Singer, songwriter and ace guitarist Mark Knopfler is the impressive sum of several very appealing parts. His voice is a smoky mixture of Bob Dylan's acidic whine, Tom Waits' tubercular snore and J.J. Cale's breathy, marbles-in-the-mouth whisper. He writes such songs as "Sultans of Swing" and "Once upon a Time in the West" with the cinematic flair of Bruce Springsteen, the hall-of-mirrors imagery of classic Dylan and the slashing thrusts of Neil Young's bayonetlike realism. Finally, Knopfler's guitar style is a shotgun wedding of jazzy chording and harmonic tangents descended from Django Reinhardt and Wes Montgomery, the no-nonsense electric blues of B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix' string-bending
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sensuality and James Burton's country-pop sheen.
On Dire Straits' first two albums, Knopfler wore his influences proudly on his sleeve. But when he pinned them on the band, they stood out like scarlet letters. Dire Straits and Communiqué were like roll calls of the star's patron saints, yet all too often Knopfler's hero worship overshadowed both the richly romantic tapestries of his tunes and the tasty team playing of bassist John Illsley, drummer Pick Withers and now-departed rhythm guitarist David Knopfler.
On Making Movies, Mark Knopfler pushes back those influences, rolls up his sleeves and knuckles down to the business of cutting a Dire Straits disc that's far greater than the sum of its parts. "A house of cards/Was never built for shock," he admits in "Solid Rock," the snarling, guitar-driven number that best describes what the new record is all about. Indeed, compared to his crystalline elegance and fragile introspection on the first two LPs, the creator of Making Movies now seems as bold, confident and determined to take chances in life, love and rock & roll as the brassy rollerball queen he watches with such fascination in "Skateaway." On this album, Knopfler is making "movies"–i.e., songs, some of which remind us of films: Carousel, Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story, Cabaret, et al.–not just acting them out.
And what a difference the right producer makes! On 1978's Dire Straits, Muff Winwood simply succumbed to the bleached-out tonalities suggested by the cold, misty blues of "Down to the Waterline" and the lurid yet limpid pink-neon afterglow of "Wild West End." (On the import LP The Honky Tonk Demos, Dire Straits' own scrappy 1977 eight-track demo of "Sultans of Swing" conjured up the composition's carnival atmosphere better than their Winwood-produced hit single did.) For Communiqué, Jerry Wexler and Barry Beckett merely enriched the R&B textures in the group's sultry sound, marching Knopfler's instrumental chops into the breach at the expense of his material and the sorely underrated rhythmic tension between Illsley and Withers.
Jimmy Iovine, who coproduced Making Movies with Mark Knopfler, succeeds where the others failed: he
Dire Straits' great step foreword, this was also a career best for the band. Mark Knopfler keeps the group's rootsy feel but implants it into rockers that have the cinematic sweep hinted at in the album title. This wasn't a big hit at first, but the tracks "Tunnel of Love," "Romeo & Juliet," "Expresso Love" and "Skateaway" earned FM airplay and new Dire Straits fans.
