David Knopfler

Interviews Band : David Knopfler, Dire Straits Interviewed :David Knopfler Interviewer:Alorchi samir Date: 31/10/2007 Website : www.knopfler.com/

Samir : Hi! Thanks for talking to us.

You welcome.

Samir : Your album 'Songs For The Siren' is a truly haunting album, would you like to tell us a little bit about each of the songs on it and any stories behind them?and Do you have a favourite track off the new album?

I'm pretty pleased with the songs themselves, in terms of song-writing... less pleased with the production, as a lot of compromises had to be made due to lack of budget. I don't really have any favourites per-say I don't think.

Samir: Can you give our readers a more detailed profile of what your Music sounds like?

Since CD6 The Giver, in the early nineties, I've broadly speaking been working in the hand-made acoustic tradition of the singer-songwriter.

Samir : I've heard that you started writing songs when you quite young, so let us know more about that .

Yes, I wrote my first songs when I was in my early teens. I used to perform them at the school folk club and pass them off as traditional folk songs, because no one had ever told me it was okay to write them your self.

Samir : Where does the name 'Dire Straits' originate from and what does it represent? Can you remember any of the other names that were considered at the time?

The Oxford Dictionary says straits) used in reference to a situation characterized by a specified degree of trouble or difficulty : the economy is in dire straits | a crippling disease could leave anyone in serious financial straits. We were all giving up our day jobs to pursue a dream and the economic fall out was best characterised this way.

Samir : The world is a different place now than when a lot of these bands originally started out. As I said, I was first introduced to "Dire Straits" through tape trading in the early '80s, but now we have the world wide web for discovering new bands. What are your views on the internet and its effect on the music scene?

It's vital that any young aspiring artists maximise their online presence - but as ever ever, you can't easily circumvent the hard work of getting out and building a base by persistent and lengthy touring. The invention of digitised audio, and especially in the form of MP3s has pretty much nailed the coffin for retail... there is effectively now no viable mechanism for those of us who worked successfully in the independent margins to make the kind of artisan albums we used to be able to make, c/o recording advances from record labels because the labels don't have any sales mechanism to recover those advances. The Music Industry went into free fall a decade or more ago and it still hasn't found a way to recover. In terms of finding budgets to make the kinds of records I want to make, I don't have a mechanism either.

Samir : What's relating to you between spirituality and music ?

The two things are inextricably linked. I believe it was the I-Ching which said that he who understood the power of music to influence hearts could rule the world as if it was spinning in his palm, though speaking for myself I've no which to rule anything, except possibly my own impatient heart.

samir : How much do you feel you have accomplished with your Normaly life and with musical life ?

I think my craft as a song-writer and performer has improved in fits and starts pretty much continuously all my life.. I think that's probably in part because there is less and less dissonance between myself and my work i.e. that not only have I become better at knowing how to realise a song as a finished piece or work, but I've also got less wriggle room and hiding space between myself as the teller of the tale, and the tale itself.

Samir : Tell us one thing about yourself that not many people know.

I'm practically perfect, like Mary Poppins

Samir : I have read you also write poetry and create art.Tell us how was relation between this work and your music. How do they work for or against each other?

I'm a relative novice at both... but I have finally stretched myself to be able to write poems that get published in respected poetry magazines for their own merits... and in my vocabulary that's quite a jump in standard, from the poetry I used to write. I own a big debt of gratitude for patient editors, who are established poets in their own right, being willing to look at pieces I sent them and if necessary desiccate them with comments about their short-comings. Though as a song-writer I'd largely already mastered the challenge of resisting expedient rhyme schemes, as a poet at first my ego fought the resisted the discipline of ditching lazy cliche and many of the other under-appreciated subtleties of good poetic craft,

Samir : Which of the "Dire Straits" albums is the most special to you and why?

I don't own any Dire Straits records. I'm not a fan.

What memories do you have from those days?

None.

Samir: When you are dead and gone, what is the most thing you want to be remembered for as a person?

I suppose if life is about anything it's about having all our rough edges patiently rubbed down until we can join all the other smooth stones on the beach, until in turn they become sand and then finally rejoin the water and air. I don't know that being remembered is relevant to that process. I suppose, at least for those who immediately survive me it would preferable not to leave behind ill will or negative feelings from those with whom I wasn't as kind or gracious as those I was able to love unconditionally and fully. It's a work in progress I guess ;)

Samir : if you could delete one historical event from the history of the last 50 years, which one would you choose ?

I don't know that I'd want to play God with history - the theory posits that even stepping on a butterfly in the past can wreak havoc with time-lines in the future. On the other hand if George W Bush hadn't been conceived, no doubt some other chimp would have filled the vacancy for the Neo-Con Project.

Samir : What do you think of the world after 9.11 — is it getting better or worse? And can i know your comment about the war on IRaq ? if you have been in the place of Bush what you would do ?

I don't think there's anything positive to say about anything the Bush Administration have done... I was ashamed to be called a citizen of the UK the day that Baghdad was illegally bombed... the legal and moral maze of watching Colon Powell no less, reduced to selling knowing lies to the UN just to try and provide a thread of fig-leaf of legitimacy for future administrations to an administration that has none wasn't edifying. It's been a depressingly predictable road of corporate profit seeking over moral compass and artistic expression. I don't understand how Halliburton can have their top lobbyist in the White House being paid millions of dollars by them and no-one goes to jail for professional conflicts of interest. It's a very depressing indictment of our collective ennui and inertia that we've allowed our collective presence on the planet to become so debased and ill regulated that we have allowed a man such as George Bush, of so many flagrant defects both personally and professionally to sit on, what has effectively become the Imperial throne at Washington.

Samir : Have you ever been to Morocco?

No... came close one or two times. Plan to some day.

Samir : Do you have anything you would like to say to the readers of Zero tolerance webzine ?

Tolerance is a fine thing... though it shouldn't be confused with appeasement

Samir : Thanks for appeasing us. Thanks so much for spending time with us