My Life in Dire Straits by John Illsley
In the ‘80s, The Clash may have been “the only band that matters” (so they said), but for a while, Dire Straits looked like the most popular band in the world. Bassist John Illsley recounts his life—and his group’s remarkable ascent—in My Life in Dire Straits.
Illsley was born comfortably middle class in the uncomfortably narrow constraints of small-town postwar England—the sort of place providing backdrop for many Britbox series. Drawn to art and music, he survived the punishing rigors of boarding school and gravitated to a lifestyle several degrees removed from the legendary swinging London of the ‘60s. He arrived in the big city a year too late and endured the United Kingdom’s crackup in the ‘70s with political gridlock, IRA violence, ethnic clashes, high inflation and higher tax rates. He sublet a room from guitarist David Knopfler and soon enough met the man whose songs would be heard around the world, brother and guitarist Mark.
Dire Straits played its first show in July 1977, the odd men out at a punk rock festival. Although they were pals with Squeeze and shared local stages with them, Dire Straits weren’t new wave either but a band that never marched lockstep with trends. They emerged with a distinctive sound coincidental to an explosion of new music in Britain, much of it in angry reaction to the country’s malaise. Onetime journalist Mark Knopfler simply took it down and added subtle emphasis in his lyrics. What Illsley calls the “bleak but beautiful poetry” of the band’s life in a country at dead-end filled Dire Straits’ 1978 debut LP (featuring “Sultans of Swing”). It was their best album but their most popular discs arrived in the coming era of CDs and MTV.
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Illsley writes with apparent honesty about the ups and downs and vividly about an England that—for better or worse—no longer exists. In his forward, Mark Knopfler commends Illsley for his “positive energy and willpower,” adding a discordant note about the changes that have overtaken the music industry including legalized digital thievery and the refusal by labels to nurture talent. “I’m not sure it could happen now,” he writes of Dire Straits’ success.
