Mark Knopfler: “I remember people saying about the first record…”

In the summer of 1979 i Dire Straits released their second album, “Communication”. The album reached fifth place in the charts in the United Kingdom, reached the Top Ten in the United States and in our Italy it positioned itself in a very honorable fifteenth position.

Just a few months earlier, in April 1979, the British band’s debut album released in 1978, simply called “Dire Straits”driven by the success of “Sultans Of Swing”in Great Britain it had rebounded in the rankings reaching fifth position. When the second album came out, also entirely written by the frontman Mark Knopflerbenefited from the sales of the first. The second album by Dire Straits was produced by Jerry Wexler together with Barry Beckett in the evocative setting of Muscle Shoals Sound Studios of Sheffield, Alabama.

Mark Knopfler
and his bandmate, the drummer
Pick Withers
they had spent the month of May of that year recording with
Bob Dylan
to Muscle Shoals, his album
“Slow Train Coming”
.

Speaking to UK magazine Melody Maker on the occasion of the album’s release,
Mark Knopfler
he recognized that
“Communication”
it somehow reflected the changes that had occurred in his life and that of the band after the success of the first album. “Your lifestyle changes so drastically that it’s bound to affect what you do. But that change hasn’t affected my perception of myself in the slightest. I remember people saying things about the first record… and now they’re saying good things about this album, compared to what some people said about the first one when it came out. And I think maybe over time some of these people will change their minds about what they think they heard.”