Dire Straits

Genres:	Music Videos & Concerts • Pop / Rock • World Music
Descriptive "tags":	classic rock • rock • 80s • blues • guitar
Decades Active:	1970s • 1980s • 1990s • 2000s
Links online:	BBC Music • Discography • IMDb • MusicMoz • Wikipedia

Biography

Few groups can claim to be synonymous with a lifestyle, but Dire Straits are an exception, whether they like it or not. Brothers In Arms, released in 1985, established them as the first real darlings of the compact disc 20-something generation that grew out of the boom years of the 80s. Their accessible, traditional blues-based music made them perfect for the massive, mature, relatively wealthy strata of the public that likes its music tightly performed and readily digestible. The album was number 1 in the US charts for nine weeks and spent three years in the UK chart.

Surprisingly, Dire Straits first surfaced during a period that was the antipathy of what they were to become - the London punk scene of 1976/7. Mark Knopfler (12 August 1949, Glasgow, Scotland) and his brother David Knopfler (b. 27 December 1952, Glasgow, Scotland) were the sons of an architect who moved to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, when the boys were young. Mark Knopfler...

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