Knopfler's band Dire Straits kind of ended in 1986, after a long world tour supporting the massively successful "Brothers in Arms" album. He seemed exhausted by the stardom and basically took a few years off from music. Then in 1990, he revived the band, and put out a final studio album, "On Every Street," in 1991. Then, after another massive world tour, he retired the band again, this time for good. He later said, "I put the thing to bed because I wanted to get back to some kind of reality. It's self-protection, a survival thing. That kind of scale is dehumanizing."
Knopfler clearly didn't have the personality for that level of stardom, because he again took off a couple of years to recover before putting out his first solo album, "Golden Heart," in 1996.
But that's not the whole story of that time period, because he had some other music projects going on as well. The most important one was a role in another band, the Notting Hillbillies. That resulted in a 1990 album, "Missing... Presumed Having a Good Time."
He also played a lot of concerts with guitarist Eric Clapton, and had a major role for a studio album by guitarist Chet Atkins. The first song here is a song he did with Clapton for the big 1990 Knebworth Festival. Technically, one could call this a Dire Straits performance, since there were other Dire Straits band members with him on stage at the time, even though they weren't officially reunited yet. But the original song was never officially released by Dire Straits or anyone else. The next four songs are from the 1990 album "Neck and Neck," which was billed as a Knopfler and Chet Atkins album. Knopfler produced it and played guitar all over it, but I've only included the four songs where Knopfler sang with Atkins as well. All the songs were covers, except "The Next Time I'm in Town," which was written by Knopfler.
After this, there's a big time jump to 1995, while Knopfler recovered and prepared for a proper solo career. He next emerged with an appearance on a 1995 album by the Chieftans, which is track 7, "The Lily of the West." Track 6, "No Wonder He's Confused," is an unreleased studio track, no doubt a song that he considered putting on his 1996 solo album "Golden Heart." Tracks 8 and 9 are B-sides from singles released from that album. The last song, "Blues Stay Away from Me" comes from an appearance on a 1996 album by guitarist Steve Phillips, who was one of his bandmates with the Notting Hillbillies.
This album is 46 minutes long.
01 Think I Love You Too Much (Mark Knopfler & Eric Clapton)
02 Poor Boy Blues (Mark Knopfler & Chet Atkins)
03 Just One Time (Mark Knopfler & Chet Atkins)
04 There'll Be Some Changes Made (Mark Knopfler & Chet Atkins)
05 The Next Time I'm in Town (Mark Knopfler & Chet Atkins)
06 No Wonder He's Confused (Mark Knopfler)
07 The Lily of the West (Chieftains with Mark Knopfler)
08 My Claim to Fame (Mark Knopfler)
09 What Have I Got to Do (Mark Knopfler)
10 Blues Stay Away from Me (Steve Phillips & Mark Knopfler)
https://www.upload.ee/files/16505919/MARKKNPFLR1990-1996WhtHveIGttDo_atse.zip.html
The cover photo is a promo photo from 1995.
Thanks!
ReplyDelete