During a recent appearance on BBC Breakfast, Mark Knopfler shut down any possibility of a final Dire Straits show.
When the host asked if there was any chance that he’d perform together as Dire Straits again, the musician replied by saying:
“I don’t think just because for a number of reasons. One of them being is that I’ve built my own studio, which I really love being in, and I haven’t had a bad day in there. It’s given me the chance to really push. I mean, this last album, I’ve done far too many songs, and I asked management about that, and they said, ‘Well, that’s good. It’s good to have all these’ [laughs].”
Knopfler Liked Working With Different Musicians
He had other things he wanted to do:
“I loved Dire Straits and I loved doing all that, but what I wanted to do was just to expand and work with different players and have a bigger lineup. The last time I had the band in, and that’s the high point for me. I would probably have had about six or seven guys in. It would be bigger than a little four-piece that was stripped down than when we had it. And that was great for me, and I loved it. I had an absolute ball for as long as it lasted until it got so big that I didn’t know the names of all the roadies.”
Mark Would Consider A Reunion For A Good Cause
In a 2008 chat with BBC News, Knopfler again turned down the idea of a Dire Straits reunion, saying:
“Oh, I don’t know whether to start getting all that stuff back together again.”
The singer revealed the only thing that would make him consider a reunion:
“I would only do that for a charity. I’m glad I’ve experienced it all – I had a lot of fun with it – but I like things the way they are.”
John Illsey Shares His Thoughts On A Possible Reunion
Another Dire Straits member, bassist John Illsey, also spoke about it in a 2023 interview with the Telegraph, detailing the chat he had with their former manager:
“Every time we have lunch, [he] says to me, ‘I wish people would stop offering me huge amounts of money to put [Dire Straits] back together.’ When you stop a machine like the Dire Straits thing, there’s a massive vacuum. There’s a massive vacuum. And you ask yourself if it was a good idea. And I had to keep telling myself that it was a good idea.”
Illsey also said he focused on painting and art shows following the disbandment. He left the music behind for a while and enjoyed what he was doing.
You can watch the rest of Mark’s interview below.
