‘I have no regrets’ is a bold statement for any artist when they stop for a moment and think about what they have done with their music career. Everything changes in time, including fans’ music tastes, what’s popular in the charts, and the genres dominating the era. Even the artists’ thoughts about their previous works are inclined to change. One might look at their past and be glad about their previous musical efforts, while another might wish they’d never released them.
Looking through rock music history, many artists have that one wish they wanted to come true. Billy Gibbons, for instance, had wished he could collaborate with Jeff Beck and B.B. King when he had that opportunity. Måneskin’s Damiano David wished he had taken piano lessons instead of playing football. Roger Daltrey, on the other hand, would want to record ‘Quadrophenia’ better when he looked back on the album’s recording process.
When he thought about all the albums he made, Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler wished he had followed a different path. In 1985, he told Rolling Stone that he had taken the wrong direction while recording Dire Straits’ previous albums. At that time, the band had released ‘Dire Straits,’ ‘Communiqué,’ ‘Making Movies,’ ‘Love over Gold,’ and ‘Brothers in Arms.’ As it seems, Knopfler had a huge sigh while looking at those albums.
In the interview, Mark Knopfler was asked whether he had released an album that made him think it was a step in the wrong direction. Without hesitation, the musician said, “All of them.” The interviewer then asked if he was sure. “Oh, yeah,” Knopfler confirmed. “I don’t like them that much. The best stuff happens when you’re just sitting around playing, by miles.”
The guitarist continued, “I don’t like to sit around listening to my own records — it’s perverse. I think, in general, that there’s too much attention paid to albums just because of this business that’s grown up around it. I will be playing better stuff than anything on my records if I get up in a tiny bar and play with a bar band.”
So, Mark Knopfler believed that it’s best to work on albums by not focusing on them too much. According to the musician, an artist showed their true talent spontaneously, playing without any concern in their mind. So, it seems Knopfler argued if he took the stage in a small pub, he would play better songs than any efforts in the first five of Dire Straits’ albums.
