An English breakfast with liver: this is how the story of Dire Straits began

The mid-1970s are often regarded as the lowest point in modern British history, yet for me they were as happy as any year of my life. Heath 's Conservative government had declared five states of emergency in four years, there were devastating strikes, soaring inflation , rock-bottom stock markets, militant trade union representatives with more power than political parties, dirty and unreliable trains, and unpredictable, malfunctioning telephones; power cuts were accepted as part of normal life, the IRA was setting off bombs everywhere, violent football fans were running riot, National Front skinheads were threatening immigrants, there was graffiti and littering everywhere, and street after street of terraced houses were being destroyed to make way for the brutalist tower blocks that people saw as the solution to every community's problems. London was worse for the eyes than looking at a lightning bolt . Everywhere you looked, everything was dilapidated and decrepit; nothing really worked, and daily newspaper headlines spoke of a once-great country in severe decline and on the verge of total collapse.

However, in Deptford we were having a great time.

Perhaps because Deptford was so far ahead in the race to the bottom. There may be few districts in Britain as unglamorous and as deprived, but on the Crossfields campus and the Goldsmiths campus, we didn't mind at all as long as we had enough money for beer, cigarettes, and the occasional bag of weed. I loved Deptford: its seedy bars, its old pubs , its friendly tramps, its haunting history, with all those derelict warehouses and dock machinery rusted by the water that ran into the Thames. There was a faded but beautiful poetry to the place that tugged at your heartstrings, and the attitude was: "Yes, we live in a shitty place, but it's our shitty place."

There was a faded but beautiful poetry in the place that touched your heart: "Yes, we live in a shitty place, but it's our shitty place."

After the heyday of the 1960s, the general musical landscape in Britain had become rather dull during the first half of the following decade. There was a lot of "experimental" rock on the album chart, and the singles chart was topped by light, bland, easy-listening pop songs, very few of which stood the test of time. The Bay City Rollers were hailed as the new Beatles, and Terry Jacks's eccentric "Seasons in the Sun" topped the charts for a month in early 1974. That's saying something. This was also the golden age of the novelty song: The Wombles, The Wurzels, and comedy actor Windsor Davies with "Whispering Grass." If, as was my case, you loved your music, there wasn't much new talent to put on the turntable. Bowie, Cockney Rebel, and Eric Clapton were the only contemporary artists who spoke to me. I took refuge in my favorites: JJ Cale, Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, BB King, Leonard Cohen, Cream, the Stones, The Kinks and the Beatles.

Part of the problem was that most of Britain's top rock stars had fled abroad to avoid the punitive and exorbitant taxes that were a real problem back then. The Stones had gone to France, Bowie to New York, Rod Stewart to California. It was a full-blown exodus, and it came as no surprise that something of a hasty retirement followed. Thin Lizzy's single "The Boys Are Back in Town" and the album Jailbreak netted them around 200,000 pounds (around 2 million pounds today), but after taxes, they ended up with little more than 30,000 pounds for the entire band, before deducting their management and agents. They had worked hard to hone their skills, sacrificed a stable life, and provided many people with great joy for posterity, yet they were paid like apprentice bin men. Elton John , whose early albums with lyricist Bernie Taupin I loved, was the biggest-selling artist of the time , selling around 30 million copies in 1975 alone. Everyone thought he was rolling in plenty, but he was only getting about three pence in the pound. It was barely worth getting out of his four-poster bed and clearing his throat for. It's great that he's done well since then, but it certainly wasn't giving him anything back then.

These were highly charged and highly politicized times, perfect for studying Sociology at Goldsmiths, in the golden age of the stereotypical bearded left-wing professor with, it should be noted, virtually no female professors. It was a very left-wing university, especially my department, but the ideological fervor I'd reached when I was dating Diane relaxed. I soon realized I didn't want to be an affiliated ideologue of any kind, and I've never been one since. Maybe it was watching one of my militant socialist professors in his corduroy jacket hop into his BMW at the end of his short day to go and hook up with one of his students. Maybe it was meeting up for drinks with my old colleagues from BBH and the suburbs of Bexleyheath, all good people, probably all capitalists, but hard-working and decent, just trying to get by and make a buck.

(...)

It was July 1976, in the middle of a heatwave. I'd just finished my finals and woke up in bed with the manager of the pizza place down the road in Greenwich. I had a terrible hangover, but it had been a fun night out, and I was feeling pretty content with my life, knowing I hadn't blown the biggest academic challenge I'd ever faced.

On the way back to Farrer House, the train rattled toward the old, rusty drawbridge, and my head hummed to its rhythm with each jolt of the carriage. The low tide in Deptford Creek revealed a layer of greasy mud patterned with bottles, fuel cans, and shopping trolleys. Beyond the bridge, to the sharp bend before the Thames, there were rotting wharves, crumbling warehouses, and abandoned cranes. The train slowed as it entered the station, and from the top of the viaduct, through the dirty window, I could see that the curtains to our apartment were still drawn. David must have been late, too.

I stubbed out my cigarette in the ashtray on the armrest and patted my face, cursing the last few useless drinks. I trotted down the steps and headed for the 53 bus. So a new day dawned in Deptford; what was I going to do with it? Practice a few chords, I guess , go to the dumpy pub in the middle of the afternoon, finish three meals in one sitting, and then go back to the Oxford Arms with friends for a few beers and (if I was lucky) see a half-decent band.

The thought of how I was going to spend the day, as always, extended to how I was going to spend my life as I crossed St. Paul's Cemetery toward Crossfields. This eternal question haunted me again: what now? What to do with a degree in Sociology in the midst of a global recession? I was almost 26, for God's sake.

Whenever I was away from Crossfields, I pictured it in grainy black and white. But we hadn't seen a gray sky for weeks. The weather had been very nice. I walked across the brown grass, past a burnt tree, and ducked down the alleyway, its walls plastered with anarchic imperatives and clichés: "Eat the rich!"; "Sorry about your wall"; "I fought the law"; "Hit your head here"; "All property is theft"; "Who needs school?" And a new piece of graffiti that had appeared overnight, reading in grimy white: "NATIONAL FRONT OUT!" It was a corridor of anarchic philosophy; punk was going to be the next big thing , everyone thought.

Ernie was lying on his bench in the small square, a toilet available for Crossfield's dogs and passing vagrants, and a trash can for everyone else. His mouth was half open, his face to the sky, his arm resting on the bottle of VAT 69 on the ground. I took out a couple of cigarettes and put them in his coat pocket. I liked Ernie. Everyone liked Ernie, one of the most endearing vagrants at the Salvation Army hostel on High Street, who sometimes enjoyed day or night out in our "park." The neighbors were good to him, and since he had nothing worth stealing, he had nothing to fear. None of the students or various artists in the area resented the fact that, thanks to welfare payments, he probably had more money than we did. However, we had a roof over our heads, our youth, and our dreams. Ernie had his VAT 69 and his cigarettes.

And a new graffiti had appeared during the night that read: "NATIONAL FRONT OUT!" Punk was going to be the big news.

On the esplanade, a boy wound his way between cars on his stolen chopper bike. In Crossfields, someone would steal even if you farted. All property was theft, as the graffiti said. Your chopper bike is my chopper bike, your car is my car : that was the prevailing principle in remote southeast London. As an aimless, middle-class Marxist sociology student in Oxfam clothes, supplied by the Oxford Arms, and killing time in our shabby living room, all this wasn't a big deal to me.

Number 1 Farrer House was on the ground floor of a five-story council block. I was walking through the tunnel, my footsteps echoing beneath the passageway. I turned the key in the faulty lock, finally found some purchase, and opened it with my shoulder.

I was thirsty and went straight into the kitchen, filled the kettle, and turned on the gas. The sink was piled high with plates and cups, and on the sideboard were the remnants of a late-night feast: half a pack of sliced ​​bread, a jar of sandwich spread, a box of TUC biscuits, and a tin of Fine Fare baked beans with a fork stuck in the hardened batter.

I turned on the radio and turned the volume down so as not to wake Dave. They were playing "Save Your Kisses for Me" by Brotherhood of Man... Come on! I turned the radio dial... "Combine Harvester" by The Wurzels... I turned the tuning knob a little more... "Fool to Cry" by the Stones. That was better, and I left it there.

I threw the tea bag in the trash, added some sugar, and took a step down the hall toward the living room. I jumped back and spilled the tea. What the hell...?

There was a man lying on the cement floor, fast asleep—the promised rug had never materialized—his head, propped against the only chair we had, at a right angle to his body. The guy had an electric guitar on his chest. To one side, a giant square ashtray overflowing with a thousand cigarette butts; to the other, a couple of empty Newcastle Brown beer bottles. His face, white as a sheet, looked like Dave. He must be the brother I'd mentioned. He stirred and groaned; one eyelid drooped.

"A cup of tea?" I asked.

When I came back, he'd already cleared away the cigarettes and beer bottles, and I heard him splashing water on his face in the bathroom. I grabbed his guitar, a Gibson Les Paul Junior. Beautiful. I came back and gave him the tea. He held out his hand and, in a soft Geordie accent, said,

— Mark, by the way. Mark Knopfler, David's brother.

—I thought so. I've heard a lot about you. John Illsley. Nice to meet you.

He sat down in the only chair available, and I sat on the old sofa bed I'd found in a dumpster at a construction site a few weeks earlier. We engaged in a pleasant conversation about this and that. We connected immediately. There was a sweet, natural air about him, and you could tell he thought long and hard before answering a question. The conversation turned to music, so he eventually picked up his Gibson and started playing.

I'd never seen anyone play guitar like that before, but even playing casually he managed to get a great, fresh, original sound out of it.

He strummed a few strings and turned the tuning pegs to tune it. Then he started playing for real, doing a bit of everything, with riffs and snatches of melodies. He had a peculiar fingerpicking style. I'd never seen anyone play guitar like that before, but even playing casually, he managed to get a great sound—a little bit country, a little bit rock, but fresh and original. Dave was right: his brother could play.

"Do you fancy fried food?" I asked after a while.

-Clear.

We went up to the seedy pub on High Street and had a full English breakfast with a side of liver.

* Dire Straits filled massive stadiums around the world and sold hundreds of millions of records. During the 1980s, they were one of the biggest bands on the planet. In My Life with Dire Straits , founding member, bassist, and mainstay John Illsley evokes the spirit of that era and chronicles the journey of one of the greatest bands in rock history.

The story chronicles the band's rise from humble beginnings to selling out stadiums around the world, and the devastating demands of global touring and living in the spotlight inevitably took their toll.