Dire Straits
Alchemy

THE REVIEW

July 1983: the Dire Straits are no longer a curiosity-rousing phenomenon but have already comfortably settled in the seats reserved for those who have something to teach; they are a certainty, a constantly growing band that has just released the finest product of what will be their collection and is yet to place, within two years, one of the greatest best-sellers in history. And to confirm that at the time they were hitting every mark, here is a testimony, published in the early months of 1984, of what is their ultimate expression: the concert, the live performance where the tracks previously heard on record seem to break free from their chains and undergo evolutions that take them to double their original length, enriched in arrangements, weighed down by the addition of new lines on the staff, expanded in instrumental passages to showcase all the virtuosity of a band that has always, always played in an excellent manner. And it's not just about technical virtuosity, but also about heart.

A double album with just 11 tracks is quite rare, yet the total length is a good hour and a half; all the albums released up until that point are called into play, even though "Making Movies" (4) and "Love Over Gold" (3) take the lion's share. From "Communiqué," comes the track that opens the dance, the slow "Once Upon a Time in the West" during which Mark Knopfler's Fender begins to sting, while from the eponymous debut album comes "Sultans Of Swing," grown, pumped up, doped, dressed to seduce: the original nearly 6-minute version on record is just the raw embryo of this new evolution over 11 minutes long, with Terry Williams on drums pounding away and Mark Knopfler indulging in dizzying solos until his fingers turn red-hot on the final sixteenths. The confirmation that Dire Straits find their ideal dimension in live performances is also given by the fact that the album was packaged and released without modifications or tweaks to the sound recorded during the performances at the Hammersmith Odeon in London, and nothing seems out of place; on the contrary, everything sounds much more real and tangible. "Love Over Gold," present only on the double CD release and performed in a reduced version compared to the one recorded in the studio, was chosen as a single for the market, while there's also room for the instrumental "Going Home" drawn from Mark Knopfler's fresh solo repertoire. Finding a track that plays the leading role is challenging, given the choice among at least three or four, but listening to "Tunnel Of Love" cannot leave anyone with a shred of emotion indifferent: from the intro where guitar and sax converse, through the much more sustained body of the song than the original, to the laugh that escaped Knopfler on "like the Spanish City to me..", to the ecstatic screams heard in the distance among the audience when the music slows down (and who can blame them?) up to the last long minutes of the solo, long but never long enough: Knopfler makes love with the music, the guitar starts timid and silent only to gradually increase in intensity, passage after passage, caress after caress, followed in succession by the other instruments that can't stand by and remain indifferent; they all let themselves be carried away, bass, drums, piano, keyboards, becoming a river that grows and grows further until it reaches the climax of the senses, collective, for everyone. Pleasure.

It's an album that sounds playful and serious at the same time, the pastel colors of the 80s are worn by high-class musicians, the optimism of a plastic decade when everyone pretended to be alright echoes in this work that exudes a festive air, not a party of kids with teased hair or cocaine addicts in a nightclub, but the party of professional musicians having a blast making those who listen happy, and Mark Knopfler, under that red jacket, has a heart as big as this.