Neil Dorfsman said this about recording Brothers In Arms:
"Perhaps my bedside manner wasn't the best in the sense that I always wanted the music to be the most important thing," Dorfsman now admits. "Not that I would be mean, but I would constantly be pushing for things to be different from how they were if they didn't feel right. At the same time, I would tell Mark my concerns, knowing that, as his co-producer, I could always take the blame if he decided to take action. That's part of the job description. And so finally, even though Mark had been a little bit more patient, a little bit more tolerant with the band, he got a sense that maybe things weren't happening the way they could and he decided to act.
"To me,
the record was sounding more like a demo, and this really hit home when we tried to do the song 'Ride Across The River', with its white-boy reggae feel. It was laying there like lead. I don't think Terry felt that rhythm, and that was totally understandable. Having played with Dave Edmunds and Rockpile, that wasn't what he was famous for. He was a great drummer, but his style was more straight-ahead rock & roll, whereas Omar's style was more polyrhythmic and better suited to the direction in which Mark was going. The material needed the kind of glossy sheen that Omar brought, as well as his versatility — there was a lot of different music on the record: 'Your Latest Trick' was kind of jazzy and 'Ride Across The River' had that reggae-ish feel, so we needed a drummer who was versed in a lot of different styles and Omar fit the bill in that regard.
"Believe me, it was a load off my mind when he played that first tune and knocked everybody out. It was a big deal to fly somebody in from New York, not really knowing 100 percent if things would go according to plan. I had worked with him a bunch in the past and knew he was great, but I still didn't really know if he was going to be the right guy for the job. Thank God, for that particular record, the right call was made. There were definitely some sweaty moments."
Source:
https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/classic-tracks-dire-straits-money-nothingSo if they went through all this trouble recording Brothers In Arms, why would they bother to repeat it while recording On Every Street, which in a lot of ways is similar to Brothers In Arms and even more varied, when you can resort to using great session drummers from the get-go? Meanwhile, Terry's chops were absolutely fine for the live environment it seems, but he was replaced by Chris, and luckily, we have him on this forum to tell us first-hand why it may have happened.
The most astonishing part of all this to me is that Omar learned, prepared and recorded all the parts for the album in a matter of a couple of days. What a legend. Reminds me of how Larry Knechtel came up with an epic and timeless piano arrangement of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" just as fast according to Paul Simon. Great and versatile musicians don't need a lot of time to create gold, they just emerge out of nowhere and do the job, as if sent from the heavens with this one task.
