The times article.
Not sure if the link works (please ignore the pic descriptions between the paragraphs).
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/7f894b28-3cd6-11ec-a9ce-48a11f44f00d?shareToken=a67d9d8b0d8aa797990209372689305c&fbclid=IwAR2eOH-t1OzYcadouZL6M5hKX8rVwmgp5O8PZ8bscomYChS6Ku6MKvAElQESuch a humble and classy person. Makes sense he managed to stay Mark’s pal for such a long time.
Brother in arms — my life in Dire Straits
November 29 2020, 12.01am GMT
John Illsley: “I was trapped between a failing marriage and my part in a successful band”
John Illsley: “I was trapped between a failing marriage and my part in a successful band”
JOBY SESSIONS/GETTY IMAGES
Meeting Mark Knopfler
There was a man lying on the cement floor of our Deptford flat fast asleep — the promised carpet had never materialised — and his head, propped against the only chair, was at right angles to his body. The guy had an electric guitar across his chest. To one side of him, the giant square ashtray spilt over with a thousand butts; on the other sat a couple of empty bottles of Newcastle Brown. His face, sheet-white, revealed a hint of my flatmate David. This must have been the brother he had mentioned. He stirred and groaned, and an eyelid unstuck itself.
“Cup of tea?” I asked. When I came back, he had cleared up the fags and the beer bottles and I heard him splashing his face in the bathroom. I picked up his guitar, a Gibson Les Paul Junior. Nice. He came back in and I handed the tea to him. He held out his hand and, in a mellow Geordie accent, he said: “Mark, by the way. Mark Knopfler, David’s brother.”
“I guessed as much. Heard a lot about you. John — John Illsley. Nice one.”
Dire Straits, from left: Guy Fletcher, Jack Sonni, Terry Williams, John Illsley, Mark Knopfler and Alan Clark
Dire Straits, from left: Guy Fletcher, Jack Sonni, Terry Williams, John Illsley, Mark Knopfler and Alan Clark
DEBORAH FEINGOLD/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES
He sat down on the only chair and I perched on the old sofa bed I had found in a builder’s skip a few weeks earlier. We fell into an easy chat about this and that. I took to him at once. There was a natural air and softness about him, and you could see him thinking hard before he answered a question. The conversation drifted towards music and he picked up his Gibson and started playing. He plucked a few strings and twisted the tuning pegs. Then he really started playing, messing around with riffs and snatches of tunes. He had a curious finger-picking style. I had never seen anyone play a guitar like that, but even just fooling around, it was a great sound — a bit country, a bit rock — but fresh and original. Dave was right — his brother could play. After a while, I asked: “Fancy a fry-up?” “Sure.” We went up to the greasy spoon on the High Street and had the full English with a side of liver.
I want my MTV
I remember one afternoon when we were recording Money for Nothing. The “I want my MTV” line at the end was inspired by Mark seeing the Police talking on an advert for MTV and simply saying: “I want my MTV.” He’d mated that with a few notes from Sting’s composition Don’t Stand So Close to Me. In the studio, Mark happened to remark: “I wish Sting was here to sing this part.” And someone said; “Well, he is. He’s here on holiday!”
The Police had recorded on Montserrat for a couple of years and it turned out Sting loved to come to the island to windsurf. He’d been spotted out jogging, pounding the dirt lanes in the mornings. We had played quite a few gigs with the Police, mainly in Germany, and got to know them quite well, so — a phone call later — Sting came and joined us for supper one evening. We played some of the tracks from the album and he loved Money for Nothing, so Mark popped the question: “Why not come and sing on it?”
So the next morning, warming up, Sting started singing, “I want my MTV,” over and over. And that was it. His work was done. It’s what you hear on the song. It was a small contribution, but it really added something — and it meant that Sting was credited as co-writer. The song was released in June 1985 and it became our most commercially successful single, topping the US Billboard 100 for three weeks and reaching No 4 in Britain — a success we were all delighted with.
Illsley performing with Mark Knopfler
Illsley performing with Mark Knopfler
EBET ROBERTS/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES
We were staying out of the country for most of the year to avoid the punitive tax back home, so we went straight from Montserrat to New York to mix and put the final touches to the album at the Power Station. We had moved quickly to replace Hal Lindes on guitar, bringing Jack Sonni, a friend of Mark, over to Montserrat from New York. It was a speculative move that paid off handsomely for all concerned. Jack worked in Rudy’s guitar store, our favourite haunt, a few blocks away from the Power Station in Lower Manhattan, where Mark had met him. He could certainly play, and we all got along, so it was decided that Jack was going to join us to play on one of the biggest-selling tours in rock history. I remember Mark saying; “Sometimes it’s nice to play Father Christmas.”
We brought in a number of other top session musicians to the Power Station, including bassists Tony Levin, who played on Why Worry, and Neil Jason, who helped out on the song One World. This needed a funk bass sound, which I don’t do but Neil does very well. Tony played a bass instrument called a Chapman Stick that looks like a large version of a guitar fretboard and is held almost vertically. He was highly experienced and had played with a host of top acts such as King Crimson and Peter Gabriel. He was a bit rusty at first after six months away from music, but soon found his groove.
We were only in New York for a couple of weeks so there was no point renting an apartment and we stayed in the Mayflower Hotel on Central Park, a well-known rock’n’roll hotel that you might describe as bohemian if you were in a good mood, or cheap and seedy in a bad one. There was an irritating game you had to play with the hotel reception which involved the guest making several trips up and down in the ancient elevator to complain about their room. Up and down we went, politely requesting one that was not looking out on to a brick wall or the kitchen extraction fan and that boasted a toilet that actually flushed and a shower from which water, preferably hot, came out in something more powerful than a dribble. The hotel was half-empty, but between us we made about a dozen trips to the lobby before being given half-decent rooms on the street side, there being little point staying in the Mayflower unless you get that stunning view of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline.
It was sad when they bulldozed the hotel a few years back, punching out a tooth in that famous row of buildings, and built 15 Central Park West, one of the fanciest addresses in New York. The apartments in it are occupied by the great and the good and the extremely wealthy.
Prince’s Trust 10th birthday: Paul McCartney, Tina Turner and John Illsley (right)
Prince’s Trust 10th birthday: Paul McCartney, Tina Turner and John Illsley (right)
BRIAN COOKE/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES
During this incredible period with the band, it was not going so great with my wife Pauline and we both knew it was going to be very difficult to recover the happy times, that it was all but over. While in New York, I made that area of my life that much more complicated by getting entangled with a Norwegian girl, so when the band members eventually flew home to see our wives, girlfriends and kids, it was probably just as well it was only for a couple of weeks. I had barely set foot in the door at home, kissed Pauline and our son James hello and unpacked my bags . . . when I was packing them again, kissing Pauline and James goodbye, pulling the door behind me and climbing into the car to take me back to Heathrow. I was probably at home for a week or so, but it didn’t feel like that.
Then we were on the road for a year and a day: 248 concerts in 118 cities in 23 countries. No wonder the wheels on our magic music bus were starting to wobble by the time it was over. A great deal in our lives was about to change.
Double booked! Being asked to top the bill at Live Aid
I was trapped between a failing marriage and my part in a successful band. This is the stuff of personal tragedies. What was I to do? I couldn’t, and didn’t want to, trade in one for the other. It could only continue as it was, and I would have to pray it worked out somehow. What would be would have to be. There was no way out. It was heartening to see Money for Nothing climb up the charts.
This is a fact, not a boast, but it was now being said, though never by us, that we had become the biggest band in the world, and it was for this reason that we were faced with a very awkward moral dilemma. Bob Geldof was manically organising Live Aid, the now famous benefit concert, to raise money for the victims of a dreadful famine in Ethiopia. It was scheduled to take place at Wembley Stadium, a short walk from the Arena, on July 13 [1985] , but he was struggling to persuade many of the big acts and artists to take part, pulling his hair out and banging phones. Bob was very keen — “I absolutely focking insist” — that the Straits headlined the concert, arguing that if he got us on board, all the others would follow.
It was an honour to be asked to top the bill when there were so many other huge names on the British music scene at the time. The problem was that we were contracted to play the Arena the same night and all the 12,500 tickets had been sold months before. Did we let down our loyal fans, or did we fail to meet an arguably more powerful moral imperative and decline to add our voices to a global appeal aimed at alleviating widespread suffering? As with my marriage, there seemed to be no answer. Geldof was on our case like a rottweiler in a cattery, first with our manager Ed Bicknell, then with Mark, and I ended up in the final discussions too.
Bob Geldof is an extremely hard man to say no to. His tenacity and passion for the cause was demonic and angelic all at once. Live Aid was an astonishing feat of organisation, the music industry’s equivalent of planning for D-Day, the main elements of it being carried out in just a few weeks, and most of it by one very insistent Irishman. The talks went back and forth and, eventually, Bob had to concede that it was impossible for us to headline, so we agreed to perform in the late afternoon. We understood what was at stake, and it was good to hear that other big acts joined the line-up once we were confirmed on the bill. It was a major breakthrough for Bob, and it’s pleasing to know that we played our part in the success of the enterprise.
Illsley: “It was now being said, though not by us, that we had become the biggest band in the world”
Illsley: “It was now being said, though not by us, that we had become the biggest band in the world”
JOBY SESSIONS/GETTY IMAGES
If we helped save some lives and raise some awareness, then that is an achievement as gratifying as any in the success we enjoyed as a band. It was an extraordinary day, of course, vividly remembered by all who took part and watched it. There was a wonderful informal amateurishness to the proceedings, like a massive school concert, most of the egos of the great names of music deflated for the day.
After our sound check at the Arena, we walked across the car park to Wembley Stadium and went on in between U2 and Queen, playing Money for Nothing with Sting and then Sultans of Swing. We may not have been headlining, but we played the longest of all the acts, about 20 minutes in all, in an atmosphere as electrifying as any we had ever played in and in the knowledge that there were close to a billion people watching on television. A billion! That was about a fifth of the Earth’s population. Of course we were nervous walking out on that stage, not least because no one got a sound check. We just walked on, plugged in, and I had barely pulled the strap of my guitar over my shoulder when Sting started singing: “I want my MTV . . .”
Every band had different settings and the crew that day did an extraordinary job in pulling it off. On top of everything else, Live Aid was a logistical feat of the highest order. Our performance didn’t let us down but, in retrospect, I’m just very glad we came on before rather than after Queen. Their performance stole the show. Aware that we had just taken part in a great historical event, it was an odd sensation when, half an hour later, we were out the rear and crossing the car park back to the Arena, with the security guy there hassling us for our passes.
My marriage breakdown — and new partner
Christmas down at Telscombe (our home in East Sussex) brought few tidings of joy. Pauline and I tried to make it as festive as possible for James, by now three and a half, but things were difficult between the two of us. There were long walks over the South Downs in the unseasonably mild and wet weather. It’s hard to accept that your marriage is struggling when you have brought a child into the world, James playing with his toys by the tree while his mother and father headed towards their separation.
So it was with a heavy heart, mixed with some relief, that I flew up to Edinburgh to team up with the band at the Playhouse for three shows, the last on New Year’s Eve. Knowing I had a big Illsley family holiday in Montserrat coming up — booked many months earlier — I flew to Oslo straight after Edinburgh to stay with a friend and escape the tension at home. My parents, my brother Will and his wife, Chris, and their daughter, Corin, joined James and me in Montserrat, but Pauline didn’t come. It was a spoiling holiday. We stayed in George Martin’s beautiful plantation house, waited upon by the lovely house staff.
It was while we were in Sydney that the end of my marriage was sealed. It was there that I met Louise, who was to become the mother of my second child, Jess. Our paths crossed as I headed on to the tennis court she was vacating. We dated, hit it off straight away and she joined me for much of the rest of the tour, though not in Perth, where Pauline’s family were coming to see us play.
In spite of all the troubles back home — or maybe because of them — I loved the whole tour to Australia and New Zealand. The scale of the tour was phenomenal, almost overwhelming. Ordinarily, we’d bounce from one city to the next, night after night, but with most of Australia’s population concentrated in just half a dozen cities we got to lay our hats for long periods in the same place. It was rare to be able to unpack and get to the bottom of a suitcase.
Extracted from My Life in Dire Straits by John Illsley, published on November 11 by Bantam Press. © John Illsley 2021
