“Keep it simple, stupid” was the old adage we were taught at school.
It was hard for me to follow that advice when my mum would pick me up from school, and the likes of Dire Straits would play through the speakers. How could I be taught that keeping things simple was best, when the guitar lines being played in the car home were some of the most complicated things I’ve ever heard?
Of course, later down the line, I would begin to understand the idea of a specialism. How mastering one craft requires focus, patience and most of all, skill. When it came to guitar playing, Mark Knopfler had this in abundance. Building off the foundation of 1950s and 1960s blues, he developed a fine-tuned skill that focused on delivering spiralling riffs.
As the profile of Dire Straits grew and Knopfler’s reputation as a virtuoso with it, he was undoubtedly an agent of his own pressure. ‘Sultans Of Swing’ stunned the world into thinking this guitarist could deliver a mind-bending riff simply every time he clutched the instrument in his hands, and fans awaited, like a hungry pack of wolves, desperate for more brilliance.
But in 1996, on Dire Straits’ record Brothers In Arms, Knopfler had reversed his methodology, realising that there was validity in the old school yard adage and that simplicity equally had a place within his music. Of course, the heavy-hitting ‘Money For Nothing’ still featured a snarling groove that satiated the appetite of guitar-focused Dire fans, but it was the record’s title track that adopted a different approach.
A long synthesised note draws out over the first minute, establishing a more patient sense of drama in comparison to the other songs, before Knopfler’s guitar parts punctuate the air. He gives the listener a mere teaser of the sort of lick we’ve come to associate with the guitarist, before outrightly falling away and letting the delicate structure of the song unfold modestly.
But the impact of that small flourish was arguably as impactful as any spiralling guitar line he had previously written, offering Knopfler a crucial reminder that sometimes, simplicity is indeed key.
However, the ambient introduction of the recorded track provides the same sonic backdrop for live instrumentation whenever Knopfler and Dire Straits took the stage. The space that the synthesiser allows can instead be filled by improvisation that feels natural to the overall palette of the song.
“People have bought tickets and you can see them thinking, ‘That’s not Brothers in Arms’,” Knopfler explained, adding, “That’s not to say you have to play the guitar part the same way every time. Once I’ve played those four notes, then I can start to improvise.”
Perhaps more than others, it was a song that suited Knopfler’s overall temperament. Despite being one of the most accomplished guitar players in the world at that point, he presented himself more modestly than most and in light of that, you could make a case for ‘Brothers In Arms’ being the most Knopfler song of all.
