Categories: Music

My Top 10 Songs by Mark Knopfler

To begin with, this list is going to need a few prefaces, caveats and protests before I launch into it. I do not mean to say that I object to making a top 10 list. In fact, I find it to be an interesting exercise, but I feel I need to give at least a nod to the complexities involved in making such a list.

Let’s start with my listing of Mark Knopfler as my favorite musician. He is the one I chose because I had to choose one. But, depending on my mood, I could be inclined to listen to a cd from any number of artists, sometimes a great distance away from Knopfler or Dire Straits. My tastes are truly catholic and eclectic, but they have the common bond of quality, to my way of thinking. I could just as easily pop in a Bob Dylan cd, especially the recent Time out of Mind and the much earlier New Morning, which is flat-out the best album Dylan ever put out or probably ever will.

Sometimes I have had to pick and choose among an artist’s recordings. For example, Ella Fitzgerald, before she discovered scat singing, was absolutely the best, so much so, that a top 10 all-time list of singers would have to put her at number one, then leave the second place blank to maintain the proper distance between her and anyone else. But, when she discovered scat, it was like a junkie discovering junk. She never did learn that a little scat will go a long way.

Along that same line, I find that some people were meant to compose and some to cover. After I discovered Vonda Shepard on the Ally McBeal TV show from a few years back, I bought one of her original composition albums and found it to be mediocre. On the other hand, there is nobody, but nobody, whose song she has covered who even came close to her rendition of it. Stevie Wonder, in addition to being an excellent performer, is nothing short of a genius as a composer. I am particularly referring to his albums from the early 1970s. One day, when I was browsing through a record store, I saw an album of Stevie Wonder singing Broadway songs in the dollar bargain bin. What, Stevie Wonder, plus Broadway, for a buck? Whoa, somebody sure fumbled the ball on that one, I thought. I rushed home to play it and-dear God-it was painful. I think even Stevie himself must “wonder” whatever possessed him to do that.

Speaking of Broadway, I might be in the mood for a Broadway album, whether from its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s or a recent show, such as Spamalot. Then too, I have and enjoy all the spoof albums in the Forbidden Broadway series. Other times, I may be in the mood for classical music, from a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta to a Beethoven symphony (Of which, as I’m sure we all know, the far-and-away best is the 7th).

If I want edgy, as I sometimes do, I like Tom Waits or Warren Zevon or Gram Parsons. Consider this lyric from the Parsons song “Kiss the Children” about a husband struggling to contain his feelings over being abandoned:

So don’t play this crazy game with me no longer

Cause I won’t be able to resist my rage.

And the gun that’s hangin’ on the kitchen wall, dear,

Is like the road sign pointing straight to Satan’s cage.

Whew!

All right, then, enough about people who are neither Mark Knopfler (Remember him?) nor Dire Straits, named for the dire straits the band found itself in financially before they hit it big. I am including Knopfler’s work with Dire Straits in this list and his duet work as an independent artist.

Let me just say that I set the bar awfully high for myself in regard to the chore of winnowing this artist’s work down to ten items. The funny thing is that Knopfler does not have a great voice. He has an okay voice, but that’s about it. Where he has sung with others, such as Sting, James Taylor, Van Morrison and, most notably, Emmylou Harris, he has always come off clearly second-best. Maybe I even have a better voice than he, and I make no pretence whatsoever about belonging in a recording studio. But, as a composer and all-around musician, Mark Knopfler is every bit as much of a genius in his time as George Gershwin was in his. I am not even going to discuss his brilliant movie soundtracks, except to note here that they are truly brilliant.

See also Top Ten Songs by Danity Kane

There may be some of Knopfler’s songs that some people may dislike or disagree with, but I don’t think there are any that a reasonably alert person would find boring. When I finally whomped up my top 10, I sort of resented having to leave “Sultans of Swing,” from Dire Straits’ first album, “Don’t Crash the Ambulance,” from Knopfler’s recent Shangri-La cd, and “This is Us,” from his collaboration with Emmylou Harris, All the Roadrunning.” There is one more song I left off the list that I must give special mention at the end, because it could have been his best, but for some ill-thought out lyrics. Okay, then, here we go at last.

Number 10: “Prairie Wedding” from Sailing to Philadelphia

Mark Knopfler’s gift is that he is able to stand so skillfully in the shoes of so many different kinds of people in so many different situations. This song is a poignant examination of the excitement and the underlying gnawing fear of a young man in the rural America of our past, meeting his bride for the first time on what is to be their wedding day. How terrifying an arranged marriage must have been in an era when voluntary marriage for romantic love was becoming more and more the rule, at least for people who did not live isolated lives in our plains and farms. It is a very sweet song with a very hard edge in the subtext.

Number 9: “Song for Sonny Liston” from Shangri-La

This is a hard-driving song about a person you would not think deserving of a song. Charles “Sonny” Liston was a violent criminal, who happened to become the heavyweight champion of the world until Cassius Clay (soon to become Mohammed Ali) took his title away, to the unmitigated joy of almost everyone. In January of 1971, he was found in his hotel room, dead from what was believed to be a heroin overdose. Knopfler tells a no-nonsense story to the accompaniment of no-nonsense music, but he does throw in an exceedingly complex wrinkle, which he pulls off brilliantly: the song has two separate, recurring choruses. Knopfler’s brutal rendition fits perfectly with the brutal human being he sings about, but he never forgets he is still singing about a human being.

Number 8: “Red Staggerwing” from All the Roadrunning

Very simply, I am not aware of a song anywhere that so wonderfully celebrates the joy of unbridled lust. Knopfler wrote the song, but he and Emmylou Harris both convince you that, the very second they get done singing about it, they are going to have at each other non-stop. I don’t think there was any real-life serious romantic relationship between the two of them. She is a generation older than he is, but you sure wouldn’t know it from this song.

Number 7: “The Ragpicker’s Dream” from the album of the same title

This, the only title song on my list, may induce tears. It is a tender ballad of the delusions two homeless men face at Christmas time and the awful reality they must finally deal with. The entire album mostly examines the lives of the downtrodden, living at the fringe of our society. Perhaps because it speaks of such grim existence, I have listed two other songs (as an “a” an “b” two-parter) from this album because they seem to provide some needed relief.

Number 6: “Money for Nothing” from Dire Stratis’ Brothers in Arms

In this number, Knopfler and his band (who are joined by Sting on the vocals) get to poke wild, raucous fun at themselves…on the surface. Beneath it, though, he speaks of those poor working stiffs who may feel the bitter jealousy of having been left behind in the parceling out of fortune. Check this verse of the song that is sung from the working guys’ standpoint:

See the little faggot with the earring and the makeup?

Yeah, buddy, that’s his own hair.

That little faggot got his own jet airplane.

That little faggot is a millionaire.

The therapeutic effect of this song is to remind those of us who may resent that we did not get the brass ring, that it may have had something to do with our own choices and to stop violating that commandment about coveting.

Number 5a: “Devil Baby” from The Ragpicker’s Dream

As I said earlier, this is one of the “comic relief” songs in the otherwise hardscrabble album about the disenfranchised. This song too deals with people beyond the pale: carnies, particularly the freaks. There is a joke within the song, and it nicely pops the bubble of whatever hubris we may feel about living is a supposedly enlightened age. And it’s a very catchy tune to boot.

Number 5b: “Quality Shoe.”

Speaking of boot (and catchy tunes, for that matter), this song is what you think it may be from the title: a pitch for the “quality shoe” the singer is huckstering. But the sales pitch is geared directly to the man who is down on his luck and his funds. This will be, as the song states, the only shoes he will own. And they’re none too fancy. I really like the first bridge in this song:

Now, they maybe ain’t too hot for dancing,

But I don’t foresee too much of that.

You ain’t exactly gonna be prancing

Around in the moonlight

With a cane and a top hat.

Number 4: “5:15 AM” from Shangri-La

The song in this slot is the opening number of the album. It is a tale, told in hushed tones, of mayhem and mystery in a mining town, interspersed with a heartbreaking look at the same town, 100 years earlier. It operates nicely as a slow contrast to the heavily up-tempo number that follows, but this song would still fascinate as a single.

Number 3: “Romeo and Juliet,” from Dire Straits’ Making Movies

To my way of thinking, the best song Dire Straits ever produced, without question. It spoke to the many times I thought I had found what I was looking and hoping for, only to have my heart ripped out. I’m sure it spoke to every young man who suffered through the same thing. Our various circumstances may not have been exactly the same as Romeo’s, but the betrayal that the song rages about is surely universal.

Number 2: “Done With Bonaparte” from Golden Heart

I was driving when I heard this song, toward the end of what I was considering a relatively disappointing album (bearing in mind that bad Knopfler is infinitely superior to the best possible BeeGees). In short order, I had to pull off to the side of the road and listen to the rest of it. It is an anti-war song, told from the standpoint of a French soldier in Napoleon’s army on the wintry retreat from Moscow. I have never in my life heard a more effective song against war. It makes “Blowing in the Wind” seem like a jingle. The first verse alone may make you gasp.

Number 1: “Love and Happiness” From All the Roadrunning

By the way, let me start off by saying this album was the best one I have purchased so far this millennium. Since I stuck two related songs into my fifth slot, I may yet stay within my quota by listing this one: and at number one, yet. Knopfler did not write this song. Harris, with the help of another friend, wrote it. Mark Knopfler’s only contribution to this song was to perform that which was written for him to perform, and, as I said, you will never confuse him with Placido Domingo. It is, simply, the most beautiful song I have ever heard in my life. That’s all.

The One that Got Away: “Stand Up Guy” from Shangri-La

Knopfler continues his fascination with the carnival life in this tremendously powerful ballad of life in a rural medicine show in the early 20^th century. I still listen to it often, in spite of the fact that the composer was entirely too careless with the lyrics. And that bumped a song which could have been very high on my list to off the list altogether.

The song is about a presumably deceased snake-oil salesman, known to the narrator and his cohorts as “The Doctor.” The chorus, which features that snake-oil, is badly flawed as to meter:

There stands the bottle,

Ladies and gentlemen.

All these bottles,

Don’t have to tell you, friends.

These days miracles

Don’t come fallin’ from the sky.

Raise your glasses to the Doctor

To a stand up guy.

Right off the bat, “gentlemen” does not scan, and by a long shot. He could have and should have just as easily said “ladies and gents.” The rhyme would still have been imperfect, but the meter would have been preserved, so as not to draw attention from the tremendously eloquent statement: “These days miracles don’t come fallin’ from the sky.”

In one stanza, he makes two really bad mistakes. He starts it off, singing;

The band’ll spend their moolah

Like sailors gone ashore.

We’re goin; to West Helena

To gamble, drink and whore…

Okay, Mark, you’ve put your merry band in Montana, obviously, if you’re going to “West Helena’ (which city name has to be wrongly accented to preserve the meter). You should have taken a closer look at the Montana state map. It would have been so much better to say:

The band’ll spend their moolah

Like sailors gone ashore.

We’re goin’ to Missoula…

A bit later in the same stanza, he tells the unmentioned fellow he has been singing to:

Let’s you and me make whoopee…

I don’t think Mr. Knopfler understood that, at least in American parlance, if “you and me” are “making whoopee,” it means we’re having sex with each other. A better wording would have been:

Let’s you and me both whoop it up…

No confusion there. The reason I have hit so hard on these points is that the overall song is so powerful, it’s just wrong to mess it up with stupid mistakes like that. Mark Knopfler or anyone who has Mark Knopfler’s ear: for goodness sake-no, for greatness sake-fix these lyrics!

And there you have it.