Mark Knopfler: A Life in Songs Page #4

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and the first album was a massive hit all over the place

and it was a real avalanche of activity.

The idea never was to do it to make a million dollars.

It never was that in the first place.

What happens to a lot of successful acts is that the business starts to channel them along

and you're out there touring and you're getting used to playing

in bigger places and it's all experience, all that stuff.

But it comes at the expense of something.

After the worldwide success of the first album, the group's second album, Communique,

and its single, Lady Writer, was viewed by many as a disappointment.

# Lady writer on the TV

# Talking about the Virgin Mary

# Reminded me of you

# Expectation left to come up to, yeah. #

You're out there playing live, but all the time you're doing that, you're not writing.

And all the time you're doing that you're not even really practising, not that much anyway.

So it didn't take me long to realise that I wasn't having enough time

to develop properly as a player or as a writer or anything.

So, of course, the second album, like a lot of second albums, a lot of acts are compromised that way.

By the time of their third album, Making Movies, in 1980, Knopfler had returned to form.

Having moved from London to New York, this new environment would influence his song writing.

No more so than on the classic Romeo and Juliet.

I suppose I was thinking along more of a West Side Story kind of a life,

rather than a Wild West End kind of a line.

I was playing my national with this guitar and just maybe fiddling around with it in the key...

It's like, it's almost like a semi banjo-y kind of thing.

And I started from somewhere else.

Instead of starting there, I started there

and I was trying to find a way in to the lyrics for Romeo and Juliet.

I sort of saw the Romeo figure as a kind of figure of fun.

So there...

is the key and that's where the guitar's tuned to.

I always get people saying, how did you do that?

It's really just a kind of happy accident.

# So you're a love-struck Romeo

# Got a serenade

# Laying everybody low

# With a love song that he made

# Finds a street light

# Steps out of the shade and says

# You and me babe, how about it?

# Juliet says goodness me it's Romeo You nearly gave me a heart attack

# He's underneath the window

# She's singing Hey-la, my boyfriend's back.

# You shouldn't come around here Singing up at people like that

# Anyway, what you going to do about it?

# Juliet, the dice was loaded from the start

# And I bet, then you exploded in my heart

# And I forget, I forget The movie song

# When you going to realise it was just that the time was wrong?

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