Welcome to A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. Hello, I hope you’re doing well. I’m very excited this week to be bringing you a member of one of my all-time favourite bands.
Actually, maybe it’s not the band so much, but their biggest hit that had such a huge effect on me. I think it was either my 18th or my 21st birthday party when we played this track on rotation the entire night. You get a shiver in the dark, it’s raining in the park, but meantime Sound of the river, you stop and you hold everything A band that’s blowing dixie, double ball time You feel alright when you hear the music ring Well now you step inside, but you don’t see too many faces Coming in out of the rain, they hear the jazz go down Competition in all the places But the horns, they’re blowing that sound Way on down south, way on down south, London town The group, of course, is British rock band Dire Straits, formed in London in 1977 by Mark Knopfler.
If you’re a fan, you’ll also know the work of my guest today, Chris White, who played with the Straits for 10 years. Chris has recorded and played with many other top artists, including Sir Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Ray Charles, Joe Cocker, Aretha Franklin and Robbie Williams. More recently, he’s been managing and touring with his own band, the Dire Straits Experience.
He joins us now to tell us what life’s been like before, during and after his time with the biggest British rock band of the 80s. Chris White, welcome to A Breath of Fresh Air. If my research serves me correctly, you started out wanting to be an Olympic swimmer, is that right? I did, actually, certainly.
As a young teenager, I did a lot of swimming. And yeah, for a minute, I thought, I’d really like to do this. This would be good.
Then I discovered the saxophone. So that just went, all went out the window and off we went. I became obsessed with saxophone instead.
Tell us a story around that. Well, I’ve been playing violin, actually, from about the age of 10 and got into some kind of junior school, little kid orchestras and things. But I didn’t love it.
It kind of did mean I got afternoons off school to go and rehearse with this other lot. So I kind of kept up with it. And then one night I was watching TV with my dad and somebody came on.
I think it was a guy called John Dankworth and played alto saxophone. And I just thought it was amazing. One of the best things I’d ever heard.
I went to school the next day and said to the music teacher, I heard somebody playing saxophone last night. I’d really love to do that. He said, oh, come with me.
He took me to a cupboard at the back of this rehearsal room and there in a sack was a soprano saxophone. He just said, I’ll get someone to show you what to do. But until I do that, just take that home and see what you can do with it, which was incredible.
So I took it home, started playing. And within a month, six weeks, I just knew that’s what I was going to do. Chris, what was it about the sax that caught your interest? I don’t know.
I really don’t know. I just was spellbound by seeing this guy play. It sounded great.
It was odd because at that point I’d been a big Beatles fan and it was all that stuff was going on, which is not about saxophones at all. But no, something happened there. So one thing led to another.
You were a bit young to be influenced by the Beatles, even though you were in the middle of the UK, weren’t you? Were they your main influence? No, I was around when the Beatles were up and running. So I was big on the Beatles. There were people like Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas.
So I was around with all those bands and that’s kind of what I grew up with. Listen, do you want to know a secret? Do you promise not to tell? Whoa, closer, let me whisper in your ear, say the words I love to hear. I’m in love with you.
My brothers had gone out to work because that’s what had to happen. I was the youngest of three. And actually what happened was my dad lent me the money to buy a saxophone.
Chris began taking lessons from his school teacher, who became so impressed with his protégé that he offered him some gigs. If he didn’t feel like going, he’d come to the back of the class on a Wednesday morning and say, can you do my gig tonight? So I’d go off to another city and do his gig. Somebody give me a lift.
Incredible training, actually. I was probably out four nights a week gigging at that point. Local bands, I was doing kind of dance band stuff.
I was doing a few upstart rock bands around Bristol where I grew up. So, yeah, it was great. And is it true that they’re the only two saxes that you’ve ever had? Yeah, I’m still playing that alto.
I’m still playing it today. It’s on stage with me today. So there were a lot of professional players around Bristol, older guys, the age of my sax teacher.
They had a band. One day they said, Chris, we need another alto player. Can you step in? So I got the chance to work with these incredible pro players.
I went to a rehearsal. They said, yeah, great, you can do it. You’re going to need to buy yourself a tenor, though.
So I had the alto. He said, you need to buy a tenor. At which point the tenor player said, well, you can buy mine.
So he sold me his saxophone for, I think, £75, which is the one which is on everything and is with me on my shoulder every day. At the time, there were a lot of really good sax players around, weren’t there? Who were you taking inspiration from? Some American players, yeah. Guys like Michael Brecker, I don’t know if you know that name, Dave Sanborn, Ernie Watts.
There was a thriving jazz scene in the UK at that point, so there were lots of Saturday night jazz places you could go. But Ronnie Scott, of course, was around and lots of other people. But the jazz thing, it wasn’t quite the right thing.
I was kind of a bit more bluesy than jazz, really. And for me, I really enjoy playing on songs because I like to play to a lyric. I like something with a story because that fires off something about what I’m going to play and the way I’m going to feel it.
On Everest Street Lady killer, regulation tattoo Silver spurs on his heels What can I tell you as I’m standing next to you? She threw herself under my wing It’s a dangerous road And a hazardous loan And the fireworks of liberty explode in my head And it’s your face I’ve been looking for On Everest Street A street called symphony crashes into space The moon is hanging upside down I don’t know where it is, I’m still on the case It’s my last town I still refuse to think to make such a waste Every victory is a taste that’s bitter sweet It’s your face I’ve been looking for You mentioned Mark, of course we’re talking about Mark Knopfler. How did you come to meet him? I met him because he was looking for a sax player for something. I was working around London as a gigging sax player.
I was playing solos on people’s records. There’s a lot of pop stuff going on. Heaven 17 and all that stuff.
So it was a great time and I had a diary because there were no mobile phones. So I had this thing called a diary service. So if somebody wanted a musician, they would call the diary service and say, is he available this day? They’d take the booking, phone your home that night.
So I got home one day and there was a note stuck to the phone saying Wednesday, 10am, Air Studios, Mark Knopfler, one track, film, one hour, you’ll be done in an hour. So I thought, OK. So I turned up at the studio early, got my sax out and started playing.
Mark came into the control room and I could see he was kind of listening. And then he came out, he came out into the room and said, hi, I’m Mark. He said, you sound a lot like Michael Brecker.
And I said, thank you very much. That’s really high praise. Anyway, we got into the session, which was great because unlike a lot of other sessions, the whole band was there.
So there were five, six of us there in the studio all playing live, which is kind of unusual. Yeah. So we played this track, listened to it back.
I just thought, OK, I’m happy with that. He said, that’s cool. So I said, OK, great.
Thanks very much. Thinking I was going to go and put my saxophone away. At which point he said, could you just try something on the next track? Just as a little idea, maybe on the next thing.
So, yeah, of course. Love to. Three days later, I left the studio.
We finished the movie and I played on just about everything. And at the end of that, he said, thanks very much. You have to come and play with the band.
It was a movie called Comfort and Joy. Mark had just done Local Hero. So he’s asked you then to join the band.
How did that make you feel? It made me feel great, but it was also a bit of a shame because the call came in, we’re going to Montserrat. So one, I’m going, yeah, Montserrat, fantastic. And these are the guys, Mark would like you to come and play on the album.
And then we’re going to do it. We’re going to tour it. It’ll be about nine months work or something like that.
So great. Here are the dates. And the problem was I’d already committed to actually a jazz album.
So I didn’t play on Brothers in Arms. They went off and did it. And then Michael played on it.
Michael Brecker and his brother Randy. Most of the taxes, most of the homies are only taking calls. I don’t know how it happened.
It all took place so quick. But all I can do is hand it to you and you leave it straight. Oh, we’re standing open.
Security, we’re laid back in life. They were the pitfalls of being a session musician, weren’t they? You had to honour your commitments. Yeah, that’s right.
You could depth things. Some things you could you could put somebody else in. It wouldn’t have been right.
So I thought, oh, that’s a real shame. That’s that gone. And then they came back from Montserrat and the manager Ed called me and said, look, we’ve changed what we’re going to do.
We were going to take out three horns. We just want to take out one horn on the tour. Will you come and do it? So I got the chance to step back in.
So I just I went out as the sax player on the Brothers in Arms tour, which was amazing. They were pretty huge, weren’t they? Yes, they’ve been very successful. But what happened with Brothers in Arms was really quite different for a number of reasons.
I think we started the tour. It was like any other tour. It was the same kind of standard of stuff started in Europe.
And then very quickly, the album really started to lift off, particularly in America. They’d done some stuff in America at that point, but not made any real big inroads. But Brothers in Arms really took off.
Suddenly, you know, what was going to be a nine month tour became a 16 month tour. And we’re playing really big stadiums all around the place and sitting in business class on the planes instead of economy, which was very nice. It changed the things for Mark and Jar, for everyone.
It was quite amazing because it was the happiest thing. Apart from what I’m doing now, actually, it was the happiest tour I’d ever been on. Everybody was excited.
Everybody in the band was excited. Management were excited. Audience were excited.
It was a real win-win situation. That ain’t working. That’s the way you do it.
Money for nothing and your cheeks for free. Now that ain’t working. That’s the way you do it.
Let me tell you. When guys ain’t done, maybe get a blister on your little finger. Maybe get a blister on your thumb.
We’ve got to install a microwave oven. Cut some kitchen deliveries. We’ve got to move these refrigerators.
We’ve got to move these color TVs. The little faggot with the earring and the makeup. Yeah, buddy, that’s his own again.
The little faggot got his own jet airplane. The little faggot, he’s a millionaire. We’ve got to install a microwave oven.
Cut some kitchen deliveries. We’ve got to move these refrigerators. We’ve got to move these color TVs.
We’ve got to move these refrigerators. We’ve got to move these color TVs. Chris White was having the time of his life, but 16 months straight on the road can be quite taxing.
This is a Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. Chris White was 30, married and playing with one of the biggest bands in the world.
He was on the road constantly as the tool rolled on and the excitement just continued to build. What do you think the big appeal about Dire Straits was at the time? I think Mark wrote some amazing songs. So they stand in what we’re seeing now, is that they’ve stood the test of time.
So it spoke to something out there. There were developments in instruments, so the album could sound less like a little rock band and more like a big production because synthesizers were developed so you could get big sounds without having to have a huge budget to employ an orchestra and things like that. That album kind of promoted Compact Disc, which had just been developed by Philips.
So Philips were on as sponsorship partners for that tour. So there was this whole hype about this new format called Compact Disc, which did sound great initially compared with vinyl, although a lot of people are going back to vinyl now. That’s amazing.
Myself included. But CD meant you could get more music. You could put over an hour of music on a CD.
So people could stretch out and do stuff. But I guess it comes down to really, they were great songs. The band was really, really happy and playing great.
How about it? Juliet says, hey, it’s Romeo. You nearly gave me a heart attack. He’s underneath the window.
She’s singing, hey, love, my boyfriend’s back. You shouldn’t come around here singing up to people like that. Anyway, what you gonna do about it? Juliet.
The dice was loaded from the start. And I bit. And you exploded into my heart.
And I forget, I forget. The movie song. When you’re gonna realise it was just that the time was wrong.
Juliet. Of all of Mark’s songs that he wrote, did you have a favourite? I was kind of a Dire Straits fan before I got involved with Dire Straits anyway. And I remember the first time I heard Romeo and Juliet.
I was driving my car, going to a session actually, and I thought, oh, man, that’s really cool. I really like that. Things like Telegraph Road, I love.
Private Investigations, I love. There are lots of them, I’m afraid, not just one. You’re being very modest here because I know that you did the incredible solo on Romeo and Juliet.
Thank you. There wasn’t a saxophone on the original. That was the great thing about working with Mark.
He was very open to people, to what you could contribute. He was a bit of a perfectionist, well, he was a hell of a perfectionist, so he knew what he wanted, but always willing to listen to something else. And we were in rehearsal for the Brothers in Arms tour.
Like I say, I was kind of a fan, and I’d listened to Romeo and Juliet, and I’d always thought, oh, I’d love to play on that. So we were in rehearsal, they started playing Romeo and Juliet. I was just standing there because I wasn’t playing on it.
And Mark stopped singing, and the band carried on. So I picked up my saxophone and just thought, well, I’ll just have a play along. He looked across at me, and I kind of thought, should I stop? But I didn’t.
So we played to the end of the song. I played what I was playing, and he just went, huh, well, I think we’ll have that. And that was it.
There was room for a saxophone in Romeo and Juliet, so it was cool. But that was great. He was happy to just go, OK, this guy can maybe add something here.
Great, let him do it, which is not always the case with people. Somebody sent me a clip recently of three days before Live Aid in Wembley playing Going Home, which is the thing from Local Hero. And there was Hank Marvin on stage.
And actually, Hank and the Shadows were probably responsible for me wanting to be a musician in the very first place, when I was about seven, a track called Apache. And I watched this clip the other day, and just everybody on that stage was beaming, was happy. You could just see.
It’s unusual on a long tour for it to sustain like that, really. But everybody was having a ball, just absolutely having a ball. And I was there playing with Mark Knopfler and Hank Marvin.
Wow. Fantastic. It doesn’t get much better than that, does it? It doesn’t, no.
There were two of your heroes. Absolutely, yeah. It was your 30th birthday when you played on the great Live Aid concert at Wembley.
And you also played on Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday concert. Yeah. There was another case of Mark going, OK, what can you do? It was part of that creative process.
The tracks developed as the tour went along, which was the great thing. There’s a version we play of So Far Away, which only ever happened once in Australia, right at the end of the tour. It only ever happened once.
Molly Meldrum, I think, was that? Yes. That’s his name. That’s his name.
Yeah. I think there was this big TV thing that we did at the end of the tour in Sydney. And just in the lead up to it, somebody said, you know, we should do this as a calypso.
And again, Mark just went, yeah, that’s cool. Let’s do that. So we do that.
And even at that point, after 16 months on the road, the vibe was so good, the energy was so good, that you could just throw something out like that. And it went down a storm. So that’s how we do it.
Here I am again in this mean old town. And you’re so far away from me. And where are you when the sun goes down? You’re so far away from me.
You’re so far away from me. So far I just can’t see. So far away from me.
You’re so far away from me. Oh. I’m tired of being in love and being all alone when you’re so far away from me.
I’m tired of making out on the telephone because you’re so far away from me. You’re so far away from me. You’re so far I just can’t see.
So far away from me. You’re so far away from me. What was it like playing with Eric Clapton? It was very cool.
He’s a unique guitar player, I think. I think he’s pretty unique. And it was just great to hang out with him.
We did some rehearsals and some run-ups, some shows in the run-up to the Mandela. And it was just great. He also, at that point, right at that time, he was celebrating 25 years in the business, something like that.
And there was this big dinner in a posh hotel, which we got invited to, which was lovely. So there was a nice evening with lots of people I thought I’d never meet. Yeah, I’m sure.
You were really living the life, weren’t you? Oh, man, it was great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you don’t know it.
You know, you’re doing what you do. So on reflection, I look at it now and I think, that clip turned up the other day, and I looked at it and thought, bloody hell, I was on stage with Mark Knopfler, Hank Marvin, Terry Williams, the whole thing. Yeah, no, it was great.
Very lucky. Very, very lucky. She’s wondering what clothes to wear She’ll put on her makeup And brushes her long blonde hair And then she’ll ask me Do I look all right And I’ll say yes You look wonderful tonight You go to a party And everyone turns to see This beautiful lady That’s walking around with me And then she’ll ask me Do you feel all right And I’ll say yes I feel wonderful tonight You were also on their last tour too, weren’t you? That was 9192.
Why did that one end up being their last? It was even before that, Mark was wanting to do some other stuff. He’d had a little band called the Notting Hillbillies, I don’t know if they ever made it, he had this band with a couple of mates, a couple of Geordie mates. So after Brothers, he did this album with the Notting Hillbillies, they did a little UK tour, which was 12 guys in two transit vans, touring around the UK.
One of which was called the Iron Lung, because all the smokers were in that, and you’d just see smoke coming out of this thing. The other one was the people who didn’t smoke. So already he was wanting to explore some other things.
There’s nothing I can do Nothing I can say You do what you want to Go your own sweet way You’ll go your own sweet Your own sweet way You’ll go your own sweet Your own sweet way I can talk till you see I can talk till you night When it comes to love You won’t take good advice You’ll go your own sweet Your own sweet way Yeah, you’ll go your own sweet Your own sweet way There was no big punch-up, there was no big fall-out, there was nothing like that. It was simply that. I think he, it seemed to me, he felt he’d pushed that particular thing as far as he could.
And every street tour was really big. There were nine people on stage. It was a massive, massive thing to roll around the world with.
And I think he just wanted to do something else. And I think that’s perfectly understandable, actually. So, Jive Straights came apart, the Notting Hill Billies kept going, and I think in about 1990, you got up and played with them at some of their London shows.
I know that you do a fabulous sax solo on Rainy, Rainy Day, which happens to be an old blues song that was written by Brownie McGee. I hate to be alone People on, on a rainy day I remember so well That’s the day my woman walked away It was on Oh Lord, it was on On a rainy day I remember playing with the guys, but for me it was one of those things where you’d turn up and Mike would just say, yeah, just play something here. But it was great.
It was fun. He was really enjoying it. What prompted you to go solo at that point? Other people, honestly.
Somebody came, somebody who’d seen me with, well, there were a few people who’d seen me doing what I did with Dire Straits. He kind of came along and said, mate, you should really do something here. So, so we did.
I did. I think there are some things there that I think, honestly, I kind of wasn’t ready for it, to be honest. I was old at that point.
I was older and old enough, you would think. But I think it was a sort of strange experience, really. And I would do it differently now.
During his time with Dire Straits, Chris managed to influence so many of Mark Knopfler’s songs and live performances with his touching and tender sax sound. Some of the newer ones, like Planet of New Orleans, On Every Street, Fade to Black and The Long Highway all carry his hallmark.
This is a Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. In 1990, Chris joined the Notting Hillbillies and the following year he released his first solo album, Shadow Dance, for which he composed all 11 tracks.
But then, as luck would have it, he was forced to turn down a tour with another huge band, this time Pink Floyd. We came back from the Brothers in Arms tour and I decided it was time to get a motorbike. So I got this motorbike and really enjoyed it until the day somebody drove into me and I was carted off to hospital with a leg hanging off.
So the call came in while I was in hospital from Tim Rennick, who was then a guitar player, who was then MDing for Pink Floyd at that point. He said, Chris, we’re going on tour, can you come? We’re in rehearsal next week. And I had to say, sorry, mate, I’m actually in hospital with a leg in plaster and a broken finger.
So I missed it because of that, which was a real shame. I would have loved to have done that. Good, you recovered from that accident really well.
It took a long while, yeah. Did it? Well, the leg wouldn’t heal, but I think they wheeled me in late at night and I think the guy got a bit carried away because he made me half an inch taller on the side of the broken leg. So it wouldn’t heal, the bone wouldn’t grow back, so I had to go back in a few times to get bits of bone shaven from other places and shoved in my leg.
So I was out for almost three years. Wow. Your sex must have been good comfort during that time, was it? Yeah.
I had a little studio at home, I was doing some playing there, but I couldn’t actually go out. I was on purchase for 18 months, which is, I can laugh about now, but it wasn’t so funny at the time. No, it really messes with your head, doesn’t it? Yeah, it does.
Well, I wonder where you are tonight You’re probably on the rampage somewhere You have been known to take the light in Getting in somebody’s hair And you, you always had the knack Well, fade to black Bet you already made a pass I see a darkened room somewhere You run your finger round the rim of his glass Run your finger through his hair They scratch across his back Fade to black Chris, over time you’ve collaborated with so many artists, some huge names, people like Paul McCartney, Chris de Burgh, Mick Jagger, Tom Jones, Joe Cocker, one of my favourites, Justin Heywood, and of course Robbie Williams. You had a story about Paul McCartney there to tell us, don’t you? Tell me about him. Like I said, I was a big Beatles fan.
I got this call, I was working with Nick Heywood, there was a band here called Haircut 100. The guy producing the album was Jeff Emrick, who was the Beatles engineer, very famous. So Paul was making this movie, Give My Regards to Broad Street, and suddenly I got this call, could you, you know, could you come along, we’d like to see, might be doing this track called Silly Love Songs.
So I went along for what I thought was an audition, but it wasn’t, I took my saxophone, and it was just, they just wanted to see what I looked like. It’s a movie, you know, it’s a week’s filming, and I couldn’t believe how much they offered to pay me for it. So I said, yes, it was wonderful, thank you.
And then I got a call, we need to try some makeup, we’ve got some special makeup we want to do on this track. So could you come in for a day and be the makeup guinea pig? So I’m sitting there in this makeup room, and suddenly I hear Paul McCartney’s voice going, hello, hello, walking through the building. And I thought, that’s Paul.
As he walked past the room I was in, he said hello to the lady who was doing the makeup, and carried on. And I thought, well, I’ll meet him later. I heard his footsteps coming back, and he walked into the room and said, you’re Chris, aren’t you? I went, yeah, yeah.
He said, do you know what this is? So I said, makeup. He said, no, no, do you know what the movie is? I said, no, I don’t. So he pulled up a chair, sat down beside me, and spent about 20 minutes telling me what the movie was about.
And all I could think for 20 minutes was, that’s Paul McCartney, that’s Paul McCartney sitting there. I didn’t hear a bloody word he said. Nothing went in.
That’s Paul McCartney. It’s the only time I’ve been starstruck like that. I didn’t know what to say to the man.
Did you ever suffer imposter syndrome? I guess that was it, actually. Yeah, that’s a phrase I’ve only learned over the last few years. But yeah, what am I supposed, what am I doing? You know, I’m some kid from a council estate down in Bristol.
What are you doing here? Yeah, that happened a few times. What about the work you did with Robbie Williams? Amazing. That was later.
Robbie was like the new Tom Jones. And you’d been on stage playing for the old Tom Jones too, hadn’t you? Yeah, I had, yeah. And if you had to choose a highlight, because of course you did play with Tom Jones as well as Brian Ferry at the concert for Princess Diana in 2007, but if there was one highlight you had to choose, could you name it? That’s really hard because I think I’m the luckiest man on the planet.
Two things which are really big for me are Live Aid and the Mandela concert. Live Aid because it was such an important world event. The Mandela thing meant a lot to me as well and a lot of other people.
The other thing was I had a call to go to Paris and play with Ray Charles for one night. So I went to Paris and I was in Ray Charles’ band for a night. It was a kind of concert in the basement of the Louvre.
Being on stage, looking across and seeing Ray Charles sitting there was pretty bloody cool. Georgia, Georgia The whole day through Just an old sweet song Keeps Georgia on my mind I said Georgia, Georgia A song of you Comes as sweet and clear As moonlight through the pines There have been so many good things. I loved working with Joe.
I loved working with Joe Cocker. I thought he was great. Absolutely great.
Lots of things for you. Chris, where did the idea get born to do a Dire Straits experience? How did that come about? I was asked to put a band together to play the Dire Straits stuff for a charity event at the Albert Hall in 2011. I thought it would be very difficult because Mark was away.
I contacted Mark and said, look, I’ve been asked to do this. He was away doing his solo stuff. So it was a question of trying to find someone to cover that, which I thought was impossible.
But we managed to find Terence, Terence Rage, who is absolutely incredible in his own right, actually. He’s a great, great guitar player. He grew up in Mozambique.
So he learned guitar from like street musicians who were all fingerpick players, which is what Mark is, not Plectrum. So he had that skill and he had been a very successful actor in South Africa, where he was then living, and just happened to have this kind of bass baritone voice and sound like Mark without even trying. So we did this one, this charity event, which sold out.
And what happened was in the weeks following that, I was getting calls from people saying, do you think you can come and do that? Would you like to do that here? Come and, you know, maybe we can. So it kind of started to trickle on and roll on, and that just snowballed until here we are today on, you know, the shiver in the dark world. And so it was an accident.
There’s obviously a huge appetite for all that material still, isn’t there? That’s the incredible thing. And what we’re seeing now, particularly, so we’ve been doing a lot up here in this hemisphere around Europe, the audiences are meet people I met in 1985 even, you know, who say I saw you in 1985, I saw you on every street tour and stuff like that. But what we’re seeing up here is an awful lot of young people in their kind of late teens, early 20s turning up.
I guess they found it through the internet or maybe their parents or grandparents. Recommended it, yeah. Yeah, and that’s really growing.
The audiences are growing. Incredible that it still resonates in that way with that generation as well as the others who might have heard it before. People want to see it live.
Yeah, you can listen to it. I think it’s also incredible that you still have as much passion for it as you always did. Like I say, I think I’m really lucky at this age to be still able to go and do it, and I just love playing the saxophone.
So it’s great. And I love these songs as well. Through these fields of distress Baptisms of remissed yourself In the fear of the night How jealous were your brothers? My brothers are both past, sadly.
Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t think they were jealous. They had very different lives.
We grew up in a very working-class area. So what happened for me was very unusual. My father was a docker, dock labourer.
In the end, both my brothers and my uncles, they were all on the dock. It was a kind of family tradition, you know. I’m sure they were extremely proud of you.
Chris, we can’t wait to see the Dire Straits experience. Just tell me what people can expect to see and hear. Well, there are songs you have to play every time, I think.
Things like Romeo and Juliet, Telegraph Road, Brothers in Arms, Private Investigator. So they’re all in there. We also break the set down to just the original four-piece format.
So we can do things like Down to the Waterline, Wild West End, Lady Writer. So you get quite a wide spectrum of the band’s career. Sweet surrender on the quayside You remember we used to run and hide In the shadow of the cargoes I’d take you one time Counting all the numbers from the ground to the waterline When we are missers on the dog-eat-a-stairway Friends kissing in the dark of the doorway Fuck off, throwing out a wine and cola The police man, he shines a light on my shoulder Up comes a coaster, fast and silent, in my mind Over my shoulder, all you can see are my eyes No money in our jackets and our jeans at all Your hands are cold, but you’re getting some on It really is the Dire Strokes experience.
I hope so. That’s what people seem to think. I met a guy recently who said, man, I’ve been to see you ten times.
I thought, I’m sure I’d go to see you ten times, but people are coming back to see it. So we’re just having fun. Fantastic.
Chris White, thank you so much for chatting with me and sharing all your stories. Thank you, Sandy. Thank you very much for your time.
Thanks. See you later. Bye, Chris.
Bye, Sandy. Bye-bye. Bye now.
Cause it’s a beautiful day You’ve been listening to A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kay Beautiful day Oh, I bet any day that you’re going away It’s a beautiful day