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British music journalist Robert Sandall wrote: "Looked at now with 20/20 vision of hindsight, the image on the sleeve of Brothers in Arms seems uncannily prophetic: that National steel guitar
British music journalist Robert Sandall wrote: "Looked at now with 20/20 vision of hindsight, the image on the sleeve of Brothers in Arms seems uncannily prophetic: that National steel guitar
heading up into the clouds — a shiny six-stringed rocket devoid of any obvious means of propulsion — describes, better than any words can, what happened to Dire Straits after the release of
their fifth studio album. Up till the summer of 1985 success had, for them, come as a by-product of the music making process. They had never courted celebrity, chased fads, or played safe.
Dire Straits had been loved and respected as one of the few bands to have maintained strong and credible links with the multifarious roots of rock and roll at a time — remember all the
desperate pop posing of the early 80s? — when roots were emphatically not a fashionable place to be." Source
The guitar featured on the front of the album cover is Mark Knopfler's 1937 National Style 0 Resonator photographed by Deborah Feingold. The Style 0 line of guitars was introduced in 1930
and discontinued in 1941.
Sometimes I couldn't avoid from relating the resonator guitar to Mark Knopfler's guitar playing in "Money for Nothing." "That guitar again," I'd say to myself while watching MTV. And of course,
it was a Gibson Les Paul. Mark plucked it instead of picked it. The music was essentially rock. Rock on MTV. The year was 1986.
Here's the original album cover art design.
No. 11, Billboard, The 300 Best-Selling Albums of All Time; No. 219, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000; No. 352, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
No. 50, Music Radar, The 50 Greatest Album Covers of All Time.
Design by Sutton Cooper, Photo by Deborah Feingold. Album produced by Neil Dorfsman & Mark Knopfler. Vertigo (UK), Warner Bros. (US) 1985.
Brothers in Arms was one of the first albums to be directed at the CD market, and was a full digital recording at a time when most popular music was recorded on analog equipment. It was
also released on vinyl (abridged to fit on one LP) and cassette. It was the first album to sell one million copies in the CD format and to outsell its LP version. A Rykodisc employee would
subsequently write, "[In 1985 we] were fighting to get our CDs manufactured because the entire worldwide manufacturing capacity was overwhelmed by demand for a single rock title
(Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms)." Source
(A) So Far Away - Money for Nothing - Walk of Life - Your Latest Trick - Why Worry
(B) Ride Across the River - The Man's Too Strong - One World - Brothers in Arms
"Money for Nothing" Dire Straits with Eric Clapton live at Knebworth from Eagle Rock on YouTube.
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