Aah-one, a-two, a-three, a-four. (Guitar). ‘You get a shiver at Blue Frog, and it’s raining in the park, but meantime / You check out Guitar Sarosh, he knows all the chords’. Okay. This is an adaptation of the 1978 Dire Straits classic ‘Sultans of Swing’. And the reason we mention vocalist-guitarist Sarosh Izedyar is that he and his band One Night Stand (ONS) will pay tribute to the famed British rock group and its frontman Mark Knopfler tomorrow night.
Mumbai-based ONS has a huge following, and their Dire Straits tributes have been extremely popular. While Sarosh dons Knopfler’s hat, group members Padmanabhan NS a.k.a. Paddy (on rhythm guitar), Arvind Iyer (bass/ vocals), Ramesh Krishnamurthy (drums) and George Joseph (keyboards) complete the line-up. On some songs, violinist Narayan Raman does a guest appearance.
It’s not easy to perform Dire Straits songs. The guitarist-vocalist had a very distinct vocal timbre, his own staccato singing style and a unique guitar-playing texture that blended elements of blues, jazz, country, folk and old-time rock ’n’ roll with the coolness of late 1970s rock music.
Yes, Knopfler had his influences, primarily Bob Dylan and JJ Cale. There’s a trace of Bruce Springsteen and Van Morrison too. And then there was this whole call-and-response technique used in the blues, and the twang of later-day country music.
One can write volumes on Knopfler. But let’s begin with 1978, when Dire Straits released its self-titled debut. Those days, albums by Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, Billy Joel, Jethro Tull, Eric Clapton, Queen, The Police, Van Halen, James Taylor and Bruce Springsteen were hugely successful.
The punk-rock scene had already taken off, thanks to the Ramones, The Clash and the genre-defining Never Mind The Bollocks by the Sex Pistols. On the other hand, Donna Summer, ABBA and Boney M were the pop and dance favourites. And John Travolta’s Saturday Night Fever film with its Bee Gees-led soundtrack took disco music to another level.
During this time, Knopfler may have just sung: ‘Too much competition, too many other places’. But in that era of phenomenal and diverse sounds, Dire Straits broke through.
It took a few months, but the songs ‘Sultans of Swing’, ‘Down to the Waterline’, ‘Water of Love’, ‘Six Blade Knife’ and ‘Setting Me Up’ slowly caught the public fancy.
Over the next few years, great albums like Communique , Making Movies and Love Over Gold followed, while commercially, the 1985 release Brothers in Arms became the first-ever to sell over a million records.
The band split after the 1991 effort, On Every Street , and Knopfler followed it up with solo albums like Golden Heart , Sailing to Philadelphia and the double-record Privateering . He also conducted various experiments in country music, like Neck and Neck , his album with American guitarist Chet Atkins and singer Emmylou Harris.
Knopfler’s career has been illustrious, and though Dire Straits released only six studio albums, the repertoire is vast. Tomorrow’s ONS tribute will essentially focus on the Dire Straits records, and besides the debut album, fans can look forward to later hits like ‘Telegraph Road’, ‘Romeo and Juliet’, ‘Walk of Life’, ‘Tunnel of Love’ and ‘Money for Nothing’, and the solo, ‘Sailing to Philadelphia’.
The tribute should be fun. To modify another line from ‘Sultans of Swing’, One Night Stand could well end the show with, ‘We owe this to Sultan / Mark, The Sultan of Strings’.
Dire Straits Tribute by One Night Stand, July 22, 9:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m, at blueFROG, Lower Parel. Entry: Rs. 350 (Rs. 1,000 for full cover)
Narendra Kusnur is a freelance music writer
