Fact #162825

John Illsley (bassist, Dire Straits) : The music became deeper and we were experimenting a lot more with keyboards and emotions in the music, the consequence was that my role as a bass player changed, with different timings and techniques used. It was organic in those days in that we worked on every single aspect of the song as soon as Mark had got the bare bones of the track down - that's why the sound retained a uniform nature. That changed over the years, because the nature of the songwriting and the approach to the music changed, became more expansive.

Mark Knopfler : Some things on this album again we just played - I mean everything on the album we played, we just played... There are ways and means of doing different songs, different ways, and some things just seem to have their own in-built set of rules and you really have to respect those. And of course sometimes you don't know, when you are actually starting, what the rules are of the song. It might have its own kind of logic that is escaping you. I mean, you don't actually know what it is that you've created, by God!

You can end up just going down an alley which is the wrong one. I've been mixing things on this record for instance, and then ended up leaving out stuff that you might have spent days and days on.

And then there is the actual song that goes on the record, the actual cut, the take. Some of those songs were taken lots and lots of times and rejected. Or you might end up doing days of work on a particular take and then reject that take. And either take it again or work on another take. Usually take it again. In fact, a lot of this album we took again, because, again, it could be a bunch of reasons. It didn't have the right feel to it, didn't...

Brothers in Arms itself is a re-take. We had a version or two and then just took it again. So, in fact, the amount of time spent on that one wasn't really that long.

Sometimes you pick the wrong key when you're recording. Why Worry was recorded in E and you can hear it's in the wrong key. I'm straining to sing it, and I think on the last tour we changed it to D. Sometimes a key will free a chord to sound differently from how it normally would - the song Brothers In Arms is in A flat which opens up a nice E chord.

I think a lot of this stuff about album "ethos" is a bit worn. I mean I don't necessarily look at things in those terms. ‘Brothers in Arms’ is good (as an album title) for a number of reasons. There are a few songs on there that do relate to some of the ideas and attitudes that might surround something like that - Brothers in Arms, there's the idea of the guys themselves - and of who we are and what we do. When you are touring and when you are a band, there is a certain sense of that. It is a kind of brotherhood.