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  • Dire Straits- Best pt 2- Mark Knopfler

    Dire Straits- Best pt 2- Mark Knopfler

    When the song “Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits became a worldwide hit in Summer 1985, the album Brothers in Arms   from which it came won a Grammy Award for best recorded sound, while the song won another for Best Rock Song that year. However, the album also spent a stunning nine weeks as the #1-seller in the US in 1985, eventually selling a staggering 26,000,000  copies worldwide. This kind of celebrity could not have happened to a more reluctant rock star than Dire Straits leader Mark Knopfler, and trust me here, there is absolutely no way to prepare for what comes next.

    “It changes your life,” says Knopfler thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. ” Actually, it happened on the first album with ‘Sultans of Swing’. ..It’s like someone constantly pulling at a thread of your sweater, unraveling your life.” Throughout the remainder of the Eighties and into the early Nineties, Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits attempted to surf the tsunami wave of superstardom, eventually finding the swirling water of Dire Straits way over his head. Here In the Studio  in the conclusion of my in-depth series of exclusive classic rock interviews on the members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Mark explains  why he retired the Dire Straits franchise but not from making new music, and how he finally learned to embrace his own past rather than running from it. – Redbeard

  • Dire Straits- Best pt 1- Mark Knopfler

    Dire Straits- Best pt 1- Mark Knopfler

    “As I run every light on Memory Lane down to Telegraph Road…” – Mark Knopfler

    With Dire Straits visionary Mark Knopfler In the Studio  we thought we would “mark” the occasion of the London band’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction with part one of some of their best, starting over forty years ago with that unforgettable debut Dire Straits in Fall 1978 containing the story song “Sultans of  Swing”.  Like David Bowie did five years before and Sting would repeat five years later, Dire Straits’ October 1980 third release Making Movies   is Mark Knopfler‘s unabashedly “Big Apple” album through the eyes of an Englishman in New York who had grown up an ocean away on Hemingway, Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Bob Dylan. Making Movies  contains cinematic epic-length songs” Tunnel of Love”,”Romeo and Juliet“, and “Skateaway“, reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen‘s Born to Run  mini-movies, and borrowing E Street pianist Roy Bittan and engineer/ producer Jimmy Iovine helped to capture that atmosphere, while rockers “Espresso Love” and “Solid Rock” still pack a punch. 

    Later in my classic rock interview here In the Studio , Mark Knopfler himself would fault some of his unrestrained guitar pyrotechnics which extended into the next Dire Straits album, Love Over Gold  in September 1982, in favor of a more economical approach with spectacular results on Brothers in Arms.  But Making Movies  and Love Over Gold , with its epic “Telegraph Road” and “Industrial Disease”, were the points where Dire Straits solidified an ardent worldwide following as the top-selling band in the emerging compact disc era by the end of that decade. Part one of two. –Redbeard 

  • Crowded House- World Where You Live- San Francisco 4-87

    Crowded House- World Where You Live- San Francisco 4-87

    Having never had the opportunity to see the Beatles play live, seeing Crowded House several times, including a private sunset performance on the banks of White Rock Lake in Dallas, is the closest I’ll probably ever get to progressive pop nirvana. Four lead singers and the songwriting of the brilliant Neil Finn. One hundred thousand people showed up at their farewell concert in Sydney, while in the US they couldn’t get arrested.  Their handlers could screw up a two-car funeral. Thanks to mi amigo Big Dave Logan and KFOG for rolling tape at Wolfgang’s, remastered 2013 by Redbeard. And since Neil Finn has been tapped to replace Lindsey Buckingham‘s vocals on the upcoming Fleetwood Mac tour, we suggest you check out Neil Finn’s most recent solo album Out of Silence . – Redbeard

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  • Eric Clapton- Forever Man- Best pt 1

    Eric Clapton- Forever Man- Best pt 1

    My exclusive classic rock interview with Eric Clapton for the compilation Forever Man covers a lot of ground, simply because no matter what era or decade you pick since 1965, EC was there in a remarkably consistent, influential way: Yardbirds, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers,  Cream, Blind Faith with Steve Winwood, Derek and the Dominos with Duane Allman.,,and that was just the start of the Seventies! And yet he has made a long string of mostly highly-regarded solo albums as well, dating back to his first in 1970. Friends and musical peers including George Harrison, Pete Townshend, and Phil Collins helped to revitalize Clapton’s career through periods of drug abuse and turbulent love affairs in the early Seventies, and again in the mid-Eighties.

    This is part one of my two-part career-spanning interview with Eric Clapton, in which he discusses the thirty year period covered by the  multi-disc anthology Forever Man. He explores such topics as trading in his longtime band on 1985’s Behind the Sun sessions for a West Coast group of studio all-stars headed up by fellow Brit Phil Collins; his uncanny knack  for finding complementary songs by others (dating back to his first solo album in 1970) which showcase his musical gifts; why he modestly titled his 1989 multi-million seller Journeyman;  and how he purported to fit a half century of Slowhand  into a series of two hour concerts  in London’s Royal Albert Hall almost every year. –Redbeard

  • Phil Ramone,14-Time Grammy Winner Superstar Producer

    Phil Ramone,14-Time Grammy Winner Superstar Producer

    Before he died in March 2013 Phil Ramone collaborated with a plethora of music superstars, including RAY CHARLES, BOB DYLAN, ARETHA FRANKLIN, PAUL MCCARTNEY, QUINCY JONES, FRANK SINATRA,  STEVIE WONDER, BURT BACHARACH, BONO,  MADONNA, and PAUL SIMON, among many others. More recently, he produced TONY BENNETT‘s “Duets II” set from 2011, when he also reunited with SIMON on the album, “So Beautiful or So What.”

    “I always thought of PHIL RAMONE as the most talented guy in my band,” BILLY JOEL noted. “The music world lost a giant.”

    Among RAMONE’s GRAMMYS were Album Of The Year Awards for RAY CHARLES, BILLY JOEL and PAUL SIMON, and Producer Of The Year in 1980. He produced music for several films, including “A Star is Born,” “Flashdance,” “Ghostbusters” and “Midnight Cowboy,” and he worked on Broadway and off-Broadway productions such as “Chicago” and “The Wiz.”

    RAMONE also had a hand in a slew of technical innovations. According to his website, RAMONE was the first to use a solid-state console for recording and mastering solid state records; his digital live recording of BILLY JOEL’s “Songs in the Attic,” paved “the way for the widespread use of the compact disc in the pop music world”; and used the fiber optics system EDNet to record tracks in “real time” from different locations for FRANK SINATRA’s “Duets I” and “II.”

    In tribute to this visionary, here is my March 1998 interview with Phil Ramone In the Studio in which he discusses a wide variety of topics, including a prescient prediction twenty years ago on exactly how the internet and digital technology would change our lives. –Redbeard

  • Aerosmith- Cryin’- Brussels Belgium Halloween 1993

    Aerosmith- Cryin’- Brussels Belgium Halloween 1993

    In their long illustrious career as America’s premiere hard rock band, no Aerosmith album ever sold more than Spring 1993’s Get a Grip,  and the band toured in support of it the world over. Case in point, listen to Steven Tyler, Joe Perry & Co. power Aerosmith through a live version of the megahit “Cryin’ ” from Get a Grip   on tour to support that album in Brussels on Halloween night 1993. –Redbeard

  • James Taylor- Something in the Way She Moves- Dallas 8-93

    James Taylor- Something in the Way She Moves- Dallas 8-93

     Truly one of the greatest honors I have ever received was to have James Taylor sing a song to me and my live radio audience. Like millions of others, I came of age at the time that James debuted on U.S. radio with the stunning “Fire and Rain” in 1970, but this gem “Something in the Way She Moves” from the earliest JT canon actually pre-dates his breakthrough by about 18 months. Originally from Massachusetts, transplanted as a boy to Chapel Hill N.C., Taylor was the first musician signed to the Beatles’ Apple label. Peter Asher, half of the ’60s duo Peter and Gordon, signed Taylor to Apple after Asher (his sister Jane was Paul McCartney’s girlfriend) parlayed the connection into a job as head of A & R at the label. Peter Asher would later manage Taylor’s career and produce several of JT’s biggest sellers, including the December 1968 James Taylor  album on which “Something in the Way She Moves” originally appeared. James-Taylor_40375-BTW_RGB

    As for the title lyric of this song being exactly the same as George Harrison’s legendary Beatles contribution released on Apple Records 10 months after Taylor’s, let’s just say that James deferred to his Beatle boss’ pre-eminence at the time and wisely chose not to press the matter. That would have to wait a few years before Harrison would be sued ( and lose) for doing the same thing to the composer of The Chiffons’ “He’ So Fine” when writing “My Sweet Lord”.

    By the way, I have been sending James Taylor’s album Before This World  to anyone who laments today’s music with the complaint that “no one makes good albums anymore where every song is good…”. Hands down JT’s album was my choice to beat for Grammy Album of the Year in 2015.  -Redbeard

  • In the Studio 1988-2018: Thirty Years of the Greatest Rock Stories Ever Told

    In the Studio 1988-2018: Thirty Years of the Greatest Rock Stories Ever Told

    Enter the name of any band, musician, album title, music style, year, or place in the search box in the upper right portion of the homepage, & then click to find thirty years of Redbeard’s exclusive interviews and live recordings!

  • Todd Rundgren’s Utopia-“The Very Last Time” Boston 11-79

    Todd Rundgren’s Utopia-“The Very Last Time” Boston 11-79

    “The Very Last Time” that Todd Rundgren performed live with his ace band Utopia reportedly was over thirty years ago, so you can imagine that it is a pretty big deal for us hardcore Todd-followers that a box set and a reunion tour are both set for this year. It was once said of Todd Rundgren, the stupendously gifted singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/producer, that his only problem was finding other musicians good enough to play with him(the same could easily have been said for Prince, except Rundgren can’t dance in 4-inch stacked heels). But for a period in the late 1970s, Todd Rundgren may have had one of the greatest live bands ever containing bass player Kasim Sulton (far right), drummer Willie Wilcox ( 2nd from left), and keyboard player Roger Powell (2nd right), all of whom could sing lead vocals as well. Here’s “The Very Last Time”, totally live with absolutely no overdubs, from a concert broadcast from a Boston club on Thanksgiving eve 1979. –Redbeard

  • Jeff Healey 1966-2008

    Jeff Healey 1966-2008

    It is hard for me to accept that it has been almost fifteen years now since the world lost a real special musician, Jeff Healey. Before he too passed away, Joe Cocker told me that the obituary headline in the Los Angeles Times  for legendary music giant Ray Charles was, “Blind Crooner Ray Charles Dies”. Cocker could not believe that a major U.S. newspaper could reduce the life, talent, and immeasurable influence of Mr. Charles merely to that of his disability, a fact which the music giant proved irrelevant from the outset of his career. Similarly, every headline before and since the cancer-related premature death March 2, 2008 of  blues-rock guitar phenomenon Jeff Healey has included the qualifier “blind guitarist”, as if Healey’s mind-blowing facility and unique technique on the instrument, his more-than-competent rich vocals, Healey’s  uncanny choice of material (many of his most famous by John Hiatt including “Confidence Man” and “Angel Eyes”), and Jeff’s wicked ultra-dry sense of humor were less defining of the man than his inability to read the drive-through menu at Taco Bell. Listen to this March 1989 interview on my Q102 Dallas/Ft.Worth radio show, then play the ironically-titled album See the Light . To paraphrase Tina Turner, “What’s blind got to do with it”? –Redbeard