Knopfleriana greetings!!!
After a while without posting news, I'm back.
It's not revolutionary at all, it's just something I discovered and I think it has some kind of connection, so I'd like to share it here with all of you.
The cover of Dire Straits' debut album has always been something curious and mysterious to me, it conveys much of the band's melancholy, the cover art carries the characteristic London moisture and is present in the album's opening song, Down To The Waterline. (Although this is a song that was inspired by Newcastle, River Tyne, a place called The Quayside, however, it's a very similar place to where London's Woodwharf is.)
The woman on the balcony of what appears to be an apartment block has never gone unnoticed, the melancholy air of loneliness, mystery and seduction present in the image is contained in the energy of the songs that make up the first album.
The authors of the cover art for the first album are:
Album design: Hothouse, Alan Schmidt
Album cover painting by: Chuck Loyola at Hothouse
Album cover photography: Paddy Eckersley
There are many places related to DS / Mk, one of them, very special, is located in the Deptford / Greenwich area, on the way from Depford to Greenwich, this is Woodwharf Studios where the DS rehearsed from 1978 to 1982.
We can see footage of Dire Straits rehearsing at Woodwharf Studios on BBC ARENA.
I assume and in the So Far Away video, there are scenes of the band rehearsing at Woodwharf Studios, it's also possible to be at Air Studios in London.
We can see MK visiting Woodwharf until 2000 (as seen in the STP press kit, where Mark talks a little of his memories about what it was like to rehearse in this place, with windows facing the River Thames, something that brought inspiration to his songs). Anyway, the place was important for the band, where many things were created and developed.
One fine day I decided to look for images from Woodwharf Studios, that's when it became clear to me, I immediately associated it with the cover of the first album, as you can see.
It may just be a coincidence, but my theory is that the artist who made this cover certainly connected with something related to the band and realized at the time that the band was hanging out at Woodwharf Studios and listening to songs like Down To The Waterline, Lions, Eastbound Train , Southbound Again... Songs that talk about a woman and have a London atmosphere, humidity... The artist was inspired and made the art in the way it became known around the world and I really think there's this connection with Woodwharf Studios .
In this video, which is probably from the time when Dire Straits started to visit the place, we can see and feel a little of the atmosphere of the place.
Just look and intuit.
In my research I found this video about Kate Buch, we can see her rehearsing in 1979 with her band at Wood Wharf Studios in Greenwich, with some great undeveloped photos by the river (9:45 min), she was driving down the Thames to Greenwich for the Music rehearsal at Wharf Studios.
I believe the woman on the cover of the first album was inspired by the last song on that album, Lions, written while the band was in the studio recording the album. What makes me think like that is that in the lyrics of Leões there is this character, a girl, she appears in the first and last stanza and has a mysterious air, I wrote something more in-depth about this in a musical analysis of Lions that I posted on the Dire Straits Universe blog in 2010.
And there is another connection of this woman in Eastbound Train's music, I just analyze the lyrics, it seems to me a duplication of an aspect contained in Lions.
Furthermore, we cannot help but consider that the moment the artist made this cover was contemporary with the same period when the band was rehearse at Wood Wharf Studios in Greenwich.
As far as I could research, I got little information about Chuck Loyola, and even less about the Hothouse that was in London, at the moment, I'm trying to get in touch with Alan Schmidt to better substantiate my thesis, if in fact there is this connection of art on the cover from the first album and Woodwharf Studios. I think that if it wasn't intentionally, the artist would have unconsciously absorbed the band's rehearsal place at that time, Woodwharf Studios and influenced its art, tones, colors, architecture...
The only person who could confirm my thesis is the author himself, perhaps some member of the original formation has some precious information about it.
Anyway, it's my point of view, my intuition points to this connection, I could be wrong, but that's what makes sense to me, after researching and understanding a little bit about MK's mind at the time and the Dire Straits universe.
Brunno Nunes.
Grande Bruno
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