Song 91: Why Worry

Of all the bands stuck on the wrong side of the cool line, Dire Straits are the one for whom I always maintained a sneaking affection.

Like all super-hip teenagers, I listened to Dire Straits quite a lot when I was 14/15/16. Their tapes were around the house. When I started reading the music press, I was taken aback by the extent to which one was simply not allowed to like them. The NME review of 'Brothers in Arms' had been brutal. Seems funny to me that. It's not like there was loads of great music in 1985. 'Brothers in Arms' hardly came out in the Summer of Love or the Golden Age of Punk or whatever.

But, anyway, Knopfler and his gang sat alongside the likes of Sting and Phil Collins as persona non grata from the MOR era.

But I never really stopped liking them. There were always a nice handful of their songs that, if I should happen to hear them out and about, I'd stop for and enjoy.

Here's an example. A day in 1997 we'd been in Nairobi to renew our visa but somehow ended up being threatened with jail by an immigration official, so our time was being cut short and we only had a couple more weeks before our flights back to England, and there was a lot to get straight, we took the train back from Nairobi to Voi, which is the largest town on the main road from Nairobi to Mombasa, and was an evocative, wild west frontier town-like place, and we got back to Voi in the early hours and would have to catch a bus to Wundanyi (our nearest small town) which wasn't til the early morning, so we had a few hours at Voi bus station, and I remember we bought some sausage and chips with watery ketchup and prepared to try and get some kip on a bench and contemplate the vastness of the sudden switch in plans, weighing up the fact I was secretly relieved to be going home with the brief blast of adrenalised fear Mr Kirui had, for his own amusement, given us that afternoon, and the disappointment at not being able to complete what we'd intended, and, anyway, complete incongruously, 'Why Worry' by Dire Straits came quietly out of the speaker hung on a post, and it was a moment in time.

'Why Worry' has that trite sentiment - "hey, things are bad now, but they'll be better in the future" which can be terribly grating at times, but also sustains some of the most perfect and beautiful songs ever written, from 'Be Not So Fearful' to 'From the Morning' to 'Over the Rainbow' to 'Hey Jude', and sometimes that trite sentiment is all we want and need. More than we'd care to admit.

That night in Voi, that song had been sent by my god to calm, reassure and amuse me, and even in these particular awful, endlessly hopeless time, it does the job as well as anything else.

I found myself watching a documentary of a Dire Straits concert a few weeks ago. If I tell you Knopfler, mullet and headband and all, was the least uncool man on display, you get the idea. But, boy, could he play guitar.

I've loved the theme from 'Local Hero' most of my life though mostly I didn't even know what it was, I love 'Blind Willie McTell' more than almost any other Dylan song, and it's Knopfler's guitar accompaniment that adds so much to it, I still find 'Sultans of Swing' thrilling and 'Romeo and Juliet' delightful.

I get some of the negativity but Knopfler never erred in the taste stakes anywhere near as much as Collins or Sting or countles others, he always kept on making music which seemed relatively true to himself and didn't put himself about that much.

I'm quite sure he's spectacularly rich and doesn't care much about any of it, but I think he's as due a critical reappraisal as anyone.