mark knopfler

Song of the Day: Education in Music (Day Three). “It’s No Use, He Sees Her, He Starts to Shake and Cough, Just Like the Old Man In That Book by Nabokov”.

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The Police released their third studio album Zenyatta Mondatta in 1980, preceded by the single, Don’t Stand So Close to Me.  The single gave the band their third number one single, following Message in A Bottle and Walking on the Moon from their previous album Regatta de Blanc in 1979.  Additionally, the song won the band the 1982 Grammy Award for the Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.  It was the biggest selling single in the UK in 1980.

Don’t Stand So Close to Me concerns a schoolgirl’s crush on her young teacher which leads to an affair, which is then discovered.  Sting, who worked as a teacher before the band became successful, has denied that the song is autobiographical.  He qualified as a teacher in 1974, after attending Northern Counties College of Education for three years, before working as a teacher at St. Paul’s First School in Cramlington for two years.  Of Don’t Stand So Close to Me, Sting said in the 1981 biography L’Historia Bandido:

“I wanted to write a song about sexuality in the classroom.  I’d done teaching practice at secondary schools and been through the business of having 15-year old girls fancying me – and me really fancying them!  How I kept my hands off them I don’t know … Then there was my love for Lolita which I think is a brilliant novel.  But I was looking for the key for eighteen months and suddenly there it was.  That opened the gates and out it came: the teacher, the open page, the virgin, the rape in the car, getting the sack, Nabakov, all that”.

The lyrics and music of Don’t Stand So Close to Me were both written by Sting.  Lyrically, the song deals with the lust, fear and guilt that a female student and a teacher have for one another.  The female student’s feelings towards the teacher are found in lines such as “Young teacher, the subject, Of school girl fantasy, She wants him so badly, Knows what she wants to be”.  Later in the song, we find the teacher’s feelings towards the student in lines such as “It’s no use, he sees her, He starts to shake and cough, Just like the old man in, That book by Nabokov”.  The last line of the verse likens the affair between the song’s characters with the predicament of the characters in Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel, Lolita.  In the novel, the male character, Humbert Humbert is obsessed with the 12 year old Delores Haze, whom he nicknames “Lolita” and becomes sexually involved with after becoming her stepfather.  In Lolita, Humbert is described as “not quite an old man”.

Sting has often been criticised for rhyming “cough” with “Nabokov”.  In an interview on sting.com, the singer said of the rhyme:

“I’ve used that terrible, terrible rhyme technique a few times.  Technically, it’s called a feminine rhyme – where it’s so appalling, it’s almost humorous.  You don’t normally get those types of rhymes in pop music and I’m glad”.

Don’t Stand So Close to Me features a guitar synthesiser in the middle of the song, played by Andy Summers.  In an interview with sting.com, Summers said of the inclusion of the guitar synthesiser:  “After Sting had put the vocals on Don’t Stand So Close to Me, we looked for something to lift the middle of the song.  I came up with a guitar synthesiser.  It was the first time we’d used it.  I felt it worked really well”.  The verses and choruses do not feature this effect.  Don’t stand So Close to Me utilises a common effect in Police songs, that of the verses being quieter and more subdued whilst the chorus is bolder and bigger in sound.

A few years later, Sting was asked to perform on the Dire Straits song Money for Nothing (Brothers in Arms, 1985) due to being in Montserrat at the same time as the band were recording the song.   Sting performs the “I want my MTV” line, which reuses the melody from Don’t Stand So Close to Me.  After the likeness was mentioned to reporters during the promotions for Brothers in Arms, lawyers for Sting became involved and whilst early pressings of Brothers in Arms only credit Mark Knopfler with having written the song, later copies credit both Knopfler and Sting. It is one of only two shared songwriting credits on a Dire Straits album, the other being Tunnel of Love, from the 1980 album Making Movies, which includes an extract from The Carousel Waltz by Rodgers and Hammerstein.

In 1986, Don’t Stand So Close to Me was re-recorded with a new, more brooding sounding arrangement, a different chorus and more opulent production.  The new version, titled Don’t Stand So Close to Me ’86, appeared on the album Every Breath You Take:  The Singles and was released as a single, reaching number 24 on the British singles chart.  The song’s tempo was decreased for the new version and features a slight lyric change in order to compensate for it, with the line “Just like the old man in that book by Nabokov” becoming “Just like the old man in that famous book by Nabokov.  The Police had already split by the time the single was released and aside from the then-unreleased De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da ’86, it is the most recent studio recording released by the band.  A new music video was produced for the reworked song by Godley and Creme.  The video is notable for its early use of computer graphics.

Song of the Day: Music Inspired by Television Shows (Day Six). “I Want My MTV”.

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Brothers in Arms, Dire Straits’ fifth album, was released in 1985.  The album charted at number one worldwide, spending ten weeks at number one in the UK and nine weeks at the top spot in the US and thirty-four weeks at number one in Australia.  It became the eighth best-selling album in UK chart history, is certified nine times platinum in the US and is one of the world’s best selling albums, having sold over thirty million copies worldwide.  It was also one of the first albums to be released in the CD format.  Following the release of opening track So Far Away as the first single just prior to the album’s release, the second single was one of Dire Straits’ most recognisable, famous and enduring songs, Money for Nothing.

Money for Nothing is notable for several reasons:  Its controversial lyrics, groundbreaking video and cameo appearance by Sting, who sings the song’s falsetto introduction and backing chorus, “I want my MTV”.  The single’s accompanying video was also the first to be aired on MTV Europe when the network started on the 1st August 1987.  The single was one of the band’s most successful, staying at the top spot in the US for three weeks and peaking at number four on the UK charts.  Money for Nothing went on to win the Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal in 1986 at the 28th Grammy Awards.

The lyrics of Money for Nothing are written from the point of view of a working class man working in a hardware store who is watching music videos on MTV and commenting on what he sees.  Singer, guitarist and songwriter explained the song’s meaning in a 1984 interview with critic Bill Flanagan, saying:

“The lead character in Money for Nothing is a guy who works in the hardware department in a television / custom kitchen / refrigerator / microwave appliance store.  He’s singing the song.  I wrote the song when I was actually in the store.  I borrowed a bit of paper and started to write the song down in the store.  I wanted to use the language that the real guy actually used when I heard him, because it was more real …”

In a 2000 interview with Michael Parkinson on his television programme, Parkinson, Knopfler explained the origin of the lyrics again, saying that he was in New York and stopped by an appliance store.  At the back of the store, they had a wall of TVs which were all showing MTV.  Knopfler continued to explain how there was a man working there dressed in a baseball cap, work boots, and a checkered shirt delivering boxes who was standing next to him watching.  As they were standing there watching MTV, Knophler remembers the man coming up with lines such as “what are those, Hawaiian noises? … that ain’t working” and so on.  Knopfler asked for a pen to write down some of the lines to eventually put them to music.

The character in the song, speaking in the first person, refers to a musician that he sees on the screen “Banging on the bongos like a chimpanzee” and a woman “Stickin’ in the camera, man we could have some fun”.  He moans about how the artists that he sees get “money for nothing and chicks for free” and describes a singer as “that little faggot with the earring and the make up” and moans about how the artists that he sees get “money for nothing and chicks for free”.

In an interview with Blender magazine in 2007, Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx claimed that the song was written about his band, saying:  ““Money for nothing and the chicks for free … that little faggot got his own jet airplane”.  They were in a store that sells televisions, and there was a row of TVs all playing Motley Crue – and that’s where it came from.  Isn’t that great?”

The lyrics in the song’s second verse, “See that little faggot with the earring and the makeup, Yeah buddy that’s his own hair, That little faggot got his own jet airplane, that little faggot he’s a millionaire” sparked much controversy, with several publications deeming them to be homophobic.  In a 1984 interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, Knopfler said of the criticism:

“I got an objection from the editor of a gay newspaper in London – he actually said it was below the belt.  Apart from the fact that there are stupid gay people as well as stupid other people, it suggests that maybe you can’t let it have too many meanings – you have to be direct.  In fact, I’m still in two minds as to whether it’s a good idea to write songs that aren’t in the first person, to take on other characters.  The singer in Money for Nothing is a real ignoramus, hard hat mentality – someone who sees everything in financial terms.  I mean, this guy has a grudging respect for rock stars.  He sees it in terms of, well, that’s not working and yet the guy’s rich:  that’s a good scam.  He isn’t sneering”.

The songwriting credits for Money for Nothing are shared between Knopfler and Sting.  Whilst Dire Straits were recording the song in Montserrat, Sting was also visiting the city and Knopfler invited him to add some background vocals.  Sting has said that his only writing contribution to Money for Nothing was the line “I want my MTV”, which follows the melody from The Police’s song, Don’t Stand So Close to Me (Zenyatta Mondatta, 1980).

In terms of the song’s music, Knopfler modelled his guitar sound for the distinctive riff after ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons’ trademark guitar tone, much due to the fact that ZZ Top’s music videos were very popular on MTV.  In an interview with Musician magazine in 1986, Gibbons stated that Knopfler had asked for his help in creating the right guitar sound for the track, but also said, “He didn’t do a half-bad job, considering I didn’t tell him a thing!”

The video for Money for Nothing, directed by Steve Barron, who also directed the videos for A-Ha’s Take On Me (Hunting High and Low, 1985) …

… and Thomas Dolby’s She Blinded Me With Science (The Golden Age of Wireless, 1982), was seen as highly innovate at the time.

The video was the one of the first to feature computer generated animation by means of the early program, Paintbox.  Apparently, the characters in the video were supposed to have more detail, such as buttons on their shirts, but the project went over budget.  The video won the award for Best Video at the MTV Music Awards in 1986.

In the book I Want My MTV:  The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution (2011), it is explained by various people who worked at the network that Dire Straits’ manager Ed Bicknell asked MTV what they could do to get on the network and break America.  MTV’s answer was, for them to write a hit song and have a top director make a video.  In a 2011 interview with Culturebrats, Barron said of the video:

“The song is damning to MTV in a way.  That was an iconic video.  Te characters we created were made of televisions, and they were slagging off television.  Videos were getting a bit boring, they needed some waking up.  And MTV went nuts for it.  It was like a big advertisement for them”.