Dire Straits have turned down “huge amounts of money” to reform the band in recent years, one of their founding members has revealed.
In an interview with The Telegraph, John Illsley, the bassist who was an ever-present in the ‘80s rock giants, confirmed that the band continue to receive major financial offers to get back together, but he also suggested that they remain uninterested.
Speaking about recent meetings he has had with the band’s former manager Paul Crockford, Illsley said: “Every time we have lunch, [he] says to me, ‘I wish people would stop offering me huge amounts of money to put [Dire Straits] back together.’”
Dire Straits split briefly in 1988 for two years before permanently calling it a day in 1995, releasing a total of six studio albums.
Illsley has now reflected that he was “pretty happy” when the band’s run came to an end, recalling feeling “mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted” by the time they finally disbanded.
“Most of our marriages were falling apart, we weren’t seeing our children very much – it was all wrong. It’s the usual things that can happen to people in bands,” he continued.
Dire Straits won four Grammys and three Brit Awards, and their 1985 album ‘Brothers in Arms’ is the eighth best-selling album of all time in the UK. They have sold over 100 million records worldwide and in 2018, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
In 2008, Illsley revealed that he had approached Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler about the possibility of reforming the band, but was knocked back.
“I think we’ve definitely got one more tour left in us, and probably another record too,” Illsley said at the time. “But he’s [Knopfler] doing different kinds of music now. He’s doing incredibly well as a solo artist, so hats off to him. He’s having a perfectly good time doing what he’s doing.”
Illsley has reflected that the absence of the band has left a “massive vacuum” in his life, but he appreciates that it has allowed him to explore other creative directions. “I was in London studying painting, I got some lessons, made a terrible mess for seven or eight years, and then started doing art shows. I thought, ‘OK, this is fun’. And I stopped playing music for quite a while. I leant the bass against the wall and said ‘Thank you very much but I’m doing something different now’.”
On August 31, Jack Sonni, who played guitar in Dire Straits between 1984 and 1988, including on ‘Brothers in Arms’, died at the age of 68.
Mark Knopfler continues to record solo material and is known for his work on film scores, including Local Hero (1983), The Princess Bride (1987) and Wag the Dog (1998).