Dire Straits: Love Over Gold (import) [BACK TO BLACK/VERTIGO]

Why you'll love it

This EU import is a 180g Back to Black pressing, mastered from the original analogue and digital masters by Bernie Grundman and Bob Ludwig. The album topped the charts in the UK, Australia, Italy and Norway, and went double platinum in Canada.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Mastered by Bernie Grundman and Bob Ludwig
• Download card included
• Pressed in the EU
• Stereo mix

About the album

Mark Knopfler got the idea for the opening track while sitting at the front of the tour bus, watching Detroit's Telegraph Road go on for miles and reading a novel about settlers working the land. He put the two together, and the result is a fourteen-minute story of a road growing from a dirt track into a city, with a guitar finale that still raises the hair on your arms.

Recorded at the Power Station in New York with new members Alan Clark on keyboards and Hal Lindes on guitar, and Pick Withers making his last appearance on drums, Love Over Gold stretches out like no other Dire Straits record. "Private Investigations" is a hushed, cinematic slow burn that went to No. 2 on the UK singles chart, "Industrial Disease" is a jaunty satire, and the title track and "It Never Rains" close things out with Knopfler at his most lyrical.

A live version of the title track from Alchemy charted across Europe a couple of years later. Five songs across two sides, which is a remarkably generous running time per song, and nobody has ever asked for one less minute of "Telegraph Road."

Also at Kops: more Dire Straits on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Vertigo (cat# 3752906), a reissue of the 1982 album.