00:00okay good afternoon my name is phil hewitt group arts editor at sussex newspapers and i can't quite
00:07believe i'm talking to the bass player from dire straits john ilesley you're on the road looking
00:11back over a life which you've just described as pretty weird really pretty strange you've gone
00:17through that that superstardom that massive massive success of the band and you're looking
00:22back reflecting on it does it all make sense as you look back now well it's sort of it kind of
00:29makes sense because it's quite a time since we called it a day but of course when when i think
00:34about it it was a very weird thing to be doing and we never ever believed that it was going to get to
00:42that sort of level and i think that's what probably what you know came to mark and i's conclusion in
00:481985 that we should sort of keep the put this thing to bed because we pretty much done everything we
00:53thought we could do with it and i think it was probably a good time to stop before we all went
00:57slightly bonkers well you're saying towards the end in the early 90s then you're on the road with
01:0247 trucks 47 arctic 47 arctic lorries and 150 crew odd yeah wow and like as i said you know it's like
01:11being on maneuvers with an army and you know because you're leapfrogging stages and doing that sort of
01:18leapfrogging the lighting and the sound and you know you you need a pretty fantastic organization to do
01:25that but at the back of all this of course is the fact that we were very fortunate to have
01:29a some great musicians playing with this yeah and a songwriter who has written some absolute
01:37classic and and wonderful songs uh which still resonate to this day i mean that's why i love going
01:45out and playing them every time i play brothers in arms i get a shiver down my spine because it's still
01:50relevant you know and songs of swing is still relevant because we still go into pubs and we
01:56see a band in the corner being completely bloody ignored you know and that's what the bat that was
02:01about you know money for nothing is obviously what that's about it's a bit of a an ironic view of um
02:08people on the television but absolutely and i remember at the time what felt so powerful about
02:16dire straits was you were so distinctive you're so different to everything else and that was the risk
02:22of stating the obvious that comes down to the quality of the music and the musicianship doesn't
02:26it yes well you know it's an interesting thing because i played in quite a few bands before but i i
02:31kind of felt that when when we when we started the very first version of dire straits with mark and
02:39david and pick with us on drums that suddenly when pick joined us with the drums and he and i slotted
02:46in as the bass player in the engine room very very quickly and i suddenly i felt this is this is
02:53something different from all the other bands i've played in and i think mark felt the same way because
02:58i could see him smiling and thinking i've done a lot of guitar playing in my life but now i'm playing
03:03my own songs with people who seem to know what to do with them and that's all you need as a songwriter
03:11you need a band that actually respects the songwriter and you know if if there were songs some songs that
03:18didn't work in rehearsals we just wouldn't do them and he was fine about that some songs you record you
03:24can't play live for some reason or another or it doesn't fit in with the scheme of things
03:28and um but you know songs like brothers in arms and money for nothing and so far away and
03:36down to the water line which i'm going to play on this on this little tour i'm doing i opened the set
03:41with that the very first song on the very first album and it's so beautiful to play i mean you forget
03:48how the chord structures on it is so wonderful simple but just work and i think that's the kind of a bit
03:56of magic which you don't realize the band had really until you go back and revisit it again
04:01so i'm very very proud of being part of that so given that you can hardly be surprised that
04:08very nearly 50 years later you're still playing them yeah i mean it's interesting isn't it i mean
04:14the other day i heard lady writer on radio 2 i nearly fell through the floor radio 2 playing lady
04:20writer that was 1979 you're on the up they've realized suddenly that dire straits is relevant
04:28now i don't know but you know i think we we would we were very touched with with the success of the
04:35band mark and i really enjoyed it the fame bit not so much but um you know when you when you go to
04:42sydney in australia and you end up playing 25 or 27 nights in the sydney sydney entertainment center
04:50to 10 or 12 000 people you think oh my god this is really weird you know um we moved into a hotel
04:57for three weeks and um it was like being at home after a while fantastic we're very sure yeah great
05:05times great truly sensational memories of an absolutely fantastic band john a real pleasure
05:10to speak to you thank you ever so much i feel we've spoken before phil but you seem very familiar
05:16i don't quite know why indeed we have indeed right i thought we had i thought we had pleasure to meet
05:22you again anyway thank you
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