No. 249 – Calling Elvis

Performer: Dire Straits

Songwriter: Mark Knopfler

Original Release: On Every Street

Year: 1991

Definitive Version: On the Night, 1993

On Every Street was a regular play in the Fall of 1991. Something about the sound of it just got me right from the first listen. I played it recently, and it still sounds good.

So I wasn’t going to pass up a chance to see Dire Straits when they toured (for the final time as it stands) to support the album. They were scheduled to be at the Palace of Auburn Hills in January 1992.

I went as part of a foursome. It was me, Dave, Dave’s wife, Julie, and Dave’s unborn child. It wasn’t close to being born—due in the summer—but it was far enough along that the news of Julie’s pregnancy was known, to me at least.

I got tickets in one of the corners of the lower bowl, fairly decent seats. It turned out that our seats, by an amazing coincidence, were right behind those of Brendan from Sports.

This led to some discomfort, considering the bad blood between Dave and Brendan from softball and then Rotball. Being in Sports now, I had to navigate both rivers at once. So what was it going to be like at the show?

No problem at all as it turned out. Dave was concerned Brendan was going to get soused and be a jerk. He wasn’t at all; he loves a good Guitar God as much as anyone and was too busy watching Mark Knopfler work to bother with starting anything—or even getting up to go get another beer, let alone another dozen.

The show was OK, although, honestly, it could have used more On Every Street. I know. I know. Dire Straits was touring the States for the first time since the mid-Eighties. They HAD to load up on the olden goldies, and they had only so much time. The show started off with a bang—Calling Elvis—which featured an intro before the band launched into the song that seemed to go on for five minutes as the band was led on stage and the curtain was raised.

As an answer to my ever-changing bulletin board over my desk in Sports, Brendan at about this time began to make a collage on the door to Features of a collection of pics from paste-up after they were used in the newspaper. One was taken at the Dire Straits show—a really cool pose of Knopfler punching a fist for “oomph” emphasis. It became the centerpiece of Brendan’s door, and I’m certain it was taken during Calling Elvis, because newspaper photogs typically were allowed to shoot pics in the front of the stage only for the first few songs.

That concert also was the last time Dave and I went to a show together. That in and of itself wasn’t significant, but it wasn’t long before we stopped doing things together completely, outside of softball. Actually, I didn’t pay much attention to this at the time.

Dave and I started the card column soon after the Dire Straits show, and then I became so smitten by a certain waitress at the White Horse that—outside those two things and softball—I couldn’t think of anything else. By the time the distractions eased, I realized that the dynamic of our friendship had changed to the point where I began to question why it still existed.