Why Dire Straits Turned Down Big Money To Reunite
via Dire Straits / Youtube
Dire Straits admitted that they have turned down the reunion offer that came with a huge amount of money.
During an interview with The Telegraph, Dire Straits bassist, John Illsley, mentioned that the has no interest in doing a reunion despite being given lucrative offers. He also noted that the band’s former manager and he regularly visits each other. He recalled:
“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.’ When you stop a machine like the Dire Straits thing, there’s a massive vacuum.”
He then continued:
“There’s a massive vacuum. And you ask yourself if it was a good idea. And I had to keep telling myself that it was a good idea. Because you’re doing something else, completely different – 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, ‘Okay, 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.’”
Recalling their farewell, the band took their separate ways in 1995 but remained to be close friends. For Illsley, they ended Dire Straits at the right time. Illsley said:
“I sort of knew that things were coming to an end.
“And I was pretty happy about that because we were exhausted. We were exhausted. Mentally, physically, emotionally exhausted. Most of our marriages were falling apart, we weren’t seeing our children very much – it was all wrong, basically. It’s the usual things that can happen to people in bands.”
“Sultans of Swing” and “Money for Nothing” are two of the band’s most successful works, which indeed, is something to be proud of. The bassist then continued:
“I can openly admit to you that I really enjoyed the success of the band. I’m speaking for Mark as well, we both really enjoyed [it]. It comes with a certain amount of stress, obviously. You’ve got to really dig deep sometimes to keep it working. I think Mark said – and I hope I’m quoting him correctly here – but he said that success is great, but fame is what comes out of the exhaust pipe of a car. It’s something you don’t really want.”
