Will Dire Straits Perform At the Rock Hall Induction Ceremony?
Dire Straits has been dormant since 1992. Will we see it ride again, at least for one night, now that it’s been elected into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
Bassist John Illsley, the only full-time member and continuing owner of the name besides frontman Mark Knopfler tells us that he…doesn’t know yet:
“I can’t really answer that immediately…I think it would probably be pretty important if Mark and I were there…I’m free, so I’ll definitely be there. I’ll definitely talk Mark into coming as well. I’m sure he’ll come…It’s essentially up to Mark if he wants to do anything, but I completely respect his feelings about it. He doesn’t want too much white light…As you probably know, Mark is quite sort of restrained about things like this.”
Dire Straits enters the Rock Hall on its first-ever nomination and finished third in the fan vote behind Bon Jovi and the Moody Blues. Besides Knopfler the induction also covers original members David Knopfler and Pick Withers as well as Alan Clark and Guy Fletcher.
Illsley says that despite the aforementioned restraint, both he and Mark Knopfler are happy to be going into the shrine:
“We have spoken about it and we just said, ‘Oh, that’s nice’…That’s like joining a rather large executive club…It’s a rather beautiful thing…It sort of fills me with a lot of pleasure I must say, I suppose, to be recognized and to be included in the thing that we love doing best, which is making music and playing rock ‘n’ roll.”
The induction ceremony takes place April 14 in Cleveland and will be filmed by HBO for subsequent broadcast on Saturday, May 5th.
Gary Graff is an award-winning music journalist who not only covers music but has written books on Bob Seger, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen.
