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The Story Behind Dire Straits' Money for Nothing

The Story Behind Dire Straits' Money for Nothing

"I wrote Money for Nothing in the window of an appliance store in New York," Mark Knopfler said ahead of the Brothers in Arms reissue.

I was in an appliance store in New York, and there was this big chump delivering appliances. All the TVs were tuned to MTV, and I overheard this guy talking about the rock stars on the screen. He had an audience of one — the junior guy in the store — and some of his lines were too good to be true.

Things like, "That little bastard's got his own jet!" And, "He plays the bongos like a chimp!" And, "It doesn't work!" He just said it — and in this New York accent. Bells were ringing in my head, but I didn’t have a pen with me, so I borrowed one, got some paper, and basically sat in a shop window and started writing down the lines from Money for Nothing as he said them.

The guitar lick is just a stomp, tap, two-finger boogie. It comes from the Clawhammer style and has its own rhythm. It was just fun to do. But there were a whole bunch of lucky breaks that collided with each other to create the song. For example, I saw the Police on MTV saying the line, “I want my MTV.” But they also had a song called Don’t Stand So Close to Me, so I put “I want my MTV” over that melody and put it at the beginning.

When we were recording the Brothers in Arms album at Air Studios in Montserrat, I remember thinking, “Wouldn’t it be cool to have Sting sing that line?” We were on a tiny headland in the middle of the ocean and someone said, “Sting’s here on holiday! He’s on the beach!” So he came into the studio and the first thing he said was, “What’s happened?” I said, “What do you mean?” And he said, “Nobody’s fighting here…” [unlike the Police].

The success of Brothers in Arms was huge. So many people wanted to see the band live. After we played Live Aid at Wembley Stadium, we ran across the car park to Wembley Arena, where we were playing that night. In fact, one of the reasons I felt like I needed to slow down was because I went into catering and didn’t recognise my crew. That’s when I realised the scale of it.

We’d already had four successful albums, so the expectations for Brothers in Arms were pretty high. Luckily, Mark was a sharp as a tack. At that point, we were in a mews house in west London, just with guitars, an acoustic bass and keyboards, and running through the stuff Mark had been working on.

The chords and lyrics to Money for Nothing were already there – and obviously there was a riff of Mark’s, which was quite unusual. It’s funny: when other guitarists try to play that riff, they play all the right notes, but they don’t feel it. We took our time, and the song went from a Mark Knopfler song to a Dire Straits song. I was playing bass in a simple way, happily sitting on the chords, recording this engine room.

The title is ironic, because we’d worked so hard for years to get to that point. But everyone was looking at us from the outside. Like, “Oh, look at them, it’s not working, it’s just money for nothing – and they’re getting chicks for free.” But it was a bit like Picasso when he’d do a quick sketch for someone and they’d say, “That only took you 10 seconds.” And he’d say, “No, it took me 40 years.”

Brothers in Arms was the first record we made with Guy Fletcher, who was a very technical player. He knew how to work these modern keyboards, while Alan Clarke was a wonderful pianist. The two of them created that intro to Money for Nothing, and Terry Williams played the most explosive drum solo I’ve ever heard. Then the riff comes in. The guitar tone you hear on the record was an accident: the microphone fell on the floor in front of the speaker, and it completely changed the sound.

Money for Nothing was No. 1 in America, and Brothers in Arms was No. 1 in the American album chart at the same time. We really enjoyed that success, but the fame… not so much. After the tour, there was a definite feeling that we had to call it a day. We got back together for On Every Street in 1991, and that tour was physically and mentally gruelling. Mark had definitely had enough. For everyone’s sanity, but mostly his, we called it a day. But to be honest, I still enjoy playing Money for Nothing as much as I did then. A good song is like a good painting – it never fades.