Love over Gold

Background

Following the end of the On Location Tour on 6 July 1981 in Luxembourg, Mark Knopfler began writing the songs for Dire Straits' next album. Alan Clark (keyboards) and Hal Lindes (guitar), who joined the band for the On Location Tour, would also be involved with the new album.

Recording

Love over Gold was recorded at the Power Station in New York from 8 March to 11 June 1982. Knopfler produced the album, with Neil Dorfsman as his engineer—the first in a long line of collaborations between the two.

Knopfler used several guitars during the sessions, including four Schecter Stratocasters—two red, one blue, and one sunburst—a black Schecter Telecaster, an Ovation classical guitar on "Private Investigations" and "Love over Gold", a custom Erlewine Automatic on "Industrial Disease", and his 1937 National steel guitar on "Telegraph Road". Knopfler also used Ovation twelve- and six-string acoustic guitars during the recording.

Several songs were written and recorded during the Love over Gold session that were not released on the album. "Private Dancer" was originally planned for the album, with all but the vocal tracks being recorded. Knopfler decided that a female voice would be more appropriate and handed the song to Tina Turner for her comeback album, Private Dancer. "The Way It Always Starts" ended up on Knopfler's soundtrack to the film Local Hero, with vocals sung by Gerry Rafferty. "Badges, Posters, Stickers and T-Shirts" was cut from the album and later released in the UK as a B-side to "Private Investigations". It was subsequently released in the United States as the fourth track on the ExtendedancEPlay EP.

Release

Love over Gold was released on 20 September 1982 on vinyl LP and cassette. "Private Investigations" was released as the lead single from the album in Europe, It reached the number 2 position in the United Kingdom. "Industrial Disease" was released as a single in the United States, reaching the 75 position on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1983.

The album was remastered and released with the rest of the Dire Straits catalogue in 1996 by Vertigo Records internationally, and in 2000 by Warner Bros. records in the United States. The remastered CD features slightly altered cover art; the album title is rendered underneath the band name, both in larger type, rather than arranged across the top. The image of lightning is also somewhat zoomed in and made brighter, making for a more purple colour. It is the only remastered Dire Straits CD with altered cover art.

Critical reception

In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine gave the album four out of five stars, noting that the addition of a new rhythm guitarist "expands its sounds and ambitions". Erlewine added, "Since Mark Knopfler is a skilled, tasteful guitarist, he can sustain interest even throughout the languid stretches, but the long, atmospheric, instrumental passages aren't as effective as the group's tight blues-rock, leaving Love over Gold only a fitfully engaging listen."

In a contemporary review for Rolling Stone magazine, David Fricke gave the album four out of five stars, calling the album a "statement of purpose" and "an ambitious, sometimes difficult record that is exhilarating in its successes and, at the very least, fascinating in its indulgences." Fricke continued:

Two drastically different moods dominate the new album. One is sharp and fiery (like the bolt of lightning on the cover); the other is soft and seductive. That dichotomy is particularly explicit in "Private Investigations", a long, unorthodox ballad in which Knopfler plays a private detective hardened by a life of combing through other people's dirty laundry. Over a discreet synthesizer ring, gurgling marimba and a delicately plucked acoustic guitar, he grumbles into his whisky glass like Bob Dylan in a trench coat: "You get to meet all sorts in this line of work Treachery and treason There's always an excuse for it," he recites in a raspy nicotine snarl. Then John Illsley sounds a quiet warning with a stalking bass line before the song erupts in dramatic bursts of guitar gunfire and tragic-sounding piano playing. This wracking schizophrenia between the heart and the heartless, the loving and the pain, has always informed Knopfler's songs and arrangements. Love Over Gold, however, finds Knopfler casting further than ever for ways to articulate the frustrations that colour his romantic streak.

Fricke praised the album's centerpiece, "Telegraph Road", which he characterized as a "challenge to the average pop fan's attention span" with its "historic sweep and intimate tension". The theme of the building of America and the dashing of one man's dreams "enable Knopfler to deploy a variety of surprising instrumental voices, from the synthesized sunrise whistle at the beginning to the baroque piano motif in the middle." Fricke concluded that "in a period when most pop music is conceived purely as product, Love over Gold dares to put art before airplay."

In 1986, Love over Gold had sold 4.4 million copies in Europe, whereas the album had only reached gold status in the United States by that stage.

Track listing

All songs were written by Mark Knopfler.

Personnel

Dire Straits

Additional musicians

Production

Albums

Love over Gold spent 200 weeks in the UK Albums Chart. In Australia, the album was the twelfth best-selling album in 1982 and the sixth best-selling in 1983.