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John Illsley, Dire Straits
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In the scarred world of rock ’n’ roll, harrowing childhoods are worn like a badge on the sleeve.
Not by John Illsley, the son of a bank manager who grew up in a quiet corner of Market Harborough hugged by picturesque south Leicestershire countryside. The man who sold more than 118 million albums with Dire Straits has fond memories of his childhood: especially golden summer holidays spent fishing for sticklebacks in the grandly-named River Jordan, which flowed by the bottom of his garden.
“No-one ever said, ‘Mind what you’re doing out there, young man’,” sighs John 58.
“There was none of the fear we have today. It was idyllic.”
So on the rare occasion when John speaks to the media, he can’t lie about his childhood. It might not make for a sensational headline, but it was lovely.
John was born in Leicester in June 24, 1949. He spent five years in the city before his father accepted the post of Westminster Bank deputy manager in Market Harborough and the family moved to Shrewsbury Avenue, Little Bowden.
His new school was four miles away – but John and his older brother, William, were shown the way once, maybe twice, and from that day on, the Illsley brothers made the eight-mile round trip by bike. John was seven years old. “It seems strange now, expecting a kid to bike that far to primary school, but that’s how we were brought up.”
If the child is father to the man, maybe John was destined to be the stoical, happy-at-the-back bass player in a rock band.
Dire Straits were born in South London in 1976, in the middle of the punk rock revolution. John was a university student in South London.
He lived in a modest council flat in Deptford. The rent was £9.62 per week, too much for an impoverished undergraduate, so he advertised for a lodger. David Knopfler, brother of Mark, answered the ad. They hit it off immediately. David, a trainee social worker, would come home from work and shake off the day’s blues by reaching for his guitar.
“I used to say to him, ‘You’re a great guitar player’,” says John.
“He’d always shake his head and say, ‘Man, if you think I’m good, you should see my brother’.”
Brother Mark knew all the fancy chords. The three of them would sit in John’s flat, guitars in their laps, trading licks and writing songs. Most of the band’s self-titled debut album was written right there – in John’s south London flat. They found a drummer – co-incidentally, another Leicester ex-pat called Pick Withers – and started gigging.
Their first concert was a punk festival in Deptford. “There we were, playing Ry Cooder covers, surrounded by men with mohicans spitting at each other,” recalls John. Unsurprisingly, punk wasn’t really a hit with John. “I was right in the middle of it all,” he says, “yet I was completely out of it.
“It really wasn’t the musical force it’s made out to have been today.
"Its importance has been rewritten by journalists.” And besides, he laughs, they really didn’t have the first idea about how to play.
His abiding memory of his first Dire Straits gig is not the performance – it was tuning the guitars of the punk bands they were supporting. “They just didn’t know how to do it,” he says. In the three-chord firestorm of punk, Dire Straits’ laid-back adult rock was a curiosity.
Yet they were signed within months and given a £40,000, five-album advance. John paid off his debts and bought a car. It was more money than he had ever seen, although, as the gold records poured in and the gigs got bigger, that would soon change.
From 1977 until 1993, when they quietly lay down their instruments and walked away, Dire Straits became one the world’s biggest bands.
Their 1985 release, Brothers In Arms, was the era-defining sound of the times and one of the major draws at Live Aid. They nearly didn’t play though, as The Biggest Gig In The World coincided with their 13-night stint at Wembley Arena.
“It was only because Bob Geldof wouldn’t take no for an answer. So we played at Live Aid – and then walked across the car park with our instruments to play our gig that night at the arena.” Music took John around the world several times over. Today, it has given him a house in Hampshire on the edge of the New Forest, another in France, a third in the Bahamas – and a life which must have seemed a million miles away when he was fishing for sticklebacks in Little Bowden.
As retired rock aristocracy, he spends his time painting – an exhibition in south west London finished last month – producing (he’s excited about a new singer-songwriter called Greg Pearle), playing occasional guitar in Irish rock band Cunla and shunning media requests.
You don’t give many interviews do you?
“I don’t,” he says. “Why should I? I’ve never courted the press. I’ll do it when I fancy it – and more often than not, I don’t, ha, ha. “I don’t mind this, though. I remember the Mercury when I was a lad. We used to have it delivered. “You’re part of my heritage.”
Duran Duran have done it, the Police have done it, so have Take That and the Spice Girls – is it time for Dire Straits to become brothers in arms once more? “I’m asked this question all the time,” says John Illsley. “If it’s going to happen, it will happen. I can tell you, though, honestly, there is nothing in the pipeline. “I never say never about anything, but it looks unlikely.” Besides, he says, even if they did reform, he wouldn’t want to do it on the same scale they did it in the 1980s. “We were in a bubble which just got bigger and bigger until it became a big business corporation,” he says. “One would wake up in the morning and one wouldn’t know where one was. “If it’s Tuesday, then, OK, it must be Paris. I miss certain elements of Dire Straits. But I don’t miss that.”
Making rafts and playing pirates on Market Harborough’s River Jordan was all great fun, remembers John Illsley – until the day his neighbour nearly drowned and he jumped in to save her life. “We used to live opposite a family called the Gazzards in Shrewsbury Avenue,” he recalls. “I played with their son, who was the same age as me, and his younger sister, Sally, used to tag along, too. “I remember one day, we’d made a raft out of kettle drums – and Sally fell in the river. “She was drowning. I jumped in after her. I was scared for her – I was scared for myself, to be honest. “Did I save her? We kind of saved ourselves, I think. As far as her mum and dad and brother were concerned, yes, I saved her. I remember feeling a bit embarrassed by it all.” * Sally – if you are out there, give the Leicester Mercury a call on 0116 222 4234.
Lee Marlow, July 2007
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