S1E60: John Illsley
Rockonteurs with Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt
Rhino UK
4.8 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 14 November 2021
⏱️ 73 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week Gary and Guy return with another fascinating and insightful episode of Rockonteurs.
Our guest this week is John Illsley from Dire Straits. Yes….a bass player! John was one of only a few members to play from the bands start to their finish and remains great friends with Mark Knopfler.
He has a new book out this week that charts the bands meteoric rise to the top in the late 70’s and throughout the 80’s and in this episode he shares some of those incredible stories.
From pub rock to stadiums, CD’s, sharing studios in Monserrat with Sting to the cultural explosion of MTV – it’s all exactly what this series is all about, great stories from the artists that shaped the music we love.
Rockonteurs is produced by Ben Jones for Gimme Sugar Productions.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hey Guy, how are you? |
| 0:02.0 | I'm very well. |
| 0:03.0 | I've had a nice sunny run along the seafront to Dire Straits this morning. |
| 0:08.0 | Were you back in the 80s? |
| 0:11.0 | Did you have a headband? I was going to say, no,? Did you have a headband? |
| 0:12.9 | I was going to say, no, I didn't have a headband, |
| 0:15.0 | and neither did anyone else I saw. |
| 0:17.0 | Do you know what, countless people who overtook me. |
| 0:20.3 | So John, John Ilzley is on, he's got a new book out which is about his life in Direstraits obviously because he's the only member to other than Mark Knopfler to have done the whole course 15 years. |
| 0:32.0 | He's there Nick Mason. So and it's extraordinary how many |
| 0:35.1 | records they sold isn't it? I mean I think it's something like a 120 million albums sold. |
| 0:41.7 | Brothers in Arms was the best-selling album in the UK of the whole of the 1980s, |
| 0:46.7 | sold 30 million records. |
| 0:47.7 | Well it was the birth of the CD, wasn't it? |
| 0:49.2 | That's why. |
| 0:50.2 | It was the album that everyone had to buy to try out their CD plan. |
| 0:52.4 | But also that's the kind of music they got into in the end, wasn't it? |
| 0:55.3 | It was an incredible sort of soundscape arrangement that, I mean, you know, private investigations |
| 1:01.6 | from the album before Love Over Gold |
| 1:03.6 | it's seven minutes long |
| 1:05.3 | it's virtually all spoken |
| 1:07.6 | it's so complex and yet radio one play it happily |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Rhino UK, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Rhino UK and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.