Dire Straits

Mark Knopfler was a former journalist teaching English in London when he formed Dire Straits with his brother and two friends. A demo of Sultans of Swing, a song about a pub jazz band nobody watches, got played on Charlie Gillett's radio show, and the labels started calling. The album they then cut for about twelve thousand pounds arrived in 1978, the loudest year in British rock, and sounded like the opposite of its moment: clean, fingerpicked, unhurried. America noticed first. It reached number two on the US chart while Britain was still catching up.