I took it for granted, because I grew up with it, of course. Some of that playing in the early days, when you go back and look at it, was absolutely extraordinary. “It’s got much simpler as he’s got older, that’s for certain. “His way of playing was very different from anything I’d ever seen, and still remains to this day,” he says. It wasn’t even a consideration about playing together at that point, I just felt this natural warmth and humor from him. Reflecting on that inauspicious introduction today, Illsley says: “I knew as soon as I met him that I was going to know about him for a long time, in one way or another. This must have been the brother he had mentioned.”ĭire Straits photo: Ebet Roberts/Redferns The guy had an electric guitar across his chest…his face, sheet-white, revealed a hint of my flatmate David. “There was a man lying on the cement floor of our Deptford flat fast asleep…and his head, propped against the only chair, was at right angles to his body. He shared a flat with David Knopfler and writes specifically about his first meeting with David’s older brother. Illsley, born in Leicester in the English midlands in 1949, reminisces in the book about his musical education and an early job with a timber firm, before a Sociology course at Goldsmiths college brought him to London. He’s told the story in the songs, really, and he doesn’t need to do it any more than that.” “I thought, is never going to write this down, and it gives me a chance to say something about him which he won’t say. “The main thing for me is celebrating something, celebrating a friendship that I’ve had for 40-odd years, and a musical partnership,” says Illsley.
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