1982 DIRE STRAITS Telegraph Road
LOVE OVER GOLD is the fourth studio album by British rock band Dire Straits, released in 1982.
"Telegraph Road" is written by MARK KNOPFLER. Clocking in at over 14 minutes, it is rarely played by radio stations, yet has remained highly regarded over the years.
Inspired by a bus trip taken by Knopfler, the lyrics narrate a tale of changing land development over a span of many decades along Telegraph Road in suburban Detroit, Michigan. In the latter verses, Knopfler focuses on one man's personal struggle with unemployment after the city built around the telegraph road has become uninhabited and barren just as it began.
In an interview on RockLine, a "rock radio network" call-in show, broadcast live on 10 May 1983, Mark Knopfler said, while on tour, he... "in fact was driving down that road and I was reading a book at the time called Growth of the Soil [by the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun], and I just put the two together. I was driving down this Telegraph Road... and it just went on and on and on forever, it's like what they call linear development. And I just started to think, I wondered how that road must have been when it started, what it must have first been. And then really that's how it all came about yeah, I just put that book together and the place where I was, I was actually sitting in the front of the tour bus at the time."
1982 DIRE STRAITS Telegraph Road
LOVE OVER GOLD is the fourth studio album by British rock band Dire Straits, released in 1982.
"Telegraph Road" is written by MARK KNOPFLER. Clocking in at over 14 minutes, it is rarely played by radio stations, yet has remained highly regarded over the years.
Inspired by a bus trip taken by Knopfler, the lyrics narrate a tale of changing land development over a span of many decades along Telegraph Road in suburban Detroit, Michigan. In the latter verses, Knopfler focuses on one man's personal struggle with unemployment after the city built around the telegraph road has become uninhabited and barren just as it began.
In an interview on RockLine, a "rock radio network" call-in show, broadcast live on 10 May 1983, Mark Knopfler said, while on tour, he... "in fact was driving down that road and I was reading a book at the time called Growth of the Soil [by the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun], and I just put the two together. I was driving down this Telegraph Road... and it just went on and on and on forever, it's like what they call linear development. And I just started to think, I wondered how that road must have been when it started, what it must have first been. And then really that's how it all came about yeah, I just put that book together and the place where I was, I was actually sitting in the front of the tour bus at the time."