The album that captured the growing phenomenon of Dire Straits as a live attraction is marking a birthday. ‘Alchemy: Dire Straits Live,’ recorded over two nights at London’s Hammersmith Odeon and accompanied by a sister longform video, was released this week in 1984.
Alchemy: Dire Straits Live is a double album and the first live album by the British rock band Dire Straits, released on 16 March 1984 by Vertigo Records internationally, and by Warner Bros. Records in the United States. Recorded at the Hammersmith Odeon in London on 22nd–23rd July 1983, the album features the band’s best-known and fan-favourite songs from their first four albums, the Extended play EP, and the Local Hero soundtrack (composed by Mark Knopfler); many of the songs have reworked arrangements and/or extended improvisational segments. The album cover is taken from a painting by Brett Whiteley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0dwIFqlLXM
‘Alchemy’ followed the band’s first domestic No. 1, the ‘Love Over Gold’ album of some 18 months before. As Dire Straits grew, record by record and tour by tour, into one of the biggest bands in the UK and beyond, the live record went on to have a long life. It debuted in the UK top three, spent all but one week of its first seven months in the top 40 and, in the slipstream of the subsequent sales sensation that was ‘Brothers In Arms,’ went on to spend more than three years in the UK top 100.
‘Love Over Gold’ had gone straight to No. 1 in Britain in October 1982 and stayed there four weeks. Then, with some time for a little extracurricular activity, Mark Knopfler pursued the first of the side projects that ultimately steered him towards the solo career he follows to this day. His soundtrack to the film ‘Local Hero’ included the Ivor Novello Award-winning ‘Going Home.’
Then it was back to Dire Straits business. After dates from March, 1983 in Australia, New Zealand and Japan, the band embarked on a massive European tour from May onwards. They played to big audiences all across the continent, arriving home via an Irish date at Punchestown Racecourse, followed by a London engagement at the Dominion Theatre.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t77uErKLiaI
Knopfler and Dire Straits Then came the two sellout Hammersmith shows of July 22nd and 23rd, which turned into celebrations of everything the band had achieved so far, from ‘Sultans of Swing’ to ‘Private Investigations.’ When the recordings of the performances were delivered to Knopfler at his home, he was too exhausted from the tour to listen to them. But he recalled that the Saturday show, the second one, had been especially good, so that formed the bulk of the double album.
‘Alchemy’ was released while the coal miners’ strikes dominated the news in Britain, and while scientists first murmured about something called the greenhouse effect. Meanwhile, this first document of Dire Straits’ live work carried on selling for years.
The Fat Angel Sings 