With Making Movies, Dire Straits releases cinematic third album

Dire Straits : Skateaway

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On October 17 1980, Dire Straits released Making Movies, their third album. Featuring the UK#8 hit "Romeo and Juliet" and the future MTV hit "Skateaway", the album was a Top 20 hit in the US and a Top 5 hit in the UK.  While recording with the difficult producer Jimmy Iovine ( Patti Smith's Easter and Tom Petty's Damn The Torpedoes), Mark Knopfler's brother David left the group. The E Street Band's Roy Bittan came in to play keyboards.

"We had a great time playing with Roy," Mark Knopfler told Trouser Press. "I want to get a keyboard player in the band on a permanent basis and go on that way."

The songs are longer with the lead off track "Tunnel Of Love" clocking in at 8:11. 

"Maybe it's because a lot of people write one-and-a-half minute songs that I felt like writing songs that are eight minutes long. It's probably I've just got a lot more garbage to say."

Rolling Stone's David Fricke was impressed by the album and its lyrics, giving Making Movies 4 out of 5 stars:

Making Movies is the record on which Mark Knopfler comes out from behind his influences and Dire Straits come out from behind Mark Knopfler. The combination of the star's lyrical script, his intense vocal performances and the band's cutting-edge rock & roll soundtrack is breathtaking—everything the first two albums should have been but weren't. If Making Movies really were a film, it might win a flock of Academy Awards

Iovine is also impressed by the album.

"I think (Mark) wanted to take Dire Straits to that next step, especially in terms of the songs, and to have the album really make sense all together, which I think it does. It's a really cohesive album. He stunned me, as far as his songwriting talents. The songs on that album are almost classical in nature."