On January 19, Rhino will release Dire Straits – Live 1978-1992, an 11 LP/8 CD box set of live performances by Dire Straits, a band that straddled the globe in the eighties and nineties with their sophisticated rootsy guitar rock wedded to literate story-telling lyrics. We’re celebrating the release with an exclusive radio special that features the songs, as well as new interviews with Mark Knopfler and other members of Dire Straits.

Dire Straits Live 1978-1992 features newly remastered versions of the classic Dire Straits’ live albums Alchemy (‘84) and On The Night (‘93), ‘93’s Encores EP, ‘95’s Dire Straits Live At The BBC, and the previously unreleased Dire Straits Live From The Rainbow Theatre show from ’79, and captures the band’s thrilling heartland rock played with breathtaking virtuosity from their first live recordings at the BBC in ’78 through to their final shows in ‘92 in On The Night. The expanded version of the original double album Alchemy will include unreleased songs from the performance – ‘Industrial Disease’ and ‘Twisting By The Pool’ – as well as ‘Love Over Gold’ and the extended versions of ‘Telegraph Road,’ ‘Solid Rock,’ ‘Going Home’ and ‘Portobello Belle.’ An expanded version of the original On The Night will include tracks performed during the tour which have never been released, taken from multitrack recordings of shows in Nimes, Rotterdam and Paris: ‘Tunnel Of Love, ‘Telegraph Road,’ ‘Sultans Of Swing,’ ‘Two Young Lovers,’ ‘When it Comes To You,’ ‘I Think I Love You Too Much.’

Says Mark Knopfler (when speaking to journalist and broadcaster Paul Sexton, author of the box set sleevenotes): ‘People will always want you to play songs from the songbook; that’s part of what you’re doing playing live. You’ve got to please yourself but at the same time it’s a celebration. You’re all there to have a good time together. I enjoyed writing the songs, I enjoyed recording them, so I’m going to enjoy playing them. I don’t play anything I don’t want to play, so if I get up there and play ‘Romeo and Juliet’ or ‘Brothers In Arms,’ it’s because I want to play them. It’s important to me that it’s important to people, that you’ve created milestones in people’s lives.”