Yknow because you put all the Telegraph Road stuff into your sig and title, I hadda go back and listen to it. Now I tell you I have treasured this record for two decades, but only this morning did I put it on and realize...
Knopfler is absolutely channelling early Springsteen on that song, and for most of the album too!
I say channelling because I don't think he wants to BE the English Bruce. I think he's not directly copying, he's just intentionally bending Bruce's way. But here's a song that, in the Bruce 1973-1980 tradition, talks about ordinary life in the crappy industrial suburbia of north Jersey, I mean, northern English coal towns or whatever you want to invoke with it. And why not put a little clean tinkly piano behind the loud parts like Bruce's David Sancious would do? And tell Pick Withers, who has a trademark light touch, to slam that snare really hard like Max Weinstein would do.
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