Dear everyone,

First of all, Happy 1991 to you all! Hope you had a good Christmas and New Year, and thanks from all the band and everyone here at the office to everybody who sent cards.

Sorry this newsletter is late, but we decided to do it in January rather than December because

1. we have been moving offices (chaos!) and
2. we wanted to put in the booking details for the first set of tour dates, some of which weren´t confirmed until recently.

THE NEW ADDRESS AND PHONE NUMBER FOR DAMAGE MANAGMENTE AND DIRE STRAITS INFORMATION SERVICE ARE AS FOLLOWS:

16 LAMBOTN PLACE
LONDON W11 2SH
Tel: 071 229 2992

Don´t forget to change it in your address book. For those of you who are wondering where London W11 is –it´s near Notting Hill Gate. Yes, we are all Notting Hillbillies now! Of course, we´ve had five reasonably quiet years during which we could have moved without too much upheaval, but no, we´ve decided to do it NOW when we´re at our very busiest… We will be getting a new computer system which none of us can operate, so if you never hear from me again, it will be because I´ve lost my entire Information Service programme whilst transferring it from one system to another… (you think I´m joking??!!!)&hellip Now for the news you´ve all been waiting for (probably for the past five years!): The new Dire Straits album is well underway, and sounding just fantastic, of course. The plan at present is for a single to come out worldwide in early April, and for the album to be released worldwide in mid-May. This may change slightly –the band have not even begun mixing it yet.

Then comes the long awaited tour. After the “Live In ´85/86´´ tour, which was so long it nearly finished us all off, we had planned that this one would not be nearly so long and gruelling, but it already looks like running for 8about 14 months! Later on in this newsletter you will find details of the first section of tour dates, plus a booking form for the UK shows. Those of you who live in other parts of the world will get details of relevant dates in forthcoming newsletters. At present, it looks like running North America and Canada, South America, Australia and New Zealand, Europe II, in that order, between summer 1991 and summer 1992. However, no shows apart from the first section are confirmed yet.

The band line-up isn´t 100% finalised, but there are a couple of changes: Mark, John, Alan, Guy and Chris remain. But there´s a new drummer, and a new second-guitarist. Terry Williams will not be on the album or tour, and has been replaced by Chris Whitten (ex-Paul McCartney). However, as far as the album is concerned, the drummer for most tracks is Jeff Porcaro. Those of you who read album credits will know the name as he´s played with literally hundreds of top acts over the years including Steely Dan and Madonna, and he was also a member of Toto. We were all sorry to see Terry go, but unfortunately, things just weren´t working out musically. As I said in the last newsletter, Jack is also no longer with us, and he´s been replaced by Phil Palmer. Phil has played with the Paul Brady Band in the past so we all know him well, and of course he was onstage with Mark/Eric/Elton at Knebworth since he was part of Eric Clapton´s touring band at the time.

In addition, as I hinted in the last newsletter, we have Paul Franklin on pedal-steel guitar (who you´ll know if you saw the Hillbillies tour). We´ve also added a percussion player called Danny Cummings (currently playing on George Michael´s tour). Contrary to rumours, I will no be playing the triangle on tour, I will be far too busy doing tickets, guest-lists, etc… It looks as if the tour will be sponsored in the same way as the last one, by Philips Compact Disc, and may be sub sponsored by Levis. We will, of course, have a brand new range of merchandise made up, to be sold on the road and by mail order from here. We´ll be getting designs together over the next couple of months. In fact, the number of things we´re supposed to be doing “over the next couple of months” is looking rather daunting!!! (you are not kidding! –Ed).

Now I´ll move on to other bits and pieces, and will come back to tour details later in this newsletter.

BACK NEWSLETTERS: several of you have asked if back newsletters are available. Well, we are not intending to have reprints done of letters we´ve run out of, but if you want to order any we have in stock, you are welcome to order any we have in stock. Price: 1 pound per letter (inc. p&p) for UK fans, 5 x IRCs (inc. p&p) for overseas fans. Order form towards the back of this newsletter.

AIDS CHARITY PRIZE DRAW: (this was a UK-only draw, in case overseas fans are wondering what I´m talking about!). Thanks to all of you who entered –we raised over 1.600 pounds for the Terrence Higgins Trust. Practically everyone who sent in received something, however small, but here´s a list of the three main prizewinners: 1st prize –Dire Straits triple gold disc award: David Noble. 2nd prize –Dire Straits cd award: Karen Edwards. 3rd prize –Mistery Prize: Alan English. A complete list of prize-winners is available on request. Overseas fans –don´t feel left out –I´ll be doing something similar for your in a future newsletter.

NOTTING HILLBILLIES: you may recall in the last newsletter I mentioned that the general consensus of opinion was that Liverpool and Derby were the best gigs of the tour. Debbie Scrivens and Lindsey Parkinson wrote in to say I should have mentioned them as being the best fans on the tour… for getting up and dancing about while all around them stayed firmly glued to their seats (specially at Oxford). So, since the band much appreciated their enthusiasm and liveliness, they do indeed win the “fans of the tour” award!

NOTTING HILLBILLIES PHOTOS: so glad those of you who ordered these liked them so much. We still have a few sets left, so send a stamped addressed envelope marked “photos” if you want details. I´d like to take this opportunity of thanking DSIS member Carolyn Dean, who took all the photos, for her hard work on this project and over the past couple of years. Carolyne –give me a call as we have a nice thank-you present here for you!

DISCOGRAPHY: I´ve had loads of requests for a proper up-to-date discography, so you´ll find one in this letter. It´s a complete list of UK releases (it would be virtually impossible for me to list every release and catalogue number for the entire world!). Because of the postage costs, especially to overseas territories, we have reduced this to fit it onto two pages. However, if you find it too hard to read and want a full-size copy, send me a medium-size s.a.e. (overseas fans send IRC). Mark the back of your envelope “DISCOGRAPHY”.

CHRIS WHITE´S ALBUM: in the last newsletter I said this was due for release in September or October worldwide –well, it´s still not out (long story…). It is now due out in March, an the title has been changed –it´s now called “Shadowdance” (slightly more inspired than “Chris White & Friends”). Since the last newsletter, some of the tracks have been added to, and in particular, Mark has now added some great guitar to a couple of them. As yet, I still can´t give you the catalogue numbers for each country, but will try and list tem in the March newsletter if you haven´t managed to acquire a copy by then.

FANS AT COLLEGE: a few of you have written to give me a term time address and a home address, plus the dates of your college terms. We cannot start changing our files every few weeks, so we must just have ONE address per fan to which all newsletter are sent.

NECK AND NECK: have had many letters from people who´ve got this album and loved it. For those of you who asked –yes, there was a single released from the album (Poor boy blues) which didn´t exactly take the charts by storm… If you haven´t yet heard or got the album though, I would strongly recommend you try to do so. In many European countries (but not the UK) “The next time I´m in town” has just been (or is about to be) released as a single.

ERIC CLAPTON –ALBERT HALL, FEB/MAR ´91: I´m getting loads of calls about these shows, mainly from people asking if Mark´s going to play at any of them. Well, those of you who have been on my mailing list for a few years will remember that two years ago, Mark said he WASN´T going to play (and then did), and that last year, he said he WAS going to play (and then didn´t). So… I have given up trying to predict what Mark might do! However, since the band are recording six days a week, morning, noon, and night, I think it unlikely he´ll have time.

GUY BECOMES A DAD: just after the August newsletter was sent out, Guy´s wife Lauri-Ann had her baby –a boy, which they have named Maxfield.

CAPITAL TOP 500: you may be interested to know that London´s main independent radio stations, Capital Radio, compiled an “All time Top 500” (records voted for throughout the years by listeners), and “Money for Nothing” was number 6. Various other DS tracks also made it into the chart (Romeo & Juliet, “Private Investigations”, “Walk of Life” and “Sultans of Swing”. In case you are wondering who beat the group into the top places, here´s the Top 5: George Michael –“Careless Whisper”, Phil Collins –“Against all odds”, Madonna –“Vogue”, Queen –“Bohemian Rhapsody”, and Led Zeppelin –“Stairway to Heaven”.

“ALCHEMY” CONCERT REPEATED ON UK TV: insomniacs may have caught the “Alchemy” concert on Channel 4 the other night – at 1:00 am… Hope it got you in the mood for the forthcoming concerts (even thogh it was somewhat out of date!)

GRAMMY NOMITATIONS: have just heard that Mark and Chet have received two Grammy nominations for the “Neck & Neck” album, in the country music category. The first is “Poor boy blues” –best country vocal collaboration, and the second is “So Long, your goodbye” –Best country instrumental performance. Will let you know how they fared in the next newsletter.

COACH TRIPS: those of you in the UK who have received correspondence from me in the past couple of months will know that we have been advising fans not to send deposits off to various coach companies advertising trips to see the band overseas. The reason for this was that ads started appearing long before the shows were confirmed, and we hadn´t promised ANY tickets to ANY coach companies, so they were, in fact, taking money for something they were not in a position to provide. Since they were taking deposits of up to 30 pounds per ticket, you can imagine how much interest they stood to make, even if the eventually had to return the deposits, having no tickets to provide. The main offenders were The Concert Travel Club in Barnstaple, Lowestoft Concert Travel Club in Great Yarmouth, and Intaland Concert Travel in Alfreton –and we would advise you not to have anything to do with these companies.

COLIN CAMPBELL: you may have read in various newspapers recently a story about a “rock musician/producer” called Colin Campbell, who was convicted of obtaining sex by threats. Many papers reported that he had “worked with Dire Straits”. I would just like to set the record straight: Collin Campbell has never worked with the band at any time in any capacity. In fact, we´d never even heard of him until we read about the case in the paper! Does anyone know who he is or what instrument he plays? We´d be interested to know…

That´s about it for now! PLEASE read the ticket info thoroughly before you book, and to those of you in other countries –you´ll get your turn in future newsletters!

Best wishes for now