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Album dossier / 1985

Brothers in Arms

Dire Straits · Rock

Recorded at George Martin's remote AIR Studios on Montserrat starting in November 1984, Brothers in Arms was co-produced and engineered by Neil Dorfsman, who, together with Mark Knopfler, decided partway through the sessions that the original drum tracks weren't working and brought in jazz-fusion session drummer Omar Hakim to re-cut them from scratch in roughly two and a half days, instantly changing the record's feel. 'Money for Nothing' grew out of a chance visit from Sting, whose 'I want my MTV' vocal line was folded into the track; the album was also among the first ever recorded on 24-track Sony digital tape, a Knopfler-driven push that made it the first album to sell a million copies on the fledgling CD format. It became the best-selling album of the 1980s in the UK and Dorfsman won a Grammy for engineering it.