Jeffrey R. Clark, Ph.D.

Freelance Writer

“Telegraph Road”: A Little-Known Favorite

Most songs that exceed five or six minutes have little chance of being played on any standard broadcast radio station, although they may have slightly increased chances on satellite radio. One of my favorite songs, “Telegraph Road” by Dire Straits, is a song that I have never heard played on the radio, and yet it has always been one of my very favorite songs (along with, perhaps, “Dogs” by Pink Floyd). This anthem lasts about 12 minutes in the live version from the ‘best-of’ album Money for Nothing and 14 or 15 minutes on the original album Love Over Gold. Although I usually have no use for live recordings, in this case I prefer the live recording on Money for Nothing, as I think Mark Knopfler sings with more emotion and gives the song that needed boost to take it from good to great.

One of my favorite features of the song is its narrative character. It does, granted, seem to wander back and forth a bit, but I think it has a certain theme that is expounded in something other than the usual array of four-line verses and repeated chorus. When I used to struggle with the blues, which I still do but to a lesser extent than I did in my college days, I would listen to this song and take some kind of solace in its melancholy story. As I understand it, “Telegraph Road” relates the struggles of an average working man living in the city. This is not so unique a story except for the background that interplays with it, describing the lone pioneer who started it all by trekking into the wilderness and starting a new life. The development into modern times is related, ultimately leading to a tension between the source in that single pioneer in the wilderness and the culmination in a man who, in spite of the crowds around him, feels ever more alienated from the people and society that seem to be abandoning him.

One of the beautiful things about this song is that it does not confine itself to the typical repetition seen in other songs. This gives it something of an open-ended character that may seem a bit disconcerting, yet it is also in some ways a relief, as it allows the story to continue without the suffocating restrictions of the before-mentioned verse-chorus structure. What at first sounds like a chorus, “Then came the churches, then came the schools...” is actually more a transition: from the pioneer of the wilderness to the man of the city. “I used to like to go to work, but they shut it all down; I got a right to go to work, no work here can be found” is the lament of the man who had been stuck on the road among all those driving a three-lane highway home from their jobs in factories. The struggles of the man culminate in the musical high point of the song, where both the instruments in the background and Knopfler’s voice in the forefront reach an intensity that, it seems to me, is rather uncharacteristic of Dire Straits. The lyrics at the end of this climax are, in my opinion, the most powerful: “As I run every red light on memory lane, I see desperation explode into flames, and I don’t want to see it again.” After a few more vocal lines, the remainder of the song becomes a rebuilding from a slowed-down pace after the high point back to a faster, more intense pace with a Knopfler guitar solo.

These days, I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the lyrics, because they tend to bring back difficult memories, but I still enjoy the song greatly for its open character and enjoyable music. Even though I don’t pay as much attention to the words, I still think that Knopfler’s voice is very fitting to this song, and I can’t think of many who could do a better job. That sort of working-class character that Knopfler brings (whether real or imaginary) adds to the atmosphere of the song, illustrating and augmenting it almost flawlessly. Of course, perhaps one of the most unforgettable parts of the song is its soft, melancholy opening, a combination of a beautiful whistle in the background and, later, gently played piano and guitar. My college days also often included using this song to wake me up in the mornings, the whisper-like opening easing me out of sleep. Of course, if that didn’t work, a more convincing wake-up call came with the drum hit a few seconds later!


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