“Yeah, that’s where I started, really, playing things like Lawdy Miss Clawdy and Roll Over Beethoven, and all that sort of stuff. It became a pretty big obsession in my life and I just absorbed everything that was going on.”ĭid you go through the whole high-school band thing? “Essentially, I just thought about music all the time and I couldn’t help it - and, as a consequence, I left school with very little apart from Art A Level and the ability to throw a few chords together. My brother, who is incredibly good at woodwork, built me a bass in the woodwork department and I used that for a bit I wasn’t particularly academic, so I wasn’t crazy about reading or chemistry or physics or anything like that. So, I grew up at what I think was probably one of the most exciting times for music. Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry and then, of course, The Beatles and The Stones came along. “I started listening to music in ’60 or ’61 when I was 11 or 12, I suppose. So, going back way before the days of touring the world with Dire Straits, what piqued your interest in music? “It’s quite a difficult decision to make, but I said, ‘Nah, I’ve got to play the bass because then I know that the engine room is solid…’” “I’ve often thought with this band I’ve got now whether I should play the guitar or whether I should play the bass,” he says. “I think a lot of people end up being bass players because there’s already a guitarist in the band and if you want to join you have to play the bass - and that’s exactly what happened to me.”Īfter a considerable tenure with Dire Straits, John has now put his own band together in order to tour with his new solo album, Long Shadows, on which he plays both bass and rhythm guitar. “You know, I think what Paul said is probably quite relevant,” says John.
I just thought about music all the time and I couldn’t help it - and, as a consequence, I left school with very little apart from an Art A Level We remember how Paul McCartney once said quite a few started off as guitarists, deferring to bass when they found that all the guitar jobs were already filled in the bands they auditioned for. We’re sitting in the conservatory of John Illsley’s Hampshire home and mulling over the subject of how some bass players begin their careers on the instrument. The Dire Straits bassman reflects on the glory days of huge world tours and his latest solo album, Long Shadows, as well as giving us a look at a few choice pieces from his guitar collection (Image credit: Joby Sessions/Future) Introduction
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