Dire Straits – Once Upon a Time in the West (Rockpop In Concert, 19th Dec 1980)

American radio got a three-minute edit and passed on it, so the band stretched the song out and made it the first thing every audience heard

Warner Bros. gave Once Upon a Time in the West its shot as an American single in September 1979, trimmed to three minutes for radio, and the Hot 100 never registered it. Fifteen months later Dire Straits used the song for a different job entirely. On December 19, 1980, it was the first thing the band played at the Westfalenhalle in Dortmund, with West German television cameras running. Radio and the band had reached opposite verdicts on the same song, and the band’s verdict is the one that lasted.

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Mark Knopfler wrote it as the opening track of Communiqué, the album Dire Straits cut at Compass Point Studios in Nassau in late 1978. Their first tour had ended in Hitchin less than two weeks earlier, and Vertigo wanted a follow-up while the debut was still selling. Jerry Wexler and Barry Beckett, two producers schooled at Muscle Shoals, ran the sessions. Beckett also played keyboards under the name B. Bear, and the record was mixed in Alabama that January. What came out of Nassau was slower and more patient than Sultans of Swing, a groove that prowls rather than gallops.

The title shares its name with Sergio Leone’s 1968 Western, though Knopfler never said on the record that he borrowed it. The lyric itself names reckless drivers, a peace-keeping force and a hero shot in the chest. Billboard’s July 1979 review heard spaghetti-Western atmosphere wrapped around a modern subject: ordinary people trying to get through a troubled society. Record World’s September 29 single pick praised the imagery in Knopfler’s vocal and the Wexler-Beckett production. West German buyers sent Communiqué into their chart at No.1 while the debut album was still sitting at No.3. The Official Charts Company placed it at No.5 in Britain, and Billboard ranked it No.11 on the album chart.

By Dortmund it belonged to a different band

The musicians onstage in December 1980 were not the musicians on the record. David Knopfler, who played rhythm guitar on Communiqué, had walked out during the Making Movies sessions that summer. Hal Lindes took over rhythm guitar, and Alan Clark joined on keyboards, filling in the parts a studio player had covered in Nassau. Vertigo released Making Movies on October 17, 1980, and the On Location tour spent October and November crossing North America before turning to Europe. A song written for a four-piece now had five players and room to spread.

ZDF’s Rockpop in Concert booked the Westfalenhalle over two nights, sharing the bill between Dire Straits, Talking Heads, Roxy Music and Mike Oldfield. The band’s own channel dates this footage to December 19. Dire Straits opened with Once Upon a Time in the West and went on through Down to the Waterline, Lions, News, Sultans of Swing, Tunnel of Love and Solid Rock. It was a sensible place to open: this was the country that had made Communiqué a No.1 album. The official Dire Straits channel published the song in December 2022, and the complete set in December 2024, both under license from ZDF.

Warner Bros. had cut the song down to fit radio, and the band kept pulling it in the other direction. The official upload of the Dortmund performance runs just over ten minutes, more than three times the length of the edit American stations were sent. At the Hammersmith Odeon in July 1983, the shows that became Alchemy: Dire Straits Live, Once Upon a Time in the West opened the night again and ran past thirteen minutes. The single failed because the song needs time, and onstage the band could give it as much time as it wanted.