“Telegraph Road” by Dire Straits

"Telegraph Road" throws open Dire Straits' 1982 album Love Over Gold, and it's Mark Knopfler going for the long haul: a road epic he wrote, sang and produced himself. The spark came from the front seat of a tour bus rolling down the real Telegraph Road, the big north-south artery through Michigan, and the song unspools like that highway, mile after patient mile.

Knopfler and Hal Lindes handle the guitars while Alan Clark's keyboards spread out the horizon, John Illsley's bass and Pick Withers' drums keeping the engine turning over. Neil Dorfsman engineered. The band had already been playing it live as the last encore of the opening night of their Australian tour in 1981, and it stayed a fixture of their shows and Knopfler's solo sets; a trimmed single, backed with "Twisting By The Pool", followed in 1983.

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