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October 14, 2024 • 10 mins

Tracey caught up with Dire Strait's saxophonist Chris White ahead of the Dire Straits Experience tour across New Zealand this week

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Gold a sides podcast The Stories behind Just Great Rock.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
My special guest this afternoon from Dia Strates Chris White,
who's spent a good decade in the band, through the
glory days of the eighties, now bringing the Diastrates experience
to New Zealand next week after shows all around the world,
these shows which always sell out, Chris, that must be
such a good feeling.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
It's amazing and really quite humbling, to be honest.

Speaker 4 (00:29):
It just feels great onstage and that's clearly what's going.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Across to the audience.

Speaker 4 (00:34):
So we're having a ball and I just can't wait
to bring it to New Zealand.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Oh, we are really looking forward to it.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Chris.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
For those who don't know, obviously, you were a touring
member of Diastrates for a decade through the eighties and nineties.
You recorded with them. You clearly made a huge impression
on Mark, not for because he invited you back for
reunion gigs and for his side projects.

Speaker 4 (00:54):
Yeah, it was great working with Mark. I'd worked with
him for a couple of years before I worked with
the band. The first time I worked with him was
completely out of the blue. It was a call to
do a movie, so he was recording a soundtrack for
a movie called Comfort.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
And Joy, and at that point I was a session.

Speaker 4 (01:11):
Player in London, playing on people's records and I got
home one day to find a note on the phone
saying can you get to Air Studios Wednesday ten am?

Speaker 3 (01:21):
One track? Mark? Not for one hour, that's all.

Speaker 4 (01:23):
So I turned up studios on this Wednesday morning early
and started warming up and I was in the studio
I saw Mark go into the control room and I
just carried on warming up.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
Anyway.

Speaker 4 (01:36):
We got into the session and we played this one track.
We listened to it back and I thought, great, I'll
start packing up and Mark said, could you try something
on the next track?

Speaker 3 (01:45):
Wow?

Speaker 4 (01:46):
Yeah, love to man, absolutely, So what was supposed to
be one hour turned into three days. And at the
end of all that he said, mate, you have to
come and play with the band one day. So eighteen
months later something like that, I got the invitation to
go and play with the band, which was fantastic.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Wow, that is an incredible story. Well, you obviously just
made a really good impression from the get go. By
the sounds of it.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
It was great to work with.

Speaker 4 (02:08):
He was quite a perfectionist, knew kind of what he wanted,
but was also happy to just say do you want
to do anything on this or do you want to
try something on this, so really open to what people
might be able to contribute, which was fantastic for me.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
Loved it every minute of it.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Isn't that incredible. One minute you just you're calling to
do one song. Next minute that you are on stage
at Live Aid. You probably haven't done a single interview
where people haven't mentioned the Live Aid gig. And now,
if I've got my days lined up right when I
was researching this, I think that was your thirtieth birthday.

Speaker 4 (02:40):
You're absolutely right, it wasn't. I it was my thirtieth birthday.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
God, it was.

Speaker 4 (02:44):
I think it was probably the best thirtieth birthday anyone
could have. We were actually in the middle of a
run of thirteen shows. So there's Wembley Stadium, which is
where Live Aid took place, and across the car park
is Wembley Arena, which is a twelve thirteen thousand seater.
We pitched up early, went to the stadium, did our
bit at.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
Live which was just amazing.

Speaker 4 (03:07):
Actually so many people there and so many musicians and
bands there, and then we walked back across the car
park and did our own gig at Wembley Arena that night.
And the great thing was, as people were finishing it
at the stadium, they've kind of wandered across and came
into our gig and a few people came up and
played with us that night.

Speaker 3 (03:24):
Yeah, very cool.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Well, I was going to say, how did you celebrate
that night? I mean, because there you are on the
biggest stage at Wimbley with dire Straits and sting, You're
facing seventy thousand fans with a worldwide audience of over
a billion. E's your thirtieth birthday. How do you ever
come down from a high like that?

Speaker 4 (03:40):
So the Brothers and Arn tour, it started out like
all tours, it was going to be six months or
something like that.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
But as it started, the album really started to take off.

Speaker 4 (03:49):
So that thing just grew and grew, and by the
time we did live we were just really buzzing from it.
We were out for fourteen months in total, and the
whole thing was just fantastic. Quite a change from what
I've been doing before anyway.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Imagine was Ellen Clark a part of that tour? The
Brothers and Arms tour.

Speaker 4 (04:08):
He was oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, Alan was there,
Jacksny who sadly passed last year. Yes on guitar, Guy Fletcher,
Terry Williams on drums, John of course on bass, Me
and Sexes.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
I think that was about it because.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
I interviewed Ellen last year. He was down in New
Zealand and I asked him what it was like playing
on the Brothers and Arms tour. I mean, like you said,
you are literally at that stage in the biggest band
in the world, playing the biggest stages in the world. Still,
when you're in the band, is it huge. I mean,
looking in as a fan, it's massive. But when you're
on stage looking out, do you ever actually really grasp
the enormity of it at the time or is it

(04:42):
more now that you look back that you just go, wow,
that was huge.

Speaker 3 (04:46):
There were occasions.

Speaker 4 (04:47):
I remember one of the early shows was in Israel
in a park in Tel Aviv. One of the things
I remember is that night actually stepping up to play
Romeo and Juliet as the sun had just dipped and
people were holding up their lighters, and so there are
all sorts of memories like that where you realize that
it's quite a big thing going on. Really, the band
was great. Everybody was in really high spirits. Mark was

(05:10):
having a ball. We just rolled around your world in
a bit of the party.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Really just amazing and beyond dire straits. Chris, the artist
that you have played with as wild, but I will
single out mc jagger and Paul McCartney and Brian Fiery
is just like incredible. Being a sex often as that
plays in a rock band, does that make you pretty
niche and therefore a lot more in demand than say
a touring guitarist, So imagine would be much more like
a dime a dozen.

Speaker 4 (05:34):
Yes, there is an element of that, and it did
change my career, particularly with Mark. Actually in dire straits,
not a lot of bands were using saxophone at that time.
The thing about it is, actually every band's got a
rhythm section. So every band's got a guitar player and
a drummer, but not every band's got a sax player.
So I think I've been incredibly lucky to get to
work with the people I've worked with through my career.

(05:57):
I definitely think I'm one of the luckiest men on
the planet to have done what I've done and still
be doing it actually.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
Well, it's not like I mean, you're incredibly, incredibly good
at what you do. I think the sect is probably
the most beautiful instrument. I think it's Ernie what it does.
The sex solo on Christopher Cross Arthur's Say Much, I
think is the most stunning song in the world of
all time. I love it.

Speaker 4 (06:18):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. He was another big hero of mine.
Ernie What's Michael Brecker and Dave Samborne were the three
players who really meant a lot to me. I saw
Ernie in a little club in La in my very
early years when I was I went to La on
tour with an English artist called Nick Hayward who was
out of a band called Haircut one hundred and stayed

(06:38):
on for a while, and Ernie Watts was playing in
this little club somewhere on the outskirts of LA and
I just went and sat at this table and listened
to it all night long.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
It was fantastic.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Oh yeah, sex in a small, intimate sitting a like
in a jazz club or something magic.

Speaker 3 (06:55):
Got your tracy. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
Anyway, let's talk about this show and the reviews online.
People are singling out Telegraph for I had constantly saying
it's an absolute highlight of the show. What is the
settlers like? Do you play songs from all the Diastrates
albums or.

Speaker 3 (07:10):
Yeah, we do.

Speaker 4 (07:11):
The whole idea behind this is to give people the
experience of what it would have been like to go
to say the Brothers in Arms tour or the on
Every Street tour.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
We play Telegraph Road, we play.

Speaker 4 (07:21):
Private Investigations, Brothers in Arms, Romeo, and all sorts of others.
We do also actually break it down to a little
four piece so the original format of the band, which
is just four members in the middle where we can
play some of the early stuff like Lady Writer or
down to the Waterline and things like that.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
So that's what it is.

Speaker 4 (07:41):
And one of the key things when I was with
Diastrates was that although we played the same songs every
night or pretty much, they were never the same every night.
The atmosphere, the feel from the audience meant that Mark
would take off on a solo in a different direction
and I'd follow him if it was my turn to play,
So things would shift around, which kept it really fresh

(08:01):
and exciting for us on stage, and I think it
kept it fresh exciting for the audience so we do
the same thing. We're not like a tribute band. I
don't wear a headband. Nobody wears headbands. I don't wear
a pink suit. We don't try and play exactly the
notes that we played you know, back down the line.
So that's one of the reasons it's doing what it's
doing and we're getting the reactions we are, which I'm very,

(08:22):
very grateful for.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
When you mentioned the pink suit, I rewatched the Live
aid seat last night. That was you in the pink suit.
That's stunning, stunning. I really like that.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
Well it was it seemed like a good idea at
the time.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
You know, God, I love the eighties fashion.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
I thought you looked amazing.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
Thank you, Jay.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
I just want to touch on something you said as well
about tribute band or not being a tribute band. When
you do tour playing somebody else's music and I guess
incorporating the name in some degree, do you have to
have permission, Like did you have to go to Mark
and ask if you.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
Could do this?

Speaker 2 (08:54):
Or you can do it independently regardless.

Speaker 4 (08:56):
Or anybody's music that is out for sale is public domain,
so anybody can play it. That said, this whole thing
started from a request to me to put a band
together to play dire Straits stuff for a charity concert
back in twenty eleven at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
So Mark was out doing all sorts of other stuff.
So I made contact with him and said, look, been

(09:18):
asked to be this charity thing with dire Straight stuff.
Just to let you know that this is on the cards.
And he emailed back and said that's great. I think
it's great to do charity stuff. I really wish you
all the best with it. So yeah, that was the
start of it. Actually, I thought it was just going
to be for one night. I had no idea, Wow,
it would carry on and be like this.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Has he been to see the show.

Speaker 3 (09:38):
Not as far as they know. He's been very busy
with his solo stuff.

Speaker 4 (09:41):
And actually I was a little sad to hear recently
that he's saying he's probably not going to be.

Speaker 3 (09:46):
Doing much live work anymore. That would be a shame.
He's a great, great player, great songwriter too.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
It would be a shame. That's why we're very lucky
to have the dia Strates experience. I mean, there aren't
many bands whose music is strong enough that it can
pull people literally to come out at night to see
the music, if not seeing the actual band. I mean,
that's got to be the ultimate testament to in credible music,
doesn't it.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
Yeah, I just as I say.

Speaker 4 (10:07):
I think Mark wrote some stunning songs, and I think
the attention to Tsel in the production back in the
eighties and early nineties was pretty stunning. So hopefully it
will continue and Mark's songs will be played for a
very long time.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
I have no doubt. We still play dist Rates on
the radio all day every day. It's insane the legs
that music has got. There's going to be a lot
of people coming to the show. I'm sure that saw
you here with Distrates the Brothers and Arms tour back
in eighty six. We are so excited the Distrates experience
touring New Zealand this October. Chris, thank you so much
for taking the time to talk with us.

Speaker 4 (10:39):
Tracy, thank you, thank you so much. It's a real pleasure.
Thanks for your interest, actually, and I hope we see
you when we're down there in October.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
Gold a sides podcast The Stories behind Just Great Rock.
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