Knopfler Leads The `Very Flexible' Dire Straits To The Coliseum

For a British superstar on a two-year tour, Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits was refreshingly relaxed.

"I think one of the most important things when you have a band is humor," he said in a telephone interview. "If you don't have a sense of humor, you might as well pack it in and go home."

Not just jokes and silly pranks with the guys, but seeing the light side of a situation and keeping a balance, he said.

"I think I'd rather work as a gravedigger than with someone who takes everything too seriously," Knopfler said.

He doesn't take his own singing too seriously.

"Well, I can't sing. I just get up there and mumble," he said. "But I'm glad people like it. I'll keep fooling them as long as I can."

Yet there was a time when band founder Knopfler almost left Dire Straits.

"There was a period there, three or four years ago, when I almost `knocked it on the head,' didn't want to carry on with the band," he said. But the call of the concert scene was too strong.

"You get so you just miss it," he said.

He also would have missed writing his own songs, his own way, said Knopfler, a songwriter, singer and guitarist. For the past several years, he has produced successful movie soundtracks and albums for other artists, as well as played with other bands.

He won't be missing many places in his current world tour. The itinerary began in Dublin in August and will continue through 1993. (The group plays in Seattle at 8 p.m. tomorrow at the Coliseum; $22.50; 628-0888.)

"What's good is that we have a very flexible band. We can do anything we want to. Big arenas, small places. I've finally gotten used to big places," he said.

The concerts feature nine musicians and Dire Straits' most extensive and expensive light show. "It's unbelievable, something you've never seen before. It's all computerized," Knopfler said.

Not bad for a former rock critic for the Yorkshire Evening Post.

"Actually reporting was good for my music career. It trained me to organize. I was offered a lot of jobs after I got good grades in a journalism course," he said. "But I didn't get enough pay to live on - 9 pounds, 18 shillings and 3 pence a week. Of course they let me have a few pounds for expenses. So I went back to the university." That led to a short teaching career.

Knopfler loved rock when he first heard his uncle play boogie-woogie piano. There's an underlying blues in many of his songs.

"But I don't like to be categorized," he said. "I just try to please myself. Usually that pleases other people. And we've been lucky to have had an early successful song, `Sultans of Swing,' that kept record executives from telling us how to do things. And we were lucky to get good management."