"Private Investigations" is a song by the British rock band

Dire Straits Dire Straits were a British rock band formed in London in 1977 by Mark Knopfler (lead vocals and lead guitar), David Knopfler (rhythm guitar and backing vocals), John Illsley (bass guitar and backing vocals) and Pick Withers (drums and percuss ...

from their album ''

Love over Gold ''Love over Gold'' is the fourth studio album by British rock band Dire Straits, released on 24 September 1982 by Vertigo Records internationally and by Warner Bros. Records in the United States. The album featured two singles: "Private Investi ...

''. It reached number 2 in the United Kingdom (despite its length), and is one of their biggest chart successes in the UK. The track has appeared on the compilation albums '' Money for Nothing'' and '' Sultans of Swing: The Very Best of Dire Straits'', and is the title track to the more recent 2005 compilation, '' Private Investigations: The Best of Dire Straits & Mark Knopfler''. The song begins with a deep-pitched synthesizer orchestration, leading into a slow piano progression accompanying a classical guitar, followed by several spoken verses. The single edit removes the opening synthesisers, beginning with acoustic guitar. After the verses, the song opens into a slow, bass-driven beat, with strident electric guitar chords at the end, before the gradual diminuendo featuring extended interplay between

Mark Knopfler Mark Freuder Knopfler (born 12 August 1949) is a British singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer. Born in Scotland and raised in England, he was the lead guitarist, singer and songwriter of the rock band Dire Straits. He pursued a s ...

's acoustic guitar and

marimba The marimba () is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the timbre ...

played by

Mike Mainieri Michael T. Mainieri Jr. (born July 4, 1938) is an American vibraphonist, known for his work with the jazz fusion group Steps Ahead. He is married to the singer-songwriter and harpist Dee Carstensen. Biography Mainieri was born in The Bronx, Ne ...

. On the '' Sultans of Swing: The Very Best of Dire Straits''

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

, Mark Knopfler said this about the song: "It's just about the Private Investigations... "What have you got at the end of the day" – Nothing more than you started out with..." It is said the song was inspired by author

Raymond Chandler Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive durin ...

. This song was also modified by Mark Knopfler into a score for the

Bill Forsyth William David Forsyth (born 29 July 1946). known as Bill Forsyth, is a Scottish film director and writer known for his films ''Gregory's Girl'' (1981), '' Local Hero'' (1983) and '' Comfort and Joy'' (1984) as well as his adaptation of the Ma ...

film '' Comfort and Joy'' in 1984, in which portions of the song are used for certain scenes. It was also used in the video release of the 1984 film '' Against All Odds'' during the deleted scenes. A section of the footage cut from the final release dealt with the time spent on the run, in Mexico, by Rachel Ward’s & Jeff Bridges' characters. The

riff A riff is a repeated chord progression or refrain in music (also known as an ostinato figure in classical music); it is a pattern, or melody, often played by the rhythm section instruments or solo instrument, that forms the basis or accompani ...

from the song was used in France on a

Crédit Agricole Crédit Agricole Group (), sometimes called La banque verte ( en, The green bank) due to its historical ties to farming, is a French international banking group and the world's largest cooperative financial institution. It is France's second lar ...

advert in 1984, and on a BT advert in 1994.

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications

References

1982 songs 1982 singles Dire Straits songs Dutch Top 40 number-one singles Number-one singles in Israel Songs written by Mark Knopfler Rock ballads Song recordings produced by Mark Knopfler Vertigo Records singles {{1980s-song-stub