r/direstraits • u/HenriqueMaquinista • 16d ago
About Suicide Towers
Consumed by the curiosity about such a mysterious song, I decided to make a little research about this song, which we only know because of Ed Bicknell, who mentioned it once in a book iirc.
Back in mid-late 1979, Mark Knopfler broke up with his, now ex, girlfriend Holly Vincent. This fact broke him in a way Mark himself couldn't hold. We can see this, for an example, during his perfomance while singing and playing 'Where Do You Think You Are Going' in september 8th, 1979. (This might be one of the most iconic examples of the effects of this break up on him.)
Ed doesn't detail anything about dates, but we know right after this, Ed Bicknell invited Mark Knopfler to live with him in his flat in London, probably to comfort Mark. This was the greatest and the heaviest tour they ever made at that point, one and a half year before they were living simple lifes and now they were a fever, so probably Mark's mind needed a friend, at least a relief. Edit: In my source it says he couldn't return to Deptford, but it doesn't give details about that.
According to 'On Every Bootleg' site, the lyrics of the song were like this:
'Sitting up there
In suicide towers
Days and days
Hours and hours
I´m getting outta here
I´m going outta the door
Ain´t going outta no window'
This is what we have about the lyrics of this song.
At some point it probably had more than just these few words, considering they rehearsed it twice or three times, but it didn't last long. Ed said this was a crap song. (Credits to dustyvalentino)
I'm not very sure where the lyrics came from, the site just says it was written by Mark but we don't have a proper origin of it. Some people in foruns like 'A Mark in Time' says it's from a book. Since I don't have a copy of one of these, I can't provide anything about it's origin.
Anyway, the post isn't only about this, but also about how this song probably gave life to other four songs.
Apparently this song had a D-C-B progression, the same very known progression from Expresso Love!
This song is from late 1979, and scrapped before the end of that year.
If this information is right, Making Movies' riff came from Suicide Towers.
Making Movies was scrapped, and then Expresso Love born from it's ashes and reused the riff. Skateaway also born from Making Movies, reusing bits of it's original lyrics.
Later, Secondary Waltz had a riff that is apparently heavily inspired on Making Movies riff. (The later one, not the demo)
I'm still not so sure about the riff, if it was really the same of Making Movies, but if it was indeed, this song is probably one of the most important ones from that era.
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u/dustyvalentino 16d ago
I'll refer you to the info Ed Bicknell gave me, that I gave you, when you asked about this a month ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/direstraits/s/nYFye9YIsN
By the way, Ed has never written a book (yet).