"Private Investigations" is a popular song by Dire Straits from their album Love Over Gold. Although it was not released as a single in the US, it reached the number 2 position in the UK (despite its length), and is one of their biggest chart successes in the United Kingdom, on a par with "Walk of Life". Similarly, the album it came from, Love over Gold, only sold 500,000 copies in the US, though it was well-received elsewhere. The track also 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, The Best of Dire Straits & Mark Knopfler: Private Investigations.
The song begins with a sinister, deep pitched synthesizer orchestration, leading into a slow piano progression accompanying a classical guitar. Throughout the several spoken verses, Knopfler expresses the disillusionment and bitterness of a betrayed lover, likening his position to that of a private investigator uncovering scandal: "A bottle of whiskey and a new set of lies / Blinds on the windows and a pain behind the eyes.....Scarred for life, no compensation / Private investigations."
After the verses, the song opens up into a slow, bass-driven beat, with strident electric guitar chords at the end, before the gradual diminuendo featuring extended interplay between Mark Knopfler's acoustic guitar and marimba played by Mike Mainieri.
On the Sultans of Swing: The Very Best of Dire Straits DVD, 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.
This song was also modified by Mark Knopfler into a film score for the Bill Forsyth movie Comfort and Joy in 1984, where you can hear the song broken up into portions and used for certain scenes.
The riff from the song was used on a BT advert in 1994.
Read more about Private Investigations: Chart Positions
Famous quotes containing the word private:
“They make a great ado nowadays about hard times; but I think that ... this general failure, both private and public, is rather occasion for rejoicing, as reminding us whom we have at the helm,—that justice is always done. If our merchants did not most of them fail, and the banks too, my faith in the old laws of the world would be staggered.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)