1980 · Behind the Songs
Heartbreak in Shakespeare’s clothes.
By 1980, Mark Knopfler’s private life was coming apart. His relationship with Holly Vincent, the American singer fronting Holly and the Italians, had ended, and he did what songwriters do: he reached for the oldest love story in the book and made it his own. “Romeo and Juliet” dresses a very modern breakup in Shakespeare’s clothes.
The song opens Making Movies, the band’s third album, and it begins with one of the most beautiful sounds in the Dire Straits catalog: Knopfler’s resonator guitar, metallic and mournful, playing alone before the band joins in. The album was recorded in New York with producer Jimmy Iovine; E Street Band pianist Roy Bittan played keyboards, and David Knopfler had departed the band mid-sessions, leaving his brother to carry the record.
The lyric replays the tragedy with new, street-level details — a lovestruck Romeo singing a serenade, a Juliet who has already moved on. “When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong, Juliet?” Knopfler asks, and the centuries collapse: it could be Verona, or it could be last Tuesday. The single reached number 8 in Britain and became one of the band’s most beloved songs.
The song’s power is in its restraint. Knopfler never raises his voice; he lets the resonator guitar do the crying, and the result is a breakup song that feels less like an ending than like a long, quiet look back.