Dire Straits — “Tunnel of Love”: The Carousel Waltz Hidden in the Intro

1980 · Behind the Songs

An eight-minute single that opens with Rodgers and Hammerstein, name-checks a Whitley Bay fairground, and hides one of Knopfler’s finest solos.

Most rock songs borrow from the blues. “Tunnel of Love” borrows from Broadway. The opening minutes of the Making Movies track are not a rock intro at all but an arrangement of the “Carousel Waltz” — the sweeping instrumental from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1945 musical Carousel — played on guitar and keyboards before the band kicks in. It is one of only three Dire Straits songs not credited solely to Mark Knopfler; the writing credit is shared with Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, two men who never met the band and died before it existed.

The Spanish City and the fairground

The Broadway borrowing is not random. The song’s lyrics wander through the Spanish City — the fairground and amusement complex at Whitley Bay on England’s northeast coast — alongside mentions of Cullercoats and, across the ocean, Rockaway in New York. The carousel music sets the scene before a word is sung: lights, rides, and the particular ache of a night out that is already ending. When Knopfler’s guitar finally takes over the melody, it carries the same bittersweet lift as the fairground organ it replaces.

A single that barely charted — and a film that found it

At 8:09 on the album, “Tunnel of Love” was an unlikely single, and the charts agreed: released in October 1981, it stalled at No. 54 in the UK. But the song found a second life in an unexpected place — the soundtrack of the 1982 Richard Gere film An Officer and a Gentleman, where its romantic swell fit the movie’s mood better than radio ever had. Critics kept the song alive too: Ultimate Classic Rock later ranked it the band’s fourth-best song and praised its extended guitar solo, while Classic Rock placed it second — remarkable standing for a track that was never a hit.

The recording drew on heavyweight guests. Roy Bittan, the E Street Band’s pianist, played piano and Hammond organ; guitarist Sid McGinnis contributed uncredited guitar work; and Jimmy Iovine co-produced alongside Knopfler. On tour, the band stretched the intro even further: through the 1980s, concerts often opened the song with a quote from The Animals’ “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” — a nod from one northeast England band to another — and sometimes a tease of The Supremes’ “Stop! In the Name of Love” before the Carousel Waltz rolled in.