POP MUSIC REVIEW : Purity, Not Flash, From Dire Straits

Two yellow-jacketed security guards were still talking before show time Wednesday at the Sports Arena here about last week’s two Guns N’ Roses concerts in the same building.

Specifically, they were marveling at all the young women who raised their blouses for the closed-circuit video cameras, and how the guards didn’t get home from the shows, which ended around 3 a.m. both nights, until almost 4.

The two men could afford to spend their time chatting as the estimated 10,000 fans filed into the arena. The generally older and mild-mannered crowd for Dire Straits, the night’s attraction, is about as far from the mostly teen-age, party-seeking GNR fans as an audience can get and still be termed rock .

While the guards last week were watching anxiously for troublemakers, they seemed so relaxed Wednesday that they almost welcomed it when someone asked them for help in finding a seat.

“Our son came to see Guns N’ Roses and we were joking about how we’ll probably be home in bed tonight before Guns N’ Roses even went on stage,” a 37-year-old fan from Coronado said, sitting with his wife before the concert.

Sure enough, Dire Straits’ two-hour concert ended just before 10 p.m., which meant the couple could have driven home, watched the late news and still been in bed before Guns N’ Roses’ 11:40 p.m. starting time.

That doesn’t mean the couple won’t have as many memories of their Sports Arena night as their son does of his.

Dire Straits, whose “On Every Street” tour continues tonight and Saturday at the Forum in Inglewood, doesn’t offer the energy, excitement or psychodrama of a band like Guns N’ Roses.

It also doesn’t speak to an emerging generation’s frustrations and desires the way GNR does, in the tradition of such earlier youthful and rebellious bands as the Rolling Stones and Doors.

But there is something in both Dire Straits leader Mark Knopfler’s musical design and the almost loving way the nine musicians--including two drummers, two keyboardists, a saxophonist and a steel guitarist--perform that is so pure that the evening’s best moments were both liberating and inspiring.

Singer-guitarist Knopfler has been in charge of this ever-changing cast since the late ‘70s, when the Dylanesque “Sultans of Swing” caught the pop-rock world’s ear and became their first hit single. He isn’t flashy, though he does spruce up the setting itself with sometimes dazzling lighting. Wearing a loose-fitting white shirt, jeans and headband, Knopfler doesn’t so much “front” the band as graciously host the show.

He writes songs about a wide range of human concerns in a way that could be described as sophisticated, but without the self-consciousness that often accompanies the term. And he sings in a monotone drawl that oddly suits them.

Yet the heart of the live show rests in the extended instrumental passages that follow his vocals, passages that weave a refreshingly wide range of influences--from a bright trace of hoedown to a veil of moody jazz cellar-club atmosphere--into warm, multidimensional exercises. In the most affecting moments, the music juxtaposed harsh and lovely elements with a “Layla”-like intensity and grace.

Though the group’s set touched on only a fraction of Dire Straits’ body of work, the selections--ranging from the old “Romeo and Juliet” to a new, unrecorded number and including such commercial highlights as “Money for Nothing” and “Walk of Life”--offered a satisfying sample.

Perhaps the clearest image of the night was the way Knopfler seemed to feel free to step back from the microphone with his guitar and close his eyes as he searched for something new to express in his music.

Many pop-rock artists, even ones who have been around as long as Knopfler, might have been so disoriented by the enormous success of Dire Straits’ mid-’80s album “Brothers in Arms,” which sold more than 21 million copies, that they would be torn between pursuing their own musical impulses and holding on to that massive audience.

On this follow-up tour, Knopfler shows that he has not become a prisoner of his own success. He still seems determined to share his own musical impulses as freely, and as unpolluted by commercial considerations, as he shares the stage.