Telegraph Road

Knopfler wrote it after the tour bus drove for miles down Telegraph Road in Michigan, a north-south road of about 70 miles. He was reading Knut Hamsun's Growth of the Soil on the bus, and he put the two together. He said it was the same road and it just went on and on forever. The song follows the beginning of the development along the road and the changes over the decades that followed.

It opens with a quiet crescendo in G minor that lasts almost two minutes before the main theme starts. A slow guitar solo and a keyboard passage follow, and the final verses lead to a faster guitar solo of about five minutes. Knopfler played a 1937 National steel guitar on it, with Hal Lindes on electric guitar, Alan Clark on piano, organ and synthesizers and Pick Withers on drums. It was the last song recorded with Withers. Reviewing the album, David Fricke of Rolling Stone praised its historic sweep and intimate tension.

Live

The first performance was the final encore at the opening concert of the Making Movies Australian tour, at the Perth Entertainment Centre on 22 March 1981. A slightly shorter live version is on Alchemy, and a remixed edit of it is on the 1988 compilation Money for Nothing. A single cut the song to 5:05 in 1983, with Twisting by the Pool on the B-side. It returned to the set on the final tour of 1991 and 1992, and Knopfler kept playing it on his solo tours.