Wild West End

The lyric is a walk through the West End of London, taking in coffee at Angellucci's, the Barocco Bar, Shaftesbury Avenue, the conductress on a number 19 bus and Chinatown. Greil Marcus wrote in 1979 that for Knopfler the Wild West was also the wild West End of London. Knopfler came back to it on Making Movies, where the lyric of Expresso Love refers to Wild West End.

It was one of the five songs on the July 1977 Pathway demo, with Mark on electric lead and National rhythm and David on acoustic, and that take came out on The Honky Tonk Demos for Record Store Day in 2015. The album version was cut at Basing Street in early 1978, again with Knopfler's National Style O. It was never a single.

Live

Dire Straits played it 174 times by setlist.fm's count, first at the Roundhouse on 29 January 1978 and last in Auckland on 2 March 1986, near the end of the Brothers in Arms tour. It was left out of the Love Over Gold and On Every Street tours. Released live versions include the 1978 BBC session on Live at the BBC, a Rainbow Theatre show from December 1979 on Live 1978-1992, and a San Antonio concert from 1985 on the 2025 edition of Brothers in Arms. The upload in the hypersongs web is the official video, which runs to the length of the album version.