09-12-2021, 19:45
One for the obscure annals – Jack Sonni was born on this day in 1954, in Indiana, Pennsylvania, USA. His is the guitar synthesizer on “The Man’s Too Strong” - Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms. He also toured with them for that one and appeared at Wembley with the band. He joined after David Knopfler had left – ironically, since it was David he met first while working at a luthier’s that the brothers K frequented. He moved on in other marketing and literary directions shortly after the BIA tour, due mostly to family commitments, but he seems to have maintained his connections to the biz in his roles in those fields.
There is some conjecture as to who this song references – MK had this to say in an interview with Bill Flanagan for the book Written in My Soul: Conversations with Rock's Great Songwriters
"On “The Man’s Too Strong” [Brothers in Arms], I tried to do a study in guilt and hatred and fear. On some levels, you can almost see a Hess-like figure, in the depths of Spandau. You might see somebody who’s just not at peace with himself. It’s always interesting to me that any kind of heavy censorship, like book burnings, has always failed in the long run. That kind of suppression. I was just trying to get in the mind of somebody who’s lived his life that way. There’s nothing very heavy about it, it’s just an experiment in character and playwriting. That song is absolutely not me. It’s like Randy Newman talking about being a closet gay truck driver."
There is some conjecture as to who this song references – MK had this to say in an interview with Bill Flanagan for the book Written in My Soul: Conversations with Rock's Great Songwriters
"On “The Man’s Too Strong” [Brothers in Arms], I tried to do a study in guilt and hatred and fear. On some levels, you can almost see a Hess-like figure, in the depths of Spandau. You might see somebody who’s just not at peace with himself. It’s always interesting to me that any kind of heavy censorship, like book burnings, has always failed in the long run. That kind of suppression. I was just trying to get in the mind of somebody who’s lived his life that way. There’s nothing very heavy about it, it’s just an experiment in character and playwriting. That song is absolutely not me. It’s like Randy Newman talking about being a closet gay truck driver."
"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us." ~ Bill Watterson