Equipment and Technique
Withers's style with Dire Straits is distinct for being restrained, favoring spare snare drum and hi-hat combinations over heavy beats, speed and pyrotechnic flourishes. Like the guitar playing of the band's frontman, Mark Knopfler, Withers's style was blues-based. Pick Withers also plays on Prelude's 1973 album, 'How Long Is Forever." Knopfler met Withers in 1973 in London when he joined the blues band Brewers Droop, for which Withers was already playing. Withers continued to work regularly with Knopfler through the mid-1970s although he maintained his Rockfield affiliations and was briefly a member of folk-rock outfit Magna Carta in 1977. Once Dire Straits gained a recording contract, Withers turned to drumming for that band full-time.
Withers played on the Dire Straits albums Dire Straits (1978), Communiqué (1979), Making Movies (1980) and Love Over Gold (1982).
Withers left the band in the summer of 1982, soon after completing the Love Over Gold sessions, to spend more time with his family and to pursue jazz music. He reportedly told an interviewer that he had succumbed to a growing feeling that there was nothing left in the music for him and that he was in danger of "becoming a rock drummer." His replacement in Dire Straits was Terry Williams, also a Dave Edmunds sideman.
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