Dire Straits was launched with Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing". After the "Brothers in Arms" tour ended Mark Knopfler took a break from Dire Straits and during 1987 he concentrated on solo projects and film soundtracks. Dire Straits regrouped in 1988 for the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute concert staged on 11 June 1988 at Wembley Stadium, in which they were the headline act. They were joined for their set by Eric Clapton who performed his hit "Wonderful Tonight" with the group and played rhythm guitar on the other songs performed by the band, while guitarist Jack Sonni was absent. Soon afterwards,
Dire Straits a charity show at the Royal Albert Hall in London. On 13 December 2017 Dire Straits were announced as inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for 2018. Speaking to "Billboard" magazine, John Illsley stated, "it fills me with a lot of pleasure to be recognized and to be included in the thing that we love doing best, which is making music and playing rock n' roll". On a possible reunion performance he added, "Mark [Knopfler] is quite sort of restrained about things like this. We have spoken about (the induction), and we just said, 'Oh, that's nice.'