These days, Mark Knopfler tends to keep his distance from Brothers In Arms. Dire Straits’ all-conquering fifth album belongs to another time now, its songs to a 30-something gunslinger in a red headband whom the 76-year-old only half-recognises.

Before he quit the road, six years ago, he’d pull out the occasional track at solo shows, treating Madison Square Garden to a valedictory blast through Money For Nothing in 2019. But Knopfler – press-shy at the best of times – has never gone deep on the ’85 album that briefly made him the world’s biggest rock star, whether he liked it or not (hint: he didn’t).

“Brothers In Arms just happened to coincide with compact discs, and it was a sheer fluke,” he shrugged in a 1995 interview with Guitarist’s David Mead. “If it hadn’t been that album, it would have been something else. It was just an accident of timing…”

In the decades since then, Knopfler has kept his head down so doggedly on the subject of Brothers In Arms – while quashing talk of reuniting the band who split in ’95 – that it’s common to meet younger music fans who have never even heard of this 30-million-selling album.

But times change. Given the spending power of Dire Straits’ demographic, you’d anticipate a 40th anniversary Brothers In Arms reissue – and this year’s boxset is a stunner, complete with pin-sharp sleeve art of that airborne ’37 National resonator and a live disc of the band killing it in San Antonio.

Less expected is that Knopfler, his long-standing bassist and lieutenant, John Illsley – plus assorted members of the Straits’ inner circle – have agreed to promo interviews at the guitarist’s British Grove recording facility.

And so, on a warm day in West London, Guitarist is led into Studio 2, where Knopfler awaits, looking owlish behind thick-rimmed glasses, while nursing an espresso.

Warming Up

Knopfler is reticent to start with, but we break the ice over a joke that only guitarists would get – the impossibility of playing in a chair with arms – and he’s off to the races, reaching back through the fog of four decades far more readily than we expected.

“It’s tempting just to say, ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ and downplay it,” considers Knopfler, “but thinking about Brothers In Arms now, it seems like that record meant so much to so many people. I mean, that’s why we’re sitting here now…”

It wasn’t a million miles from here – just a short tube ride to Holland Park, in fact – that Brothers In Arms became a notion, recalls Illsley, speaking to us separately.

“We all got together in a little mews house, myself, Mark, Alan Clark [piano], Guy Fletcher [keys], and Terry Williams [drums] hitting a cardboard box. Mark slowly introduced us to the new songs, and it was a really good balance, from the seriousness of Brothers In Arms to the lightness of touch in Walk Of Life. What I’m doing on the bass, mostly, is complementing Mark’s thumb work on the low strings. And that goes right back to the first album.”

At first glance, the Brothers material shared little DNA. There was opener So Far Away, its warm lope offset by the space-age Synclavier that only Fletcher could wrangle.

There was the jazz-inflected, woman-done-me-wrong film-noir of Your Latest Trick, and the fusion of Knopfler’s rockabilly scuttle with a zydeco-inspired earworm on Walk Of Life. Among these, the clear standouts were the title track’s molten anti-war polemic and the deceptively tricksy riff of Money For Nothing.

“The lick is just a stomp, a two-fingered boogie,” says Knopfler of the song he wrote while listening to a New York TV store’s “bonehead” delivery man tear into the rock stars on the screens. “It’s just picking that pattern, and you mask off a lot of the notes, try to play the right ones. I was listening a lot to ZZ Top, things like Gimme All Your Lovin’. Boogie is a big part of where I’m from. You know, it almost comes from a fingerstyle perspective, just cranked up a little bit and smokin’ along.”

Illsley won’t stand for his bandleader’s modesty: “Money For Nothing is simple to play – but it’s not. It’s one of those odd things where everybody thinks, ‘Oh, anybody can play that.’ But actually, I’ve met very few guitarists who can play it the way Mark does. So that one stood out for me. The guitar lines that open Brothers In Arms are so subtle. You could think, ‘Is that it?’ but actually, it just worked so brilliantly with the chords.”

Listen to the aforementioned live disc and you’ll note that Knopfler rarely plays any lick by the book, endlessly tweaking the studio original. The opening to Brothers, he points out, was the only sacrosanct moment.

“It’s very interesting to me, the furniture of the title track. If you think about the first four notes I play on guitar: I’ve tried doing other intros live and they just don’t work. People have bought tickets and you can see them thinking, ‘That’s not Brothers In Arms.’ That’s not to say you have to play the part the same way every time. Once I’ve played those four notes, then I can start to improvise.”

By contrast, he says, most people miss the track’s nuances. “Because it’s quite deceptive. Each verse is slightly different from the one preceding it. These little variations are built into the song. I’ve heard classically trained musicians make the mistake of playing Brothers In Arms straight. You have to listen hard to figure out what’s different from the third verse to the second, and the second to the first. It might be just one ‘blue’ note, but it changes the way you feel.”

Something In The AIR

The material gave Dire Straits the confidence to book Montserrat’s AIR Studios in winter ’84. But there was trouble in paradise. Having shifted state-of-the-art digital gear down potholed roads to George Martin’s plantation-style recording facility, tropical rain hammered the roof for six weeks while Knopfler’s guitar tech of the period, Ron Eve, recalls producer Neil Dorfsman’s growing frustration.

“He was very unhappy because he felt there wasn’t enough work going on. And during that recording, he was complaining that all the sounds were too ‘dark’ – and I think he was talking about the guitar.”

Pre-Brothers, ‘dark’ was not a term you’d associate with Knopfler’s fretwork. By that point, Dire Straits’ 1978 hit Sultans Of Swing was still the band’s signature song, and its flittering outro solo – recorded with a ’61 Strat’s three-way pickup selector jammed between settings – perhaps the quintessential example of a Fender’s single-coil cluck.

Now, the ’61 made the trip to Montserrat, but Eve believes it mostly stayed in the flight case. “I think Mark got it out once or twice. But I think, with some of the superb instruments he had by then, he was finding that Fender – which was a bit of a partscaster – quite limiting.”

Instead, Brothers In Arms heralded the arrival of the 1983 Les Paul ’59 Reissue whose thick, burnished tone drove the title track, and Money For Nothing. Knopfler can’t recall exactly why he picked it up. “Maybe it was from listening to Need Your Love So Bad by Peter Green. And that wasn’t a distorted guitar sound, but it was so powerful.”

Eve fills us in on the model’s provenance: “That Les Paul came from Rudy’s Music in New York. I played it and the first thing I was conscious of was the neck. My comparison is always my own ’65 SG, with the really slick neck, and this wasn’t like that, but it wasn’t like the plank necks some Les Pauls have, either, which I can’t abide.

“After the recording, that reissue was also the one I converted the wiring on to do the out-of-phase pickups, going back to the Peter Green sound. I don’t think I even asked Mark!”

Illsley – running his trusty ’59 Precision, ’61 Jazz and black Wal through an Ampeg Portaflex – believes Knopfler’s gear choices and shifting style went hand-in-hand. “It’s strange to think of a word like ‘economical’,” he says of the title track’s lugubrious lead, its swollen sustained notes the antithesis to Sultans’ blurry bob ’n’ weave.

“The Strat is almost like a ballet dancer, whereas the Les Paul has a lot of emotional weight to it and seemed to be the absolute answer for Brothers In Arms, so it didn’t need 15 notes in a bar. It just needed two or three.”

Knopfler himself sees his Brothers lead work as a natural evolution. “My approach to solos was probably changing. You start to realise how much real estate there is in a bar – where you can put the notes or, if you have a band of that quality, where you can lean on the timing. But there wasn’t really time to think about it. You’re just moving on.

“The band had developed. It was a lot louder and more powerful, with keyboards becoming more important. That then makes you think in a different way – more inversions, perhaps. But I didn’t force it. I didn’t stop picking on country tunes. I was still doing rootsy things.”

As he handed guitars to Knopfler across the studio floor, Eve was also noticing the Gibson’s impact. “Mark’s music had become more wide-ranging and moved away from the sound of the first two albums, which had that single-coil American sound, very clean, almost a surf-guitar sound, if you like.

“As he got into more complex arrangements, he knew the guitar sound needed to fit what he was playing. And Mark always loved that Les Paul tone, it just wasn’t really his style.

“It was up to him, of course,” Eve continues. “But I confess I pushed him more towards the Les Paul sound. I felt a resistance early on. But I persevered. He’d be on the neck setting with the tone rolled off, if I recall. Winding up the sustain. I can see him now, holding those notes. I don’t think he could have played those parts on any other guitar, quite frankly. A Strat couldn’t have done it at all. Not with all the pedals in the world.”

And The Rest

On the flipside, for other tracks, a Les Paul would have been dead wrong. The perky Walk Of Life demanded the articulation of Knopfler’s ’83 Tele-style Schecter (“That hunky, chunky Telecaster sound with that thumb-and-forefinger rockabilly rhythm,” says Eve. “There’s nothing like it, is there?”).

The old-west metallic pluck of The Man’s Too Strong proved the National wasn’t just eye candy (“It’s a lovely beast, that, and it’s made for exactly Mark’s style – you can either play those guitars or you can’t”). And contrary to the nagging rumour, a Les Paul Junior definitely didn’t feature on Money For Nothing (“No, rubbish. Mark has a Junior, but it certainly wasn’t involved on the recordings”).

Knopfler coaxed warmth and body from Eve’s own Marshall JTM45 (“I think I got the idea from the Bluesbreakers album”) into the studio’s Laney 4x12, with the Cry Baby on Money For Nothing representing the only significant pedal. But the sessions’ unsung gear curio, the tech points out, wasn’t even played by the bandleader.

“The Roland synth guitars of that time, someone like Mark would pick them up and say, ‘I’m not playing that.’ So he had one made, I’m pretty certain, by John Suhr. It was a beautiful guitar, but Mark never really mastered it. With his style, it was always going to be difficult. Because he’s such a light player; his fingers just brush the strings.

“Back then, with a synth guitar, you had to pick a single note, really precisely and monotonally, then pick the next. But because of how Mark played, with all the grace notes, the synth couldn’t keep up. So [New York sessioner] Jack Sonni played the parts on The Man’s Too Strong.”

That anomaly aside, Brothers indisputably belongs to Knopfler, these nine tracks representing the collision of his finest songs and most emotionally charged playing.

So it’s a strange thing to sit opposite one of the stone-cold British greats of the past half-century and hear him dismiss his own talent. The best Knopfler can say for his Brothers performance, he shrugs, is that he finally felt he was hitting his marks in the studio.

“Being called a guitar hero was just awkward. I gave up trying to be a great guitar player. I have enough to get by in the studio – that’s how I see myself as a player. Not much more than that. If you’re the one who wrote the songs, you’re kind of allowed to be crap. Well, not to be crap, but you’re given some leeway because you wrote the thing.

“[By Brothers In Arms] I was getting a little bit better,” he continues. “I was still learning how to play in time, after years of working in studios with engineers who would say, ‘You’re rushing there.’ And you’d say, ‘No, I’m not.’ And they’d say, ‘Yes, you are.’ Because you didn’t recognise it.

“You didn’t know it yet. You think you’re playing in time – but you’re not. You have to learn that. It takes a long time, especially if you’re playing eighth and 16th notes with your thumb and fingers. I got away with murder…”

That’s not how the world saw it, of course. Released 17 May 1985, Brothers In Arms quickly became inescapable, while Knopfler’s fretwork enjoyed the kind of mass adulation that simply doesn’t happen in the diffused post-internet rock landscape.

Today, the guitarist and Illsley paint the world tour that followed as both enormous fun and intense graft. “It always sends a shiver down my spine when I think about it,” says the bassist. “The energy levels were just fabulous. There was nothing not to like about it.

“Of course, it’s bloody hard work,” he counters. “And we all realised Mark was getting most of the flak. Any sensible person doesn’t like the fame aspect because you can’t get a cup of coffee in Pret or go into a restaurant without someone saying, ‘Oh look, there’s so-and-so…’”

From the top

Today, Knopfler carries himself with such everyman humility, it’s hard to believe he was once a target for the gutter press.

“It was what we all wanted and had been chasing – I suppose you could also say the fallout was much bigger than anything we could ever have foreseen,” he says with a sigh. “There was one occasion when a youth in Manchester shouted out to me on the street, ‘You’re top, man.’ No, no, no. I didn’t feel as though I was top of anything. I never did.”

Knopfler’s manager enters the room: time’s up. 40 years later, then, has the guitarist made peace with the album that brought him both unimaginable success and intolerable scrutiny? Well, up to a point. Ask about the last time he listened to Brothers In Arms and the notion seems to fill him with horror. “Never, never, never. I don’t ever go home and play my own records. Life’s tragic enough without that adding to it…”

• Brothers in Arms: 40th Anniversary is out now via Mercury
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Dire Straits' career-defining album Brothers in Arms ushered in the addition of the 1983 Les Paul ’59 Reissue to Knopfler's electric guitar roster, which defined the tone of both the title track and Money for Nothing.

“The Strat is almost like a ballet dancer, whereas the Les Paul has a lot of emotional weight to it and seemed to be the absolute answer for Brothers In Arms,” John Ilsey, Dire Straits' bassist, points out in the new issue with Guitarist. “So it didn’t need 15 notes in a bar. It just needed two or three.”

During that recording period, Knopfler's approach to solos was shifting, which perfectly paved the way for his adoption of the Les Paul. Ron Eve, Knopfler’s guitar tech at the time, credits his own influence – and coaxing – with convincing the guitar great to finally give the Gibson a try.

“As he got into more complex arrangements, he knew the guitar sound needed to fit what he was playing,” he reflects. “And Mark always loved that Les Paul tone, it just wasn’t really his style.

“It was up to him, of course,” Eve clarifies. “But I confess I pushed him more towards the Les Paul sound. I felt a resistance early on. But I persevered. He’d be on the neck setting with the tone rolled off, if I recall. Winding up the sustain. I can see him now, holding those notes.

“I don’t think he could have played those parts on any other guitar, quite frankly. A Strat couldn’t have done it at all. Not with all the pedals in the world.”

Eve was quick to notice the Gibson’s impact on the album’s overall tone, and Knopfler was equally observant of the influence it had on his playing style.

“You start to realize how much real estate there is in a bar – where you can put the notes or, if you have a band of that quality, where you can lean on the timing,” Knopfler says. “But there wasn’t really time to think about it. You’re just moving on. The band had developed.

“It was a lot louder and more powerful, with keyboards becoming more important. That then makes you think in a different way – more inversions, perhaps. But I didn’t force it. I didn’t stop picking on country tunes. I was still doing rootsy things.”

In celebration of Brothers in Arms' 40th anniversary, Knopfler recently reflected on the guitars and riffs that made the album, and the pressure of learning to play in time.

For more from Mark Knopfler, plus exclusive interviews with Don Felder and Nicolas Meiser, pick up issue 529 of Guitarist from Magazines Direct.

A red Baldwin Burns Double Six solid electric 12-string guitar that was lent to Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler in the mid-’70s – and not returned for over five decades – is set to fetch more than $40,000 at auction.

The guitar was lent to the Dire Straits guitarist by his old friend, Jeff Sadler, who also played guitar for a couple of bands in the Northeast of England, including the folk-rock band Lindisfarne.

Knopfler would go on to use the Double Six both in the studio and on stage, most notably on the Straits’ sophomore album, 1979's Communiqué, for the tracks Angel of Mercy and Portobello Belle, and at the 1986 Prince's Trust performance at Wembley Arena.

It was originally cataloged for last year's Mark Knopfler Guitar Collection Sale, hosted by Christie's, which fetched over $11 million and included the record-setting 1959 Vintage Gibson Les Paul Standard, which was achieved at a sale price of £693,000 [approx. $876,000].

However, the Double Six was withdrawn prior to the auction and returned to Sadler, its original owner, and is now scheduled for sale by Gardiner Houlgate in their September auction alongside a 1957 Gretsch Chet Atkins 6120 owned by Jimmy Page.

Luke Hobbs, auctioneer from Gardiner Houlgate, comments, “Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits had a huge influence on music and guitar players not just in the 1980s and ’90s, but through today. I’m confident that this guitar will attract a lot of attention from fans and collectors alike – particularly as it has such a great story behind it.”

The auction will take place on September 9. For more information, head to Gardiner Houlgate.

In his most revealing interview in years, Knopfler told Guitar World about the Straits' seminal album Brothers in Arms for its 40th anniversary and what he remembers from that era.

As Dire Straits’ seminal album Brothers in Arms celebrates its 40th anniversary, legendary six-stringer Mark Knopfler looks back on the songwriting process of the record's key tracks in an exclusive interview with Guitar World, and how four notes can make – or break – a song and its legacy.

Starting with Walk of Life – undisputedly one of the band's biggest commercial hits – Knopfler recollects, “Walk of Life came from a big spell of listening to Cajun music –that’s the accordion lick, played on a keyboard by Guy Fletcher – combined with a rockabilly guitar rhythm. That would have been played on my red ’83 Schecter Telecaster.”

Meanwhile, Money for Nothing featured his ’83 Les Paul and revolved around the clawhammer playing style. “It’s just picking that pattern, and you mask off a lot of the notes, try to play the right ones,” he explains.

“With that song, I was listening to a lot of ZZ Top, things like Gimme All Your Lovin. That boogie they played was right up my alley. I still love it. That’s what it’s all about for me. Boogie is a big part of where I’m from. You know, it almost comes from a fingerstyle perspective, just cranked up a little bit and smokin’ along. Boogie doesn’t really have an overplayed vibe, it just rocks.”

As for the title track, the inimitable Brothers in Arms, well, it's all about the first four notes. “If you think about the first four notes I play on guitar – I’ve tried doing other intros live, and they just don’t work,” he confesses.

“People have bought tickets and you can see them thinking, ‘That’s not Brothers in Arms.’ That’s not to say you have to play the guitar part the same way every time. Once I’ve played those four notes, then I can start to improvise.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Knopfler looks back on his jams with fellow fingerstyle legend Chet Atkins and discusses the treasured Gibson he received as a gift from a rock hero.

Behind an unmarked door in a nondescript West London street, you’ll find the recording studio of the world’s most reluctant rock god.

Do this job long enough and you’ll learn to spot the artists who project a carefully cultivated aura of false modesty, often blended with a phoney man-of-the-people vibe. With Mark Knopfler, you can tell, it’s absolutely genuine.

Over the course of our interview at the British Grove facility he founded two decades ago, the 75-year-old former leader of Dire Straits will tell us, with unblinking sincerity, that he considers himself a mediocre player who struggled among more capable studio musicians and squirmed every time he was anointed as a guitar hero.

We must respectfully disagree with our host, of course. Anyone who followed his band from the South London ratholes of the late ’70s to the stadiums of the mid-’80s would agree that Knopfler is a contender for the most beautiful, lyrical, shiver-and-tingle guitarist that Britain ever produced, the sound of his bare fingers dancing on the neck of his preferred ’61 Strat one of the era’s most magical sounds.

The evidence for his brilliance is writ large across a five-decade catalog, from the bob-and-weave outro of 1978's Sultans of Swing to the metallic resonator pluck of 1980's Romeo and Juliet and all over a 10-album-strong solo career that makes his peers look sluggish with its breadth and quality.

But if a Knopfler fan were to pick his or her desert island album, it would surely be 1985’s Brothers in Arms. Flowing from the Synclavier quack of So Far Away to the stormy title track’s molten solo – via the zydeco tootle of Walk of Life and the hairy-backed riff of Money for Nothing – this is Knopfler’s masterpiece. Riding the CD boom to sell 30 million copies, it made Dire Straits the biggest band on the planet, but it also drove the guitarist to overload and exhaustion.

These days, Knopfler doesn’t do much press – and he talks even less about Dire Straits. But with a new 40th Anniversary Edition of Brothers in Arms presenting these classic tracks alongside a dynamite full-length 1985 concert from San Antonio, he’ll make an exception.

And if you offer him the right questions, this modest, self-effacing man speaks with all the eloquence of his fabled guitar parts.

You must have been thinking about Brothers in Arms a lot recently because of this reissue. How does it feel to revisit a piece of music you recorded 40 years ago?

“Well, it’s tempting just to say, ‘Oh, it’s nothing’ and downplay it, but thinking about Brothers in Arms now, it seems like that record meant so much to so many people. I mean, that’s why we’re sitting here now. I think it was a combination of luck and events crashing into each other.

“We were so lucky to have intersected with Neil Dorfsman, who was such a great engineer. The record came out and we had a bunch of hits in America – that makes a hell of a difference. The CD had just been invented and they decided it would be a super idea to push Brothers in Arms in hi-fi shops. That’s where a lot of people first heard it. Then the singles made it in different countries and it became a worldwide thing. Next thing you know, you’re in the eye of the storm.”

You say in the sleevenotes that you only just had enough material for Brothers in Arms.

“Probably, yeah. Because we were touring so much. I would have been writing a lot on the road, in hotel rooms. And you got used to doing that. If you saw me walking up a hotel corridor holding a chair that had no arms, that was so I could play guitar on it.”

What do you remember about writing the key tracks?

“Walk of Life came from a big spell of listening to Cajun music – that’s the accordion lick, played on a keyboard by Guy Fletcher – combined with a rockabilly guitar rhythm. That would have been played on my red ’83 Schecter Telecaster.

“Money for Nothing was my ’83 Les Paul, and it comes from that clawhammer style. It’s just picking that pattern, and you mask off a lot of the notes, try to play the right ones. With that song, I was listening to a lot of ZZ Top, things like Gimme All Your Lovin’. That boogie they played was right up my alley. I still love it.

“That’s what it’s all about for me. Boogie is a big part of where I’m from. You know, it almost comes from a fingerstyle perspective, just cranked up a little bit and smokin’ along. Boogie doesn’t really have an overplayed vibe, it just rocks.

“It’s very interesting to me, the furniture of the title track on Brothers in Arms. If you think about the first four notes I play on guitar – I’ve tried doing other intros live, and they just don’t work. People have bought tickets and you can see them thinking, ‘That’s not Brothers in Arms.’ That’s not to say you have to play the guitar part the same way every time. Once I’ve played those four notes, then I can start to improvise.”

In the early days, you were known for single-coil sounds, but your 1983 Gibson Les Paul ’59 reissue played such a major role on Brothers in Arms. Did you always covet a Gibson?

“That’s putting it mildly! That moment of looking through the windows in Denmark Street – there was all of that. Every cliché. Why did I choose to play the title track on the ’83 Les Paul? Maybe it was from listening to Need Your Love So Bad by Peter Green [with Fleetwood Mac]. He was a beautiful guitar player. What a shame that he deteriorated. And that wasn’t a distorted guitar sound, but it was so powerful.

“My gear got more expensive as Dire Straits got bigger, but it still took a long time before I could get to a ’58 Les Paul. That was a bit later on, when I realized just how good they were. When Gibson made a bunch of repro ’58s, they took my ’58 and did a great job recreating it. They made about 55, and they’re fabulous. The tooling is so accurate – they even copied the scratches from my belt buckle.”

What other gear was central to Brothers in Arms?

“My ’61 Strat would have been in the mix. I know there was my roadie Ronnie Eve’s Marshall JTM45 that I’ve still got [Eve confirmed via email that the head was run into a Laney 4x12 belonging to AIR Studios in Monserrat]. My 1937 National resonator from the Brothers in Arms record sleeve – that would be on The Man’s Too Strong.

“Debbie Feingold, she was the photographer for that sleeve, and she’d marked that shot with lipstick saying, ‘I love this.’ And I remember saying, ‘I love it too.’ How could you not? It was such a great shot.

“That National looked like a spaceship, up against the sky like that. And that was Montserrat light, too. Spending so much time in AIR Studios, that taught me a lot about what kind of gear to get for British Grove.”

Did you enjoy being called a guitar hero in that period?

“No, that was just awkward. The world is bursting with fabulous players. Whether I’ve written a good song or not, that’s what counts to me. I gave up trying to be a great guitar player. I have enough to get by in the studio – that’s how I see myself as a guitar player. Not much more than that.

“But I can get away with it. If you’re the one who wrote the songs, you’re kind of allowed to be crap. Well, not to be crap, but you’re given some leeway because you wrote the thing. The other guys are there, really standing by their instruments: ‘I play piano,’ ‘I play bass.’ Like, ‘I’m good at this and that’s why I’m here’ – and boy, they are. I got away with murder.

“But the guys that really know their business – the session guys, making a living with their instruments – that’s a whole other kettle of fish. I remember, in the solo band one day, I said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry about the [mistake] in so and so’. And Richard [Bennett, guitar] said, ‘Well, the singer is always right!’”

How many takes did you need to nail the Brothers in Arms guitar parts?

“I was getting a little bit better. I was still learning how to play in time, after years of working in studios with engineers who would say, ‘You’re rushing there.’ And you’d say, ‘No I’m not.’ And they’d say, ‘Yes, you are.’ Because you didn’t recognize it. You didn’t know it yet. You think you’re playing in time – but you’re not.

“You have to learn that. It takes a long time, especially if you’re playing 8th and 16th notes with your thumb and fingers. That’s just part of the journey. Some of the very finest musicians have told me they had to learn the same thing. Glenn Worf [bassist] was just the same. There was a guy in his band who told him, ‘You’re not playing in time.’ And he said, ‘The hell I am!’”

The solos on Brothers in Arms are very different from, say, Sultans of Swing. You seem to really let each note breathe. Do you think your philosophy to lead work was changing?

“It probably was. You start to realize how much real estate there is in a bar – where you can put the notes or, if you have a band of that quality, where you can lean on the timing a little bit. But there wasn’t really time to think about it. You’re just moving on.

“The band had developed. It was a lot louder and more powerful, with keyboards becoming more important. That then makes you think in a different way – more inversions, perhaps. But I didn’t force it. I didn’t stop picking on country tunes. I was still doing rootsy things.”

In the wake of Brothers in Arms, some of the guitar world’s most respected figures wanted to play with you.

“I remember, Chet Atkins gave me a [call]. Because we were both pickers in that sense – but, of course, Chet was otherworldly. I used to go round to his office and hang out, and I’ll never forget, we once played and sang the song Kentucky all morning.

“Chet had such facility and knowledge, and yet what he wanted to do was play Kentucky – which has two chords – all morning long. He’d say to me, ‘You’re pretty good, but you’re no Mark Knopfler.’ He always had good jokes. You know, you’d get to the end of something and he’d go, ‘Very educational.’ And then he’d say, ‘A little below above average.’ Or something like that. Very dry.

“I only remember him being slightly put‑out once, when John Fahey said he’d been double-tracking. Chet was not pleased by that. And he wrote to whatever magazine it was and said, ‘You can learn to do this with your own two hands; you don’t need double‑tracking.’

“I mean, Chet liked multi-tracking too, of course, but only if he was doing something even more complicated. But he could play Yankee Doodle and Battle Hymn of the Republic at the same time.”

What do you remember about the hysteria that set in after Brothers in Arms?

“I remember doing the Mandela show [Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute, June 1988]. We were walking up to the stage – Eric Clapton was playing with us that night – and somebody said, ‘Oh, there’s 650 million people watching.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, what have I done?’

“I heard our sound man’s voice from the desk and he’s going, ‘I can’t hear a fucking thing!’ I thought, ‘Oh shit, there’s been a breakdown, he’s lost his sound.’ But what he was talking about was the noise in the stadium before we went on.”

Much of the Brothers in Arms gear was sold in the charity guitar auction you held in 2024. Did it hurt to see it go?

“Yeah, of course, when you’re saying goodbye to that ’83 Les Paul and that Schecter Tele. But it’s fine. You’re not going to sit and play all those guitars. It’s time to thin it out a bit. Give them another home. Let them be played by other people.”

What are some of the real treasures still left in your collection?

“Tony Joe White gave me his blonde Gibson 330 that he used for Rainy Night in Georgia. We’d become pals and Tony had switched to a Strat, and I was ’round at his house playing one day. I’d given him an acoustic guitar as a present. And he reached under the sofa and he pulled out this dusty old case. And he says, ‘Mark, I want you to have this guitar. I don’t play it anymore.’

“I opened up the case and the fingerboard is so sweat-pitted it’s got shell shapes between all the frets. And I said, ‘I can’t take this, Tony.’ And he said, ‘Hell, take it; I don’t want the damn thing.’ So I put a new fingerboard on it and I’m never without that on a recording session.

“If I was recording now, that 330 would be here. I love that guitar. And actually, in a lot of ways, I’d rather have a 330 than a 335 because the P-90s are such wonderful pickups.”

If you were tracking Brothers in Arms today, would you play the parts differently?

“I probably wouldn’t be able to play them so well now. But I’m hoping to put my head down and really get back into some proper playing in the near future. Covid slowed me down a lot. I’ve had it three times. And then, if you’re away from the guitar for a while, your pads get softer and you lose your facility a little bit. So I’m really looking forward to improving.

“I think what happens is, you develop lazy techniques. I’m forever doing that. You know, half-chords, these little semi-shapes. It wouldn’t make a teacher very happy. I mean, nothing I do would make a guitar teacher happy.”

Do you think guitarists can keep improving all the way through their lives?

“I don’t know about ‘improve.’ I think you just find new things to inspire you. Because there’s just no end to it. It’s really all there for you, if you just want to sit down and be bothered to learn it.”

If you were to look in a guitar shop window today, would you be as excited as when you were a young man?

“Absolutely. I’ll still walk across the road to look at motorbikes. And it’s the same with guitars. What’s wrong with me? I’m stuck in my childhood. But I think you need to have that semi-obsessional point of view. It doesn’t matter what it is.

“I mean, how could you succeed in football if you didn’t love the game, even if you were earning a quarter-of-a-million pounds a week? If you didn’t love the game, it would show. It has to border on obsession. And I think people like to be around that. Just to see these maniacs.”

Finally, do you think Brothers in Arms is Dire Straits’ best record?

“I never think in terms of ‘best.’ You absolutely can’t. You might as well be asking, ‘What’s your favorite cheese?’”

• Brothers in Arms (40th Anniversary Edition) is out now.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.
  

Not only is Brothers in Arms widely considered to be Dire Straits’ magnum opus, it’s also deemed to be a nine-track showcase of generational guitar playing that has since cemented Mark Knopfler’s place in the pantheon of electric guitar greats.

In fact, the hysteria surrounding Brothers in Arms was so great that Knopfler himself was soon receiving calls from the guitar world’s most respected figures, who all wanted to sit down and jam with the Strat-wielding fingerstyle player.

One of those figures, as Knopfler recalls in a new interview with Guitar World, was fellow fingerstyle hero Chet Akins. However, when the pair linked up to trade licks, it didn’t quite go as Knopfler had been expecting.

“I remember, Chet Atkins gave me a [call],” he remembers. “Because we were both pickers in that sense – but, of course, Chet was otherworldly. I used to go round to his office and hang out, and I’ll never forget, we once played and sang the song Kentucky all morning.

“Chet had such facility and knowledge, and yet what he wanted to do was play Kentucky – which has two chords – all morning long. He’d say to me, 'You’re pretty good, but you’re no Mark Knopfler.'”

Atkins telling Mark Knopfler that he wasn’t quite as good as Mark Knopfler was part and parcel of a jam with the Country Gentleman, who was known to crack a quip every now and then.

“He always had good jokes,” Knopfler goes on. “You know, you’d get to the end of something and he’d go, ‘Very educational.’ And then he’d say, ‘A little below above average.’ Or something like that. Very dry.

“I only remember him being slightly put-out once, when [fingerstyle guitarist] John Fahey said he’d been double-tracking. Chet was not pleased by that. And he wrote to whatever magazine it was and said, ‘You can learn to do this with your own two hands; you don’t need double-tracking.’

“I mean, Chet liked multi-tracking too, of course, but only if he was doing something even more complicated. But he could play Yankee Doodle and Battle Hymn of the Republic at the same time.”

Knopfler and Atkins’ friendship wouldn’t be restricted to the rehearsal room, though. In 1990, the pair released their collaborative record, Neck and Neck, and would share the stage together on numerous occasions.

Elsewhere in his Guitar World interview, Knopfler explains why he doesn't consider himself a guitar hero and discusses the treasured Gibson he received as a gift from a rock hero.

Brothers in Arms is indisputably one of the hallmarks of Mark Knopfler’s (and, by extension, Dire Straits’) career.

In 2024, the guitarist parted ways with 120 of his prized instruments – many of which were central to the creation of Brothers in Arms, such as the red Schecter Tele-type used on Walk of Life – at a charity auction that fetched over $11 million. Yet, there are still some real treasures left in his collection.

“Tony Joe White gave me his blonde Gibson [ES-]330 that he used for Rainy Night in Georgia,” he tells Guitar World. “We’d become pals, and Tony had switched to a Strat, and I was ’round at his house playing one day.

“I’d given him an acoustic guitar as a present. And he reached under the sofa and he pulled out this dusty old case. And he says, ‘Mark, I want you to have this guitar. I don’t play it anymore.’

With a sense of disbelief, Knopfler opened up the case and recalls that the fingerboard was so “sweat-pitted, it's got shell shapes between all the frets.

“I said, ‘I can’t take this, Tony.’ And he said, ‘Hell, take it; I don’t want the damn thing.’ So I put a new fingerboard on it, and I’m never without that on a recording session.”

In fact, Knopfler says that if he were recording right now, the now-trusty 330 would be by his side. “I love that guitar,” he gushes. “And actually, in a lot of ways, I’d rather have a 330 than a 335 because the P-90s are such wonderful pickups.”

As for whether he misses the guitars that were auctioned off, Knopfler replies with a frank, “Of course!

“When you’re saying goodbye to that ’83 Les Paul and that Schecter Tele [it hurts to see it go],” he admits. “But it’s fine. You’re not going to sit and play all those guitars. It’s time to thin it out a bit. Give them another home. Let them be played by other people.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Knopfler gives his take on why he doesn’t consider himself a “guitar god,” and identifies the ones in the industry who truly deserve that title.

Brothers in Arms is not just one of the most beloved Dire Straits records, it's also one of the most revered guitar albums of all time. While the figures speak for themselves – it has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide – many Mark Knopfler aficionados would also say it's also his masterpiece in terms of playing, forever cementing his place in the pantheon of electric guitar greats

Despite this heady success, though, Knopfler was a self-described reluctant rock star. Being called a guitar hero in that era (and ever since then) was, and still is, as he aptly puts it in his latest Guitar World interview, “Just awkward.”

“The world is bursting with fabulous players. Whether I’ve written a good song or not, that’s what counts to me. I gave up trying to be a great guitar player.”

He continues, “I have enough to get by in the studio – that’s how I see myself as a guitar player. Not much more than that. But I can get away with it. If you’re the one who wrote the songs, you’re kind of allowed to be crap.

“Well, not to be crap, but you’re given some leeway because you wrote the thing,” Knopfler says upon rethinking his previous statement.

“The other guys are there, really standing by their instruments: ‘I play piano,’ ‘I play bass.’ Like, ‘I’m good at this and that’s why I’m here’ – and boy, they are.

“I got away with murder,” he adds matter-of-factly, before shifting the focus to the industry's unsung heroes: session players.

“The guys that really know their business – the session guys, making a living with their instruments – that’s a whole other kettle of fish.

“I remember, in the solo band one day, I said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry about the [mistake] in so and so.’ And Richard [Bennett, guitar] said, ‘Well, the singer is always right!’”

In other recent Mark Knopfler news, the Dire Straits legend revealed that his favorite ever guitar solo from his repertoire is one he recorded on a cheap electric guitar.

Despite the monumental success of tracks like Sultans of Swing and Money For Nothing, Mark Knopfler says his favorite ever guitar solo from his repertoire is a solo he recorded on a cheap electric guitar and that was far from perfect.

Penned as the theme of Bill Forsyth’s 1983 comedy-drama film, Local Hero, Going Home is up there as one of the greatest instrumental guitar tracks of them all. The song lives on as the walk-out music for soccer team Newcastle United, of whom Knopfler is a childhood supporter, and was the subject of a bumper charity re-release last year.

The film it soundtracked tells the story of a man sent by an oil company to a fictional Scottish coastal town with the vision of buying it. Knopfler was intent on capturing the town’s spirit and landscape in his score while incorporating fragments of traditional Scottish songs.

While speaking to Spanish newspaper El Pais about the 40th anniversary of Dire Straits’ groundbreaking album, Brothers in Arms, he says, “There’s something about Going Home that seems to work.

“It’s [recorded on] a cheap guitar, it sounds very direct. I did everything wrong, but I think they’re perfect notes,” he laughs.

“I think it turned out well because I didn’t take it to the extreme of getting into trouble,” Knopfler continues. “I just said what I had to say. I didn’t go too far. I tried to portray the place, the people, the rocks, and the water. For me, it was a portrait of a place, an idea, a local hero.”

Last year, Knopfler recorded a new charity version of the song with more than 60 musicians, raising funds for the Teenage Cancer Trust. Alex Lifeson, Brian May, and Jeff Beck (recorded before his death) were just some of the names featured. The song broke the top 20 on the UK singles chart.

“They just kept coming,” Knopfler told Guitar Player of the charity song’s mammoth cast. “Pete [Townshend] came through the door first, armed with a guitar and an amp, and we plugged it in and Pete played a chord. And we were happening, because when Pete plays a chord, it stays played.

“And then I think Eric Clapton came through the doors the next day, and Jeff Beck had recorded something at his place which was so beautiful. Then David Gilmour came over. I thought, ‘This is fantastic!’

“And then all the stuff was coming on from America: Joe Bonamassa, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai," he develops. “Different people, fantastic guitar playing, coming in from all sides. I came in one day and Bruce Springsteen was all over it.”

No wonder then, by the time Steve Lukather came to track his part, he was left asking, “What the hell am I gonna play?”

The song had even planted the seeds for a collaborative record between Mark Knopfler and Jeff Beck, but Beck’s passing brought that enticing concept to an end.

It’s unclear what guitar Knopfler had used for the track, but he has since upgraded to pricier builds. The charity re-recording was tracked on a 2021 Les Paul Standard Goldtop, which later sold at auction for over £400,000 (approx $540,000).

Knopfler's El Pais interview also found him discussing the beauty of individuality in guitar playing.

“It’s wonderful when Jeff Beck or Hank Marvin [of The Shadows] played, because they were so different,” he says. “If we all played the same, it would be terrible. I think Peter Green was just a magnificent musician. It’s not about playing too much, just playing the right thing.

“When you listen to Stevie Ray Vaughan, you’re hearing the right thing. And even if it gets complicated, you know there’s a care and attention that goes into great musicians, which is a wonderful thing. I’ve never tried to play like that, but I think it’s great. When you start at 15, you try to copy, but after a certain amount of time, your own style starts to emerge. That’s part of the beauty of it.”

Knopfler released his latest solo album, One Deep River last year. Speaking to Guitar World, he says its recording changed his relationship with the guitar.

Yet another eyebrow-raising best guitar riffs of all time list has been published, and – as is usually the case with such round-ups – it has drafted up some rather interesting results.

The 40-strong list comes from uDiscoverMusic, which is part of Universal Music Group’s stable. With that in mind, it's noting that, in the list, the top five riffs all come from Universal artists or bands signed to one of its numerous subsidiaries.

Other notable caveats are that some big hitters and popular Guitar World poll-toppers are questionably relegated to more humble positions (or omitted entirely, in some cases) and the most ‘modern’ offering of the compiled list dates back 22 years to 2006.

That means that none of the riffs of our best riffs of the 2010s poll feature, as the likes of Tool (7empest), Arctic Monkeys (Do I Wanna Know?), and Gary Clark Jr. (Bright Lights) all miss out.

However, there is never an exact science behind compiling such lists, and while the resulting run-down leaves plenty of room for commenters to swing an argument, it’s still an interesting list nevertheless – even if there are some totally bizarre absences.

Kirsten Hersh’s acoustic-led Your Dirty Answer creeps in at the 40th spot on the list, hailed for its “pulsating main guitar riff” and deemed more worthy of a spot than White Stripe’s Seven Nation Army, which is left out entirely.

Eddie Van Halen and Van Halen make one sole appearance with Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love peaking at a fairly lowly 25, one place behind Johnny Marr's spangly This Charming Man riff, and two behind Mark Knoplfer's dancefloor-filling antics on Money for Nothing.

Led Zeppelin’s hip-shaking Whole Lotta Love, which topped Guitar World’s poll of the 50 best guitar riffs of all time in 2023, has to settle for 7th place, not even making it into the top 10. AC/DC’s Back In Black, triumphant in NME’s 2012 poll, falls to 16th.

They weren't the only world-conquering riffs to be humbled here, either. Crazy Train (15), and Enter Sandman (14), both nestle outside the top 10, while The Kinks' You Really Got Me (10) just makes the top bracket.

ZZ Top's ever-cool La Grange (9), Hendrix's Purple Haze (8), and Link Wray's hugely influential 1958 cut Rumble all follow, before Guns N' Roses Sweet Child O' Mine – which Slash says did not come from a warm-up routine, despite popular belief – kicks off the top five.

But it's Nirvana's '90s-shaping Smells Like Teen Spirit that reigns supreme, edging out Smoke on the Water (4), The Rolling Stones' (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction (3), and Chuck Berry's Johnny B Goode, despite the poll describing the four-chord smash as “unoriginal”.

UDiscoverMusic notes: “The four-chord pattern of the riff is unoriginal but the quiet-loud dynamic contrasts of the song, and Cobain’s visceral delivery, add to the potency of one of the best guitar riffs of the ‘90s”.

As reported by Guitar World, “while the Studio preamp, Boss DS-1, and Small Clone provide the essence of Cobain’s guitar tones on the song, several other production flourishes influence the finished recorded sound.”

Luckily, replicating the song's iconic tones can be done on the cheap. Check out Guitar World's guide to nailing Smells Like Teen Spirit's tone.

Check out uDiscoverMusic to see the riff list in full.

2024 Year in Review: A collection belonging to Dire Straits legend Mark Knopfler went under the hammer in February, fetching over $11 million.

120 items were offloaded through Christie’s in London, including his 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, which sold for $884,000, setting a new auction record.

Then there was his 1988 Pensa-Suhr MK-1, which he played at Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday tribute concert at Wembley Stadium, and the red Schecter Tele-type used on Walk of Life.

At least a quarter of the proceeds were shared across three charities close to Knopfler’s heart, and Teenage Cancer Trust collected the total $535,000 raised from a 2021 Gibson Les Paul goldtop signed by Jeff Beck, David Gilmour, Slash and more.

“I hope they all get played,” Knopfler told BBC News, adding, “I don’t think they do too well living in a case all their lives.”

As lead guitarist and singer with Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler has been one of the world’s most high-profile artists since Sultans Of Swing captivated listeners back in 1977.

A few years later in 1985, the group’s Brothers In Arms album became a colossal hit, coinciding with its release on the new music format, CD. The iconic song Money For Nothing, with its reference to MTV, and a video featuring computer generated animation, caught the wave of enthusiasm for music television featuring artist videos.

Knopfler’s approach is based around a rootsy fingerpicked way of playing (mostly thumb, first finger, and second finger). This gives a varied texture and warm tone to solos, comping, and riffs. Some of his parts would be much more difficult to execute without at least using hybrid picking, where the pick and fingers are used together. This approach is particularly appropriate for country, folk, and roots styles.

I once did a session with Straits’ bassist John Illsley, who told me that Little Feat were a big influence on the band’s sound. If you listen to the grooves they were purveying at the time, you might hear some kinship with that great American group, despite the fact that Knopfler’s guitar style is quite different.

Knopfler has been working as a solo artist since Dire Straits stopped working, and has amassed a fine body of work that capitalizes on his playing, songwriting, and singing.

In addition to his work as a solo artist, Knopfler has lent his talents to recordings by Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, and others. He also famously recorded an album called Neck And Neck with Nashville guitar legend Chet Atkins. It’s well worth a listen is you’re a fan of classy fingerpicking and country solos.

Our examples all feature in the final solo. The chord sequence is a four-bar loop, which I envisaged as a contrast section for a tune based in D Major, which you should see as still being within that key center, despite the fact that it starts on chord IV.

I was struck when transcribing some of Knopfler’s recent solos that he’s a master of making solos on Major key sequences sound exceptionally moody and atmospheric, almost as though he’s playing in a Minor key.

The trick over the sequence that underpins our solo is to lean into the Bm7 chord, as B Minor and D Major Pentatonics contain the same notes (B-C#-D-E-F#-G-A, start from the D note for D Major), being relative Minor and Major respectively.

You can even extend this way of thinking by playing or implying the B Minor Blues scale (B-D-E-F-F#-A; F is the blues note) over some of the D Major sequences. This is useful where the tonic Blues scale (in this case, D Major) doesn’t fit well, as the b7th degree (in this case, Bb) would clash.

Get the tone

Amp Settings: Gain 6, Bass 7, Middle 4, Treble 6, Reverb 3

Knopfler is best known for playing single-coil guitars like Fender Strats or Schecters and Pensa Suhrs. In later years he’s also used humbucking instruments, like his fabulous 1958 Les Paul. Using the flesh of the picking fingers gives warmth to his picking, so do try it. You’ll need a cleanish sound with some light overdrive, or a slightly driven guitar amp with light reverb.

Example 1

This is a lyrical phrase played legato style and mostly using D Major or B Minor Pentatonic. Watch for the momentary use of the bluesy b5 in the second bar.

Example 2

This line grows out of the phrasing in the first bar, developing from that idea and into the B Minor chord section. It’s a great bluesy sound and classic Knopfler.

Example 3

This line has a few more ornaments around the melody – little flourishes to add detail and lyricism. This is a big part of Knopfler’s style, especially on a ballad.

Example 4

Here we’re using 6ths to harmonize the scale. The C# in bar 1 is there because the key center is D Major. If your hands try to guide you to a C note- don’t do it!

Example 5

This one develops the motif in example 2. It’s good to play thematically like this, almost compositionally, especially on a ballad.

Example 6: The Solo

This uses the above licks and adds some more classic Knopfler moves. Every time the B Minor comes round we’re referencing or ‘leaning on’ that sound. Knopfler likes to refer back his own classic licks while constantly developing them and finding musical ways to weave them around or through the chord changes.

Mark Knopfler says he developed his now-iconic fingerpicking playing style because he “didn’t have the nerve” to ask his father to buy him an amp.

The Dire Straits guitarist released his new album, One Deep River, in April – a record on which his fingerpicking reigns supreme. Now, as a guest on BBC's Desert Island Discs radio show, he's discussed how tight finances growing up – and the lack of a cheeky streak – helped shape his voice as a guitarist.

Speaking to host Lauren Laverne, Knopfler explained how a move to his mother's hometown of Blythe in Northern England when he was five brought him closer to his uncle, who was one of his earliest musical influences.

“I played shockingly bad boogie-woogie piano, taught by my uncle, in the house,” he remembers. “I cannot believe how patient my parents must have been. Then, later on, when I got a guitar I'd be stomping on the floor, but they never stood in the way of it.”

Notably, Knopfler is left-handed, but an exchange involving his big sister and a tennis racket provided a game-changing moment for the budding guitarist – one that prompted him to play right-handed and in turn give him a unique advantage on the instrument.

“My big sister Ruth... we had these dodgy tennis rackets that you could get for not very much money,” he says. “I was pretending it was a guitar, and she swung it around and said, 'That's the way you play it'.”

Ultimately, playing a right-handed guitar meant his strongest hand was commanding the fretboard, rather than doing the picking.

“It gives me a little bit of flexibility,” Knopfler explains. “If I played a vibrato I maybe could do it on two or three strings at a time.”

His other hand, meanwhile, was honed as matter of necessity. Without an amp to plug into, he seemingly would find new ways to amplify his sound and make what he played sound as big as possible.

“The fingerpicking came from not having an amplifier,” he reveals. “You know, after dad forked out 50 [pounds] for a guitar, I didn't have the nerve to ask him for an amp. I didn't think it was right.”

Expanding on how he developed his weaker hand in a conversation with Guitar Player in 2022, Knopfler explained: “Eventually, I found myself doing things with just my thumb and two fingers that I couldn't do with a pick. But I still use a plectrum now and again for strumming or for playing on acoustic tracks."

As GP details, it forced him to rely on finesse and economy picking rather than brute force, with mega-hit Sultans of Swing a direct result.

“I went through thumbpicks and even steel fingerpicks with the Nationals [resonator guitars], and I dispensed with them,” he adds. “It's a bit of a disadvantage without them sometimes, because a thumbpick is just great for that chunk thing that Chet Atkins can do so brilliantly.

“A lot of times, I’ll hit a note with the thumb and second finger together, so it might seem as though I'm pinching the string – squeezing it. The second finger hits it first I think, behind the thumb, so you can get a real physicality with a note.”

While fingerpicking has been a key part of his repertoire since those early days, it's only in recent years that Knopfler completely ditched the guitar pick.

“I think lack of use, plus three bouts of COVID, probably phased out the plectrum for me. I just kept losing them and would be fingerpicking more – not necessarily fingerpicking better, just more. And it proved to be just a bit more comfortable for me,” he recently told Guitar Player.

Yet he still talks up the value that picks can bring to your playing: “I want to bow to the plectrum and say it’s a superior thing,” Knopfler admitted. “It’s louder. It’s faster. It’s got a better signal. It’s the best amplifier there is. I would do all the rhythm parts with one all the time.”

One Deep River was released in April after a huge selection of Knopfler's guitars were sold at a record-breaking auction.

While Mark Knopfler was busy making One Deep River, he also found time – along with partner in crime Guy Fletcher – to produce a remarkable recording in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust charity. 

Taking his well-known theme music from the 1983 film Local Hero as its basis, over 60 of the world’s greatest guitar players contributed parts to the single, including Eric Clapton, David Gilmour, Pete Townshend and Slash. Poignantly, it also features the last known studio guitar session by Jeff Beck.

The project, which was released under the name Mark Knopfler’s Guitar Heroes, made plenty of headlines when it finally came out in March, so we asked Mark for his behind-the-scenes account of how it all came together.

“I mean, the organisers knew more people than I do,” Mark says with a smile. “I couldn’t believe it. And yet it seemed that the more people the organisers suggested to me and Guy, the more people were getting on it. Poor Guy did great – I mean, he worked a lot harder than I did on this thing. 

“We did have time to discuss the way something felt occasionally and where it might go, but a lot of the hands-on work had to go to Guy because he’s got all the recording and engineering skills at his disposal. Thank goodness he does. 

“Guy did a great job, really. Because [the list of contributing players] could have gone from here to Leeds,” Mark chuckles, adding that the number of players who got involved meant that two separate edits had to be made for release.

“Cutting it down to two [versions] was the solution, really,” Mark explains. “Just one for the radio – which would be desperately savage cutting – and the other one that lets the track stretch out a bit… I think it’s about eight or nine minutes. But we used to make records that long anyway, in the old days [laughs], so it’s fine. 

“But I just really want to thank everybody for such fabulous input and such great session playing from beginning to end. Pete Townshend came in first and did what only Pete Townshend can do with a chord – or two or three. And then Eric Clapton came and played some lovely guitar and different licks.

“After that, it was David Gilmour… and people like Joe Bonamassa would just send stuff in from their studios. But it was all fantastic.”

Of the process of making such disparate contributions hang together in something like a coherent, musical fashion, he says: “All you have to do is just try to treat it the way you would treat your own playing. And, I mean, it’s your baby, you just want the best thing you can for it. Obviously, it’s a little crowded down there in the vegetable market [sic], but I think Guy did a sterling job, considering, and I’m really pleased with the way it came out.”

• Going Home (Theme from Local Hero) is out now via BMG.

This April will see the release of Mark Knopfler’s 10th solo album since he struck out on his own with Golden Heart in 1996. Dire Straits had disbanded the year before and you’d have been forgiven for thinking, at that moment in time, that his best years were perhaps behind him. But it says much of Knopfler’s musical integrity that both the depth and quality of his work have only improved in the 30 years that have passed since then. 

In fact, listening to his latest album, One Deep River, you get a sense of an artist who – strange as it might seem to say – has quietly revealed the real mettle of his songcraft in his post‑Straits solo work. 

Money For Nothing may have made him a household name, but ballads such as Matchstick Man from his 2018 album, Down The Road Wherever, or Basil, from 2015’s Tracker, are masterpieces of powerful, mature ballad writing. There’s humility, grace and nuance in their unhurried stories and poignantly phrased guitar lines that hold the listener’s attention like a fireside story or a personal confession. 

So it was all the more intriguing to learn that, just after selling the majority of his guitar collection at Christie’s in London for a record total (25 per cent of which went to charity) in January, he announced a new album, One Deep River, to be released on April 12. Would this be a swan song, then? A final statement on his life in music? Happily the answer seems to be ‘no’ – but it’s fair to say that the album’s songs cast longer shadows than those of his previous two records. 

Thematically, the album is full of departures – from relationships, from towns, from life itself – and its 12 tracks are haunted by the uneasy presence of mobsters, scam artists and stick-up men. Yet the songs are as unhurried and beautifully performed as ever, while the addition of slide maestro Greg Leisz lends it some of the melancholic grandeur of a movie soundtrack set somewhere in the American West. 

And, of course, it has those unmistakable moments of guitar that only Knopfler seems to be able to deliver, saying much with just a few notes that always make the listener feel something, rather than just another ego-buffing solo. 

And yet joining Mark to talk about the album we find him – perhaps surprisingly for a man who’s a hero to so many players – musing on what he calls his “rusty” technique and ongoing struggles to stay engaged with playing the guitar while he works on the deep craft of lyric writing. 

Introspective yet frank, his thoughts on where he’s at with guitar and music are as absorbing as the new album, so join us as we wade a little deeper into Knopfler’s views on music, guitars, and recording.

Congratulations on the album. It feels like you’re playing more Strat on it, such as on the single Ahead Of The Game, than we’ve heard from you for a while.

“Yeah, I think that was the old ’54. Oh, I’m sure it’s a pretty backward kind of an approach. But, you know, I’ve always been a soft touch for something like that – a little figure [simple melodic pattern] like that.”

Does a Strat still feel like ‘home’ to you after all these years, given that there’s another big strand of your work that’s played with Gibson electrics and the like?

“I think I’m equally at home with either. I mean, not that I’m at home with [any] guitar now. I’ve looked at so many words over the past few years, through the pandemic and beyond, that I’m hardly playing. 

“My guitar playing has become a real passenger. So when I sit down to look at songs, I’m always just looking at lyrics; that’s where I am, really. I tend to be more interested in the song that I’m just writing, a song that I’ve just finished writing, or the song that I’m just in the middle of writing. So that’s where I’ll be and it won’t be practicing [guitar]. So I’m afraid that’s the truth of it.”

Do you find that as time goes by there’s more you want to write about – in terms of subject matter – or, in fact, less?

“Well, I’ve certainly been writing more songs and I don’t know whether that was to do with the pandemic or not, or because I just had more time. But it certainly hasn’t helped my playing any. The musician part [of me] is much reduced, I think, but the writer part is as strong as ever. If a song wants to be born, then I try to let it happen, but I think the playing has deteriorated a little bit… 

“I’d [find I’d] be ready to sit down and look at a song on the computer, but I wouldn’t be playing enough. But that’s just something that seems to have happened recently, and I should really take steps to spend more time behind the instrument, to just get playing. It’s not that I’ve forgotten how to play it – I’m just rusty.”

Guitar is funny – it kind of waxes and wanes a bit in every player’s life. It’s a real lifelong relationship, with ups and downs.

“It is, and it’s often how you just start off. So the first good move for me is to get the damn thing out of the case. Certainly, for me, if it’s in the case I’ll often just start looking at the song, rather than looking at the guitar.

“So I’ll try to keep an acoustic and an electric on stands so that I can just reach for them and play and I don’t have to start picking up the case, hitting somebody’s chair with it, getting the guitar out, knocking something off another stand as you’re sitting down again… 

“The whole thing is just kind of cumbersome. So I like to have a couple of guitars out of their cases and on stands, and that way they’ve got a fighting chance of getting played.”

Your 2015 album, Tracker, was full of songs about people who could be described as unsung heroes, such as the Irish laborer in Mighty Man or the poet Basil Bunting. By contrast, the new album has a lot of villains in it, such as the murderous train robbers on the track Tunnel 13. Why?

“I don’t know… I suppose it may be just getting older and looking at the world. And I suppose, even in terms of social history, I’ve been looking at a certain period, which was a kind of a pivotal time in Britain. I wrote a song once called 5:15am. It was about a miner coming onto his shift and he came across this car, a big Jag Mark X, and inside it was a man whose body was full of bullet holes. 

“This was the introduction to the Northeast of that kind of gangland killing, which was really about the fruit-machine [racket] that had come up from London. And so in a roundabout way, I suppose I’ve been reading about that period. 

“There was a revolution in Cuba and the mob had to do a quick reverse out of there and start up again, and London was the kicking-off point. So then the nightclub scene changed and the Gambling Act was brought into place so that those guys could start operating…. I’d started to read about that stuff way back a couple albums ago, and it’s still an interesting period to me. A lot of people lost their innocence during that time. Sometimes they lost their bank accounts, too [laughs]. 

“Actually, there were some extra tunes from this album and I suddenly realized that I could take four of those songs and make them into an EP [The Boy], which is yet to come out. It’s just songs that combine thematically, about the fairgrounds and showgrounds and the vanishing boxing booths [boxing booths pitted veteran fighters who journeyed from town to town against onlookers brave enough to challenge them in the ring – Ed].” 

“There were once many, many hundreds of them, but they were trying to introduce the British Boxing Board Of Control to control it more – and also the showground culture. 

“I was always fascinated by the fairground that came to Newcastle once a year when I was a boy and, of course, it had its boxing booth, too – so that time was quite interesting. There’s a song on the EP called Mr Solomons Said and a song about a bad day for a knife thrower and [narratives about] people who were attracted to the bright lights of London, maybe like the boy who’d cycled in from the countryside. So it’s just where I’m at now.”

You called the album One Deep River. What does it mean to you?

“Well, what does it mean to you? It could be a description of a person, or it could be a description of the river itself. So, you know, I like the idea of it being available across the range [of possible meanings].”

With lyrics, you have to leave a certain amount open to interpretation by the listener. Otherwise, it becomes a bit trite.

“Yeah, that’s right. And very often, you know, if you try to explain the song to somebody, I’ve found that just gets you in deeper.”

The album also sounds like the most Americana-influenced record you’ve done in a while, on tracks like Janine and Before My Train Comes. The superb lap steel playing from Greg Leisz certainly evokes that melancholy Western feeling. Would it be fair to say that’s a theme?

“Yeah, well, it’s never very far away. Greg is a phenomenal player and straight away it felt as though he’d been with us for a long, long time so he didn’t need to become assimilated – it was an instantaneous thing. With this band, it’s the high point of a year when they get together and, with Greg, it was just more of that. I don’t give directions [to musicians like him]… 

“If you’re directing Colin Farrell or someone you don’t say, ‘I’d like you to walk over to the window, lean out and then I’d like you to scratch your head and look as though you don’t know what you’re doing…’ That’s the last thing you would tell a good actor to do. 

“Because what he would be doing would be thinking about a possible approach, thinking about things that might or might not work, and possibly discussing it with you at some point but not needing to have a set of directions put in his lap. 

“And it’s the same thing with these guys. I just sing them the song and leave them to it, really, and then just keep an eye on what’s unfolding and maybe nudge things in certain directions, possibly. But that’s part of the joy of it – welcoming people into your song and them finding their place in it themselves, rather than being told where to go and sit.”

When working with really great musicians, it can be a pleasure to surrender control and just enjoy letting them react to the song instinctively.

“You’re so right – that’s part of it, part of the joy of it. I think these guys, they just take it for granted now that they’ll be skating on their own for a bit, you know, and they’ll just be finding out that they’ll be listening to each other as well, as much as anything else. 

“You have to be able to seamlessly fit in with all the existing textures and that takes a certain amount of time and experience and confidence in what it is that you’re doing. If I change my part, you can be sure that the band will hear it and will mark that change and play according to it. But you probably won’t even have a discussion about it with anybody. 

“That’s what musicians love more than anything else – when you’re playing with someone who has heard what you’ve done, what you’ve changed, and has changed their path without mentioning it, just adapted to your change with no words – no words necessary. It’s a wonderful gang to be part of and it makes all the other times worth it – because a lot of times you’re just struggling. But when it comes clear like that, it’s tremendous.”

There’s some beautiful acoustic guitar parts on the album – and we couldn’t help noticing that your lovely pre-war Martin D-18, which featured on the last album, Down The Road Wherever, wasn’t up for sale at the recent Christie’s auction of your guitars.

“Well noticed. That’s a ’35 D-18 that was given to me by a good friend. That guitar, the D-18, will have got on a lot of songs up to this point. But I found another little guitar that seems to have gotten onto a few songs on this album, taking that role, and it’s a little mahogany parlor guitar made by Arthur Boswell. 

“It just seems to have answered for some songs on this record and I don’t know how many tracks it’s actually on, but it’s four or five. That’s become the guitar of this album. 

“The song Tunnel 13 mentions redwood, but it’s not actually a redwood-top guitar [being played], although Boswell makes beautiful redwood guitars – and, in fact, I’ve got one and they’re lovely. But this one’s a mahogany guitar and it seems to have spoken on a few songs quite nicely. Quite why that should be I’ve no idea. I’m looking forward to working with the redwood [guitars by Boswell] and seeing where that goes to – but until I sort of test them in the songs, I won’t really know.”

When it comes to recording an album in the studio, the guitars that actually make it onto a record aren’t always the ones you go into the studio meaning to use. Have you experienced that before – been surprised by how central an unexpected guitar became to the sound of an album?

“I certainly have – I remember the Grosh Electrajet doing that. With this album, it was the Duesenbergs. Because I bought two, I have a Caribou and a Gran Royale. They’re great guitars, I’ve found that they just went straight onto records and I didn’t expect them to sound as good as they did. But they’re great instruments and I haven’t even scratched the surface yet with them.” 

You’ve spoken a fair bit about your motivation for auctioning much of your guitar collection at Christie’s earlier this year. But what about the guitars you decided to keep? Why did you decide to hang on to some guitars in particular?

“Partly it’s sentimental, but also I wanted to have enough left to record with, you know? Enough that I’d be happy to be recording with in years to come. So I need to have a few of those. Also, I’ve got a son who plays guitar – actually, both boys play guitar – and a daughter who plays guitar. So I wanted some stuff left for the kids to enjoy playing as well. 

“Plus, you want to hang on to things that are family heirlooms, really. Like the National that Steve Phillips played – that was Steve’s National and I treasure it; and that was the Romeo And Juliet National – but it’s the same thing for Strat Number One from Sultans, so I am careful about that. 

“There’s things that you get really closely attached to. For example, I got to be good pals with Tony Joe White and… he gave me his ES-330 that he used for Rainy Night In Georgia and Groupie Girl and all of those things. I said, ‘You can’t give me this thing…’ but it was under his bed and covered in dust and the fingerboard was pitted so deeply from his sweaty gigs that it needed a new fingerboard anyway. 

“So I got a new fingerboard for it and I use that 330 on every record that I make now; it’s just become part of the scenery. So, again, some guitars are just that little bit special that they work their way in, you know? Or like the Martin D-18 I mentioned before, there will be guitars like that. You couldn’t sell them and you wouldn’t want to sell them because they’d be just too hard to say goodbye to.”

You recently made a special recording of the theme to the Local Hero movie, Going Home, which ended up featuring the better part of the world’s top guitarists on it. It’s such a memorable and timeless melody. Where do those powerfully emotive, Celtic-sounding lead lines come from, with you? They feel like a really important part of your musical DNA. 

“A melody like that just resonates with childhood for me because of listening to Jimmy Shand and Scottish country dance music when I was small. I think that was among the earliest music I would have heard in Scotland. I’m more or less half-Scottish so it’s in the genes already on my mother’s side, who are just a family essentially of Scottish Geordies. 

“There’s a lot of links between the Geordies and the Scots; a lot of Scots moved down to Newcastle to work in the shipyards and in heavy industry. So when I’m writing in that vein, it doesn’t seem like it’s a foreign language to me at all. 

“Sometimes [Scottish] musicians will say, ‘Oh, that’s very West Highlands, Mark,’ or ‘That’s Strathspey that you’re playing there, Mark…’ And I’ll say, ‘That what that I’m playing?’ So you live and learn. But anyway, I’m reasonably at home with [those musical traditions] and they don’t seem like a foreign country to me.”

There are often distinct chapters in every person’s life that can be quite different from each other. Musically speaking, do you feel that way about your own work over the years? 

“No, I think the ditties [sic] are pretty much nursery rhymes and they haven’t really changed musically. I haven’t been too interested in improving that side of it. There was a spell a few years back when I was in New York a lot of the time and I was kind of interested in learning how to play a little better, just to learn a bit more about the music game. But generally speaking, it’s the same old nursery rhyme; so, no, I don’t think so. 

“But, lyrically, I’m still interested in trying to improve as a writer – I like the idea of writing a good song: the challenge being to do that and the other challenge being to make a good record of it. Gillian Welch once said to me that, ‘All I’m trying to do is write a good song and make a good record of it,’ and I thought to myself, ‘Well, I’ve never heard a better explanation of the process,’ and it’s all that matters.”  

• One Deep River is out now via EMI.

Mark Knopfler’s guitar auction at Christie’s earlier this year raised a staggering $11.2 million. Aside from the prices, the most remarkable thing about it was how many famous instruments it included, among them Knopfler’s Money For Nothing Les Paul and his red Walk of Life Schecter T-style.

At first glance, it seemed like Knopfler wanted an entirely clean sweep of his collection and was somewhat unsentimental about what he included in the sale –focusing instead on raising cash for a host of charities that are close to his heart.

However, in a new interview with Guitarist, the UK songwriter notes that wasn’t the case across the board and discusses a few of the instruments he couldn’t let go.

“You want to hang on to things that are family heirlooms, really,” Knopfler tells Guitarist. 

“Like the National that Steve Phillips played – that was Steve’s National and I treasure it and that was the Romeo and Juliet National... but it’s the same thing for Strat Number One from Sultans [of Swing], so I am careful about that.”

It seems intriguing that Dire Straits legend is willing to part with the 1983 Gibson Les Paul he used to record and perform some of his most commercially successful material (not to mention one of the world’s most famous riffs in Money for Nothing), but not the 1961 Stratocaster he used on Sultans of Swing. 

Likewise, the National Style O guitar that featured on the cover of Brothers in Arms has remained in his collection, but most of the guitars used to record that album (the Schecter, the Gibson et al) have not. 

As Knopfler mentions, the National previously belonged to his friend and fellow player/collector Steve Phillips and it seems it’s the people, not the records, associated with the guitars that mean the most to the guitar hero. 

“There’s things that you get really closely attached to. For example, I got to be good pals with Tony Joe White and ... he gave me his ES‐330 that he used for Rainy Night In Georgia and Groupie Girl,” Knopfler tells Guitarist. 

“I said, ‘You can’t give me this thing...’ but it was under his bed and covered in dust and the fingerboard was pitted so deeply from his sweaty gigs that it needed a new fingerboard anyway. So I got a new fingerboard for it and I use that 330 on every record that I make now; it’s just become part of the scenery.”

“So, again, some guitars are just that little bit special that they work their way in, you know? There will [always] be guitars like that. You couldn’t sell them and you wouldn’t want to sell them because they’d be just too hard to say goodbye to.”

For more from Knopfler’s extensive interview, including the background on the guitar hero-laden charity single Going Home, his changing relationship with guitar playing and new album One Deep River (due April 12), pick up issue 502 of Guitarist at Magazines Direct.

Mark Knopfler has put together an almighty assemblage of A-list guitar talent for an expanded all-star version of Going Home, his theme track to Local Hero, with the charity single opening with the late Jeff Beck’s final recording, and proceeds going to teenage cancer charities.

In sum, more than 60 rock legends, including 50-plus guitarists, were involved in the recording, which was produced by Guy Fletcher, with some choosing to track at British Grove Studios, in West London, others sending their parts in, and others, such as Pete Townshend of the Who, just appearing out of the blue with an electric guitar, an amp, and the look of a man who wanted to get down to business.

“Before I knew where I was, Pete Townshend had come into my studio armed with a guitar and an amp,” says Knopfler. “And that first Pete power chord…man, I tell you. We were in that territory, and it was just fantastic. And it went on from there.”

It did. The cast of players is ridiculous. Let’s take a deep breath and name a few names: Brian May, Tony Iommi, Slash, Joan Armatrading, Joan Jett, Buddy Guy, Hank Marvin, Bruce Springsteen, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Slash, Orianthi, Tom Morello, Peter Frampton, David Gilmour, Albert Lee, and Eric Clapton. There are many more.

Alongside Townshend, Clapton and Lee were among the first to contribute. Speaking of which, Slowhand was in top form. “Eric came in, played great, just one tasty lick after another,” says Knopfler.

The track will be previewed at Newcastle United’s home match against Wolverhampton Wanderers on March 2 (the team walk out to the Local Hero theme), before being released via Sony/BMG on March 15. A number of the performers will be at the match. 

Let’s name some more names. Also featured are Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, Joe Bonamassa, Nile Rodgers, Duane Eddy, Steve Lukather, Sheryl Crow, Joe Walsh, Mike Rutherford, and Ry Cooder. We also have a Beatles/Stones crossover event, with Ronnie Wood playing guitar, and Ringo Starr on the drums. Starr’s son, Zak Starkey, also plays drums. Oh, and Sting is playing bass guitar. It’s that sort of occasion. 

But it is Jeff Beck’s presence that makes this all the more poignant. This was the last guitar track he recorded before his death in January 2023. 

Knopfler described Beck’s contribution was “spellbinding.” While Fletcher says Beck's part was “absolutely meant to be. What he did with it, it just brings you to tears.”

Knopfler was taken aback by the response from his peers, and admits that they had to extend the track to fit everyone on it.

“What I really want to do, more than anything else, is just to thank each and every one for this sterling response,” he says. “I really had no idea that it was going to be like this. It hit Guy and I quite early on that we had to extend this piece somehow, to take in the number of people who joined in.”

Going Home is an instrumental but it does feature one of rock’s great frontmen, Roger Daltrey, playing harmonica. The single will benefit the Teenage Cancer Trust in the UK, which Daltrey is an honorary patron of, and the Teen Cancer America, which he co-founded with Townshend. 

The sheer scale of this Going Home charity redux production calls to mind Live Aid, when in 1985 the convening powers of Midge Ure and Bob Geldof got pop’s biggest stars to unite against famine in Africa for one of the defining pop-cultural moments of the decade. But has there ever been a track with so many star guitarists?

The cast certainly gave Sir Peter Blake plenty to work with for the cover, and he took a similar approach to his iconic Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album artwork, with images of all the guitarists – plus the likes of Local Hero stars Peter Riegert and Burt Lancaster – cut-out and arranged across a picture of the legendary Hank’s Guitar Shop on London’s Denmark Street.

The Mark Kopfler’s Guitar Heroes version of Going Home (the Theme from Local Hero) is available to preorder now, and is out March 15 on CD, 12” with etched b-side, and a deluxe CD/Blu-ray package including sleeve notes by Paul Sexton. Digital formats will include a Dolby Atmos mix of the track.

The track has already raised a six-figure sum following NeoFidelity Recordings’ sale of an Original Disc of the master recording.

In addition, eight guitars have been donated by leading guitar brands to support the initiative, each of which has been signed. One will be auctioned for the Teenage Cancer Trust at a private donor event on March 1. 

You can read the track’s full cast below, and find out more at Teenage Cancer Trust and Teen Cancer America.

Mark Knopfler's Guitar Heroes: 

Joan Armatrading, Jeff Beck, Richard Bennett, Joe Bonamassa, Joe Brown, James Burton, Jonathan Cain, Paul Carrack, Eric Clapton, Ry Cooder, Jim Cox, Steve Cropper, Sheryl Crow, Danny Cummings, Roger Daltrey, Duane Eddy, Sam Fender, Guy Fletcher, Peter Frampton, Audley Freed, Vince Gill, David Gilmour, Buddy Guy, Keiji Haino, Tony Iommi, Joan Jett, John Jorgenson, Mark Knopfler, Sonny Landreth, Albert Lee, Greg Leisz, Alex Lifeson, Steve Lukather, Phil Manzanera, Dave Mason, Hank Marvin, Brian May, Robbie McIntosh, John McLaughlin, Tom Morello, Rick Nielsen, Orianthi, Brad Paisley, Nile Rodgers, Mike Rutherford, Joe Satriani, John Sebastian, Connor Selby, Slash, Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr and Zak Starkey, Sting, Andy Taylor, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, Ian Thomas, Pete Townshend, Keith Urban, Steve Vai, Waddy Wachtel, Joe Louis Walker, Joe Walsh, Ronnie Wood, Glenn Worf, Zucchero.

[Ed. note: Prior to the recent Christie’s auction of Mark Knopfler’s guitar collection – which went on to garner over $11 million – we got a sneak peek at some of the most storied, rare, and collectible models in the lot.]

Some guitarists, such as Brian May, are forever associated with a single guitar. Others, such as Mark Knopfler, have browsed through a century and more of the luthier’s craft to track down unique sounds. 

During the course of his 50-year career, Knopfler has used everything from Les Paul reissues to jazz-era D’Angelico archtops to create ageless tracks such as Money For Nothing and Brothers In Arms, and a thick catalog of solo albums; among them Tracker, Get Lucky, and Down The Road Wherever. In the process, he built up one of the most enviable collections of recording instruments you’ll find. 

So it’s all the more remarkable that he’s putting 120 of these guitars and amps, including those used on some of his most famous work, up for auction at Christie’s in London on January 31. 

We caught up with Kerry Keane, Christie’s vintage guitar expert – who also inspected and prepared David Gilmour’s guitars for sale in 2019 – to talk about some of the highlights of the upcoming sale. 

What does this sale represent in terms of Mark Knopfler’s relationship with the guitar?

“I’m a bit of a guitar nerd and I find guitars wonderful to look at as icons of the stylistic time period they were made in. But at the same time, they are static items until they’re put into the lap of an artist, a guitarist, and then they fully fulfil their mission. 

“There are 123 lots in this sale and the vast majority of them are guitars. And, for me, they illustrate the musical journey of one of popular music’s greatest artists, from his youngest influences as a guitarist to a performer and now a composer today.”

There’s a wide range of guitars in the sale, but some, like the 1988 Pensa-Suhr custom, are indelibly associated with Mark’s time in Dire Straits.

“Yeah, I think without a doubt, that’s a very iconic guitar in terms of his performances. Firstly, just as an object it’s a spectacular example of really great guitar making and it really illustrates, I think, the high skill that John Suhr brings to the craft.

“John shared with me a really wonderful backstory about Mark meeting with Rudy Pensa. And after having done quite a bit of business with him over the years, Mark came up with the idea of ‘let’s design the perfect guitar for me.’ And that was all drawn out on a napkin in Fritzel’s Coffee Shoppe in midtown Manhattan. 

“What I did not know was that John Suhr, a talented young guitar maker, had begun making an instrument specifically for himself – and had decided to pull out all the stops, using the finest pieces of wood [at his disposal]. 

“He had it roughed out and he’d decided to arch the top, which he’d never done before [on a guitar of this type], arching it in the same way that a Gibson Les Paul top is arched, unlike the flat slab of a Telecaster or the contours of a Stratocaster. He wanted to do a sort of violin arch. And that part of the work was done when in comes Rudy Pensa, and says, ‘I think this is going to be the perfect guitar for Mark after speaking with him.’

“So John had to take this half-finished instrument and now fit it to the needs of Mark Knopfler. There was a time period in which it had to be done, in order to be delivered to Mark in time for his performance in a Nelson Mandela tribute, which I believe was in 1988. 

“And to this day, John Suhr says firstly that he thinks that guitar is one of the finest pieces of work he’s ever done, but also that it was his crowning achievement as a guitar maker to finish that instrument to fit the needs of Mark Knopfler and to fulfill the quality and get it there on time. 

“He was worried about the nitrocellulose lacquer drying in time [for delivery]. He had all the coats on and then decided to do a final top coat with polyester. Which was sort of a new development in ’88, as not a lot of independent makers were using a polyester topcoat at that time. But it worked and he was able to say, ‘Good, it’ll hold, now we can get it off to Mark.’”

Tell us about some of the notable Les Pauls in the sale. There’s one original 1959 Les Paul Standard and then some reissues, one of which had a very special role in Mark’s recording career.

“Yes. There’s only one vintage ’Burst in the sale, but there are a couple of more modern reissue sunbursts. In the early days of Dire Straits, Mark said he could never afford to buy a Les Paul from the ‘classic’ years, so he got a reissue and recorded things like Brothers In Arms and Money For Nothing with that one, and toured with it. That particular guitar was purchased in 1984 from Rudy Pensa and it was used during recording of the 1985 Dire Straits album, Brothers In Arms; for the title track and Money For Nothing.

“But by the mid-90s, Mark was able to afford the real deal. He actually said, during an interview, ‘Success I adore. It means I can buy 1959 Gibson Les Pauls and Triumph motorcycles. But I detest fame. It interferes with what you do and has no redeeming features at all.’ So Mark purchased the 1959 Les Paul from Bobby Tench, previously of the Jeff Beck Group, via Pete Townshend’s guitar tech, Alan Rogan, and he also purchased a 1958, which he is retaining.”

No discussion of Mark’s music would be complete without talking about his work on acoustic guitars. There are some extraordinary acoustics in the sale, such as the 1951 Martin D-28.

“Well, that guitar comes a little bit later in his career. I mean, I don’t think he had that guitar until about 2000 or so. And he shared with us that he couldn’t afford a [classic] Martin in the beginning [of his career]. He bought this particular one in 2017 from the Vintage Guitar Emporium in London and immediately put it to use in the studio to record Nobody’s Child and Pale Imitation along with a few others. 

“He waxes endlessly about acoustic guitars, but it’s interesting that prior to getting the D-28, he was mostly playing slope-shouldered Gibson dreadnoughts – and you’ll see quite a few of them in the sale. But his Martins tended to be smaller-bodied instruments. 

“Two of which that excited me, in the sale, were firstly a 1917 00-30 – very, very early – and then he had done a signature model but not with Martin, but then he went back and did another signature model [this time with Martin] and that is the 000-40S, known as the ‘Ragpicker's Dream.’ But what a great instrument and, again, it kind of illustrates, for me, his expertise as a fingerpicker.”

People always speak reverently about pre-war Martin dreadnoughts, but how much difference is there between them and the Martin dreads in the 1950s, quality-wise?

“You know, I’m gonna get in a lot of trouble for saying this… pre-war Martins are spectacular. But I think – as musicians, and as connoisseurs of great guitar making and the tonal qualities of guitars – we should never diminish the quality of guitars that Martin was making after World War II. 

“I had a client a few years back who purchased a 1954 D-28 that was in spectacular condition and sounded magnificent. And I remember one of the sort of better connoisseurs in the guitar world playing that guitar. He said, ‘Oh my God, this is the real thing.’ So, yeah, I think we put maybe too much emphasis on the pre-war instruments, but that’s the market speaking. And the market always goes where it wishes.”  

Mark Knopfler’s guitar collection has sold at Christie’s London for a total of $11,227,003 – a figure that seems to have taken even the auctioneer itself by surprise, with the venerable institution describing it as “staggering”. 

“The live auction in London was 100% sold, setting a new auction record for Knopfler’s 1959 Vintage Gibson Les Paul Standard, which achieved £693,000 [approx. $876,000],” notes Christie’s. 

“Music aficionados, fans and collectors from 61 countries registered to bid, with phenomenal levels of competition across the 122 lots offered resulting in the auction lasting over six hours.”

The ’59 ’Burst valuation is getting the most headlines in the mainstream media and that is an enormous price tag, but given its provenance, celebrity association and incredible condition, it may not come as a surprise to your average Gibson obsessive. 

Indeed, that figure is thought to have been surpassed in several private ’Burst sales (Kirk Hammett was long-rumored to have paid nearer $2 million for Greeny, for instance – something he denies), but it nonetheless sets a new auction record.

What has left Guitar World truly floored, however, is the average values fetched by the other items in the sale. 

Indeed, when Christie’s announced the auction was set to include Knopfler’s Brothers in Arms Les Paul, his custom Suhr/Pensa builds and his iconic Schecter T-style from Walk of Life – we noted that many of the guide prices were “enticingly low” and likely to surpass their estimates. What we didn’t expect was just how right we would be…

Knopfler’s first Les Paul, his 1983 reissue, on which he performed Dire Straits’ iconic Money For Nothing riff carried an estimate of an estimate of $12,500 – $18,000, but went for nearly $749,000 (£592,200) – an astonishing figure for an ’80s LP. 

Meanwhile, his 1988 Pensa Suhr, the MK-1, fetched approx. $637,000 (£504,000) and his Schecter Van Nuys T-style (as used on Walk of Life) raised nearly $526,000 ($415,800) – 100 times their estimated sale prices.

In total, 28 of the guitars in the 122 item sale realized prices of more than $100,000 and while none of the individual lots raised enough to make our most expensive guitars of all time list – we cannot think of another individual collection auction that has raised such high prices across the board. 

In fact, it could very well be – though we are unable to verify at present – the most valuable individual collection sold at auction to date.

What’s Knopfler going to do with the proceeds? Well, 25% of the total is going to UK charities he supports, including the British Red Cross, Tusk and Brave Hearts of the North East. 

Meanwhile, the full $510,000 realized by the final lot – a 2021 Gibson Les Paul goldtop reissue signed by everyone from Knopfler to David Gilmour, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, Brian May, Slash, Tony Iommi, The Edge, Buddy Guy, Nile Rodgers and Joe Bonamassa (to name a few) – is going to Teenage Cancer Trust.

Check out Guitarist’s detailed look at three of the top sale items: namely, the Brothers In Arms LP, the 1988 Pensa-Suhr and the Schecter Van Nuys in the clip above. 

Then you can browse the full sale catalog and see the prices fetched in the auction – and there are plenty of other talking points – over at Christies. 

When Dave Davies is your uncle, it’s a fair shot you’ll have at least a passing interest in guitar. The Kinks guitarist’s nephew, Phil Palmer, has that and more.

Dating back to the early '70s, with his trusty Fender Nocaster – a gift from Uncle Dave – Palmer has played in dozens of sessions including appearances with Iggy Pop, Sheena Easton, Eric Clapton, Bryan Adams and Dire Straits, of whom he was an official member in 1992 and ’93.

Indeed, they call him ‘the Session Man,’ and Palmer holds the moniker so dear he’s named his autobiography after it: “I’ve had a long career,” he tells Guitar World. “And I was never one to think about it; I just went from one project to the next.

“Then the lockdown came, and it occurred to me I was sitting on my bum, so I might as well write about my career. And I’m glad I did it. It was fun researching myself, looking back on everything I've done, and then thinking about why I did it.”

Memoirs aside, the guitarist is also on the road with the Dire Straits Legacy tribute act. According to Palmer, it’s been a blast, but no new music will come out of it: “We’re just getting off on touring,” he says. “But I promise you that the reaction we get wherever we play is the same as when I was in the band. People love the songs.

“And they should – they’re pieces of genius. They’re brilliant and they’re great to play. So as long as they keep moving people we’ll keep delivering them. Honestly, I’m busier now than I’ve ever been. Being a session player is about getting away with it, and given how busy I am, I guess I’m still getting away with it!”

Your uncle is Dave Davies. Is that who influenced you to pick up the guitar?

“Yes. My uncles were in The Kinks, which was and still is a massive influence on me. But the guitar came about when I was five after I’d picked up a ukulele. And as my hands grew, I got into six-string acoustic and electric guitars.

“But Dave helped me a lot and supplied me with a few early instruments, including a Vox amp and a Fender Nocaster he'd picked up in America. He gave that guitar to me for my 18th birthday, and by the time I was 20, I knew what I wanted to do with my life.”

Can you recall your first session?

“It was with a young girl called Claire Hamill. She was from County Durham in North England. She was signed to Ray Davies’ Konk label and had a few hits. I was very young and just noodling around, and when Claire came into the studio, I didn’t know she was there, and she heard me playing and said, ‘I need help on my next tune. Would you like to play on it?’ And that was my first session.”

As a session player, how do you approach rhythm and lead playing – especially given that you need to be a chameleon?

“It’s a matter of being invisible. During sessions, you learn some of everything from being thrown into the deep end. So, you either sink or swim. You quickly learn when to play, when not to, and how to read what people need.

“It becomes a fascinating psychological journey, since you’re walking into a room filled with strangers. But if you’re good and get away with it, you’ll do more sessions and get good at it. So I approach it by knowing when to be invisible and when to shine.”

You mentioned the Nocaster that Dave gave you. Did that become your go-to guitar?

“I did use it often. But I used to carry a cross-section of stuff. I’d always have an acoustic, a nylon-string, and a couple of electrics. I’d also have a Vox AC30 and a few pedals, too.

“I liked to have a compression and chorus pedal, but the latter kinda went out of fashion in the ‘70s, so I stopped using it. I was never a big pedals guy – I’d rather drive the amp using the valves and get some crunch from there rather than pedals.”

Tell me about your contributions to Iggy Pop’s The Idiot. 

“I was home one evening, and at around four o’clock in the morning I got a call from David Bowie, who was in Berlin at the time. He said they needed a guitar player for Iggy’s album and asked if I’d come over. 

“I threw the Nocaster on my back and, a few days later, I was in the studio. It was a strange session – there was a lot of energy between David and Iggy. They were winding each other up and finding exciting things. I found myself stuck in the middle, but it was very interesting.

“The first track we did was Nightclubbing. David’s direction was: ‘Imagine you’re walking down a busy street in London with music coming out of both sides, and as you’re walking down, you hear the music coming out of nightclub doors.’

“So, I said, ‘Right. Any clue about the key?’ And David said, ‘Don’t worry about the key, just the rhythm. Be the music that you’re hearing coming out those doors.’”

You used the Nocaster, but what amp did you plug into?

“It was vague. I just stood inside the studio with a Marshall amp and a wah pedal that belonged to Thin Lizzy – who were also in the studio – and gave it a shot. Another weird thing was we’d be recording all night from about 11pm to 8 or 9 in the morning. But a lot of cool gear was around; I just plugged in and made a racket that seemed to fit the bill.”

Fast-forward to the late ‘80s, and you’re working with Eric Clapton. How did you meet him?

“I had been working with a talented Irish singer called Paul Brady; we did a few big albums and tours through Europe. The first time I met Eric was through Paul, while playing in a small club called The Mean Fiddler. I’ll never forget it – I looked up and Eric was in the crowd. That was unexpected!

“I ran into him down the line while on holiday in the West Indies; we were both on the beach, and he asked me to come down and play on his Journeyman record, which I did.

“I loved working with Eric because he gave me space to play. Unlike other sessions I’d been on, he wanted me to bring something new to the table and contribute.”

What lessons did you learn while touring with Eric?

“An example of the lessons I learned can be heard on our Royal Albert Hall vinyl recordings. He reminded me to be at home on stage and never be nervous – Eric never was. He loved big events, and he always enjoyed the evening. So, a big lesson for me was always remembering to have that mindset and do the same.”

Before joining Dire Straits, you had a chance to play on Eric’s Unplugged record, but had to turn it down. Is that right?

“I was still working with Eric, and we did a big outdoor show in Knebworth. During that gig, Eric and Mark Knopfler decided to amalgamate the two bands, and we did some of Eric’s songs and some of Dire Straits’ songs. I got on well with those guys, and things evolved to the point that I ended up joining them.

“But the catalyst was that Eric had a major disaster in his life when he lost his son in New York, who fell out of a window and sadly died. We all went to the funeral, and just after, Eric’s manager said, ‘Guys, if anything comes up you should take it, as Eric won’t be doing anything.’

“Soon after, I negotiated a deal with Mark and signed a contract with Dire Straits. But literally the day after, Eric called me, saying, ‘Listen, I’m not going to sit around on my ass. I want to make an Unplugged album. Can you do it?’ I had to turn it down. It was terrible.”

Mark Knopfler is undoubtedly different from Eric. Was there a period of adjustment for you?

“Strangely, one of the reasons I got the gig with Dire Straits is that I came from the same school as Mark. I played fingerstyle and had the same country influences, and that’s probably why I fit so well.

“Up to that point, the guitarists that Mark had in the band didn’t do much – I think he had me come on because he wanted to be challenged. He wanted me to play a lot of what he played so he could easily explore new avenues, other licks and new ideas.

“I had to learn his very strange picking technique, where his right hand, almost like a banjo picker, does these odd things. So we got together, I nailed it, and off we went. Mark is so inspirational, and he loves to experiment. It was amazing to play alongside him for those two years.”

These days, you're on the road with the Dire Straits Legacy tribute. What's the latest?

“Over the last 10 years we’ve been keeping the Dire Straits thing alive. It happened by accident. We were brought together for a charity gig in Italy – and to our surprise, 10,000 people showed up. There was no promotion; it just happened.

“So we said, ‘Wait a minute, this has some legs. Why don’t we follow it and see it through?’ And 10 years later we’re preparing to go to Germany, Shanghai, Australia, and New Zealand. We love doing it, and we’re looking forward to more.”

• Palmer’s book, Session Man, is out now.

Christie's of London has announced a huge Mark Knopfler guitar auction, set to take place on January 31, 2024.

The sale will see the Dire Straits star parting ways with some of his most iconic electric guitars, including the Gibson Les Paul used on Money For Nothing and in his band's famed Live Aid performance, a Pensa “Strat” built by John Suhr that features on So Far Away, and the red Schecter Van Nuys T-style that he used on Walk of Life.

The news has been accompanied by a clip in which Knopfler talks through some of the highlights of the sale, including all of the above, plus a host of signature guitars.

“I never wanted to see myself as a collector at all but there comes a point where you realize what a thing you've taken on,” explains the guitarist in the clip.

“A lot of guitars that came into my possession were actually given to me by people, so they come for all kinds of reasons. I never thought that my signature would be on anything – never mind Fenders, Gibsons, and Martins, they're the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost of guitars!”

The prize piece of the sale is likely an original 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard ’Burst, reportedly bought from Bobby Tench of The Jeff Beck Group and valued at approx. $375,000 – $625,000.

In terms of star power, however, that is closely rivaled by the (much more affordable) 1983 Gibson Les Paul Standard. 

Billed as Knopfler’s first Les Paul, it was picked up from Rudy Pensa’s shop on New York’s City’s (then-somewhat-notorious) West 48th Street and used in the recording and performance of Money For Nothing – one of the ’80s' most recognizable riffs. It carries an estimate of $12,500 – $18,000. 

Then there’s a purple 1984 John Suhr S-style build – commissioned via Pensa. 

“I started talking to Rudy about needing a guitar that had all the best things about a Strat and the best things about a Les Paul,” says Knopfler in the video. 

“We used to go to a little coffee shop up the street from his store and we drew out what became the first Pensa. I got some great sounds out of the Pensa so it it starred on quite a lot of songs… 

“I plugged it in on the Brothers in Arms record and the first hit that we had off that album was So Far Away – I just happened to get lucky.”

As mentioned, Knoplfer also pulls out the 1983 Schecter Van Nuys T-style that he used on Walk of Life as another highlight.

“The red Tele was just asking to be played,” recalls Knopfler. “It’s a very punchy guitar, that – plenty of power, plenty of sound – and so it was great for Walk of Life… with just my fingers the guitar was speaking nice and loud.”

Both the Schecter and Pensa carry estimates of around $5,000 – $7,500. 

The full details of the sale lots are yet to be issued, but elsewhere in the auction we know there will be a 1958 dot-neck ES-335, a 2002 prototype of the Fender Mark Knopfler signature Stratocaster, headless Steinberger GL2T, 1979 Ovation acoustic-electric guitar, and a 1988 Suhr/Pensa build.

“It's exciting having those guitars that figured so big on [Brothers in Arms] be up for sale,” concludes Knopfler. “Each one brings back loads of memories. If you would have asked me 20 years ago, I’d have thought, ‘No way [I’m selling them]. But I'm happy now that they're going to different homes.”

The sale is certainly going to be one to watch. The blend of cast-iron vintage bankers like the ’59 Les Paul and ’58 ES-335, with star-power items from Brothers in Arms is going to attract big-money bidders from all corners of the collecting world. 

Some of those guide prices are enticingly low, too, and we suspect many will surpass their estimates. Who knows? Perhaps, by February, we’ll have a new entry on our list of the most expensive guitars of all time…

For more information on the sale, head to Christie's.

Before she was touring the world with Machine Gun Kelly, writing and recording material for her first ever full-length album, and signing on as a Kiesel signature artist, Sophie Lloyd cut her teeth the same way as many aspiring electric guitar players did: by posting videos on YouTube.

Lloyd is still partial to a YouTube cover these days (she took on Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven not too long ago), but such videos were the bread and butter for an up-and-coming Lloyd, who has previously covered Muse’s Plug In Baby and even All I Want For Christmas Is You.

But her covers stand out for a specific reason: she turns classic tracks into shred masterclasses.

Now, Lloyd has returned to her roots to shreddify another pillar of rock guitar lore, this time taking on the snappy, sultry fingerstyle lines of Dire Straits’ Sultans of Swing.

It goes without saying that this is one of Lloyd’s most eyebrow-raising shred experiments to date. There is, after all, a huge stylistic gulf between the swanky single-coil sounds of Mark Knopfler’s original Fender Strat arrangement compared to the blink-and-you’ll-miss-them fretboard exploits of Lloyd and her Kiesel.

Having said that, it’s a gulf Lloyd bridges with unsurprising ease, with the cover staying relatively faithful to the original material by utilizing a noticeable Knopfler-esque clean tone. 

Despite lasting up to and including the first solo of the cover, that Straits sound is then swapped out for something more in line with Lloyd’s tonal wheelhouse (some searing high gain, naturally), which is used to dish out an assortment of familiar melodies and an amped up take on the track’s dizzying outro solo.

Turning Sultans of Swing into Sultans of Shred is a pretty tall order, but then again no one is more qualified than Lloyd when it comes to drastic musical makeovers, and she once again delivers the goods in spades.

Lloyd never once loses sight of the overall melodic direction of the track, and injects just the right amount of technical flair when she gives herself license to push the boundaries of Knopfler’s original guitar parts.

It is indeed a bold move, but Lloyd recognises that herself: “I decided to mix this one up a bit while still paying tribute to the original, she wrote in the video's description. “The solos are so rocking with distortion. Let me know if you like it or you think I ruined it!”

Jack Sonni, best known for his time as Dire Straits rhythm guitarist on the Brothers In Arms album cycle, has passed away, aged 68.

Sonni was born in Indiana, Pennsylvania in 1954 and showed an early aptitude for music, playing piano and trumpet, before moving on to the guitar. He later relocated to New York in 1977 and studied under the tuition of sometime Steeley Dan man and session legend, Elliot Randall.

Despite being a highly capable guitarist and well-connected, Sonni spent much of the next decade in relative obscurity, playing sessions and club gigs and, eventually, finding a home selling instruments at legendary New York store Rudy’s Music. 

It was there that he would first meet and befriend David and Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, though it was sometime before he was recruited into the band. Indeed, as Sonni related in interviews, he came very close to quitting the industry entirely during that time. 

“Nothing was happening for me,” Sonni once told the podcast Our American Stories. “All of my friends were getting gigs. David Bowie came and took my entire band, except for me. And I was the guy that turned most of them onto him… 

“It just felt like lightning was striking all around me, and not me, and it broke my brain. I collapsed and was ill for like nine months… I had this massive migraine, I wasn’t happy, I was in despair with massive depression.”

Sonni later resolved to return to school and had the opportunity of a full scholarship ahead of him, when – finally – he got the call.

“I got a phone call from Mark [Knopfler],” recalled Sonni, in the same interview. “He said, ‘I had to let the other guitar player [Hal Lindes], go... What are you doing? What would you think about coming down and finishing the album and doing the tour?’ 

“It was like, ‘Are you kidding me… now!?’ It takes you about 30 seconds to go ‘college’ or ‘rock ‘n’ roll dream’.”

Sonni hit the studio with the band to complete the sessions on what would become Brothers in Arms. On its release in 1985, the album went to number one on the Billboard Top 200 and stayed there for nine weeks. It has since sold more than 30 million copies. 

Sonni then served as rhythm guitarist on the band’s supporting world tour, playing some enormous shows in the process – among them 1985’s Live Aid fundraiser, in which he stood out in his distinctive red jacket.

Following a hiatus, Dire Straits reformed in 1988 to play a Nelson Mandela tribute show – an event Sonni was absent from due to the birth of his daughters – and it later became clear to Sonni that he would not be returning to the lineup. 

After Dire Straits, Sonni moved back to the instrument world, working for Seymour Duncan and developing a role in marketing. He was also involved in the development and launch of the Line 6 POD – a product that set the template for modeling amps – supposedly coining the name and distinctive shape. Later in his career, he became VP of Marketing at Guitar Center.

Eventually he chose to leave the industry to focus on his writing, much of which examined the sense of identity tied up in ‘making it’ as a musician and the subsequent emotional fallout of it coming to an end.

The tag of ‘the other guitar player in Dire Straits’ was knowingly self-coined, so there’s a sense of poetry that it was his old foil, Mark Knopfler, who has led the music world’s defining tributes to Sonni.

“A sad farewell to our old friend Jack Sonni, whom I met when he was working at Rudy’s Music Stop on 48th St,” wrote Knopfler. “Jack was a genuine guitar enthusiast who loved to play, jam, and talk guitars and amps all day. 

“He joined us on tour during the Brothers in Arms era and took to life on the road with the band like a fish to water. Jack made friends wherever he went and will be missed by his many pals worldwide. Our thoughts are with his family at this time.”

Dire Straits’ iconic 1985 MTV-conquering anthem is the British rock outfit’s biggest single and one of guitarist Mark Knopfler’s defining riffs – all of which makes learning how to play Money for Nothing on guitar a rite of passage for aspiring rock players.

The song saw guitarist Mark Knopfler recording with a 1958 Les Paul instead of the Fender Stratocaster that had been so integral to his earlier work. Studio trickery and specialist recording techniques are a big part of the tone here – and Knopfler never fully recreated the sound in live shows, using at times the aforementioned Les Paul, his signature Pensa Suhr MK-1 and even a Steinberger GL2.

As long as you have a humbucker-equipped guitar, an overdrive pedal and EQ knobs on your amp you should get a ballpark tone. A wah pedal set to a fixed position may also help.

Famed as a fingerstylist, Knopfler’s technique in Money for Nothing relies heavily on the first and second fingers, with occasional use of the thumb. In fact, he often rests his third and fourth fingers against the guitar body for stability. It’s not exactly a ‘perfect’ technique, but copying Mark’s method might just get you closer to the feel of the recording.

• Appears at: 1:36-2:04
• Tempo: 134bpm
• Key: G minor
• Main techniques: Harmonics / fingerpicking

Get the tone

Mark Knopfler recorded Money For Nothing using his 1958 Gibson Les Paul with a Laney amp generating the basic tone. Dual-mic’ing, double-tracking and the goal of achieving a ZZ Top-like sound combined to create the unusual drive tone.

In early performances, Mark tried to recreate the sound with his Les Paul set to the bridge-position humbucker using his amps and little else for tone shaping. Later on, he started using the neck humbucker, adding a rackmount EQ/filter effect to alter the tone (best recreated with a wah pedal set to a fixed position).

Known for his superb guitar playing, unique sound and deep ‘rough cut’ vocal tones, Mark Knopfler is nothing short of a modern musical genius. One of the truly all-time great guitar players, he is much more even than that, being a singer, songwriter, film soundtrack composer, and producer.

His playing style and songs mix influences from many musical genres such as folk, country, rock and jazz, with his signature fingerstyle technique encompassing acoustic and electric guitar in both lead and rhythm approaches. He
is always supremely tasteful, instantly recognisable, yet almost inimitable. 

Born in Scotland, and growing up in the north-east of England, Knopfler started his musical journey with the guitar listening to heroes like Hank Marvin, Chet Atkins, Django Reinhardt and James Burton. After discovering early blues artists and learning their various playing styles, he began to perform in folk and blues clubs, eventually moving to London in the early 1970s.

Throughout these periods, Knopfler would have been honing and developing his songwriting and playing skills, because in 1978 his band, Dire Straits, released their eponymously titled first album.

The band was phenomenally successful throughout its tenure (1977-1988, then 1990-1995), releasing several studio albums with massive hits including Sultans Of Swing, featuring one of the most classic clean guitar solos ever played, Romeo And Juliet showcasing his tasteful fingerstyle open G tuned Dobro playing, and 1985’s Money For Nothing, which has arguably one of the most iconic guitar riffs ever committed to tape.

During Dire Straits’ existence, Knopfler not only toured extensively, but also wrote soundtracks for various movies including Local Hero, Cal, and Princess Bride.

A highly successful solo career has followed, with many great studio albums, from 1996’s Golden Heart through to 2018’s Down The Road Wherever, and he has collaborated with many notable artists including country legends Emmylou Harris on their 2006 album All The Road Running, and Chet Atkins on their 1990 release Neck And Neck. 

His solo albums have also featured performances from other legendary artists like James Taylor’s vocal on the highly moving folk song, Sailing To Philadelphia, and actor-singer Jimmy Nail providing backing vocals on Knopfler’s folk-rock ballad, Wye Aye Man, used in series three of the classic British comedy drama TV show Auf Wiedersehen Pet.  

Mark Knopfler’s music isn’t all about the guitar playing; his playing has flashy elements but is always tasteful and distinctive. Apart from his natural light touch, great feel and lovely vibrato, the thing that makes his playing so distinctive is his individual fingerstyle approach which must have developed naturally to him, yet is so difficult to copy or imitate. 

He is a truly wonderful musician and songwriter, and while the guitar playing is always great, it’s only a part of the broader vehicle of the song. 

In this lesson, we’re going to be looking at Mark Knopfler’s playing styles within the framework of five individual mini pieces inspired by some of the songs and guitar work that can be heard on various recordings.  

They encompass five different aspects of his playing that we feel represent a good cross-section of his approaches. 

The first is his rock riffing style; second, his clean electric guitar chord approach; third, his clean lead playing; fourth, ‘atmospheric and emotive’ lead playing; and finally, his acoustic picking.

All the pieces should be played fingerstyle, using the thumb, first and second fingers. If you’re used to playing fingerstyle already, this should hopefully come quite naturally, but bear in mind that as the pieces incorporate lead and rhythm approaches, the heel of the picking hand should be placed on the bridge and/or lower strings for support and for the muting of unwanted strings; think of it as how your hand position would be if you were playing with a pick, but using your fingers instead.

Although the fingerstyle approach is intrinsic to Mark Knopfler’s style, you can try the examples other ways if you wish (certainly they would work fine using pick and fingers, or thumbpick and fingers), and simply use the picking-hand fingering suggestions as a guide.

Get the tone

Amp settings: Gain 3, Bass 3, Middle 5, Treble 5, Reverb 3

Knopfler is best known for playing Strat-style guitars although in truth he has used many different guitar and guitar amp combinations. A good single-coil clean tone and not overly saturated humbucker derived overdrive or distortion sound will cover most Knopfler-esque needs, with some reverb and maybe a touch of low level delay for ambience.

Piece 1. Rock Riffing 

This piece uses a thick overdriven tone with a Gibson Les Paul on the bridge pickup into a ‘half cocked’ wah-wah pedal providing that distinctive ‘nasal’ quality. It’s in the key of A and is in a kind of 12-bar blues style. Following the fingering directions is vital here. 

The occasional muted strings that appear in bars 2 & 9 are achieved by touching the underside of the string with the first finger of the picking hand while plucking with the thumb. This creates a percussive sounding ‘click’ or ‘thud’ which is actually a country guitar technique called ‘chicken picking’. This funky edge to the sound helps make the riff groove.

Piece 2. Clean Chord Riffing 

This piece in D, involves clean power chords and triads, as heard in So Far Away and Sultans Of Swing. I used a Stratocaster in the bridge/middle pickup position with a clean tone. 

[Bars 1-4] This is a clean powerchord intro. I played these palm muted using the back of my picking-hand’s first fingernail, as if I were holding a pick. 

[Bars 5-12] These triads are picked with thumb, first and second fingers. The A and G triads in bars 6-9 and 10 -11 should be held down, with the fretting-hand’s fourth finger executing the second-string pull-off. 

[Bars 13 -16] The dead note on beat 2 of bar 13 heralds the slide into the triad on beat 3. The triads are played with thumb, first and second fingers. The A triad in bar 14 is held down, with the fretting-hand fourth finger pulling-off from the sus4 (D note) to the Major 3rd (C# note) on the first string. Follow the picking-hand guide for the G Major triad in bar 15, as this will help you to play it convincingly. 

Piece 3. Clean Lead Playing

This piece is in the key of C# Minor and has key elements of Knopfler’s approach, such as country style bends and rapid arpeggios. The main difficulty for pick-only players is that it’s all played in Knopfler’s trademark fingers-only style. 

However, this could be played with a pick, but it would just have a different sound or feel.The tonal approach is mainly C# Minor Pentatonic (C#-E-F#-G#-B) with occasional notes borrowed from C# Aeolian (C#-D#-E-F#-G#-A-B).

[Bars 1-2] The cross-string A Major arpeggio (A-C#-E) at the end of bar 1 into bar 2 should be played with the picking-hand’s thumb, first and second fingers. Use this approach for any cross-string phrase like this.

[Bars 4-5] Hold the bend (make sure it’s to pitch) and let it ring through as your fretting-hand fourth finger frets the high B note (7th fret, first string).

[Bar 6] This is a tricky double bend where the third-string, 9th-fret E note is bent up a tone, while the second-string 9th fret G# note is simultaneously bent up a semitone (I usually fret the third string with my third finger and second string with my fourth). The double bend is executed with the fretting hand, but with only the third string being struck. 

Letting that string ring, the pre-bent second string is then struck, followed by the fretting fingers letting both of those strings down to their original 9th-fret pitches. An E Major scale (C# Aeolian mode) 3rds line follows, resolving on the root and 3rd of a B Major chord (B and D# notes).

[Bar 10] This relatively fast paced C# Minor Pentatonic line is tricky due to the fingerstyle approach. Use thumb, first and second fingers of the picking hand at the very start of the phrase, but then alternate between thumb on the lower string and first finger on the upper string as you make your way through the lick.

[Bars 13-14] These 32nd-note arpeggios are best played with the thumb of the picking hand playing the first and second strings and the first finger playing the first string (see the tab). The C#m arpeggio (C#-E-G#) played over the Amaj7 chord in bar 13 implies an Amaj7 tonality, and the B Major arpeggio (B-D#-F#) played over the G#m chord in bar 14 implies a G#m7 tonality.

Piece 4. Atmospheric soloing

This piece is in B Minor and demonstrates Knopfler’s emotive soloing, as heard on tracks like Brothers In Arms and various live performances. Phrasing and feel are what it’s all about here. I used an overdriven Les Paul with both pickups on. 

[Pickup bar] The phrase leading into the tune again uses the thumb, first, and second finger approach with the picking hand to cross the strings.

[Bar 3] Although not a fast lick, the Bm descending arpeggio (B-D-F#) on beat 2 of bar 3 should be played with second, first and thumb of the picking hand.

[Bar 7] Again, tricky picking-hand stuff on this B Minor Pentatonic lick. As a suggestion, try using thumb on the second string and first finger on the first string on the first four 16th notes on beat 2. 

On beats 2 and 3, use thumb on the third string, and first and second fingers on ssecond and first strings respectively, but drop the thumb onto the fourth string on the third 16th note of beat 4, with the first finger playing the last 16th note of that bar.

[Bar 11] This lick incorporates country style ‘6th’ shapes, so make sure you hold down each pair of notes on the third and first string as little two-finger chord shapes rather than fretting each note separately.

Piece 5. Acoustic Picking

This piece is in A Minor and represents Knopfler’s alternating bass fingerstyle approach, similar to one of his influences, the great Chet Atkins. 

All of the picking hand directions are in the music, but suffice to say that this style is not easy if you’ve never played fingerstyle before, and I advise you to supplement this study piece by investigating the alternating bass style (‘Travis picking’ or ‘clawhammer’). 

The concept is that you maintain a consistent bass pattern on each beat of the bar with the picking hand thumb on the lower strings, while using your fingers of that hand to pick the upper strings. 

This usually involves holding down chord shapes with your fretting hand and often necessitates using free fingers to fret other notes within a chord shape to help make the melody. This can be tricky rhythmically, as the notes can sometimes be on or in between bass notes. 

An added complication here is that in bars 7 and 15 the Am chord is strummed down and up once with the first and second fingers which is tricky to insert and then revert back to the fingerpicking pattern. 

Take your time with this one and ensure you fully understand the concept of the technique and can play that style rather than just trying to learn the piece parrot fashion. A good practice tip to help learn this style is to take the G chord in bar 13 and just repeat that until the concept of the alternating bass feels natural. 

Dire Straits were formed in 1977 by brothers Mark and David Knopfler, with both brothers playing guitar and Mark also singing lead vocals. They were joined in the early years by bass player John Illsley and drummer Pick Withers, and it is this line-up that recorded its debut album in 1978. 

The band’s sound was markedly different to their contemporaries and shared more in common with generic pub rock than it did with punk, disco or rock of the late 1970s. 

Following a gig at London’s Rock Garden in 1977 the band were turned down in their initial attempts to sign a record deal, but after the demo version of Sultans Of Swing gained some radio play, they were immediately signed by Vertigo Records. 

The debut album led to a huge amount of success including a top 10 UK and US single with Sultans Of Swing, the album also going into the top 10 in every country in Europe; a sold-out tour and Mark Knopfler and Pick Withers being chosen by Bob Dylan to play on his next album - not too bad a success rate for an album that only cost the band a paltry £12,500 to record.

More and more success followed, culminating in one of the standout performances at Live Aid in 1985 and the mega success of the classic album Brothers In Arms. Mark Knopfler has gone on to achieve a great deal of success as a solo artist, as part of a duo with Chet Atkins, working with artists such as James Taylor, and as a producer, including producing an album for Tina Turner.

Knopfler’s guitar phrasing and tone are unique and beautifully musical. He is truly one of the few guitarists who can say more with one note than most can say with 100. His technique is equally unique, and he plays entirely with his fingers, without a pick. This has led to some of the most instantly recognisable riffs, fills and solos in the history of rock music. 

Knopfler was initially influenced by artists such as Elvis Presley, James Burton and BB King and his playing has always featured a blend of rock and roll, country and blues, as well as classic rock influences. An additional foray into country in the form of a collaboration with Emmylou Harris also led to success for the Dire Straits front man. 

Our track is in the key of A Minor A-B-C-D-E-F-G, but a D Major chord is implied by the lead guitar line. This makes the melody more in tune with A Dorian A-B-C-D-E-F#-G. You will also notice an E Major chord at the end of the progression, which implies E Phrygian Dominant - E-F-G#-A-B-C-D. 

Play with a relaxed feel and use fingers only if possible, as this will sound most authentic to Mark’s sound and style. 

Amp settings: Gain 4, Bass 5, Middle 5, Treble 6, Reverb 4

Knopfler mainly plays Fender Strats and Gibson Les Pauls, plus a Pensa Suhr custom built by John Suhr so that the HSS configuration and mahogany body could be used for Strat and Les Paul tones. 

He’s used Fender, Marshall and Soldano guitar amps. For our piece, aim for a very clean single-coil sound, with some compression, if you have it, and reverb.

Example 1. Rhythm

Backing track

The track should be played entirely with fingers and thumb. When playing the rhythm parts, use natural dynamics of loud and quieter chords and notes as you see fit. Playing fingerstyle is a great way to approach working controlled dynamics into your guitar style. 

Example 2. Solo

Again, like the rhythm parts all the lead should be played fingerstyle. In general, the low notes should be played with the thumb and the rest of the notes in the part chords and melody should be played with first, second and third fingers.

120 million albums on this planet bear the bass parts of John Illsley, who recently released his memoir, My Life In Dire Straits. 

The autobiography traces his journey from the earliest days through the ‘80s, when the Straits were an unstoppable, ubiquitous force – and beyond them, too. From the outset of the project, he tells us, he wanted to ensure his memories were contexted accurately.

“This is not about me scoring points,” says the bassist. “It is a celebration of the time we had and how we survived it. We stayed intact, and stayed friends – and a lot of people don’t. I decided right from the word go that I didn’t want people coming at me saying, ‘No, I didn’t say that – how dare you!’”

He adds: “I know some people will find glaring problems with my book, because their version of events is different from mine. This is my version of events. A lot of people did get hurt on the way, for various reasons, and you don’t want to get them to revisit that. I don’t think it’s fair.”

Aside from My Life and its associated audiobook, fans wanting a little more information can always nip down to the East End Arms, a pub and hotel that Illsley bought in 1990 in order to secure it for the local community. Situated in the New Forest National Park, the venue is renowned for its good food and great atmosphere.

“It’s basically a local boozer where you can get a good meal,” he says. “There’s also a public bar where the locals go in, and it’s like a mini community center, I think. It’s nice when people tell me they had to come to the pub [because of John’s musical background], and people are a bit more respectful now than they probably used to be.”

You won’t see Illsley changing barrels or pulling pints, though. “I don’t do that,” he confirms. “I just take care of the feel of the place, like I take care of the feel of the music.”

That feel is crucial to the work he’s produced over the years. Although Illsley has bass chops to spare, he’s never been one to dominate a song with twiddly flashiness. “Like John McVie, I like to leave as much space as possible, because the essence of bass – as far as I’m concerned – is to make the rhythm section, the engine room, as tight as possible, particularly in Dire Straits.”

He continues: “That was my approach from the word go, to leave room for keyboards or guitars. I could have put in a whole load of other notes, but in a sense, leaving air around the bass had something quite significant to do with the Straits sound – certainly on the first two albums.”

That pair of late-‘70s releases – 1978’s self-titled debut and ’79’s Communique – put the group front and center of the music scene. They were a band in the purest sense, too, with everyone pitching in to get the bandleader Mark Knopfler’s songs to sound the best they could.

The pinnacle of the Straits career was the remarkable Brothers In Arms, released in 1985 and soaring to number one in multiple territories. That LP alone has sold 30 million units – another unfathomable number. Dire Straits certainly put the hard work in to make that record shine, recalls Illsley, of the Caribbean-tracked release.

“There was a lot of preparation done before we actually went to the studio. We explored lots of different ideas, so that when we got to Montserrat there wasn’t a lot of messing around. We knew pretty much how we were going to put it down.”

As he explains, “Our band was really about feel, pretty much from the word go. The thing that I enjoyed, probably more than anything else, was trying to get that feel right. You know, sometimes you hit a string a bit harder than you would normally, or you hold back on it, or let it ring longer or shorter. You have to feel your way into the song.”

There is a purity to approaching music in such a way, and for Illsley it was key in him picking up the bass guitar in the first place. “I started on bass in 1964 or ’65 and I thought, ‘Yeah, I feel comfortable in this space’. The space was the bass and I thought, ‘This is me’. I felt at home pretty much straight away, and then it was, ‘Okay, what can I do with this music?’”

As well as the aforementioned McVie, particularly on the early records, Illsley nods to a couple of the bassists that he admired at the time. 

“I thought Bill Wyman was perfect with the Stones, and Paul McCartney is always recognized as a fantastic songwriter. Some of his basslines are extraordinary. As for Jaco Pastorius, just watching him on one occasion was mind-boggling. It was at the Rainbow Theatre in London. 

“He did a half-hour solo just on his own and I thought, ‘Well, I don’t know what’s going on here. I’ve no clue. But whatever you’re doing is just off the scale, off the planet’... I wouldn’t dream of playing like that because that’s not me. I am fascinated by how different people approach the bass.”

Like many people in their earliest musical endeavors, Illsley was in a covers band. “We wanted to be the Animals, so we did Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood and lots of Chuck Berry stuff,” he recalls. “I was just copying what was going on around in those days. Rock ’n’ roll and blues is my area – I’m very much in the tradition of songwriters, and I have to admit most jazz doesn’t do it for me.”

Illsley has a refreshing attitude towards bass equipment; he has never had an endorsement, he says. “I did get approached by a couple of people over the years but I said, ‘Thank you. but no.’ I could endorse new Fender basses, which are absolutely fine and I’d use one live if I didn’t have a budget.

“On occasions we’ve had a truck break down so we used new gear, but if I’m standing there with a ’61 Jazz... you can’t endorse old gear like that. I’ve obviously collected a few guitars over the years, because you just do without trying very hard. I look after them and keep them, but with amplifiers I don’t need much these days. They just clutter up the studio.”

Back in the Brothers In Arms days, Dire Straits were running a monstrous rig, with a bunch of solid-state Ampeg SVTs, although by the time 1991’s On Every Street came around, Trace Elliot had constructed a bespoke backline for Illsley. 

“Pretty much everything was hidden,” he says. “It was clean, with graphic equalizers and goodness knows what going on. I gave all that to some school a few years ago. I thought, somebody else should be using this – I don’t need it any longer.’” 

The only piece of bass gear he’s ever missed is a black Wal which he thinks he ‘might have lent to somebody.’ He still has a red fretless version to hand, but these days, his weapon of choice is a vintage Jazz.

Post-Street, Dire Straits was coming toward a natural end: years of touring take their toll.

“Everybody thinks it’s just a whole load of fun,” he says. “Look, there’s an awful lot of fun elements to being in a band, no doubt about it. But if you can imagine, there was a moment on the On Every Street tour when we did 30 days without a break, without a day off. I turned to somebody in the dressing room and said, ‘Does anybody have any idea where we are?’ and they said, ‘Just check the itinerary’..

“You get into this mode of activity with the music, the travel and the venues and you think, ‘Is this Germany or Austria now? Or Switzerland?’ It sounds ridiculous, but you’re in this sort of bubble that travels around, isolated from reality.”

After being in the eye of the hurricane for nearly 15 years, the band – individually and collectively – wanted to explore different avenues. 

“Mark Knopfler took a lot of energy from the outside world, being the writer and all the rest of it, so he got a massive amount of attention – and after a while I guess he just didn’t want to handle the machine any more. 

“We were playing to ridiculous-sized audiences, with all that equipment, and in order to keep it rolling it became like an army on maneuvers. I’m quite a calm person most of the time, so hopefully I kept everybody from going off and misbehaving too much.”

Misbehavior, certainly in the ’80s rock sense, often meant musicians stuffing their careers up their noses. Not so for Dire Straits, and certainly not so for Illsley, who was more enamored of another Colombian export. 

“You might as well have a couple of pots of coffee and save 20 quid or whatever,” he chuckles. “To be honest, I’d rather open a nice bottle of wine and have something nice to eat after the show. When you finish work, it’s 11pm, and it takes you two or three hours to wind down.

“If you wind yourself up again with narcotics, you get into a terrible cycle of self-destruction as far as I can see. It’s difficult for some people, because sometimes they think, ‘I’m so tired, I need some help to get on stage’, but the fact of the matter is that as soon as you walk on that stage you get an incredible lift from everybody that’s there.”

Next up for Illsley is VIII, his eighth solo album. Live work is also on the table, though it’s less all-consuming these days, and comes with some very modern issues. 

“We did a festival in Germany which had been kicked down the road three times because of COVID,” he says. “The only way we could do it with the Brexit regulations was literally get on the plane with a guitar each, fly to the gig and fly back again.”

As ever, he has strident thoughts about the role of bass. “It’s a bit like George Harrison’s guitar in the Beatles,” he explains. “Almost every lead guitarist says George was the one who stands apart, because you always remember his lead part. Occasionally, people remember bass parts – but it’s more about the theme of the music and the sound of the music. Can you feel the bass?”

“Right now I’m just doing things that I enjoy doing. If something comes into my world that speaks to me, I’ll do it. Like a one-off gig in space!”

Another mind-bogglingly big idea: you can bet that if the numbers made sense, he’d be on the first rocket up there. We’d put 120 million on it if we were you. 

• My Life In Dire Straits and VIII are out now via Penguin and 100% Records respectively.

Feel free to watch this entire blast from the past. However, if you skip directly to 3:48 in the top video, you'll witness an inspired 1988 performance of J.J. Cale's "Cocaine" by Eric Clapton—with an assortment of special guests, including Elton John and Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler—at Japan's Tokyo Dome.

This was during the period when Clapton had turned "Cocaine" into a production, with a long band intro, background singers, a funky bass line, a lengthy keyboard solo, various stops and starts and the addition of the lyric, "ooh, that dirty cocaine."

Luckily, guitar is still at the forefront of the performace. Clapton's solo starts at 5:12.

Unfortunately, Knopfler doesn't solo in this particular version of "Cocaine."

Sorry for yet another isolated guitar track, but we couldn't let this one go by. You'll agree when you start listening to it.

It's Mark Knopfler's isolated Fender Strat from Dire Straits' 1978 masterpiece, "Sultans of Swing."

“ ‘Sultans of Swing’ was originally written on a National Steel guitar in an open tuning, though I never performed it that way,” Knopfler told Guitar World a long, long time ago.

“I thought it was dull, but as soon as I bought my first Strat in 1977, the whole thing changed, though the lyrics remained the same. It just came alive as soon as I played it on that ’61 Strat—which remained my main guitar for many years and was basically the only thing I played on the first album—and the new chord changes just presented themselves and fell into place.

"It’s really a good example of how the music you make is shaped by what you play it on, and is a lesson for young players. If you feel that you’re not getting enough out of a song, change the instrument—go from an acoustic to an electric or vice versa, or try an open tuning. Do something to shake it up.

"As for the actual solo, it was just more or less what I played every night. It’s just a Fender Twin and the Strat, with its three-way selector switch jammed into a middle position. That gives the song its sound, and I think there were quite a few five-way switches installed as a result of that song.”

Mark Knopfler is currently out on tour in support of his recent solo album, Down the Road Wherever, and his keyboard player and co-producer Guy Fletcher recently revealed that the Dire Straits legend has turned to Kemper profiling amps for his onstage sound.

Fletcher wrote in a post on his official website:

“Many people have commented or asked about what we are using for amplifiers for the guitars since the stage is devoid of such things, largely to accommodate the huge band. Some have guessed correctly, we are using Kemper profiling amps.”

He continued, “Mark’s long-serving guitar tech, Glenn Saggers along with Mark has devoted much of his time in the past six months to recreating Mark’s unique sounds [and] has done an amazing job. This switch from ‘real’ amps to digital devices is not for the faint-hearted and it wasn’t without its doubters. Now we are up and running and more than two weeks into the tour, we are all on board with them. They certainly allow for incredible separation in both in-ear monitors and front of house system. The sounds are amazingly responsive and malleable.”

It’s a big leap for a man who has long had one of the most distinctive guitar tones in rock.

If you’re interested in checking out how closely the Kemper is able to mimic those sounds, catch Knopfler at one of his upcoming dates, which can be viewed here.

In the video above, Mark Knopfler shares some insight into his flatpicking and fingerstyle techniques.

Knopfler takes the time to go through his motions step by step and make suggestions for players who might want to follow in his footsteps (or finger-plucks?).

He patiently shares a few gems of wisdom and, of course, plays for a bit, too.

Knopfler is perhaps best known as the lead guitarist, vocalist and songwriter for Dire Straits, the band that brought you "Sultans of Swing,” “Money for Nothing” and “Walk of Life.”

Since Dire Straits disbanded in 1995, Knopfler has recorded and produced eight solo albums and, as with his previous band, produced many hit songs. He has composed and produced scores for eight films, including Local Hero (1983), Cal (1984), The Princess Bride (1987) and Wag the Dog (1997).

See what he’s up to now at markknopfler.com.

Great guitarists often make their mark by taking what came before them and making it their own. They put a stamp on the music they play. Mark Knopfler is unquestionably one such guitarist.

His playing style, characterized chiefly by his unique fingerpicking, has made him a true guitar hero. His work as part of Dire Straits, on “Sultans of Swing,” “Money for Nothing” and “Romeo and Juliet” especially, showcase his signature technique.

Knopfler is known for his quick, rhythmic jabs and fills, but he’s also quite dynamic. “Money for Nothing” features a roaring, distorted riff, while the guitarist employs a softer touch, using a resonator guitar, on “Romeo and Juliet.”

Even though it often looks and sounds simple, imitating Knopfler’s style is easier said than done. Luckily for you, Guitar Tricks has an entire lesson on how to play in the style of Mark Knopfler. Be sure to watch the video above to learn all about it.

Billy is the Community Specialist for Guitartricks.com. GuitarTricks.com as over 11,000 lessons covering everything a beginner guitar needs to know to get started, as well as more complicated techniques like tapping, sweeping, scales, and more. GuitarTricks.com also features over 1,000 officially licensed songs from both classic and modern artists like The Beatles, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Rihanna, Ed Sheeran and more.

Mark Knopfler has shared a new song, "Back On the Dance Floor," from his forthcoming album, Down the Road Wherever. The effort, his ninth studio album, is due out November 16 on Knopfler’s own British Grove Records, via Blue Note.

Knopfler has also announced a North American tour in support of the album. The 28-date outing kicks off in Mashantucket, Connecticut, on August 16 and finishes in Los Angeles on September 22.

For the shows, Knopfler will perform with a 10-piece band that features keyboardist Guy Fletcher, guitarist Richard Bennett, pianist Jim Cox, whistle and flute player Mike McGoldrick, fiddle and cittern player John McCusker, bassist Glenn Worf, percussionist Danny Cummings, drummer Ian Thomas, saxophonist Graeme Blevins and trumpeter Tom Walsh.

"My songs are made to be performed live," Knopfler said in a statement. "I love the whole process of writing them alone and then recording them with the band, but ultimately the best part is playing them to an audience live. I enjoy the whole circus, travelling from town to town and interacting with this group of players is a total pleasure. I’m really looking forward to it."

A full list of tour dates is below. Tickets are available here.

Mark Knopfler 2019 North American tour:

August 16 Mashantucket, CT Foxwoods Resort Casino

August 17 Philadelphia, PA Metropolitan Opera House

August 18 Vienna, VA Filene Center at Wolf Trap

August 20 New York, NY Beacon Theatre

August 21 New York, NY Beacon Theatre

August 23 Boston, MA Blue Hills Bank Pavilion

August 24 Montreal, QC Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier

August 25 Toronto, ON Sony Centre for the Performing Arts

August 27 Indianapolis, IN Old National Centre

August 28 Kansas City, MO Arvest Bank Theatre at The Midland

August 30 Minneapolis, MN Orpheum Theatre

August 31 Milwaukee, WI The Riverside Theater

September 1 Chicago, IL The Chicago Theatre

September 3 Nashville, TN Ryman Auditorium

September 4 Atlanta, GA State Bank Amp. at Chastain Park

September 6 Sugar Land, TX Smart Financial Centre at Sugar Land

September 7 Austin, TX ACL Live at The Moody Theater

September 8 Grand Prairie, TX The Theatre at Grand Prairie

September 10 Denver, CO Venue TBD*

September 13 Portland, OR Keller Auditorium

September 14 Woodinville, WA Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery

September 15 Woodinville, WA Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery

September 16 Vancouver, BC Orpheum

September 18 Berkeley, CA The Greek Theatre

September 20 Santa Barbara, CA Santa Barbara Bowl

September 21 Phoenix, AZ Comerica Theatre

September 22 Los Angeles, CA Greek Theatre

Mark Knopfler has announced a North American tour in support of his upcoming album, Down the Road Wherever. The 28-date outing kicks off in Mashantucket, Connecticut, on August 16 and finishes in Los Angeles on September 22.

For the shows, Knopfler will perform with a 10-piece band that features keyboardist Guy Fletcher, guitarist Richard Bennett, pianist Jim Cox, whistle and flute player Mike McGoldrick, fiddle and cittern player John McCusker, bassist Glenn Worf, percussionist Danny Cummings, drummer Ian Thomas, saxophonist Graeme Blevins and trumpeter Tom Walsh.

"My songs are made to be performed live," Knopfler said in a statement. "I love the whole process of writing them alone and then recording them with the band, but ultimately the best part is playing them to an audience live. I enjoy the whole circus, travelling from town to town and interacting with this group of players is a total pleasure. I’m really looking forward to it."

A full list of tour dates is below. Tickets will be available for pre-order here beginning October 29.

Mark Knopfler 2019 North American tour:

August 16        Mashantucket, CT       Foxwoods Resort Casino

August 17        Philadelphia, PA          Metropolitan Opera House

August 18        Vienna, VA                    Filene Center at Wolf Trap*

August 20        New York, NY               Beacon Theatre

August 21        New York, NY               Beacon Theatre

August 23        Boston, MA                   Blue Hills Bank Pavilion

August 24        Montreal, QC               Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier

August 25        Toronto, ON                 Sony Centre for the Performing Arts

August 27        Indianapolis, IN           Old National Centre

August 28        Kansas City, MO          Arvest Bank Theatre at The Midland

August 30        Minneapolis, MN        Orpheum Theatre

August 31        Milwaukee, WI            The Riverside Theater

September 1   Chicago, IL                   The Chicago Theatre

September 3   Nashville, TN               Ryman Auditorium

September 4   Atlanta, GA                  State Bank Amp. at Chastain Park

September 6   Sugar Land, TX            Smart Financial Centre at Sugar Land

September 7   Austin, TX                    ACL Live at The Moody Theater

September 8   Grand Prairie, TX        The Theatre at Grand Prairie

September 10 Denver, CO                  Venue TBD*

September 13 Portland, OR               Keller Auditorium

September 14 Woodinville, WA         Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery*

September 15 Woodinville, WA         Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery*

September 16 Vancouver, BC            Orpheum

September 18 Berkeley, CA                The Greek Theatre

September 20 Santa Barbara, CA      Santa Barbara Bowl

September 21 Phoenix, AZ                 Comerica Theatre

September 22 Los Angeles, CA           Greek Theatre

* on sale date tbd

Mark Knopfler has announced the release of Down the Road Wherever, his ninth studio album. The effort is due out November 16 on Knopfler’s own British Grove Records, via Blue Note. You can listen to the first track from the record, “Good On You Son,” here.

Down the Road Wherever features 14 new songs inspired by a wide range of subjects, including Knopfler’s early days in Deptford with Dire Straits, a stray soccer fan lost in a strange town, the compulsion of a musician hitching home through the snow and a man out of time in his local greasy spoon diner.

Knopfler explained, “Down the Road Wherever is a line from [album track] ‘One Song at a Time.’ I remember my pal Chet Atkins once saying that he picked his way out of poverty ‘one song at a time,’ and it just stuck in my mind. You get to an age where you’ve written quite a few songs. But Down The Road Wherever seems to be appropriate for me just because it’s what I’ve always done. I’ve always tried to make a record and also to keep my own geography happening in the songs.’ ”

For the new album Knopfler assembled the same group of top-flight musicians he has worked with for the past few years (plus one or two new faces). He encourages them to put their own stamp on the material without interfering with the essence of the song.

‘I think the business of making a record, from having written a song and then bringing it to musicians, it can be quite a bendy route,’ Knopfler said. ‘It’s not just motorways all the way…and you can end up in the occasional cul-de-sac, then you have to do a 16-point turn to try to get your truck back out on the main road as unobtrusively as you can. That’s part of the fun of it.’

Down the Road Wherever is produced by Knopfler and Guy Fletcher (Dire Straits, Roxy Music) and was recorded at British Grove Studios in London. The band features Knopfler on guitars, Jim Cox and Guy Fletcher on keyboards, Nigel Hitchcock on saxophone, Tom Walsh on trumpet, John McCusker on fiddle, Mike McGoldrick on whistle and flute, Glenn Worf on bass, Ian ‘Ianto’ Thomas on drums and Danny Cummings on percussion. Richard Bennett and Robbie McIntosh also feature on guitar, Trevor Mires on trombone, and Imelda May, Kris Drever, Lance Ellington, Beverley Skeete and Katie Kissoon all add backing vocals. All songs are written by Knopfler apart from "Just a Boy Away From Home" on which he shares writing credits with Rodgers and Hammerstein, using a piece of "You’ll Never Walk Alone" to spin the song’s tale of a lone Liverpool F.C. fan wandering the empty streets of Newcastle after midnight.

Down the Road Wherever will be available via digital download, CD, double vinyl, deluxe CD with three bonus tracks and a lavish box set that will include the album on both vinyl and deluxe CD and an additional 12” vinyl EP with 4 bonus tracks, a 12” print of the artwork and a 12” guitar tablature of "Back on the Dancefloor."

You can pre-order Down the Road Wherever here.

Down the Road Wherever track list:

1. Trapper Man

2. Back on the Dance Floor

3. Nobody’s Child

4. Just a Boy Away From Home

5. When You Leave

6. Good On You Son

7. My Bacon Roll

8. Nobody Does That

9. Drovers’ Road*

10. One Song At A Time

11. Floating Away

12. Slow Learner

13. Heavy Up

14. Rear View Mirror*

15. Every Heart in the Room*

16. Matchstick Man

*Deluxe Edition CD bonus tracks

DSL Dire Straits Legacy, featuring four former members of Dire Straits—Alan Clark (piano/keyboards), Danny Cummings (percussion), Mel Collins (saxophone) and Phil Palmer (guitar/musical director)—will embark on their first U.S. tour this September.

The band is rounded out by drummer Steve Ferrone (Tom Petty) and producer Trevor Horn of the Buggles and Yes (ABC, Tom Jones, John Legend, Cher, more) on bass, as well as Italian musicians Marco Caviglia (vocals/guitar) and Primiano DiBiase (keyboards).

Of the upcoming United States tour, DSL’s Alan Clark and Phil Palmer commented, “The DSL Dire Straits Legacy project was born from our love and respect for the music of Dire Straits, and to bring the music to fans who have been starved of hearing it played live by the musicians who made it, for far too long. Now, after many requests, we're coming to the U.S. Along with all the Dire Straits hits, we’ll also be playing one or two songs from our new album 3 Chord Trick, and a couple of other tunes we’ve been involved with. See you there!" 

Dire Straits was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April, 2018.

DSL Dire Straits Legacy U.S. tour dates:

SEPTEMBER

26       Los Angeles, CA        The Wiltern

28       Riverside, CA             Fox Performing Arts Center

29       St. Charles, MO         Family Arena

OCTOBER

 2        St. Charles, IL            Arcada Theatre

 4        Fort Lauderdale, FL   Parker Playhouse

 5        St. Petersburg, FL     Mahaffey Theater

 6        Westbury, NY             NYCB Theater At Westbury

When the curvaceous Fender Stratocaster marked six decades of innovation and influence in 2014, Guitar World celebrated its legacy via 60 players, songs, solos and historical moments. (You can find all our Strat roundups in the October 2014 issue of GW).

Here's a look at six of the coolest Strat solos—ever!

The Jimi Hendrix Experience: “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” Electric Ladyland (1968)

One of Jimi Hendrix’s most incendiary studio performances, this solo still delivers some of the most aggressive Strat tones ever heard. In the more than four decades since Hendrix recorded it, few solos have come close to its intensity.

Deep Purple: “Highway Star” Machine Head (1972)

Ritchie Blackmore composed this solo like a song unto itself that resembled a J.S. Bach prelude, double-tracking a harmony guitar part before unleashing a fierce flurry of ascending triplets and descending open-string pedal-tone pull-offs at the solo’s climax.

Dire Straits“Sultans of Swing” Dire Straits (1978)

Mark Knopfler wrenches every possible ounce of emotion out of his Strat’s percussive but singing clean tone, performing slinky string bends, snappy plucks and flowing pull-offs that make his deceptively simple melodic lines sound divine.

Pink Floyd: “Comfortably Numb” The Wall (1979)

Here David Gilmour says more with a few well-placed notes and heart-wrenching bends than most players ever express in their entire careers. This tour de force performance made “Comfortably Numb” the true climax of Pink Floyd’s The Wall album.

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble: “Texas Flood” Texas Flood (1983)

While Stevie Ray Vaughan's recording of this song owes debts to Larry Davis, who originally wrote it, and Albert King, whose signature licks Vaughan co-opted as his own, it remains one of the finest showcases of his massive tone, stinging vibrato and unique emotional voice.

Jeff Beck: “Where Were You,” Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop (1989)

On “Where Were You,” Jeff Beck takes the Strat into entirely new territory that transcends the guitar’s preconceived limitations by manipulating the whammy bar, volume controls and harmonics—sometimes all at once. The result sounds like angels crying.

• Explore our pick of the best Fender Stratocasters right now

First introduced in 1979, Steinbergers are recognized around the world as the foremost headless guitar.

The instruments are practically indestructible, impervious to sudden changes in heat and humidity, and seem to stay in tune no matter how fierce the shredder.

It’s for these reasons—and the guitar’s eccentric, minimalist look—that Steinbergers became highly visible in the Eighties and beyond, becoming favorites of Eddie Van Halen, David Bowie, Mark Knopfler, Sting and more.

This year, Steinberger is reintroducing its Spirit Collection, featuring the “headless” design, all-wood construction and high performance pickups. The Spirit Collection is affordable, ergonomic and highly transportable (hello, airline overhead compartment).

In celebration of this exciting relaunch, we’ve rounded up 10 of some of the greatest Steinberger moments ever.

For more on Steinberger guitars, visit steinberger.com.

The Police (Live in 1982)

In 1982, The Police were at the top of the world and the top of their game. It was also around this time that Sting put down his trusted P-Bass in favor of the futuristic, minimalist look of a Steinberger. Here’s an amazing 30-minute clip of the band on tour in support of their 1981 release, Ghost in the Machine.

Van Halen—“Summer Nights” (Live)

No guitarist made as big an impact on players in the Seventies and Eighties than Eddie Van Halen—so it certainly turned heads when EVH began taking the stage with a headless guitar. Here he is performing "Summer Nights" in 1986 with his custom Steinberger.

Talking Heads—“(Nothing But) Flowers”

The offbeat look of a Steinberger was the perfect choice for bassist Tina Weymouth, who anchored pioneering rockers Talking Heads. Here’s the video for “(Nothing But) Flowers,” from their final album, Naked, where Weymouth can be seen sporting her headless bass.

Genesis—“Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” (Live)

While Genesis’ sound moved further away from guitars and closer to drum machines and synthesizers in the Eighties, Mike Rutherford still had some standout playing during this era, oftentimes with a Steinberger in hand. Here’s the band playing “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” to a packed stadium in 1987—both Rutherford and bassist Daryl Stuermer are rocking Steinbergers.

David Gilmour & Kate Bush—”Running Up That Hill" (Live)

It’s tricky finding footage of David Gilmour playing a headless guitar with Pink Floyd—but this clip of the guitarist on stage with Kate Bush might be even cooler. Here, Gilmour joins Bush for ”Running Up That Hill,” offering up some wicked whammy licks on his white Steinberger.

David Bowie—“Valentine’s Day”

While a lot of the videos we’ve compiled were shot way back in the Eighties, many great artists continued to rely on Steinberger guitars through the 2000s and beyond. As seen in his beautiful 2013 video for “Valentine’s Day,” Bowie was one of them.

Ziggy Marley—“Hey World” (Live)

While played by countless rock players over the years, Steinberger guitars became popular in many other genres as well, including reggae. Check out this powerful 1986 performance from Ziggy Marley on Late Night with David Letterman.

Lou Reed—"Romeo Had Juliette" (Live)

Here’s a rare clip of the late Lou Reed from 2009, performing his classic 1989 track, "Romeo had Juliette,” for a New York Public Radio event. His guitar of choice? You guessed it—a Steinberger.

Allan Holdsworth (Live)

While only 1:47 long, this clip gets its point across fast: Allan Holdsworth was a jazz fusion master. Holdsworth was known for his fondness of headless guitars, so it’s especially cool to see him perform with a white Steinberger in this 2009 clip.

Mark Knopfler—“Money for Nothing” (Live)

“Nice and gently now, lads!” Mark Knopfler says cheekily before diving into the fingerpicked intro of Dire Straits’ mega hit, “Money for Nothing.” This 1986 clip shows Knopfler sporting his black Steinberger—and who’s that singing guest vocals? Fellow headless guitar fan, Sting.

A week after announcing the results of the fan vote for its 2018 inductions, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has announced its class of 2018. Bon Jovi—who easily won the fan vote—Moody Blues, Dire Straits, The Cars and Nina Simone will all be enshrined at the ceremony at Cleveland's Public Hall on April 14, 2018.

Notable omissions included Radiohead—who were on the ballot for the first time this year—and Judas Priest, who had finished fifth in the fan voting. Sister Rosetta Tharpe—who was also up for induction—will be given an Early Influence award.

"I wasn't surprised, but I was pleased," Jon Bon Jovi told The New York Times of his band's induction.

An edited version of the ceremony will air at a later date on HBO and on radio on SiriusXM.

For more information on the ceremony, stop by rockhall.com.

The polls have closed for the fan vote for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2018, and Bon Jovi have emerged as the clear winners.

With 1.16 million votes, the New Jersey band trounced the competition, coming in close to 200,000 votes ahead of runner-ups Moody Blues, and over half a million votes ahead of third-place finishers Dire Straits.

The other two "winners" of the fan vote (the Hall of Fame gives an extra vote to the top five finishers in the fan vote) were The Cars and Judas Priest, who edged out sixth place finishers The Zombies by about 9,000 votes.

In other noteworthy finishes, Radiohead and Rage Against the Machine came well short of the top five, finishing 12th and 13th with 176,310 and 167,903 votes respectively.

The winners of the overall vote will be inducted in April 2018 in Cleveland.

You can see the full results over at rockhall.com.

Back in 2015, guitarist Andre Antunes had a viral sensation with a video in which he copied the styles of 10 famous guitarists while soloing to Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky.”

He followed it up with similar takes on Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk” and the music of Michael Jackson.

And now he’s back at it again. In the video below, Andre tackles Dire Straits’ “Sultans of Swing” in the styles of 12 guitarists, including Slash, Brian May, Randy Rhoads, Eddie Van Halen and eight others.

But Andre goes a step further by incorporating solos from those players into the performance, including “Sweet Child O’ Mine” (Slash), “Don’t Stop Me Now” (May), “Crazy Train” (Rhoads) and “Eruption” (Van Halen).

So you get the idea. Now all you have to do is watch. And be sure to check out guitarists number 10 and 11.

For more of Andre’s videos, visit his YouTube channel.

In this clip from Sky Arts’ Guitar Stories series, Mark Knopfler shares the stories of his six favorite six-stringed instruments.

The video, uploaded by Mark Knopfler Russia, is a treat for anyone who loves guitars, and especially for fans of the Dire Straits guitarist. Guitar Stories is hosted by John Illsley, the bassist—and Knopfler’s bandmate—in Dire Straits. Together, Knopfler and Illsley drive the length of England and travel to New York City as they trace the path of Knopfler’s music career and the guitars that shaped it.

The two start off in Newcastle, Knopfler’s childhood hometown. They head to a music store in the city’s Central Arcade, where Knopfler used to shop. There they present the first guitar on the list, which is also Knopfler’s very own first guitar: a 1962 Hofner Super Solid V2, a Strat replica purchased by his father for 50 pounds in 1964 when a Stratocaster proved too expensive.

“In those days, 50 quid was quite a lot of money on the guitar, when you consider the average weekly wage was probably 30 or 20 pounds,” Illsley says. “So it was a couple of week’s wages.”

“Just because it was nowhere near a Strat doesn’t alter the fact that you love it,” Knopfler says of the guitar. ”I remember not wanting to let go of it the day that i got it, so it’s possible that I slept with it.”

From there it’s off to Robin Hood’s Bay on the coast of North Yorkshire, to visit Steve Phillips, the blues guitarist who not only influenced Knopfler’s style but also sold him the 1937 National Style O resonator guitar that appeared on the cover of the Dire Straits album Brothers in Arms.

In this segment of the clip, Knopfler talks about his history with Phillips—the two played together as the Duolian String Pickers—as well as the National and the role that it played in the writing of “Romeo and Juliet,” from Dire Straits’ 1980 album, Making Movies. One of the best part of this segment—and, indeed, of them all—is watching Knopfler reconnect with the guitars as he plays them.

From there they head to London to trace the very start of Knopfler’s career with Dire Straits—and to present the next guitars on the list.

Take a look at the video to see all the guitars—along with a visit to Rudy’s Music in New York City and the Long Island shop of famed luthier John Monteleone—and get the full story.

Simply put, this professionally shot video—which was posted to YouTube about three years ago—shows three guitar masters at work.

It's an incredible—and purely instrumental—performance of Dire Straits' "Sultans of Swing" by Tommy Emmanuel (right), John Jorgenson (standing) and Pedro Javier González. They're backed by Roger Blavia on percussion and Toni Terré on bass.

The clip was directed by Maurizio Ongaro.

As (hopefully) you all know by now, Emmanuel, the Australian acoustic master, has been gracing the pages of Guitar World lately with his "Emmanuel Dexterity" lesson column. You can check out a recent lesson (with full text and video) right here. He released his latest studio album, It's Never Too Late, in 2015.

Jorgenson is best known for his work with Chris Hillman's Desert Rose Band and, of course, the Hellecasters. He has played with everyone from the Byrds to Bob Dylan, Bob Seger, Johnny Cash, the Monkees' Michael Nesmith and Bonnie Raitt.

Pedro Javier González is a Spanish flamenco, jazz and classical guitarist, composer and producer. He has crossed paths with a wide range of artists, from B.B. King to Paco de Lucia—which is worth noting, since this performance captures something of the vibe of Friday Night in San Francisco, a well-known live album by De Lucia, Al Di Meola and John McLaughlin.

“ ‘Sultans of Swing’ was originally written on a National Steel guitar in an open tuning, though I never performed it that way,” Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler told Guitar World a few years ago. “I thought it was dull, but as soon as I bought my first Strat in 1977, the whole thing changed, though the lyrics remained the same. It just came alive as soon as I played it on that ’61 Strat—which remained my main guitar for many years and was basically the only thing I played on the first album—and the new chord changes just presented themselves and fell into place.

"It’s really a good example of how the music you make is shaped by what you play it on, and is a lesson for young players. If you feel that you’re not getting enough out of a song, change the instrument—go from an acoustic to an electric or vice versa, or try an open tuning. Do something to shake it up."

“ ‘Sultans of Swing’ was originally written on a National Steel guitar in an open tuning, though I never performed it that way,” Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler told Guitar World several years ago.

“I thought it was dull, but as soon as I bought my first Strat in 1977, the whole thing changed, though the lyrics remained the same. It just came alive as soon as I played it on that ’61 Strat—which remained my main guitar for many years and was basically the only thing I played on [our] first album—and the new chord changes just presented themselves and fell into place."

In the recently shot video below, Knopfler and longtime Dire Straits bassist John Illsley shed even more light on the roots of "Sultans of Swing," the band's 1978 masterpiece. Best of all, we get to see Knopfler take his rosewood-kneck '61 Strat out of its case and play along—for a few seconds, anyway—with the original demo. He also explains how the discovery of the Strat led him to exploit his finger vibrato, for which he now is so well known, and which is featured so heavily on "Sultans of Swing."

"It’s really a good example of how the music you make is shaped by what you play it on, and is a lesson for young players. If you feel that you’re not getting enough out of a song, change the instrument—go from an acoustic to an electric or vice versa, or try an open tuning. Do something to shake it up. As for the actual solo, it was just more or less what I played every night. It’s just a Fender Twin and the Strat, with its three-way selector switch jammed into a middle position. That gives the song its sound, and I think there were quite a few five-way switches installed as a result of that song.”

At the 2:24 mark in the video, we cut to a recent live performance of the song, in which Knopfler might be playing the very same red Strat (but we're not making any claims to that effect). His guitar solo starts at 3:10; during the solo's winding middle section, he announces, "So, I don't know what any of this is gonna be," indicating that he's making it up as he goes along. Then, at 3:50, it's pure classic "Sultans," and the crowd goes wild.

Enjoy the video below—plus (as a "Mark Knopfler birthday bonus") the isolated guitar track from "Sultans of Swing" (bottom video).

In 2012, Mark Knopfler sat down (with his original 1958 Gibson Les Paul in hand) to discuss the inspiration behind the rock guitar classic, "Money for Nothing."

The track’s percussive fingerstyle-infused riff is arguably one of the most recognizable guitar riffs of the Eighties. It, of course, appeared on Dire Straits' nine-time platinum album, Brothers in Arms, which was released in 1985.

This part-interview/part-demonstration, which you can check out in the clip below, is from Guitar Stories: Mark Knopfler, a 60-minute special made for U.K. TV channel Sky Arts.

The former Dire Straits frontman, who is joined by former bandmate John Illsley, highlights the six guitars that have had the greatest impact on his sound. In the full episode, he travels to Newcastle, London and New York City's West 48th Street to reveal the geographic significance of the chosen instruments, which were made by Gibson, Fender, Hofner and Pensa.

The story behind "Money For Nothing"

Happy New Year to everyone from Forgotten Guitar. In this clip, Mark Knopfler sits downs with his 1958 Gibson Les Paul to demo, and discuss his inspiration behind the Dire Straits classic, "Money For Nothing" with John Illsley.#Guitar #GuitarLegends #MarkKnopfler #GibsonLesPaul #Burst ForgottenGuitar.com

Posted by Forgotten Guitar on Saturday, January 2, 2016

Jonathan Graham is an ACM UK graduate based in London studying under the likes of Guthrie Govan and Pete Friesen. He is the creator of ForgottenGuitar.com, a classic-guitar media website, and is completing his debut album, Protagonist, due for release in 2016. Updates also can be found at Graham's YouTube channel.

Today, GuitarWorld.com presents the exclusive US premiere of Mark Knopfler's "Got To Have Something."

The track is from Privateering, Knopfler's acclaimed double album, which was released last fall outside the US.

Now, thanks to a worldwide deal with Universal Music Group’s Verve Records, Privateering will finally be released in the US September 10. Check out the pre-order information below.

Privateering is Knopfler’s first double album in his 35-year career.

“The older I get, the more I want to write,” he says. “Whether that is just panic at time running out, I’m not sure. I’m enjoying the process more than ever, writing, recording and playing live, I enjoy all of it. I’m almost tripping over songs.”

The 20 tracks on Privateering are consummately crafted folk, blues, country and rock originals.

“I have always thought in terms of the transatlantic nature of music," he says. "My idea of heaven is somewhere where the Mississippi Delta meets the Tyne. What I wanted from the very first album with Dire Straits and songs like 'Sultans of Swing' was to write my own geography into the American music that shaped me, to identify the English, Irish and Scottish landmarks on Chuck Berry’s road.

"I think what I’m doing now is synthesizing those influences and separating them. The band I have is so talented, and so flexible, they give me the kind of palette to go anywhere I want, so I can jump from a hill farm in the north of England and go straight to the streets of New York city or go down into the Delta for a straight-ahead blues.”

The album is available for pre-order at Amazon.com.

For more about Knopfler, visit his official website and Facebook page.

Photos: Fabio Lovino

As a renowned voice teacher, Peter Strobl has recently gained notoriety for his work with Wolfgang Van Halen, taking him from teenage vocalist to professional singer through intensive preparation for road and studio.

However, Strobl’s longstanding career in the music industry spans an interesting and unique array of skills. In addition to teaching, he also is a musician, luthier and producer, and years ago was studio manager at the legendary Shangri La studio in Malibu, California, where Mark Knopfler recorded his 2004 album of the same name.

We recently interviewed Strobl at length about his work in the music industry. Following are some excerpts about his work with Knopfler and his take on the current state of recorded music and vocals.

GUITAR WORLD: How many students are you presently teaching?

I have people who come to me weekly, when they need it, or just when they’re doing a project. I’m pretty shy about taking younger kids. The only ones I’ll work with are ones I think might have a shot at doing something meaningful down the road. The parents can sometimes be so adamant about giving them lessons that they’re going to end up with somebody, and I’d rather they end up with me than with one of these nuts that thinks a pre-teen bellowing “The Sun’ll Come Up Tomorrow” is cute.

In a lot of cases, especially with singing students, kids who are in their early teen years, it’s like working with a clarinet where they haven’t put all the screws in it yet. The instrument isn’t finished. So to approach vocal technique in any meaningful way can be premature. I’ll do a lot of basic music training. I’ll teach them how to do some simple reading, parts singing in classical music, I’ll have them do different parts in madrigals, record them, let them hear how they sound, and take them on a musical journey.

I’ve got some kids who are crossing the gap, getting into high school and doing really well. Sometimes I get kids who are in local theater groups and they might not get the parts they audition for because they’re not showing off as much as the next kid. But two years later they’re singing well and their voices are developing at the right pace. I’ve got a guy that just started with me that’s working on a self-produced record and looking to get the most out of himself. And I’m always working with a producer pal in Holland over the Internet. I’m not teaching so much as coaching English diction and getting into the mechanics of the differences in the language. So there’s all that stuff going on. It’s really a mixed bag.

You also repair instruments.

I do basically guitars and basses. I was playing in a Top 40 band in nightclubs in Southern California when Jaco Pastorius’ first album came out. I wanted to be just like Jaco, so I took my Fender bass, ripped the frets out and went to work that night. Unfortunately, I had to stare down at my hands because I was playing so out of tune. I had to put a new neck on my bass the next day because the band wanted to stone me, and not in a good way. That got me started working with instruments. That, and sending instruments out for repair and they’re not right, or they’re not exactly what you want.

I got into the details and I had some really good help. I get a lot of great tips from a guy in Santa Barbara named Jamie Shane, an older cat who played in Canned Heat, who is a burning blues guitar player. His motto is, “If you know I’ve been there, I didn’t do a good job.” When he does stuff on a guitar, it’s like nothing ever happened, but everything works really well. With vintage instruments it’s really important that you fix whatever needs to be fixed, but you don’t alter anything.

I just finished a 1930 National Dobro, and right now I’ve got a Gibson 56 Super 400 with Alnico pickups that’s similar to the one Elvis played on the comeback concert, and an ES-5, which is a triple-pickup guitar that T-Bone Walker was known for playing. It’s an old blues-dog guitar; it’s just fantastic. I’m just doing maintenance on these. I’ve got an old plectrum guitar with a split neck that will be with me for a while. I’ve got to figure out how to put that one back together.

These are all the same owner, a collector friend of mine who used to own Shangri La studio. I’ve been taking care of these guitars for years. There’s a Gretsch Sierra acoustic. The top is kind of stoved in and the binding is popping off, but I’m going to figure out how to bring that one back to life. I have to improvise with that. It’s not something you read in a book. It’s “Let me stare at this long enough and see if I can get this guy to play another song.”

You were the studio manager at Shangri La. What did that involve?

I was working with an artist named Beej [Blaine John] Chaney, who was the lead singer of a Minneapolis band called The Suburbs. He had come out here to do a solo career. We had taken this little storefront place in North Hollywood and turned it into a 16-track recording studio. I was helping [producer] Jim Nipar put the last screws in the walls to mount the speakers and Beej walks in and says, “How would you guys like to go to Malibu and work?” He acquired Shangri La and saved it from the wrecking ball. The former owner was going to sell it to developers and they were going to put up condos or something.

We went out there and the place was a shambles. There was no equipment, the integrity of the studio room was compromised, the vocal booth was only half built. We went bumper to bumper, tore out everything and completely rebuilt it. We went to the Sound Factory and pretended to be mixing while we measured the speaker sofits and copied the measurements and angles because that’s the vibe that Jim wanted. We gradually brought the place back to life.

We did a couple of benefits up there to draw attention to the place again. That’s when we realized we had to completely redo the electrical service, because you’d listen to music really loud and the lights would dim every time the refrigerator kicked in. I was there from about 1993 or 1994. It took a good year to get the place up and running, get a console, get some tape machines, and then in 2004, Beej asked me to be studio manager. What that meant was that I was the studio manager —and the staff. It was basically a one-horse operation and turned out to be a lot more work than just hanging around with musicians.

Mark Knopfler came out to do the Shangri-La album, and everything you would imagine about Mark is true — the good stuff, at least. The first night, we unpacked his guitars, looked them over and tuned them up. He is such a lover of nice guitars, and it was really cool to hear him talk about each one as we got them ready for the sessions. You would have thought they were all old pals of his, which, when you think about it, I guess they were.

The next day, we started organizing Chuck Ainlay’s recording equipment and integrating it into the control room. Suddenly nothing worked. The fault was that we had wired the room to be a vintage old-school downtown Hollywood room in the days when everything was Pin 3 hot, which is out of phase with everything since the Civil War. So we were plugging in tape machines, outboard gear and mic pre’s, and everything was out of phase. Nothing was working.

That night, I was up with a soldering iron re-soldering two tape machines worth of harnesses, which is two 24-track snakes per, as many of the outboard snakes as I could manage, and going through and retesting all the mic panels in the room. It was a nightmare at the start, but eventually we got it organized and everyone had a great time. I think Mark and the band enjoyed the vibe of the place and recorded a wonderful album.

I understand that he still records on tape.

I can’t say what he does now, but the Shangri La album was sort of a hybrid process, so to speak. You’d have to talk to Chuck to get the complete details. What a lot of guys do is record to tape, but the signal from the tape machine goes right to Pro Tools, so you have the tape saturation, but you’re not scuffing the tape over and over again. In the old days, by the time you got to mixing, every time you roll the tape over the heads you’re losing high end, which is why they invented equalizers.

So with the new technology, which has become pretty damn amazing, you run a microphone output, or guitar, or whatever it is, through the tape machine, record it and take the output of that tape machine to Pro Tools so you have the first pass across the tape head recorded permanently in its pristine quality. In the old days of doing a recording, every time you did an overdub or fast-forward or play or rewind, you’d wear the tape down just a little bit. A lot of times the rough mixes of songs had more sonic punch than the finished mix because there was more information left on the tape. It was an interesting conundrum.

As we speak about technology and correction, some singers may think, Why go to a voice teacher when everything can be fixed with Auto Tune and pitch correction? Does this upset you?

It does when I listen to untalented people do things that sound amazingly similar to actual singing. Every step of the way, new technology comes on to the scene and we don’t really know what to do with it. It hasn’t really sifted down into, “Here’s where that belongs.” It’s different for everyone who uses that stuff. I happen to like using Melodyne to create background vocals when I’m working alone. It saves me the time of having to pull out pencil and paper and writing them. Now I can actually hear what they sound like. I can play them for singers and say, “Sing that,” so that’s a cool use of technology for me.

As an effect, you never know. You might come up with something that has a new sound, but that’s not really my thing. To replace actual singing in tune and on time with pitch correction and that kind of stuff is a bit disrespectful to singers who have put a lot of time and effort into learning how to do those things as a matter of technique. I’ve been in sessions where a really well-known producer spent all day getting a drum sound, spent all day with a famous studio guitarist, kissing his ass and making him happy and making sure that the parts are right and the cappuccino is warm. Then he put the singer in the booth, took one pass and said, “Yeah, honey, that was just great.” I heard myself think out loud, “That was horrible!” But time being money, he was probably thinking, “Yeah, but I got the words. It’s close enough, I can fix it all.” Jesus, what’s going on here? If I were a singer, I’d want to take another crack at it. Wouldn’t you?

You take the time to produce and craft this, only to know that people are listening on earbuds and phones.

It’s got to come back around. Van Halen put out a vinyl edition of one of their tracks — you can’t listen to that unless you have a record player, which has a whole different frequency response than listening to a laser reading a hard drive. Somewhere along the line, someone is going to listen to a needle riding a groove, which has to be played on analog stuff, which many people say draws a different response from human beings.

There are studies about music therapy indicating that there’s a difference between how people respond physically to CDs as opposed to LPs. Who knows how meaningful that is, but there is a difference. Which one you prefer is another question. I don’t believe that all old things are better than all new things. I think you have to take it on a case by case basis. Use what works for you, and learn how to make it do what you want it to do, rather than just float around in a wave of technology, pushing buttons to see what happens.

Read more of Peter Strobl’s interview, including some of the techniques he used while working with Wolfgang Van Halen, right here.

— Alison Richter

Alison Richter interviews artists, producers, engineers and other music industry professionals for print and online publications. Read more of her interviews right here.

Surely, Mark Knopfler and his band must’ve bet on the 1980 Grammys or thrown the Love Over Gold sessions.

Otherwise, how can the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame explain its perennial exclusion of British rockers Dire Straits from its list of nominees? It’s a travesty rivaled only by the Baseball Hall of Fame’s lifetime bans of Pete Rose and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson.

However, while I must admit that those ball players did compromise the integrity of the National Pastime, Dire Straits’ biggest crime was their 1991 comeback album, On Every Street (And even that had one hell of a title track).

The ingredients are all there for Dire Straits to be enshrined in Cleveland: critical praise, tens of millions of records sold, a period of time (1985) when they were legitimate worldwide superstars, two songs (“Money for Nothing” and “Sultans of Swing”) that anyone with an FM receiver recognizes instantly. If that somehow isn’t enough, the fact that guitarist Knopfler turned in heart-wrenching vocal performances over some of the most innovative licks ever recorded, on tracks like “Tunnel of Love” and “Brothers in Arms,” should make Dire Straits a shoe-in.

The only possible explanation I can muster is that Knopfler, the creative driving force behind the band, was too innovative, too nuanced in his work with Dire Straits. And that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.

The Rock Hall exists to immortalize the most influential artists of the past 75 years or so, but that demarcation should, in theory, only serve to differentiate between the Bruce Springsteens and the John Mellencamps of the world. While both of those heartland rockers could easily win a popularity contest, the watered-down Born to Run-lite that the latter churned out shouldn’t guarantee him a spot.

There is no Mellencamp to Knopfler’s Springsteen, if only because it’s almost impossible to so much as approximate his unique style. The melodious guitar flourishes that Knopfler placed over many of his verses and slow-burn solos like the one that explodes out of thin air in "Brothers in Arms" put him in a class of his own. If any of the guitarists in any of the Dire Straits cover bands that have ever existed could have taken the torch from him, they would have. There’s only so much that mortals are capable of, though.

Knopfler himself took cues from the blues, jazz and folk world to create a sound completely his own. Perhaps the nominating committee would’ve rather he followed the lead and wrote generic, middle-of-the-road anthems?

Having released their self-titled debut in 1978, Dire Straits became eligible for inclusion in the Hall in 2003. Since then, ABBA, Madonna and Darlene Love have all been inducted, with Donna Summer potentially joining them in 2012. Whether or not those artists belong in a museum celebrating pop music is another discussion, but when it comes to one with a fretboard incorporated into its logo, you can’t tell me they have nearly as much business being there as Knopfler and his bandmates. How many people have ever felt compelled to sit through an entire Donna Summer album? Who picked up a guitar because “Dancing Queen” spoke to them?

“Down to the Waterline.” “Sultans of Swing.” “Lions.” “News.” “Where Do You Think You’re Going?” “Single-Handed Sailor.” “Tunnel of Love.” “Skateaway.”

I could go on naming Dire Straits’ best contributions to the guitar rock canon, but I wonder how long it will be until the Rock Hall’s nomination committee begins celebrating the band’s entire catalogue.

Until then, I plan on sounding like a broken record.

Alex Rice is a 22-year-old novice guitarist living in Minneapolis. He counts R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler and Weezer's Rivers Cuomo among his favorite axemen and enjoys going to concerts and watching baseball in his spare time.

Bob Dylan and Mark Knopfler will be teaming up for a tour of Europe this fall.

Knopfler and Dylan have a long history of collaboration, first working together in 1979 on Dylan’s Slow Train Coming. Knopfler would also later produce Dylan's Infidels album in 1983.

"I'm much looking forward to going out on the road with Bob in such a special year. Also, it was an honor to be asked to record one of Bob's songs on the forthcoming Amnesty International 50th anniversary album to mark his 70th birthday," said Knopfler on his website

Knopfler is currently working on a new, as-yet-untitled studio album.

Bob Dylan and Mark Knopfler Tour dates:

• Oct 06, 2011 - Dublin, IE The O2
• Oct 08, 2011 - Glasgow, UK Braehead Arena
• Oct 09, 2011 - Glasgow, UK Braehead Arena
• Oct 10, 2011 - Manchester, UK MEN Arena
• Oct 11, 2011 - Nottingham, UK Capital FM Arena
• Oct 13, 2011 - Cardiff, UK Motorpoint Arena
• Oct 14, 2011 - Bournemouth, UK BIC
• Oct 16, 2011 - Lille, FR Zénith
• Oct 17, 2011 - Paris, FR Bercy
• Oct 19, 2011 - Antwerp, BE Sportspaleis
• Oct 20, 2011 - Rotterdam, NL AHOY
• Oct 21, 2011 - Luxembourg, LU Rockhal
• Oct 23, 2011 - Oberhausen, DE König-Pilsener-Arena
• Oct 25, 2011 - Mannheim, DE SAP Arena
• Oct 26, 2011 - Munich, DE Olympiahalle München
• Oct 27, 2011 - Leipzig, DE Arena Leipzig
• Oct 29, 2011 - Berlin, DE O2 World
• Oct 31, 2011 - Hamburg, DE O2 World Hamburg
• Nov 02, 2011 - Herning, DK Jyske Bank Boxing
• Nov 03, 2011 - Malmö, SE Malmö Arena
• Nov 04, 2011 - Stockholm, SE Globe
• Nov 06, 2011 - Hannover, DE TUI Arena
• Nov 07, 2011 - Nuremburg, DE Arena Nürnberger
• Nov 08, 2011 - Innsbruck, AT Olympia Hall
• Nov 09, 2011 - Padova, IT Palasport Arcella
• Nov 11, 2011 - Florence, IT Nelson Mandela Forum
• Nov 12, 2011 - Rome, IT Palalottomattica
• Nov 14, 2011 - Milan, IT Mediolanum Forum
• Nov 15, 2011 - Geneva, CH SEG Geneva Arena
• Nov 16, 2011 - Zurich, CH Hallenstadion

We all know a great lick when we hear one—Jimmy Page’s solo breaks in “Whole Lotta Love” and Mark Knopfler’s blistering triads in “Sultans of Swing,” for example. Moments like these grab your attention and aurally brand your ears forever. Or, sometimes it acts more subliminally: You suddenly find yourself playing a certain lick over and over again, wondering, Where have I heard this before?

Through the years, these licks have evolved into a vocabulary for the guitar. And like great writers who are always able to find the right word to make a point, great guitarists always have that essential lick at their disposal to express, in the moment, what they’re feeling. And whereas the best writers are able to string those words together to form remarkable prose, the best guitarists link their licks to form living, breathing, musical statements.

We called upon our mighty stable of instructional writers to assemble these 101 Amazing Guitar Licks, spanning over eight decades and ranging from rock, metal, and blues to jazz, country and bluegrass. Regardless of what style music you play, it will do your ears and your chops good to go through each of these licks. Learn them, master them, and keep them on file for the next time you’re looking for just the right way to say what’s in your soul.

ROCK

FIGURE 8

Origin: Blazing triads form the moment of truth from Mark Knopfler’s lyrical outro solo in Dire Straits’ “Sultans of Swing.”
Theory: The lick is an adjacent-string, pull-off motif constructed from D minor (D–F–A), Bb (Bb–D–F), and C (C–E–G) triads.
Playing Tip: Fretboard activities are pretty simplistic on this one; it’s the picking direction where you’ll likely hit a snag. Try using a downstroke on every attack except for the last 16th-note in each group, where you should use an upstroke. Or play it like Knopfler—fingerstyle!

Check back tomorrow for Figure 2!