Mark Knopfler
Mark Knopfler found his guitar voice on an instrument nobody would have chosen. One night, while spending time with friends, the only guitar within reach was an old acoustic with a badly warped neck. Someone had strung it with extra-light strings just to make it usable. Even so, he could not play it at all unless he picked the strings with his fingers. Years later he said, "That was where I found my 'voice' on guitar." That makeshift sound would go on to sell in enormous numbers. It also leaves several questions hanging. How did a former newspaper reporter and college lecturer become the songwriter behind one of the biggest bands of its era? Why did he keep turning away from the scale of that success? And what drew him toward film scores, country studios and other people's records when the arenas were already waiting?
Erwin Knopfler left his native Hungary in 1939 to flee the Nazis. He was an architect and a chess player, and his son Mark was born in Glasgow on the 12th of August 1949. Mark's mother, Louisa Mary, née Laidler, was English and worked as a teacher. Mark later described his father as a Marxist agnostic.
When Mark was seven, the family moved to Briarfield Road in Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne, closer to his mother's hometown of Blyth. He had spent two years at Bearsden Primary School in Scotland. In Newcastle he attended Archibald Street School and then Gosforth Grammar School, alongside his younger brother David.
His uncle Kingsley played harmonica and boogie-woogie piano, and that sparked an early curiosity about many kinds of music. Mark pestered his father for a Fiesta Red Fender Stratocaster like the one Hank Marvin played. The price was too steep, so he bought a twin-pickup Höfner Super Solid for £50 instead.
In 1963, at the age of 13, he took a Saturday job at the Newcastle Evening Chronicle, earning six shillings and sixpence. A copy editor there was the poet Basil Bunting. In 2015, Knopfler wrote a track in tribute to him. Around this time he travelled the country mostly by hitchhiking, and he hitched through Europe several times.
Through the 1960s he formed and joined several bands. His listening ran from Elvis Presley and Scotty Moore to B. B. King, Django Reinhardt, Chet Atkins and James Burton. At 16 he appeared on local television in a harmony duo with his classmate Sue Hercombe.
In 1968, after a year studying journalism at Harlow College, he was hired as a junior reporter at the Yorkshire Evening Post in Leeds. There he met Steve Phillips, a furniture restorer and country blues enthusiast one year older than him. From Phillips's record collection and guitar style, Knopfler absorbed a deep knowledge of early blues. The pair formed a duo called The Duolian String Pickers and played local folk and acoustic blues venues.
Two years later he went back to education and eventually graduated from the University of Leeds with a degree in English. In April 1970 he recorded a demo of an original song, "Summer's Coming My Way". Phillips played second guitar, Dave Johnson played bass and Paul Granger played percussion. Johnson, Granger and the singer Mick Dewhirst also played with Knopfler in a band called Silverheels.
On graduating in 1973, he moved to London and joined Brewers Droop, a band based in High Wycombe. Their studio material with him stayed unreleased until the 1989 archival album The Booze Brothers. After that brief stint, he took a job as a lecturer at Loughton College in Essex and kept it for three years. He still played in local pub bands, among them the Café Racers.
By the mid-1970s the Café Racers took up most of his musical energy. David had moved to London and was sharing a flat with John Illsley, a guitarist who had switched to bass. In April 1977, Mark left his flat in Buckhurst Hill and moved in with them. He soon invited Illsley to join the Café Racers. Steve Phillips, his Leeds blues partner, would return to his life years later in a band called the Notting Hillbillies.
On the 27th of July 1977, five songs went onto demo tape. They were "Wild West End", "Sultans of Swing", "Down to the Waterline", "Sacred Loving" and "Water of Love". David Knopfler played rhythm guitar, John Illsley played bass and Pick Withers played drums. "Sacred Loving" was a David Knopfler song. The group later cut "Southbound Again", "In the Gallery" and "Six Blade Knife" for BBC Radio London. On the 9th of November they taped demos of "Setting Me Up", "Eastbound Train" and "Real Girl".
Many of these songs were maps of the places Mark Knopfler had lived. "Down to the Waterline" recalled images of life in Newcastle. "In the Gallery" paid tribute to Harry Phillips, a Leeds sculptor and artist, who was the father of Steve Phillips. "Lions", "Wild West End" and "Eastbound Train" came from his early days in the capital.
The debut album, Dire Straits, came out in October 1978 to little fanfare in the UK. Then "Sultans of Swing" was released as a single and became a chart hit in the Netherlands. Album sales took off, first across Europe, then in the United States and Canada, and finally in Britain. The second album, Communiqué, followed in June 1979, produced by Jerry Wexler and Barry Beckett.
Making Movies, released in October 1980, brought more complex arrangements and production. The band kept moving that way for the rest of its life. It held some of Knopfler's most personal writing, including "Romeo and Juliet" and "Tunnel of Love". The latter opens with "The Carousel Waltz" by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. That intro also appears in the 1982 Richard Gere film An Officer and a Gentleman.
During those sessions, tension between the Knopfler brothers reached a breaking point, and David decided to leave for a solo career. The remaining trio finished the record. Roy Bittan of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band guested on keyboards, and the session guitarist Sid McGinnis played rhythm guitar without a credit. From 1980 on, the lineup changed frequently, and only Mark Knopfler and Illsley stayed through the band's 18 years. Once the sessions were done, the keyboardist Alan Clark and the Californian guitarist Hal Lindes joined as full-time members. Together they set out on the On Location tour of Europe, North America and Oceania.
Love Over Gold arrived in September 1982 with "Private Investigations", "Telegraph Road", "Industrial Disease", "It Never Rains" and its title track. When the recording ended, the drummer Pick Withers announced he was leaving. In early 1983 the band released a four-song EP, ExtendedancEPlay, with the hit "Twisting by the Pool". It was the first release with the new drummer Terry Williams, formerly of Rockpile and Man.
An eight-month Love Over Gold tour closed with two sold-out nights at London's Hammersmith Odeon, on the 22nd and the 23rd of July 1983. Those shows became the double album Alchemy Live in March 1984. It reached number three on the UK Albums Chart and was reissued on DVD and Blu-ray in 2010.
Recording for the fifth album began at the end of 1984 at George Martin's AIR Studios in Montserrat, with Knopfler and Neil Dorfsman producing. The lineup shifted again. Guy Fletcher joined full time, so the band now had two keyboardists. Hal Lindes left early in the sessions. In December 1984 he was replaced by Jack Sonni, a New York guitarist and longtime friend of Knopfler. Sonni's contribution to the album was minimal.
Terry Williams was released from the sessions after the first month. The jazz session drummer Omar Hakim replaced him and re-recorded all the album's drum parts within three days before leaving for other commitments. Williams returned as a full-time member for the music videos and the world tour.
Brothers in Arms came out in May 1985 and has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. In 2006 it was the fourth best-selling album in UK chart history. It produced the US number one "Money for Nothing", which was the first video played on MTV in Britain. Other singles included "So Far Away", "Walk of Life" and the title track.
The record also made technological history. It was the first compact disc to sell a million copies, and it was one of the first DDD CDs ever released. It is largely credited with launching the CD format. The 1985-1986 world tour that followed ran to over 230 shows.
When Knopfler said he wanted to write film music, the producer David Puttnam answered. The result was the score for Local Hero, released in April 1983. It earned a BAFTA nomination for Best Score for a Film the following year. Alan Clark contributed, and Gerry Rafferty sang lead vocals on "The Way It Always Starts". John Illsley, Hal Lindes and Terry Williams played on one track, "Freeway Flyer". The closing instrumental, "Going Home: Theme of the Local Hero", was released as a single. It became a live staple for Dire Straits from 1983 onwards.
In 1984 came scores for Cal and Comfort and Joy, both featuring Terry Williams and the keyboardist Guy Fletcher. Knopfler later wrote the music for The Princess Bride, released at the end of 1987, which included the song "Storybook Love" with Willy DeVille. He recorded the soundtrack for Wag the Dog in 1997 and worked with the percussionist Evelyn Glennie on Altamira in 2016. He also wrote the score for a musical version of Local Hero. It added new songs and lyrics to the original instrumental music, and it reunited him with Bill Forsyth.
His studio work reached well beyond film. In February 1983, a Phil Everly and Cliff Richard song reached the UK Top 10. Knopfler and Williams played on "She Means Nothing To Me". Knopfler produced Bob Dylan's Infidels and Aztec Camera's Knife. He wrote "Private Dancer" for Tina Turner's comeback album of the same name. Illsley, Clark, Lindes and Williams of Dire Straits played the backing track. He also played lead guitar on Bryan Ferry's Boys and Girls, released in June 1985.
Some of his appearances were lighter. In the wake of the Zeebrugge ferry disaster, he joined the charity ensemble Ferry Aid on "Let It Be". It spent three weeks at number one on the UK Singles Chart in March 1987. He also took part in a comedy sketch on the French and Saunders show called "The Easy Guitar Book Sketch". With him were Rowland Rivron, David Gilmour, Lemmy from Motörhead, Mark King from Level 42 and Gary Moore. Phil Taylor explained that Knopfler borrowed Gilmour's guitar rig and still managed to sound like himself.
At the end of the 1980s, Knopfler formed a band at the opposite end of the commercial scale from Dire Straits. The Notting Hillbillies leaned on American roots music: folk, blues and country. Members were Guy Fletcher, Brendan Croker and Steve Phillips, with Paul Franklin added on pedal steel. Their only studio album, Missing...Presumed Having a Good Time, came out in March 1990 and included the minor hit "Your Own Sweet Way". On a low-key UK tour that year they packed small venues such as Newcastle University.
Also in 1990, Knopfler released Neck and Neck with Chet Atkins, the guitarist he credits for his habit of playing fingerstyle exclusively. The collaboration won three Grammy awards. One of its tracks, "Poor Boy Blues", peaked at number 92 on the chart.
Country artists kept calling. Knopfler wrote and played guitar on John Anderson's 1992 single "When It Comes to You". Mary Chapin Carpenter covered the Dire Straits song "The Bug" in 1993. He played on "White Lightnin'" for George Jones's 1994 album The Bradley Barn Sessions. Randy Travis released his song "Are We in Trouble Now" in 1996. In 1999 he appeared on Kris Kristofferson's The Austin Sessions. For Jimmy Buffett he contributed "Whoop De Doo" in 2006 and "Oldest Surfer on the Beach" in 2013.
His largest country project was All the Roadrunning, a 2006 album with Emmylou Harris. It reached number one in Denmark and Switzerland and number 17 on the Billboard 200 in the United States. It was nominated at the 49th Grammy Awards but lost to Bob Dylan's Modern Times. Their tour was short but successful, with 15 concerts in Europe, one in Canada and eight in the United States. A show on the 28th of June at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City, California, became the DVD Real Live Roadrunning.
Critics have long tried to describe the sound. Knopfler is left-handed but plays the guitar right-handed. In 1985, Spin wrote, "Mark Knopfler may be the most lyrical of all rock guitarists." Rolling Stone called his style "evocative". Classic Rock, in 2018, praised "a breath of clean air amid the lumbering rock dinosaurs and one-dimensional punk thrashers of the late 70s". Rolling Stone also ranked him 27th on its list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.
On the 11th of June 1988, Dire Straits headlined the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute at Wembley Stadium. Eric Clapton, by then a close friend of Knopfler, joined them. Jack Sonni and Terry Williams left the band soon afterwards. In September 1988, Knopfler announced the dissolution of Dire Straits, saying he "needed a rest". A compilation, Money for Nothing, followed in October and reached number one in the UK.
The break did not last. In 1990, Knopfler, Illsley and Clark played as Dire Straits at Knebworth, with Clapton, Ray Cooper and the guitarist Phil Palmer. In January 1991, Knopfler, Illsley and manager Ed Bicknell decided to reform the band. With Clark, Fletcher and a cast of sidemen including Toto's Jeff Porcaro, they recorded On Every Street. It came out in September 1991, after a six-year gap, and reached number one in the UK. Critics were mixed, and some found it an underwhelming comeback.
The tour that followed was punishing. With the drummer Chris Whitten, the band played 300 shows for some 7.1 million ticket buyers. Bicknell said, "The last tour was utter misery." He added, "Whatever the zeitgeist was that we had been part of, it had passed." Illsley agreed with this view. He said, "Personal relationships were in trouble and it put a terrible strain on everybody, emotionally and physically. We were changed by it."
The live album On the Night documented the tour in May 1993. In 1995, after Live at the BBC, a contractual release for Vertigo Records, Knopfler quietly dissolved the band for good. He later explained, "I put the thing to bed because I wanted to get back to some kind of reality. It's self-protection, a survival thing. That kind of scale is dehumanizing." He spent two years recovering.
Offers to reunite have gone nowhere. In October 2008, Knopfler declined a suggestion from Illsley to reform. He said that the global fame of the 1980s "just got too big". Dire Straits were announced in December 2017 as inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. At the 2018 ceremony only Illsley, Clark and Fletcher were present. Knopfler did not appear, and the band did not perform. They were the first act ever inducted without anyone introducing them. Sales estimates for his years with the band run between 100 million and 120 million records.
In November 2021, Illsley published My Life in Dire Straits. He wrote that the band had "reached the end of the road" after the final tour in 1992. He felt "mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted". As Illsley recalled it, Knopfler said success is great, but fame is what comes out of the exhaust pipe of a car. Knopfler restated his lack of interest in a reunion in November 2023.
Golden Heart appeared in March 1996, featuring the UK single "Darling Pretty". Its sessions produced Knopfler's solo backing band, known as The 96ers, with Guy Fletcher on keyboards. That main lineup has lasted much longer than any Dire Straits lineup. His most successful solo album so far was Sailing to Philadelphia, in 2000.
In July 2002 he gave four charity concerts as "Mark Knopfler and friends", with Illsley, Chris White, Danny Cummings and Fletcher. Three were at Shepherd's Bush and one at Beaulieu. The Notting Hillbillies played too, and Jimmy Nail sang backing vocals on "Why Aye Man". His third solo album, The Ragpicker's Dream, followed that year. In March 2003 a motorbike crash in Grosvenor Road, Belgravia, left him with a broken collarbone, a broken shoulder blade and seven broken ribs. The tour was cancelled. He returned in 2004 with Shangri-La.
Shangri-La was recorded at the Shangri-La Studio in Malibu, California, where the Band had made recordings for The Last Waltz. Knopfler said his new lineup "play Dire Straits songs better than Dire Straits did". The tour took him to India and the United Arab Emirates for the first time. Over 20,000 fans came to each of the Mumbai and Bangalore concerts.
His live shows use little more than some lighting. He sometimes drinks tea on stage, and so does the guitarist Richard Bennett, who has toured with him since 1996. On the 31st of July 2005, at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver, the tea was replaced with whisky as a last-show joke.
The albums kept coming: Kill to Get Crimson in 2007, Get Lucky in 2009 and Privateering on the 3rd of September 2012. Privateering was his first double album, with 20 new songs. In late 2011 and again in autumn 2012 he toured with Bob Dylan. Tracker, made at his British Grove Studios in London, followed in 2015. Down the Road Wherever came in November 2018. At the first show of its 2019 tour, in Barcelona on the 25th of April, he told the crowd it would be his last. That softened as the tour went on, since he said he loves touring. His final headline show to date was at Madison Square Garden in New York on the 25th of September 2019.
Honours have piled up. He received an OBE in 2000. In 2001 a dinosaur species, Masiakasaurus knopfleri, was named for him, and the asteroid 28151 Markknopfler also carries his name. His anthem "Going Home" is played by Newcastle United at home games.
In January 2024 he announced One Deep River, again made with Fletcher, and it was released that April. He also assembled a supergroup, Mark Knopfler's Guitar Heroes. Their new version of "Going Home" came out on the 15th of March 2024 and featured more than sixty musicians. It supported the Teenage Cancer Trust and Teen Cancer America. Also in January 2024, more than 120 of his guitars and amps sold at auction in London for over £8 million. Twenty-five percent went to charities. They included the 1983 Les Paul used on "Money for Nothing" and "Brothers in Arms". He said he hoped the instruments would be played rather than stored away.
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Common questions
When and where was Mark Knopfler born?
He was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on the 12th of August 1949. His family moved to Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne, when he was seven.
Which album made Dire Straits a global success?
Brothers in Arms, released in May 1985, has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. It produced the US number one "Money for Nothing".
Which film scores has Mark Knopfler written?
They include Local Hero, Cal, Comfort and Joy, The Princess Bride, Wag the Dog and Altamira. He also wrote the score for a musical version of Local Hero.
Why did Dire Straits end?
Knopfler and his bandmates found the scale of the final world tour exhausting. He dissolved the band in 1995, saying he wanted to get back to some kind of reality.
Has Mark Knopfler worked with country musicians?
Yes. He formed the Notting Hillbillies, made Neck and Neck with Chet Atkins, and recorded All the Roadrunning with Emmylou Harris in 2006.
All sources
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