Mark knopfler

Mark Freuder Knopfler (Glasgow, Scotland, August 12, 1949) is a British musician, guitarist, record producer, singer and songwriter. Before his career as a musician, he worked as a journalist and taught at the university. Known primarily as the founder, guitarist and singer of the band Dire Straits and his unique pickless guitar style, he is considered one of the most important musicians in rock history.

He has also played in other bands (Notting Hillbillies, Brewer's Droop), for other artists (Bob Dylan in Slow Train Coming among others), he has participated in countless Phil records Lynott, Solo in Soho and The Philip Lynott Album) and has undertaken solo projects. In addition, he has composed music for several films, including Local Hero, Comfort and Joy, Cal, The Princess Bride, Last exit to Brooklyn, Wag the Dog, Metroland and A shot at glory, and for other singers like Tina Turner, Private Dancer.

He is currently leading a solo career, with a somewhat different style from the one he created with Dire Straits, based on his own style, a mixture of various sources such as blues, rock and folk. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him 44th of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

Biography

Childhood and beginnings

Mark Knopfler was born in Glasgow on August 12, 1949. He is the second of three children born to Louisa Mary Laider, an Englishwoman from Newcastle and a teacher, and Earwin Knopfler, a Hungarian-Jewish architect and chess player who abandoned his native Hungary in 1939 to flee the Nazis. At the age of 9 his family moved to this city, on the banks of the River Tyne, and he settled in Gosforth, a suburban district of the same. By then he had taken a liking to music by listening to his uncle Kingsley play boogie-woogie on the piano.

During those childhood years, his father tried, with the help of his uncle, to teach him to play the piano and also the violin, although what caught his attention the most was the guitar.

At the age of 13, Mark attended elementary school in his district and was already accustomed to collecting photos of musical groups, especially guitarists. He began to insist on his father to buy him a guitar, and at the age of 15 he finally got her to buy him a red and black Hofner V2 Solid, a guitar aesthetically similar to a classic "Stratocaster" 3. 4; which cost him £50.

With her he learned by listening to musicians like B.B. King, J.J. Cale, Jimi Hendrix or Hank Marvin and she plays with friends with whom she practiced at their houses, even playing at some parties and school dances. One of these musical dalliances led him in 1966, at just 16 years old, to appear with his friend Sue Hercombe on local television, NRK, in an interview in which they performed the song "Chilly Winds";.

In 1968, after studying journalism for a year at the Harlow Technical College in Essex, thanks to the brother of an acquaintance of his, he got a job at the Yorkshire Evening Post in Leeds where he worked for two years reviewing local bands and some of the big bands that played in the city.

During these years, and thanks to his work as a reporter, he met Steve Phillips, a local musician who worked as a restorer at the Leeds City Art Gallery and Temple Newsam House, with whom he became friends. Their great musical affinities led them to form a duo they called The Duolian String Pickers and to record, in April 1970, a demo of an original song by Mark, Summer's Coming. my Way, along with two other musicians, Dave Johnson on bass and Paul Granger on percussion.

On September 18, 1970, he wrote his last article in the Yorkshire Evening Post about the death of Jimi Hendrix. Shocked by the news, he decided to leave the newspaper and start studying English at the University of Leeds, which kept him in the city until 1973. During this period he continued playing with Steve Phillips, who collected some of their joint work on the album Just Pickin' published in 1996.

Also during this university stage he married for the first time with Kathleen Urwin White, a girl who, like him, came from Newcastle and who studied at the same university. The marriage took place at the Northumberland South Registry in Leeds on 4 March 1972 and lasted just two years.

Claim to fame: the Dire Straits stage

Mark Knopfler in Dublin, 1981

In 1973, once he had finished his university studies, he decided to move to London to try to achieve his goal of having his own band and making a living from music. He starts playing with the Brewer's Droop group with which he collaborates for a couple of months and in which he coincides with the drummer Pick Withers.

After Brewer's Droop breaks up, Mark struggles financially until he lands a teaching job at Loughton College in Essex that allows some stability to be achieved. For two years he lives in a flat in Buckhurst Hill and forms a band with friends from Loughton College called Café Racers with which he plays in pubs and schools near the college where he works.

In April 1977, Mark moved in with his brother David and bassist John Illsley from Leicester, who share a flat in London's Deptford. It was then that the three decided to form a group with the addition of Pick Withers, the former drummer of Brewer's Droop. At first, the name of the band was still Café Racers although, finally, they decided to change it to Dire Straits (which in English comes to mean "big trouble" or "desperate situation"), alluding to the painful economic situation they lived in those days.

In July 1977, they recorded a demo of five songs with which they became known to the general public, thanks to the diffusion that music critic and presenter Charlie Gillet made of it on his program Honky Tonk from BBC Radio London. After some subsequent performances that allow them to make themselves known even more, the Dire Straits sign a contract with Phonogram Records thanks to the perseverance of one of its executives, John Stainze. It is this one who puts them in contact with the representative Ed Bicknell, from the NEMS agency, who in turn manages to place them as the opening act for the American group Talking Heads on the British tour that they offered in various cities in the United Kingdom at the beginning of 1978.

In 1978, they managed to publish their first album, simply titled Dire Straits. It spawned the hit Sultans of Swing. After that album, they continued to release records as the band's personnel changed. David and Mark clashed over the role that the latter had within the band. During the 1980s, the band evolved into greater complexity musically as it became a larger and more varied ensemble of musicians. In 1985, only John and Mark were still in the band. It was then that they published Brothers in Arms, an unprecedented success that launched them for good. Artists such as Sting and Eric Clapton collaborated with the band around this time.

At the end of the 80s there was a period of silence. He always recognized that this stage helped him in his future compositions. Dire Straits returned in the early 90's with what would be their last album 'On Every Street', with a clear country influence. It did not achieve the same sales as "Brothers in Arms" and had polarized reviews. Finally, in 1995 the band dissolved.

Side projects

Knopfler had built a bit of a reputation as a studio musician. In 1979 Bob Dylan called him for the Slow Train Coming sessions, which included the well-known "Man Gave Names To All The Animals". Dylan had heard the single from "Sultans of Swing" and had contacted him on March 29 after a concert in Los Angeles. For the recording in Alabama, Knopfler recommended Pick Withers, drummer for Dire Straits. In 1980, he collaborated on the album & # 34; Solo in Soho & # 34; by Phil Lynnott, bassist and singer of Thin Lizzy, specifically on the song 'King's Call'. In 1982, he collaborated on the song she Means Nothing To Me, a duet by Cliff Richard and Phil Everly, belonging to the latter's self-titled album.

In 1983, while playing with Dire Straits, Knopfler composed the first of a long series of soundtracks, "Local Hero," on which most of his bandmates collaborated. They met Guy Fletcher, a keyboardist who joined the group shortly after, in 1984, during the recording of one of these soundtracks. Fletcher would continue collaborating with Knopfler on his solo career and on other soundtracks such as The Princess Bride (1987) or Last Exit To Brooklyn (1989): his most ambitious work as a composer.

Knopfler's style in his soundtracks is generally close to the so-called Celtic sound (Local Hero, Cal, A Shot At Glory) although you can also find examples of other styles such as country (Wag the Dog). In 1993, Screenplaying was published; a compilation of the best songs from some of his soundtracks.

In the silent days of Dire Straits in the late '80s, Mark was saturated with the effort of the world tour of the Brothers in Arms album. In addition, the musical style of the band prevented him from publishing more personal songs of more minority styles such as country or blues. For this reason, in those years in which Dire Straits did not publish anything, Mark took the opportunity to publish the album Neck and Neck with country guitarist Chet Atkins in 1990.

In 1988 he collaborated again with Bob Dylan on Down in the Groove, in which he coincided with other greats, such as Clapton. With Steve Phillips, Brendan Crocker and Guy Fletcher he formed the band Notting Hillbillies, which released only one studio album, though they have reunited frequently to tour throughout the 1990s.

In 2016 he worked on the soundtrack for the film Altamira, starring Antonio Banderas, about the discovery of cave paintings in the Altamira cave in Spain.

In 2018 he collaborates on the song "PS Please" by Cliff Richard, included on the album Music...The Air That I Breathe, released in 2020. Other collaborations include Bryan Ferry, Jools Holland, Rod Stewart, Sonny Landreth, Sting or Jeff Healey

Solo Race

By the mid '90s, Mark felt less and less free as a musician within Dire Straits. This sentiment, coupled with the fact that the band's last album had been met with a lukewarm reception, made Mark decide to launch a full solo career after Dire Straits disbanded. In 1996, Golden Heart saw the light of day. In it, we find a series of songs that continue the style of the last Dire Straits albums; but at the same time we find other songs unthinkable in a rock album like Dire Straits used to publish. On this album he began playing with a series of collaborators who would be referred to by Knopfler himself as & # 34; The 96ers & # 34; (which comes to mean something like & # 34; those of 96 & # 34;) and with whom he would continue to collaborate from now on. Worthy of mention is the collaboration of the Celtic music performers from the group The Chieftains.

Placing away from the style he had followed in the 1980s, Knopfler released Sailing to Philadelphia in 2000, in a primarily blues style. Musicians such as Van Morrison, James Taylor or the Squeeze duo collaborated on it. Later, he came The Ragpicker's Dream in 2002 with a folk style.

In 2003, Mark Knopfler suffered a motorcycle accident in London that forced him to cancel his world tour. At the end of 2004, he published the album Shangri-La, recorded at the Shangri-La studio in Malibu, where groups like The Band recorded.

In 2006, Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris released the album All the Roadrunning, which included collaborations between the two musicians between 2000 and 2006. The release was accompanied by concerts in Europe and America in 2006, leading to the live album and DVD Real Live Roadrunning.

On September 10, 2007, he released a new album entitled Kill To Get Crimson, which includes the collaborations of former Dire Straits member Chris White on tenor sax, Guy Fletcher on the keyboards and Danny Cummings on percussion. For this new album, Knopfler broke with what had been his band's regular line-up since the mid-'80s (two guitars, two keyboards, one bass, and one drummer) to move to a much smaller band (one guitar, one keyboard, a bass and a drums). With this, he sought to achieve the musical style of the songs of the 60s.

Continuing a pattern of high productivity in his solo career, Knopfler began work on his next album, Get Lucky, in September 2008 with Guy Fletcher, who returned to diary of the recording of the album on their website. Get Lucky was released on September 14, 2009 and was followed by an extensive tour of Europe and North America. The album was moderately successful on the best-seller charts, reaching number one in Norway and the top 5 in most European countries.

On September 3, 2012, Knopfler released Privateering, his seventh studio album and the first double of his career. After a brief tour with Bob Dylan of the United States between October and November of the same year, Knopfler embarked on a European tour in 2013. After a brief stint in the United States, Knopfler returned to British Grove Studios in London. to work on the successor to Privateering with Guy Fletcher as producer. The new work, Tracker, was released on March 16, 2015 and reached number three on the of best-selling albums in the United Kingdom, the best position for an album of his solo career.

In November 2018, he released what is currently his latest album, Down the Road Wherever. The following year he went on a concert tour of Europe and North America. At the first concert of the tour, in Barcelona, he announced that this would be his last tour. As the tour progressed, he qualified these statements to indicate that he would continue recording albums and offering live concerts, and that other tours would not be completely ruled out.

In 2018 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with his former band Dire Straits. Only three of his former members attended the ceremony.

Personal life

Knopfler has been married three times. He contracted his first marriage to Kathy White, his teenage sweetheart. The couple separated before Knopfler went to London to join Brewers Droop in 1973. In November 1983, Knopfler married Lourdes Salomone. The couple produced twin sons, Benji and Joseph (born 1987), before divorcing in 1993. On Valentine's Day 1997, Knopfler remarried British actress and writer Kitty Aldridge, whom he had met three years earlier. The couple have two daughters, Isabella and Katya Ruby Rose.

Knopfler owns a collection of classic cars that he races and exhibits at shows, including a Maserati 300S and an Austin-Healey 100S.

Knopfler is also the owner of the London recording studio British Grove Studios where he has recorded several of his albums.

Music

He is left-handed, although right-handed on guitar, being one of the relatively few rock guitarists who frequently uses an open-hand technique to pluck the strings, without the use of a pick—other examples include Jeff Beck, J.J. Cale, Mike Oldfield and Lindsey Buckingham. Specifically, Knopfler uses a variant of the clawhammer technique, used mainly by banjo players, but adapted to the guitar, using the thumb, index and middle fingers to pluck the strings, leaving the other two fingers —ring and little finger— to help support the wrist on the bridge. This technique allows him to produce the rhythmically percussive sound that he is known for. Nevertheless, Knopfler uses a plectrum on occasion, especially on songs where rhythmic accompaniment predominates —for example, in Expresso Love or in The man's too strong—. In songs where he looks for another type of sound on his guitar, he has also been seen using the pick, as in True Love Will Never Fade.

Knopfler usually plays the electric guitar, usually the Fender Stratocaster, although he sometimes plays the acoustic as well. This peculiar style and little practiced by the great rock guitarists makes it characteristic of an unmistakable sound, endowing his works with harmony, nuances and cadences that drink from the music of the 50s and 60s and that Knopfler himself has commissioned. to make it evolve also with the introduction of dissonances.

Mark Knopfler owns over 150 guitars, including:

• Several Fender Stratocaster, including a 1954 model (one of the first to be manufactured) called "Jurassic Strat".
• Several Fender Telecaster
• Several Gibson Les Paul
• Custom models of Pensa (MK-1 MK-2 & MK-80)
• Several Schecter
• National Style 0 (for example, in the song "Romeo and Juliet" and on the album cover Brothers in Arms)
• A Gibson Super 400 (used, for example, in "Your Latest Trick") that cost 20,000 Libras.
• A Gibson Chet Atkins CE (used, for example, on the tour Love Over Gold or his live album Alchemy in the song Private Investigations, to quote any)
• At least 2 guitars of the lutier Monteleone, one of them Isabella

Discography

Dire Straits

Solo