Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler: Swinging from a cub journalist to a rock legend

Tom Dunne talks music, Guinness and future gigs with Mark Knopfler

Mark Knopfler: Legendary singles were inspired by real-life interactions, informed by a background in journalism. Pics: Murdo MacLeod

How do you introduce Mark Knopfler? 

Helped launch the music television era; helped launch — with Brothers in Arms — the CD era; was in a band — Dire Straits — that spent over 1,100 weeks on the UK album charts?

Then there’s his recent charity single, ‘Going Home’. It attracted contributions from members of The Beatles, Queen, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath and The Police. Not to mention Bruce Springsteen, Nile Rodgers, Joan Armatrading...

All of the above, with a mention of his new album, One Deep River, would have made an exemplary introduction, but this is the Zoom age. 

As I am gathering my thoughts, Mark appears before me on a screen. We are both in man sheds. “How are you today, Thomas?” he enquires brightly.

I am at an immediate disadvantage. “Thomas” is a name used only by my immediate family, parents, siblings, cousins, and those married to such. I’ve been Tom Dunne so long my nephews think it’s one word.

Before I can recover he is in again, “And where are you, exactly?” He knows Ireland, so I am precise.

“Dalkey,” I tell him, hoping he will equate it with the book festival or Maeve Binchy. He doesn’t. “Oh, lovely,” he says, “have you tried Guinness Zero?” It’s all happening very fast. 

I briefly wonder, “Am I not supposed to be the one asking the questions here?” but I blurt out a measured, very measured, “I have.”

He looks confused. “And?” he asks. “Yes,” I tell him, “it’s, eh, very good!” The 74-year-old knows faint praise when he hears it. “Ah,” he says. I try to explain, “I really love Guinness, you see” but he interrupts.

“I understand. We did a gig in Ireland once, with Dire Straits. We were walking up to the venue and decided to stop for a pint. They had Beamish and Guinness so I asked the barman, which was best? ‘They are both equally good,’ he said, ‘no real difference at all. But obviously the Guinness is better.’” 

Not a Cork gig and not a Cork barman.

It was at this point that I realise Zoom and the advent of podcasting have changed interviews forever. Formality, stock introductions, and set questions are increasingly rare birds. It’s more about shared humanity these days.

“Mark,” I tell him “We really are going to have to talk about your new album. We’ll both be in trouble if we don’t.”

Mark Knopfler, on demonstrating new songs: "We just go into the control room and I play them to them on the acoustic."

MONEY FOR NOTHING?

Dire Straits really were a phenomenon. 

Their breakthrough hit, ‘Sultans of Swing’, arrived at the point where punk rock should have snuffed out such traditional-sounding fare at birth.

Impeccably played, blues-based music should have had no place in Oliver’s Army.

But that distinctive guitar style was mesmerising. In clubs, after playlists of The Jam and The Clash, it often closed out the night. The punks loved it, but told no one.

Some years prior to its release Mark had been an 18-year-old cub reporter on the Yorkshire Evening Post. He brought this up, regaling me with a story of another young reporter from the same paper.

“This lad announced,” he tells me, “that he wanted to go to London and study at RADA. He said he wanted to be an actor and nothing would stop him. And do you know who that was?” he asks me. “That was Peter O’Toole!” 

Mark was destined to outshine even Lawrence of Arabia. At 20 he attended Leeds University, and upon graduation, had been lecturing for three years before Dire Straits came together in a friend’s flat.

He’d been playing in various bands nearly all his life, but in that flat, something wonderful happened. Discovering that the one guitar to hand was an old, damaged acoustic, he found that he could only tease a tune out of it by lightly finger-picking it, unearthing as he did, a guitar style as unique to him as fingerprints.

But it was his use of the journalist skills acquired in Yorkshire that were truly crucial. He had learned to write what he saw. 

The band that inspired ‘Sultans of Swing’ was a real band he saw playing to a near-empty room in Deptford. The man who inspired ‘Money for Nothing’, a salesman who thought rock stars got it easy.

Mark literally wrote down what he said.

Those powers of observation are still lovingly and powerfully employed on One Deep River, his tenth solo album. It is the first to be recorded since the farewell tour of 2019 and subsequent covid isolation.

The reunion with his long-time band members, and indeed his beloved British Grove Studios, after two years apart was a joyous one.

“Two years of jokes,” as he says. His enthusiasm to be with them and play is infectious, but it is how he introduces new songs to them that really floors me.

“We just go into the control room and I play them to them on the acoustic.” I am stunned. Most artists, with modern computers, will have done up a rough demo. But not Mark.

“No, I play them and then they write their bits. They’re great musicians. But songwriting is a different thing. I never have to talk to them. They know their stuff. Some of the songs are bouncing around in my head for years, then suddenly I find a bit of music that unlocks the whole thing.”

Mark Knopfler: shrugs at the thought of heading back on the road

THE NEW LP

Tales of railways, America and the passage of time abound in songs like ‘Tunnel 13’, ‘Sweeter than the Rain,’ ‘Two Pairs of Hands’ and ‘Ahead of the Game’ — but I wondered, amidst all this observation, was there anything, autobiographical?

“Watch Me Gone,” he says without hesitation. “When the chance to do the band professionally came along I knew I wanted it. I’d seen Van Morrison on his Caledonia Soul Orchestra tour in 1973 and Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Tour in ’74. I knew I wanted that above all else.” 

The song lyric strongly suggests that were trade-offs in this, a price to be paid, possibly in terms of a relationship, but before I can follow up, an assistant is pointing out the time.

I do quickly push him on the possibility of future live dates — Dire Straits were phenomenally popular live, fans would adore new concerts — but his shrug says everything.

I conclude, listening to him exude love for the studio, that he is “doing a Beatles”. World tours are over, the studio beckons, perhaps a Sgt Pepper is next. 

In the meantime, bathe in the music of a master at work.