As he releases One Deep River, Mark Knopfler reflects on the guitars he’s loved, the music that keeps his passion youthful… and how he’d like a do-over on that Dire Straits Rock Hall induction.
BY GARY GRAFF PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOBY SESSIONS
PLAYERS| MARK KNOPLFER
Talking with Mark Knopfler about guitars — what else? — is a bit like speaking with an unrepentant kid and a hardened member of GAA: Guitar Aficionados Anonymous.
“I STILL STOP AND LOOK in a guitar shop window when I pass one on the street. I can’t walk past it,” Knopfler confesses via Zoom from his home in London. “And all the clichés — nose up against the glass, that whole thing. I suppose there were a lot of years where, instead of music being music and songs being a dream — a kid’s dream — it became work. It becomes your life. And I’m not alone there.
“So I have to try hard to keep it ‘teenage’ — to stay the kid about it. It’s an endlessly fascinating thing to be part of. And it goes on. History goes on.”
And this year Knopfler, now 74 and more than 45 years onward from his first album with Dire Straits, is adding a few chapters to his history.
There was his January guitar auction, a somewhat shocking sale of 123 instruments through Christie’s that netted more than $11 million, including $100,000-plus for 28 of them and a record $876,000 for a 1959 Vintage Gibson Les Paul Standard with a sunburst finish. That was followed by a new version of his 1983 film composition “Going Home: Theme of the Local Hero,” which Knopfler and longtime wingman Guy Fletcher turned into a benefit single for Teenager Cancer Trust in the U.K. and Teen Cancer America, using a who’s-who roster of guitar-playing mates and other all-stars, including what is thought to be the final recording by the late Jeff Beck.
But the star attraction is One Deep River(British Grove), Knopfler’s 10th solo album and first in six years. It’s the product of a prolific time. The 12-song core set is complemented by four bonus tracks on the vinyl LP and a different five cuts on the CD. The sessions spawned another EP of four songs, unified thematically by lyrics about British showground boxing culture of yore.
“Maybe it’s pandemic-based,” says Knopfler, who on top of everything else also launched a syndicated TV show, Johnson and Knopfler’s Music Legends, with AC/DC frontman and fellow northern Englishman Brian Johnson. “Throughout COVID, I was just listening to songs all the time,” he explains. “There was a lot to work wi
