THE INTERVIEW
Mark Knopfler is at an interesting crossroads in his life and music. He’s just sold most of his guitar collection and he’s got anew album out that’s as deep in emotion and storycraft as its title suggests. As you’d expect, it’s also got some sublime guitar on it, though Knopfler himself believes his playing became “rusty” during the pandemic and is still in recovery. On the eve of the release of his new long-player, One Deep River, we join him to hear his perspectives on songcraft, gangland Britain in the 1960s, his enduring relationship with the Stratocaster, and the guitars that he couldn’t let go…
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 anew album, One Deep River, to be released on 12 April. Would this be a swan song, then? Afinal 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 afew notes that always make the listener feel something, rather than just another ego-buffing solo.
And yet joining Mark to talk about t
