For Dire Straits, one of the highest points in their career came from watching one of the lowest of another band. "Sultans of ...

“It used to hang in a guitar shop in Newcastle,” says Knopfler, who moved to Tyneside from Glasgow when he was eight years old. As a teenager he spent many hours eyeing up the equipment in that shop, ...

In 1978, a song about a little-known pub band quietly transformed Dire Straits into international stars. "Sultans of Swing" became the band's breakthrough hit and eventually one of the defining rock ...

Mark Knopfler lets his guitar do most of the talking. And trust me when I say that’s a very good thing. The low-key, but lovely, 66-year-old former frontman of quintessential ‘80s British rock outfit ...

Mark Knopfler tends to be at one remove from the narrative arc of his songs, even those born of personal experience. Perhaps his training as a reporter taught him to remain detached – just tell the ...

Though it regrouped in the Nineties, Dire Straits was officially dissolved 30 years ago and Knopfler has since worked with a wonderfully eclectic range of artists, among them Emmylou Harris, Chet ...

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Down a London backstreet, an anonymous rider glides unnoticed, slipping discretely past a garage door. The giveaway is the guitar etched into the motorcycle's gas cap. The rider is Mark Knofler, and ...

‘Sultans of Swing’ was both the first single from Dire Straits’ debut album and a revealing first-person account of the average working band’s hardscrabble, often thankless existence playing British ...