Superlatives
A Vulture series in which artists judge the best and worst of their own careers.
Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Mark Knopfler is a tough guy to pin down.
A reluctant sultan of swing, if you will.
He cant think of anything good about it; in fact, he eschews itinstinctively.
His rich, fluid guitar playing is just an added bonus.
At least I was there.
Brothers in Arms or Romeo and Juliet perhaps.
They survived the trip.
You make a run at get the most out of songs and they take a lot of playing.
If you try, the song will try, too.
Surely you never know if you will survive the trip.
Its like a love affair.
You dont know, for sure, where its going.
Ive been lucky a few times and had some things that stuck.
And then, getting used to the idea that maybe I could write a song.
And then thinking of myself as a songwriter is probably the last thing.
One song took 16 years.
Other songs can take 16 minutes.
I wrote about an autograph hunter, Rudiger stands in the rain and the snow.
But for the music to arrive good and ready, it took years.
You find that you know certain things about boy things like bicycle badges, just useless information.
You have things in your head that stay there until you need them.
And then you come out with this useless stuff occasionally.
Its kind of general knowledge, I suppose.
I have a friend and we just sit and quiz each other on music and rock-and-roll records.
We take enormous winnings off each other, which are all forgotten about as soon as we start playing.
We give each other clues if someones struggling, but its great fun.
Its amazing how much rubbish a mind can retain, isnt it?
It wouldnt have been anything serious.
Writing, for me, is a solo affair and I never could write in a recording studio.
Now Ive got a studio of my own and I cant write in it either.
I like recording studios for recording purposes only.
I would write on the road and I would write in hotel rooms.
It feels more civilized to me.
You identify with certain characters more than others you just like them more.
I think that happens to authors, because things you create do tend to start going their own way.
Certainly a song does.
When you have children, you realize its quite similar to that in some ways.
Theres something enormous about it.
I find that I dont have to love these characters.
In fact, sometimes it can be the opposite.
They can kind of scare you as well.
Im not saying Im in that Randy Newman bag.
I wrote about a character like that for Dire Straits in The Mans Too Strong.
Thatsthe only timeIve done it.
I dont think I could write a song as an executioner now.
I dont think it would interest me.
Id rather be able to write a song like You Are My Sunshine.
To me, it would be in many ways superior.
Take Nobodys Darling but Mine, by Merle Haggard.
Im busy, unsuccessfully, trying to create something like that.
Song whose meaning you discovered after
In certain places you feel the ghosts.
History is in the cobblestones.
You connect with the place in a real geographical sense.
Im there from centuries before.
Sometimes Ill think of what places were, like with Telegraph Road.
And now its 12 lanes of Texaco.
So its a different reality, but I like thinking of all of those realities at once, together.
There was hardly anything there.
Now, its Philadelphia, and that all seems to have happened in a very short space of time.
Then you start wondering what its going to be like in another 100 years.
I dont know whether I can help it.
Im sure a lot of people do it.
Because, also, America is such an evocative country.
The language of it, the biblical references, the places, and the names.
I get enchanted just reading lists of kids names from the South.
Its the promise of those names.
The promise is always there, isnt it?
Its a fun thing for a band to experience.
I suppose you get used to that happening, the big audience reactions and massive noises.
Wow, this is Madison Square Garden and people are going nuts.
Surely, thats what youre doing here.
Otherwise, go home.
It doesnt mean anything to you.
Youre in the wrong place.
You got to want to be there and youve got to go looking for the source of it.
So you become this little dragon slayer whos got a nerve.
Who do you think you are?
Youre just a kid who doesnt know anything, but without that, where would we be?
Im perfectly well aware that a lot of it is just blowing smoke.
But youre trying to figure out a way through.
You stick around for long enough and after a while you get a bit more of an idea.
I feel as though Ive had a really blessed run with some great people.
I wouldnt ask for anything more than Ive had.
Solo that doubles as the greatest endurance test
Some of the guitars are pretty hard to play.
Youve just got to brace your hands for an old guitar from the 1930s.
And the new lights seem as though they dont generate any heat at all.
The old lights generated so much heat.
We were always drenched when we came off-stage, literally soaked to the skin.
Sweat would be stinging your eyes, so you learn to play with your eyes squeezed shut.
Im pretty sure I played a lot of that stuff without looking.
Thats all part of the fun of it: figuring out ways around things.
I was spraying the audience with so much sweat that it was stingingthem.
I always used to think,Only rock and roll could do this.
I was really pleased to havegotten to be therein the first place.
Id gone through this period of loving Steely Dan records.
I just heard Any Major Dude Will Tell You the other day.
What a beautiful, beautiful thing.
The music ends up affecting you and becomes part of what you are.
You know, what living theyve done with it or how theyve used it to live.
I must have played those chords a thousand times in the studio.
So youre thinking about history and where we are now, where were going, and where weve been.
