Mark Knopfler: Fearless Leader

Mark Knopfler: Fearless Leader Dire Straits' driving force takes command

One day in 1977, Mark Knopfler and John Illsley visited an art gallery run by a friend in London's West End. "We just couldn't believe the stuff that was in this gallery," Illsley recalls, "bits of string, bricks piled up in a comer, garbage cans strewn all over the floor."

During the ride home to their apartment in south London, Knopfler sat in the back seat of the car, scribbling furiously. "We got to the flat," Illsley explains, "and he stayed writing in the back seat. So I went upstairs and made myself a cup of tea. Thirty minutes later, he finally came in. 'I just finished this song,' he said. And that was 'In the Gallery,' " Illsley says. " Illsley says. "He wrote the whole thing between Shaftesbury Avenue and Deptford."

Mark Knopfler — singer, songwriter, guitarist and undisputed captain of Dire Straits — still works with the same intensity and single — minded devotion to his craft. The group has long been a superstar attraction in England, Europe, Australia and Japan. Now, the smash hit "Money for Nothing" has given the band its first Number One album in America; Brothers in Arms has already sold 2 million copies. But Mark Knopfler has rarely been seen in public without a guitar around his neck since he founded Dire Straits in the summer of 1977 as a vehicle for his evocative country-and-blues-rooted songs. Offstage, his life seems to be an endless succession of Dire Straits recording sessions, film soundtracks ( Local Hero , Cal , Comfort and Joy ), production assignments (Bob Dylan, Aztec Camera) and guest appearances on other artists' records (Van Morrison, Bryan Ferry and Steely Dan; "Private Dancer," recorded by Tina Turner, bears his copyright).

"Even now I just go up and look at my guitars sitting on the side of the stage," admits Knopfler, 36, idly chewing on a guitar pick before a recent New York show. "I'll hang out at Rudy's Music Stop down on Forty-eighth Street when I'm in town, just to be around the instruments, just looking at the damn things." (New Dire Straits guitarist Jack Sonni used to work at Rudy's.)

When Knopfler talks about his music, he often seems at a loss for words. Running a hand through his receding brown curls, he interrupts his sentences with thoughtful pauses. His arctic-blue eyes are often cast to the floor, as if the next word is written on his shoe.

Yet his mind certainly works in Cinerama and his guitar often speaks in tongues. Knopfler's 1983 soundtrack for the Bill Forsyth film Local Hero conjures up vivid images of the Scottish Highlands with its pensive melodies and the solitary sigh of his guitar. His lyrical soloing on Dire Straits , the group's 1978 debut album, resonates with animated echoes of moaning cotton-field blues, Nashville plucking and gutsy Sun rockabilly. His singing is a smoky mumble, but it renders his rich lyric portraits of young lovers ("Down to the Waterline") and jazzmen ("Sultans of Swing") with seductive intimacy.

Born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1949, Mark Knopfler is the son of a Jewish architect whose communist sympathies forced him to flee the fascist regime in his native Hungary. When Mark was about nine years old, the family moved to Newcastle, in the north of England. At fifteen, he got his first guitar. Not long after, he cut his first record in a London studio, an unreleased demo of an original song, "Summer's Coming My Way."

Knopfler worked for two years as a cub reporter at the Yorkshire Evening Post and, after graduating with an English degree from Leeds University, was a lecturer at Loughton College in Essex. In April 1977, he moved into a London apartment shared by his younger brother David and bassist John Illsley. With the addition of drummer Pick Withers, they became Dire Straits.

The pressures of the group's sudden success — they got BBC airplay with a demo of "Sultans of Swing" and had a record deal by Christmas 1977 — eventually ripped the band in half. "David was under a lot of strain," says Illsley. "Mark felt very responsible for David and didn't quite know what to do. But once Making Movies was out and David had left, it seemed to lift a tremendous strain. Mark felt very freed." Withers also quit, in 1982.

With his second wife, the former Lourdes Salamone (he was briefly married during his university days), Knopfler splits his home life between apartments in New York's Greenwich Village and London's West End. But he isn't seeing much of either this year. The current seven-member Dire Straits is in the middle of a mammoth world tour that will not end until next April.

Do you go into training for a tour of this length?

Oh, yes. I warm up on the rowing machine, and then I lift weights. You have to, or you'd be exhausted. I don't run — running's boring — but I've always loved sports. I played a little football [soccer] when I was young, but I only started getting strong when I was seventeen or eighteen.

The thing I like most about sports is hand-eye stuff, which I guess connects with playing guitar. I'm crazy about motor racing. I figure that if I didn't know how to play a note and didn't have any music in me, that's what I'd like to do. 'Cause that's an occupation guided by a very simple rule: Don't fuck up. It's always struck me as being very much to the point.

It's obviously a rule that you apply to your rock & roll affairs as well. You've worked for your success in a very quiet, businesslike manner.

What happened with us is we became so successful quite quickly that we gathered up as much power as we could for ourselves. I would say that the vast majority of what you see is voluntary. I mean, you won't see us doing jingles for radio stations. I keep the making-music side of it as the main thing. Everything else is peripheral.

Was stardom something you actively pursued?

Oh, no. That's a...

https://www.beatles.ru/books/paper.asp?id=2406

В журнале "Ровесник" (октябрь, 1986) был напечатан перевод этой статьи:
Марк Нопфлер: "противостоять успеху"
Кен Таккер, Дэвид Фрик, американские журналисты
Перевод с английского С. Кастальский
https://www.beatles.ru/books/paper.asp?id=2407

Опять же, трудности перевода:

Rolling Stone:
...'cause that's an occupation guided by a very simple rule: Don't fuck up. It's always struck me as being very much to the point.
— It's obviously a rule that you apply to your rock & roll affairs as well. You've worked for your success in a very quiet, businesslike manner.
— What happened with us is we became so successful quite quickly that we gathered up as much power as we could for ourselves. I would say that the vast majority of what you see is voluntary. I mean, you won't see us doing jingles for radio stations. I keep the making–music side of it as the main thing. Everything else is peripheral.
Мой перевод:
...потому руководствуясь очень простым правилом: Не испорти. Это всегда казалось мне очень к месту.
— Очевидно, что это правило вы применяете также и к вашей музыке. Вы работали чтобы достичь успеха очень тихо, не привлекая внимания, по–деловому.
— То, что случилось с нами, то что мы довольно быстро стали успешным, стало возможным потому что мы собрали всю нашу энергию, настолько насколько мы это могли. И я бы сказал, что это и большая часть того, что вы видите, является нашим добровольным решением. Я имею в виду, вы не уведите, что мы записываем музыкальные заставки для радиостанций. К созданию музыки я отношусь как самому главному делу. Все остальное является вторичным.
Ровесник:
— А вам не кажется, что такой прагматичный подход к творчеству делает его похожим на бизнес?
— Если считать искусство делом — а я воспринимаю его именно так, — то в таком подходе нет ничего заслуживающего порицания: дело есть дело, и все не относящееся к нему только портит его. Но отождествлять труд композитора и дровосека я тоже не стал бы: у нас с ним качественно иной подход к ремеслу, и результаты нашего труда находятся в разных категориях ценностей. А прагматизм... Видите ли, если бы мы не были прагматиками, успех раздавил бы нас — я знаю слишком много примеров. Пришлось сознательно собрать все силы и противостоять ему. Точнее, даже не противостоять, а направлять в иное русло — мы сами по себе, успех сам по себе, Причем все это происходило совершенно добровольно. Мы отказались сотрудничать с радиостанциями, хотя, если твои песни звучат по радио, это гарантия популярности. Но, на наш взгляд, в такой популярности есть элемент нравственного падения: мы не хотим, чтобы наша музыка звучала в одном ряду с убожеством "АС/ДС" или "Чип трик". Вот если наш слушатель сам поставит на проигрыватель нашу пластинку до или вслед за пластинкой "АС/ДС" — что ж, значит, такая нам цена. Значит, мы большего не заслужили. Но, повторяю, он сам сделает свой выбор. Поэтому мы и сосредоточились на студийной работе. Если вы называете это прагматизмом, то я горд такой характеристикой нашего творчества.
*************Таких слов "мы не хотим, чтобы наша музыка звучала в одном ряду с убожеством "АС/ДС" или "Чип трик". Вот если наш слушатель сам поставит на проигрыватель нашу пластинку до или вслед за пластинкой "АС/ДС" — что ж, значит, такая нам цена. Значит, мы большего не заслужили" в статье нет вообще!

Оригинал в журнале Rolling Stone:
— How about guitar players?
— Yeah, a lot of dead ones: Robert Johnson, Lonnie Johnson. B.B. King, who's very much alive, is a big influence. I heard Live at the Regal when I was sixteen, and that was a great moment, 'cause I felt that a triangle was formed on that record: guitar, voice and audience, and it was amazing to hear. There's also the fact that on his records the guitar seems to do some of the work of the singer — his guitar has such a clear voice. Maybe that appeals to me because I'm not much of a singer in the conventional sense, certainly not like B.B. King is. So my guitar becomes another, better voice I can use.
When I was a little kid, I sang Everly Brothers songs with a friend of mine. I really tried to sing well, and I think we did, for kids. But in general, I think singers absorb the influence of other singers. Eric Clapton's one of my favorite singers. People don't give him enough credit for his singing. As a singer, he's the white Ray Charles. Bob Dylan's another influence on my singing. I don't hear it as much as other people seem to, but I know he's in there, in my phrasing. A lot of my favorite singers, people like Tom Waits, Ry Cooder, J.J. Cale, they're not technically great. But to me, that's what makes them special.
Перевод в журнале Ровесник:
— Кого из гитаристов вы бы выделили?
— Таких много. Но прежде всего Би Би Кинг. Его роль в развитии современной музыки огромна, а вклад в технику игры на гитаре неоценим. Треугольник — гитара, голос, публика — родился на его концертах. Именно он впервые стал отдавать гитаре партию голоса, гитара издала человеческий крик в нежных руках Кинга. И это был не вопль боли, а тонкий голосок новорожденного, которого приняла повивальная бабка–маэстро. Его гитара была очень чистой, возможно, мне это ближе и понятнее потому, что я сам как певец — категория вторичная, я стараюсь вложить голос в гитару.

Rolling Stone:
— It cost fifty pounds, which was a lot then. / Это стоило пятьдесят фунтов, что было много тогда.
Ровесник:
— Гитара стоила целых пятнадцать фунтов, по тем временам очень большие деньги.

— As rock stars go, you seem to be all work and no play. Would you say you're a workaholic, that you do music to the exclusion of all else?
— I wish that wasn't the case. Because I like all the things that guys like. You know, I love to eat and I love to sleep. I love to watch sports, I like cars. But when you're touring so much and doing all these things, it ends up that you haven't got time to put in new light bulbs all over the place. I just don't get off on painting the toilet.
I get accused of being lazy. I'm lying on the bed, watching sports on TV, and Lourdes wants me off the bed, she wants to tidy up around me. I end up getting thrown out of the house. You have to go do something, right? So why not go do a session?
— Пресса сообщает, что вы одержимы работой, что вы лишаете себя элементарных человеческих радостей. И все же когда выдается свободное время?..
— Я такой же, как все, я самый обыкновенный, И люблю я то же самое, что другие. Люблю хорошо поесть и понежиться утром в постели, люблю смотреть телевизор, особенно спортивные передачи, Вообще люблю смотреть на то, что красиво — от красивых картин до красивых женщин. Иногда, глядя в зеркало, люблю сам себе показать язык.
Но нет времени. И не только на это — порой некогда сменить перегоревшую лампочку в коридоре, так и спотыкаешься впотьмах. И еще я ужасно ленивый. Где–то внутри. И вот когда наступает блаженный миг счастья — последний раз это было, м–м, года два назад — и ты наконец довольный и томный валяешься на диване и тупо наблюдаешь за сложными перемещениями жены вокруг пылесоса, то самый близкий тебе человек вышвыривает тебя с дивана и начинает идиотскую уборку. Как любой нормальный мужчина, я тут же удираю из дома, и угадайте, куда иду? Ну, конечно, в студию. Кстати, именно так и было положено начало альбому "Братья по оружию": мы все женаты, а жены, наверное, договорились одновременно включить пылесосы.

*Lourdes (Лурдес) — это жена Марка