1977-1995Mark KnopflerVocals, guitar
David KnopflerGuitar1977-1980
John IllsleyBass
Pick WithersDrums1977-1982
Hal LindesGuitar1980-1984
Terry WilliamsDrums1982-1988
Alan ClarkKeyboards1980-1995
Guy FletcherKeyboards1984- 1995
Jack SonniGuitar1984-1988
They took the name Dire Straits because it represented their financial condition in the early days. They weren't destitute for long. After playing their first gigs in June 1977, they made a demo a month later that got played on the BBC, and that December they landed a record deal.
In 2001, British scientists named a dinosaur they discovered after Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler. They named the dinosaur, which was discovered in Madagascar, "Masiakasaurus Knopfleri" as a tribute.
Mark Knopfler was a journalist and teacher before joining the band. One of his first assignments as a cub reporter for the Yorkshire Evening Post was to write Jimi Hendrix' obituary.
Mark Knopfler has been married three times. His first children arrived in 1987 when he and his second wife Lourdes had twin boys. They split in 1993, and in 1997, Knopfler married his third wife, Kitty. They had two daughters.
The band's demo cost only $175 dollars to make. Their record company was so impressed, they got Spencer Davis Group bassist Muff Winwood (brother of Steve) to produce their debut album.
Dire Straits were a brother band for their first two albums, with Mark Knopfler's brother David on rhythm guitar. After leaving the group in 1980, David launched a solo career and built a small following. He beat Mark to the
knopfler.com domain name.
Mark Knopfler doesn't like being famous. "Instead of watching the world, the world's watching you," he explained to Rolling Stone in 1996.
For their 1980 album
Making Movies, they really did make some movies, producing short films to accompany the songs "
Romeo And Juliet," "
Tunnel Of Love" and "
Skateaway." MTV wasn't around back then, but the collection was sold directly to consumers on VHS.
Before Dire Straits, David Knopfler was a social worker, and John Illsley was studying sociology.
Mark Knopfler has worked on a lot of movie soundtracks, most famously The Princess Bride (1987). His other soundtrack work includes Local Hero (1983), Wag The Dog (1998) and A Shot At Glory (2002).
Mark Knopfler is left-handed but he plays right-handed; he says that makes him strong at vibratos.
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Suggestion credit:
Gary - Kumla, Sweden
Mark Knopfler got his distinctive guitar playing style from strumming tennis rackets with his sister during his childhood. In an interview on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, Knopfler revealed the story behind his technique.
"Well, it's because of my big sister Ruth, and I think big sisters are very important in this world. We had these dodgy little tennis rackets that you could get for not very much money, we used to use the tennis racket as a guitar. I was playing it, I was pretending it was a guitar, and she turned it round so that I was holding it right-handed, and she said that's the way you play it."
As a left-handed person playing a right-handed guitar, Knopfler found that his stronger hand was now forming the notes. This unintentional twist gave him "a little bit of flexibility," as he put it, allowing him to master the vibrato technique by bending two or three strings at a time. Thanks to Ruth's intervention, what began as child's play with a tennis racket shaped the signature sound of one of rock's greatest guitarists.
Some groups go out with a bang, but Dire Straits slowly faded away and never came back. They released their last studio album, On Every Street, in 1991 and played their last show in 1992. Fans had no reason to suspect the band was kaput, but that last tour took a toll on Mark Knopfler, and when he decided to record his next set of songs for his first solo album, he put Dire Straits to bed. We only found out about the band's demise when Knopfler was promoting that album in 1996.
The end date for Dire Straits is subjective but is often listed as 1995, when they released a live album of earlier recordings called Live At The BBC. They did reunite to play four shows in England in 2002, but they performed under the name Mark Knopfler And Friends.
On January 31, 2024, Mark Knopfler parted ways with over 120 of his guitars and amplifiers at a Christie's auction in London, raising £8.84 million. The collection charted his 50-year career, with some truly legendary instruments, including a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard that fetched £693,000, setting a new auction record for that model. True to form, Knopfler didn't keep it all: a quarter of the proceeds went to charity, benefiting The British Red Cross, Tusk, and Brave Hearts of the North East.
