mark knopfler tour australia

Mark Knopfler Tour 2024 : Unforgettable Musical Journey Ahead

Mark Knopfler’s 2024 tour will feature a mix of his classic hits and new releases. Fans can expect a memorable experience with his talented band and iconic guitar skills.

Known for his captivating stage presence, Knopfler’s tour is sure to delight audiences worldwide. Mark Knopfler, the legendary musician and former lead guitarist of Dire Straits, has announced his highly anticipated 2024 tour. With a vast catalog of hits from his solo career and time with Dire Straits, the tour promises to be a treat for music enthusiasts.

Knopfler’s soulful voice and masterful guitar playing have made him a household name in the music industry. As he prepares to take the stage once again, fans can look forward to an unforgettable performance filled with timeless classics and new favorites. Stay tuned for ticket information and tour dates to catch Mark Knopfler live in 2024.

Credit: ultimateclassicrock.com

Mark Knopfler Tour 2024: Unforgettable Musical Journey Ahead

Mark Knopfler Tour 2024 promises an unforgettable musical journey for fans across the globe. The initial announcement and release of dates have created immense excitement among music enthusiasts. The tour will cover notable cities and venues, offering enthusiasts a chance to experience Knopfler’s iconic music live. Fans can look forward to special editions and unique experiences crafted exclusively for them, adding a touch of exclusivity to the tour. The tour aims to create a memorable and engaging experience for all attendees, providing an opportunity to immerse themselves in the essence of Knopfler’s music.

Anticipating Knopfler’s Setlist Magic

Mark Knopfler’s highly anticipated 2024 tour promises to deliver a mesmerizing blend of classics and new tracks, creating an electrifying experience for fans. With the potential for captivating collaborations and guest musicians, enthusiasts can expect an unforgettable performance. For devoted followers, the live setting holds immense significance , offering a unique connection to the music that transcends the studio recordings. Knopfler’s masterful setlist curation and the energy of the live audience are certain to ignite an unforgettable concert experience.

Behind The Scenes: Tour Preparations

Mark Knopfler’s upcoming tour in 2024 is being meticulously prepared behind the scenes. Rigorous rehearsals and stage design insights play a crucial role in ensuring a seamless and captivating performance. The technical crew’s contribution is invaluable, as they work diligently to create perfection in every aspect of the show. Additionally, Mark Knopfler’s personal preparation rituals offer a glimpse into the dedication and commitment required to deliver an unforgettable experience to his fans.

Tour Highlights And Must-sees

Mark Knopfler’s 2024 tour promises a lineup of electrifying performances that are not to be missed. Fans can look forward to unique tour merchandise that will make for unforgettable mementos. Additionally, there will be opportunities for meet-and-greets with Knopfler, granting an intimate experience with the legendary musician.

Embracing Local Cultures On Tour

Mark Knopfler’s 2024 tour is set to embrace local cultures, integrating local music influences into performances. This will be complemented by special charity initiatives and local partnerships, showcasing a commitment to engaging with fans across different cultures.

Frequently Asked Questions For Mark Knopfler Tour 2024

When will the mark knopfler tour 2024 tickets go on sale.

The Mark Knopfler Tour 2024 tickets will go on sale starting next month. Keep an eye out for the official announcement on the ticket sales date to secure your seats for this highly anticipated tour.

What Can Fans Expect From The Mark Knopfler Tour 2024 Concert?

Fans can expect an exhilarating musical journey as Mark Knopfler showcases his iconic guitar skills and performs timeless hits along with new material. The concert promises to deliver a memorable experience filled with superb musicianship and captivating melodies.

Where Will The Mark Knopfler Tour 2024 Be Held?

The Mark Knopfler Tour 2024 will traverse various cities and venues across the country, providing fans with ample opportunities to catch this legendary artist live. Stay tuned for the tour schedule to find out if Mark Knopfler will be performing in a city near you.

What Is The Significance Of The Mark Knopfler Tour 2024 For Music Enthusiasts?

The Mark Knopfler Tour 2024 is a rare chance for music enthusiasts to witness the brilliance of a living legend live on stage. This tour marks a momentous occasion for fans to immerse themselves in the timeless melodies and masterful performances by Mark Knopfler.

As Mark Knopfler’s 2024 tour comes to a close, fans can look back on a series of unforgettable performances. With his captivating guitar skills and soul-stirring vocals, Knopfler proved once again why he’s a music legend. The tour was a celebration of timeless music that left a lasting impression on all who attended.

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Mark Knopfler  

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Mark Freuder Knopfler was born on August 12th 1949, in Glasgow, Scotland (UK). He is a rock and blues-rock guitarist and singer-songwriter.

Mark is well recognized for his role in band Dire Straits, who formed in 1977, where he was the lead guitarist and vocalist. The band broke up in 1995 where Mark decided to embark on various other projects. This includes being in other bands including, the ‘Notting Hillbillies’.

However, after the break up of Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler propelled straightforward into a solo career. In 1996 e released his debut album, titled, ‘Golden Heart’. Following the success of his debut album, Mark had a breakthrough in the year 2000 once he released his second album, named, ‘Sailing to Philadelphia’.

The Scottish artist impressively also collaborated with the likes of highly regarded singers, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and Chet Atkins. Furthermore, the talented Mark also went on to produce various albums for singers comprising of, Tina Turner, Randy Newman, and Bob Dylan. In addition, he has scored the music to several films, including Local Hero, The Princess Bride, Comfort and Joy, Cal, Last Exit to Brooklyn and Wag the Dog.

The Glaswegian picked up great success and released further albums including, ‘The Ragpicker’s Dream’ in 2002 and ‘Shangri-La’ in 2004. A tour was to follow, however, unfortunately a motorcycle accident resulted in the tour being postponed for a whole year.

Mark Knopfler was positioned 27th on Rolling Stone magazine's list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

Live reviews

Casa cheia no Estádio Municipal de Oeiras para o regresso de Mark Knopfler a Portugal em mais uma etapa do Festival EDPCoolJazz. Apesar de trazer um disco novo, o concerto foi bem distribuído pelos discos mais recentes a solo, ficando a segunda metade reservada para passagens gloriosas por alguns dos maiores hinos dos Dire Straits.

Depois de ter passado por Alvalade e Faro com os Dire Straits, Knopfler já visitou o Porto, Cascais, duas vezes o Pavilhão Atlântico e duas vezes o Campo Pequeno. O regresso foi em Oeiras onde deu o seu concerto em nome próprio com alinhamento mais equilibrado e bem conseguido. Visivelmente bem disposto, muito comunicativo e seguro que as escolhas musicais para esta digressão não desiludem nem fãs nem nostálgicos ocasionais.

Apesar de ter editado um novo disco recentemente, Mark já assinou mais discos a solo do que com os Dire Straits, o concerto não é focado em temas novos. A primeira metade da noite é dedicada a três canções de cada um dos seus dois últimos álbuns.

«Broken Bones» de «Tracker» abre da melhor maneira o alinhamento que segue com três músicas do penúltimo disco, o duplo «Privateering». «Corned Beef City», «Privateering» e «Hill Farmer's Blues». Uma sequência que mostra a excelência dos músicos que acompanham Mark, uma viagem por sons tão próximos do blues, folk e country como dos ambientes celtas pontuados por flautas ou gaitas de foles e violinos. Depois, volta a «Tracker» para tocar «Skydiver», onde mostrou empenho em ter a plateia a cantar consigo. Nunca tínhamos visto Knopfler tão orgulhoso de uma composição nova como esta noite. «Laughs and Jokes and Drinks and Smokes» fechou a viagem pelos dois registos mais recentes. Pelo meio não passou despercebida uma visita ao baú, uma maravilhosa recuperação instrumental de «Father and Son» recuperada da banda sonora de Cal de 1984.

Tempo para deliciar os fãs com arranque imediato para «Romeo and Juliet» e a sua guitarra prateada a luzir. Sem pausas e já com a guitarra vermelha e branca a terminar esta primeira passagem pelos Dire Straits, ataque ao hino «Sultans of Swing». Telemóveis ao alto, cabeças em baixo e algum air guitar para acompanhar o tema que deve ser um dos grandes responsáveis por Knopfler continuar a encher estádios em 2015.

O acompanhamento vocal do público às notas de saxofone em «Your Latest Trick» comprova o acerto da escolha do tema do célebre disco «Brothers in Arms».

Com o público conquistado, Mark Knopfler partia para as últimas três canções antes do encore. Promoveu duas músicas de discos a solo mais antigos que há muito pediam para figurar entre os grandes clássicos do guitarrista. «Postcards From Paraguay», do disco «Shangri-La», tem como introdução lenta a apresentação individual da banda. Em crescendo arranca para uma festa tropical instrumental própria de uma noite de verão.

Segue-se «Speedway at Nazareth», de «Sailing to Philadelfia», uma cavalgada instrumental poderosa que fica mesmo a pedir a entrada do épico «Telegraph Road», digno de fechar o alinhamento em grande estilo.

O encore foi mais um rebuçado para o nostálgicos, «So Far Away» em versão monocórdica e um final instrumental com o grandioso «Going Home: Theme From Local Hero».

Não houve «Brothers in Arms», nem «What it Is», presenças habituais em alinhamentos anteriores mas ficámos a ganhar com a interpretação de «Your Latest Trick» e «Telegraph Road» a soarem melhor que nunca. O mesmo já não podemos dizer de «Sultans of Swing» ou «So Far Away», por exemplo, a perderem pedalada com o passar do tempo, embora sempre dignas.

A caminho dos 66 anos, MarkKnopfler está impecável em palco e atingiu quase a perfeição na escolha equilibrada de um alinhamento onde se percebe que tem tantos clássicos a solo como aqueles que deixou nosDireStraits. Isto é proeza só ao alcance de alguns.

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Still a bit gobsmacked with how good Mark Knopfler and band were last night. It’s all a product of Mark’s brilliant songwriting, arrangement, playing, production, and most of all his imagination. Mark is a storyteller in the truest sense and he inhabits his characters to a depth not unlike Kate Bush or Tom Waits. I often feel like he understands American and world history better than most of the natives.

His band are monsters on their respective instruments, and in most cases that’s three or more instruments each. The tour lineup includes Mark Knopfler (guitar, vocals), Guy Fletcher (keyboards), Richard Bennett (guitar), Glenn Worf (bass), Jim Cox (piano, organ, accordion), Ian Thomas (drums), John McCusker (violin, cittern), and Michael McGoldrick (whistles, uilleann pipes). Nigel Hitchcock (saxophone).

This band can cover any genre and create any dynamic. Majestic is a great old venue (I’m deliberately not talking about the seats), and the sound was excellent. High marks for the Dallas audience as they all seemed to be real Knopfler fans and not just the socialites that sometimes inundate these shows (not looking at you, ATT PAC).

Another really cool feature of this and the last few tours is that Mark offers the board recordings on little guitar shaped USB sticks a few months after the show. As this was a great performance (even according to Richard Bennett on his blog), this live recording should be a keeper.

There is something so wonderful about Mark Knopflers style of guitar playing. His style along with the tone of his guitar makes his music instantly recognisable.

A ‘Music Makers’ evening with Mark Knopfler was an amazing example of his talents. A tiny stage housed Mark and 5 other musicians. This was’t a conventional performance, it was laid back and personal. Very different to the stadium performances he used to do with Dire Straits. They started off with a simple instrumental before playing ‘Sailing To Philadelphia'. Then the story telling started, he told the audience about how he came to be a musician and how his musical talents evolved. Stories of his childhood made the audience smile and laugh and the performance of each song brought about a hearty applause.

He performed a range of songs and described what inspired them, he even gave the audience a little guitar lesson, showing how he created the riffs and gave an insight into the songwriting process.

He played big hits such as ‘Sultans of Swing,' Juliet’ and ‘Brothers In Arms’, as well as a number of folk tracks that he said were a big inspiration to him as he began as a musician. All in all it was a wonderful evening! The stories he told were Interesting, funny, and insightful and the performances of his songs were flawless.

It's always great expectations for a Mark Knopfler concert. He's been generating amazing music for a long time - it's hard to believe that it's been 37 years since "Sultans of Swing" and those fancy, memorable licks - and gone in more than a few interesting musical directions, from Dire Straits rock to Scottish country folk.

The show in Milwaukee on Wednesday night gave his fans a sample of his (and his band's) incredible versatility and four-decades long catalog.

(The set list is posted here: http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/mark-knopfler/2015/riverside-theater-milwaukee-wi-3f43543.html).

His band has expanded to 8 members now. His introduction of bass player Glenn Worf (who grew up in Madison and attended UW-Eau Claire) drew a loud applause.

Mr. Knopfler's banter was funny and informative. In reference to Milwaukee being the home of Harley Davidson and his fondness for motorcycles, he announced he was "still growing up."

As expected, it was an evening of outstanding music, the eclectic mix chosen from an amazing career of innovation and creativity. It's not a stretch to say he remains one of the finest living guitarists.

Four time Grammy award winner Mark Knopfler OBE is one of Britain's most critically acclaimed artists having been awarded the Edison Award, the Steiger Award and the Ivor Novello Award. At the age of 65, he continues to tour globally to his loyal fan base.

Mark has enjoyed a successful solo career since the release of his debut album 'Golden Heart' in 1996 following the demise of Dire Straits. His set lists now accumulate his extensive solo work, a variety of Dire Strait's greatest hits and covers by his many collaborators such as Emmylou Harris and Chet Atkins.

The audience is delighted with a performance of 'I Dug Up a Diamond', Mark's track with Emmylou.

Part of the appeal of seeing Knopfler live is to witness his incredible guitar playing abilities, his fingers move at lightening pace during a Dire Straits cover 'Romeo and Juliet'. By a blistering finale of 'Our Shangri-La' the audience have been well and truly schooled as to why the artist has been awarded by so many esteemed organisations.

Since I am a gigantic Dire Straits fan, I really wanted to go to Mark Knopfler's concert, even though his new music isn't like his songs back from the Dire Straits time. I have to admit that some of his new songs weren't for me at all, but a few of them were cleverly made and give his bandmembers (and Mark himself of course) a wonderful chance to showcase their talents. Some of his bandmembers played up to 5 different instruments during the show!

I was also glad that he performed a few Dire Straits songs, including his legendary 'Sultans of Swing' with his infamous guitarsolo at the end.

All and all it was a fantastic show and I enjoyed very much, even though my cousin and I were pretty much the youngest fans out there with our fifteen years of age!

Mark Knopfler is obviously still really good at what he does and he found himself a band with members equally as talented as him!

This is the second time I've seen Mark Knopfler and both times he has been fantastic!

An evening with Mark makes a large venue feel like a pub gig due to his warm vibes and friendly banter. Over the course of his career, Mark has gained a reputation as one of the finest guitar players of all time and this shines alongside his world class band.

Together Mark and the band execute the latest songs with energy and precision, whilst his golden-oldies such as 'Sultans of Swing', 'Local Hero', 'So Far Away' and 'Telegraph Road' have been given a new, but fantastic lease of life due to the addition of folk instruments from the likes of John McCusker and Mike McGoldrick.

I can't recommend a Mark Knopfler gig enough to both old die-hard fans and new music lovers a like.

Mark Knopfler show was incredible. He is simply "in my opinion" the best guitarist, loved to see his hand gliding on the cords. He also as a great band and it was super that he let them have their own moment of glory during the show, so cool! I was very happy with his list of songs for the show, I know he said we could ask for a song but they will not give a damn and frankly it was not necessary as he made a great range of popular songs from Dire Strait time to now and all of My best songs were there Wouhou! Place des Arts Salle Wilfrid Pelletier is the best as it is not too big and everyone is close enough to see the band, and the sound was going strait to the heart, what a feeling. Great show to remember for a long time. Many Many thanks to Mark Knopfler and is band.

Mark Knopfler - Heinz Hall, Pittsburgh, PA 10/13/15

From the moment Mark and the band took the stage, musicianship stood center stage. Mark flowed through the setlist effortlessly covering new and old and even dipping into the far past with a couple of Dire Straits selection. His guitar prowess was front and center but the talents of the band members were highlighted throughout. Each musician played multiple instruments and flowed from jazz to rock to Celtic influences. The acoustic instrumentation was clear even at subdued volumes. If you were a Mark Knopfler fan you went away satisfied as Mark came out for two encores.

Great concert.

It's not Dire Straits but it's not meant to be. However he does indulge the audience with Romeo and Juliette, Sultans of Swing and a belter of a version of Telegraph Road. Some of the best and most effortless guitar play I have had the privilege to witness. The band are all extremely talented and provide great support to a great artist. If you want Dire Straits you are many years too late, if you want an outstanding guitarist having a good time and sharing it with a relatively small audience then you will have a great evening.

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Find out more about Mark Knopfler tour dates & tickets 2024-2025

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The 250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time

Celebrating six-string glory in blues, rock, metal, punk, folk, country, reggae, jazz, flamenco, bossa nova, and much more.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Mdou Moctar, Randy Rhoads, Carlos Santana, Wes Montgomery, Yvette Young, Prince, King Sunny Ade, Jimmy Page and Odetta

WARE/KEYSTONE FEATURES/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES; PAUL BERGEN/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES; JOHN ATASHIAN/GETTY IMAGES; DAVID REDFERN/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES, 4; TIM MOSENFELDER/GETTY IMAGES; BERTRAND GUAY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; KEVIN MAZUR/WIREIMAGE

“MY GUITAR IS not a thing,” Joan Jett once said. “It is an extension of myself. It is who I am.” The guitar is the most universal instrument, the most primal, and the most expressive. Anybody can pick up a little guitar in no time at all, but you can spend a lifetime exploring its possibilities. That’s why thinking about what makes a great guitarist is so much fun.

Rolling Stone published its original list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists in 2011. It was compiled by a panel of musicians, mostly older classic rockers. Our new expanded list was made by the editors and writers of Rolling Stone . This one goes to 250.

Guitar players are often as iconic as the lead singers for the bands they play in. But mythic guitar gods like Jimmy Page, Brian May, and Eddie Van Halen are only one part of the story. We wanted to show the scope of the guitar’s evolution. The earliest entrant on the list (folk music icon Elizabeth Cotten) was born in 1893, the youngest (indie-rock prodigy Lindsey Jordan) was born in 1999. The list has rock, jazz, reggae, country, folk, blues, punk, metal, disco, funk, bossa nova, bachata, Congolese rumba, flamenco, and much more. There are peerless virtuosos like Pat Metheny, Yvette Young, and Steve Vai, as well as primitivists like Johnny Ramone and Poison Ivy of the Cramps. There are huge stars like Prince, Joni Mitchell , and Neil Young, and behind-the-scenes masters like Memphis soul great Teenie Hodges and smooth-rock assassin Larry Carlton.

Many great guitarists realized their genius as part of a duo, so Kim and Kelley Deal of the Breeders, Adrian Smith and Dave Murray of Iron Maiden, and other symbiotic pairs share an entry. Our only instrumental criteria is that you had to be a six-string player. (All you Balalaika shredders out there, keep at it; maybe next time.)

In making the list, we tended to value heaviness over tastiness, feel over polish, invention over refinement, risk-takers and originators more than technicians. We also tended to give an edge to artists who channeled whatever gifts god gave them into great songs and game-changing albums, not just impressive playing.

As modern blues visionary Gary Clark Jr. put it, “I don’t know if I want to get too far off the path — I don’t want to get lost in the forest — but I like to wander out a bit and adventure.”

CONTRIBUTORS: Jonathan Bernstein , Tom Beaujour , David Browne , Brenna Ehrlich , Jon Dolan , J.D. Considine , Dan Epstein , Jon Freeman , David Fricke , Elisabeth Garber-Paul , Maya Georgi , Michael Goldwasser , Sarah Grant , Andy Greene , Joe Gross , Kory Grow , Will Hermes , Brian Hiatt , Joseph Hudak , Maura Johnston , Ernesto Lechner , Alan Light , Leah Lu , Charisma Madarang , Angie Martoccio , Michaelangelo Matos , Brittney McKenna , Craig Seymour , Rob Sheffield , Rob Tannenbaum , Simon Vozick-Levinson , Douglas Wolk , Zhenzhen Yu

From Rolling Stone US

Although his best-known solo is probably a cameo on the Beastie Boys’ 1986 hit “No Sleep Till Brooklyn,” Slayer co-founder Kerry King’s contributions to the sound and sensibility of Eighties thrash metal will be his lasting contribution to the world. King, along with his co-guitarist Jeff Hanneman, created a much darker, more dissonant and twisted brand of riffage on Slayer classics like “Angel of Death” and “Dead Skin Mask” than any of other guitar teams in thrash’s “Big Four” of Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth, and Slayer. King’s solos, a face-melting onslaught of tremolo picking, atonal chromatic runs, and howling whammy bar dives, are both unnerving and tinged with a free-jazz skronk that is not just downright evil, it’s timelessly hip as well. “There’s nothing that says playing out of key is wrong,” King told Music Radar. “To me, anything that sounds good is right.” —T.B.Key Tracks: “Angel of Death,” “Raining Blood”

Tosin Abasi

His prodigious chops were first recognized when he was the guitarist in Washington, D.C., technical metalcore group Reflux, but it was only after launching his aggressive, acrobatic instrumental outfit Animals as Leaders that Tosin Abasi cemented his reputation as one of the most exciting and innovative of guitarists of the past decade. Abasi adopted an eight-string, extended-range instrument and invented finger-boggling techniques like selective picking, thumping, and “swybrid picking.” It could be argued that Abasi is also redefining the very notion of what it means to be a guitarist. “I’m always trying to progress,” he said in a 2020 interview. “And that means that I have to conceive of new ways of producing harmony and rhythm on the guitar.” —T.B.Key Tracks: “Cafo,” “Tooth and Claw,” “The Problem of Other Minds”

When Link Wray released the thrilling, ominous “Rumble” in 1958, it became one of the only instrumentals ever to be banned from radio play — for fear that it might incite gang violence. By stabbing his amplifier’s speaker cone with a pencil, Wray created the distorted, overdriven sound that would reverberate through metal, punk, and grunge. Wray, who proudly claimed Shawnee Indian ancestry and lost a lung to tuberculosis, was the archetypal leather-clad badass, and his song titles alone — “Slinky,” “The Black Widow” — convey the force and menace of his playing. “He was fucking insane,” said the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach. “I would listen to ‘Some Kinda Nut,’ over and over. It sounded like he was strangling the guitar — like it was screaming for help.” —A.L.Key Tracks:“Rumble,” “Jack the Ripper,” “Raw-Hide”

Stephen Malkmus

When Pavement started, Stephen Malkmus came on like a feedback-loving indie prankster. But he soon proved himself the great guitar romantic of his era. He plays his beautifully ragged, fluently emotional ripples all over albums like Pavement’s Brighten the Corners (“Fin”) or the Silver Jews’ American Water (“The Wild Kindness”). He gets shreddier over the years, in the shaggy psych of Real Emotional Trash, the elegiac wit of Mirror Traffic, or his folk experiment Traditional Techniques. He jams hard on the recent Pavement tours, jokingly introducing the band as “Phishport Convention.” But his crackpot independence has made him an icon to younger guitarists of the Snail Mail/Soccer Mommy generation, inspiring the Beadadoobee tribute, “I Wish I Was Stephen Malkmus.” —R.S.Key Tracks: “Gold Soundz,” “Night Society,” “Share the Red”

Mark Knopfler

Mark Knopfler’s first big guitar-hero moment — the fleet, gloriously melodic solo on Dire Straits’ 1978 hit “Sultans of Swing” — came at a time when punk seemed to be rendering the idea of a guitar hero obsolete. And yet Knopfler built a reputation as an intensely creative virtuoso (not to mention an ace songwriter), showing remarkable command over a range of tones and textures — from the gnarly distortion on hit single “Money for Nothing” to the stinging precision of “Tunnel of Love.” One key to Knopfler’s signature style: playing without a pick. “Playing with your fingers,” he has said, “has something to do with immediacy and soul.” Knopfler’s versatility made him much in demand for projects with artists including Tina Turner, Eric Clapton, and Bob Dylan, who first called on Knopfler for 1979’s Slow Train Coming. —A.L.Key Tracks:“Sultans of Swing,” “Romeo and Juliet”

Mary Timony

The ferociously brilliant Mary Timony has been rewriting the guitar rulebook for three decades. A teen Satriani/Vai devotee, she took all her classically trained technique to punk rock. “I’d gone to music school, but I was playing in the D.C. hardcore scene,” she says. “I knew I wanted to be loud.” She made her bones with Helium, one of the Nineties’ most head-spinning bands, in avant-fuzz classics like The Dirt of Luck. She moved on to prog, psychedelia, the rock swagger of Wild Flag and Ex Hex. Other shredders idolize her. Carrie Brownstein calls her “Timony, that woozy wizard.” Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan — one of her guitar students — told Rolling Stone, “Everybody wants to be her.” —R.S.Key Tracks: “XXX,” “Pat’s Trick,” “Glass Tambourine”

Joe Satriani

Even if he was only known as the guitarist who once counted Kirk Hammett and Steve Vai among his pupils, Joe Satriani might still be a player whose name is whispered in hushed tones. But in the “faster is better” ecosystem of the Eighties, Satriani astutely found a niche for himself as the “tasteful shredder,” a melodic voice of reason in a the era’s fretboard arms race. Sure, “Satch” as he is often referred to, had chops to burn, but on signature tracks such as “Surfing With the Alien” and “Summer Song,”he deploys them judiciously and always in service of the song like the classic rock guitarists he grew up idolizing. “If someone wants to play really fast, they can practice six hours a day, and in two years see amazing results,” Satriani told Guitar Player. “But there’s no method to playing like Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page.” —T.B.Key Tracks: “Surfing With the Alien,” “Summer Song”

Leo Nocentelli

Growing up in New Orleans, Leo Nocentelli wanted to play jazz like his guitar heroes Kenny Burrell and Wes Montgomery. But when he would “wake up in the night with a riff in my head,” as he told a reporter, the music would take on a funkier shape. Along with his bandmates in the Meters, Nocentelli “used to take things that were already pretty funky and make them really funky,” as generations of hip-hop and dance-music samplers would affirm. Nocentelli’s riffs stung coolly, whether on Meters masterworks like “Cissy Strut “ and “Just Kissed My Baby” or while accompanying Labelle on “Lady Marmalade,” among many others. —M.M.Key Tracks: “Cissy Strut,“ “Just Kissed My Baby”

More than the guitar, Wata’s instrument is her amplifier. Over the years, her band, the avant-garde metal trio Boris, have titled albums Amplifier Worship, Feedbacker, and Noise — literalisms for how she conjures long, grumbling drones and overtones from her amp, letting each fuzzy chord burble until it fizzles away. But Wata is a master of more than noise. On Boris’ nearly 30 albums, including collaborations with noiseniks like Merzbow and Sunn O))), she and her bandmates have alternated between psychedelic rock, doom metal, and shoegaze. Most impressively, on Pink, she uses an EBow (an electronic violin bow for electric guitars) to create notes that surf atop the waves of sound. —K.G.Key Tracks:“Huge,” “Just Abandoned Myself”

Stephen “Cat” Coore of Third World practically redefined the heights that reggae guitar could soar to, with searing solos that can stand alongside those of the most acclaimed rock guitar gods — check out his string work on 1982’s “Try Jah Love” for an example of why his lead playing is sometimes compared to that of Carlos Santana. But Coore’s appreciation of the importance of rhythm is essential to his style, and his pick accompaniments often help drive the engine of Third World’s best. He’s also a master on the acoustic guitar, not always associated with Jamaican music — his fretwork on “1865 (96 Degrees in the Shade)” helped open the minds of Jamaican listeners and other Jamaican guitarists as to the possibilities of the acoustic in reggae. —M. GoldwasserKey Tracks: “Try Jah Love,” “1865 (96 Degrees in the Shade”

Mdou Moctar

Growing up in Niger, Mdou Moctar was forbidden by his strict parents from playing guitar. Undaunted, he built a four-string guitar out a piece of wood, repurposed bicycle cables, and sardine-can openers and began a musical journey that has brought his unique and hypnotic brand of Touareg music to Europe, the U.S., and beyond. Having now graduated to a Fender Stratocaster, Mdour uses modulation effects like flanging and chorus along with echo and reverb to give his sharp but unerringly tuneful lines a sheen that evokes vast expanses both spiritual and terrestrial. “The sky and the stars, that inspires you when you want to write something or when you need to play,” he told Guitar World in 2021. “It’s a feeling of being free to do whatever you need to do.” —T.B.Key Tracks: “Tarhatazed,” “Mdou’s Theme,” “Afrique Victime”

Revered more as a songwriter than a virtuoso player, Lou Reed has always been a ferocious guitarist — a fan of both Ike Turner’s muscular R&B and Ornette Coleman’s scalding free jazz who was inventing new approaches straight out of the gate (including his single-pitch “ostrich tuning”) with the Velvet Underground. Listen to the sweetness and blood of “Heroin,” the godhead garage rock of “What Goes On,” the epic bad-trip psychedelia of “Sister Ray.” “He was rightfully quite proud of his own soloing,” wrote fellow New York guitar luminary Robert Quine, “but resigned to the fact that most people weren’t ready for it.” As a solo artist, Reed kept on ripping up the rulebook: See 1975’s Metal Machine Music, a noise opus that took feedback further than Jimi Hendrix could have imagined. —W.H.Key Tracks:“Sister Ray,” “Heroin,” “Foggy Notion”

Kurt Cobain

Not surprising for someone who grew up adoring both Kiss and the Melvins, Kurt Cobain’s approach to his instrument lay in that fertile ground between arena rock and indie punk. “I never wanted to sing,” Cobain told Rolling Stone in 1994, recalling his pre-success days. “I just wanted to play rhythm guitar —hide in the back and just play.”Cobain knew his way around a potent power chord (“In Bloom” and “Stay Away”), but his solos were always inventive and unconventional, from the serrated-edge grind in “School” (on Nirvana’s debut, Bleach) to the fire-alarm buzz in his last recording, Nirvana’s “You Know You’re Right.” Cobain favored texture and rawness over flash, and from him, a generation of alt rockers learned you didn’t have to be a virtuoso to be a guitar hero. —D.B.Key Tracks:“Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “Scentless Apprentice”

Poison Ivy put it best herself: “Nobody ever talks to me about music or guitar. I’m the queen of rock & roll, and for this not to be recognized is pure sexism.” The true engine of the Cramps, Ivy and her orange 1958 Gretsch 6120 added the zombie Dick Dale flavor to the haunted rockabilliy band. Despite being the band’s de facto co-lyricist and composer, Ivy may have at times taken a back seat to her more flamboyant bandmate and partner Lux Interior, who died in 2009, but her six-string stylings have inspired countless bands with a taste for sexy surf rock with a bloody edge. “Maybe that made it easier for me to consider playing guitar because I was such a misfit anyway,” she once said. “Maybe it’s harder for someone who fits in to do that. For me, anything was fair game.” —B.E.Key Tracks: “Human Fly,” “Goo Goo Muck”

Sonny Sharrock

Sonny Sharrock wanted to be the next John Coltrane — until asthma drove him to the guitar instead of sax. But as he said in 1990, “I consider myself a jazz saxophonist with a very fucked-up horn.” Sharrock brought rock-style distortion to jazz on classics like Pharoah Sanders’ Tauhid (1966) and Miles Davis’ Jack Johnson (1971). He disappeared for years but hit his prime in the Eighties with his solo Guitar and Bill Laswell’s avant-noise band Last Exit. He finally made his masterpiece in Ask the Ages, blasting with Sanders and drummer Elvin Jones, right before his tragic death in 1994. “Interdenominational intergalactic music,” Carlos Santana called him. “He’s like Coltrane — he’s the cosmic lion.” —R.S. Key Tracks: “Yesternow,” “Sheraserhead’s High-Top Sneakers,” “Many Mansions”

Larry Carlton

When Joni Mitchell and Steely Dan, two of the most musically adventurous acts of the Seventies, wanted to make jazz-infused masterpieces, they both turned to the same guitarist: session master Larry Carlton, who played as if there was no difference between dauntingly sophisticated chord changes and the most elementary rock and folk. You can hear Carlton’s signature licks intertwining with Mitchell’s own playing throughout Court and Spark and Heijira, as well as all over the Dan’s Aja. But his most famous moment came with dual leads on that band’s “Kid Charlemagne,” where he casually melds blues-rock bends, jazz runs, and cosmic psychedelia into one of the greatest guitar solos ever recorded. —B.H.Key Tracks: “Kid Charlemagne,” “Josie,” “Rio Samba”

Muddy Waters

Had he stayed in Mississippi playing roadhouses in and around Clarksdale, McKinley Morganfield would undoubtedly have been remembered as a giant of country blues. But after he’d moved north to Chicago and discovered the electric guitar, Muddy Waters changed the rules by which the blues were played. At first, he went electric simply to ensure his guitar would be heard over the din of raucous, big-city crowds. But as his playing adapted to the new instrument, his music took on a more aggressive edge, one that was intensified by a band that included pianist Otis Spann and harmonica wizard Little Walter. His songs, which included such classics as “Hoochie Coochie Man,” “Got My Mojo Working,” and “Rollin’ and Tumblin’,” became touchstones for blues players and young rockers alike. —J.D.C.Key Tracks:“Rollin’ Stone,” “Mannish Boy”

Adrian Smith and Dave Murray

Iron Maiden’s secret weapons have always been speed and harmony, techniques pioneered by guitarists Dave Murray and Dennis Stratton on the band’s self-titled debut and later perfected by Murray and Adrian Smith beginning with 1981’s Killers and the band’s classic Eighties albums. The duo commands the band’s galloping riffs with rare intensity, taking breaks only to indulge in their own unique solos: smooth, creamy leads for Murray and cutting blues licks for Smith. It’s a combo that defines beloved songs like “The Trooper,” “Run to the Hills,” and “Aces High.” Since 1999, the guitar line has been a trio with Janick Gers, only adding to its harmonies and power. —K.G.Key Tracks: “Hallowed Be Thy Name,” “Aces High,” “The Evil That Men Do”

Wes Montgomery

In the documentary Influences, Carlos Santana named Wes Montgomery as one of the three guitarists who most inspired him. Known for a unique thumb-picking style that allowed him to play melody lines in octaves, Montgomery became one of the most sought-after guitarists in jazz. Working with producer Creed Taylor, he cut everything from driving hard bop (1965’s Smokin’ at the Half Note) to funky soul jazz (1966’s Tequila). But it was his lushly orchestrated take on rock hits, 1967’s A Day in the Life, that earned him his biggest audience, in the process paving the way for smooth jazz. Said Bill Frisell, ““Wes Montgomery was playing music that was popular at that moment. It was like he was the Pied Piper or something”. —J.D.C.Key Tracks: “Four on Six,” “Willow Weep for Me,” “Bumpin’ on Sunset”

Bert Jansch

The U.K. folk-rock scene of the Sixties gave us a music class full of accomplished players, including Richard Thompson and John Renbourn. But there’s a reason Bert Jansch, the Scottish singer and guitarist, was name-checked by Jimmy Page and Neil Young. Whether on his own records or with the classic band Pentangle, which also featured Renbourn, Jansch’s austere fingerpicking (which also matched his singer voice) had an agile, moody personality all its own. In his hands the acoustic guitar conjured isolated walks in the British countryside more than sing-alongs in pubs. His “Black Water Side” clearly inspired Led Zeppelin’s “Black Mountain Side,” and their “Bron-Y-Aur Stomp” takes a cue or two from Jansch’s “The Waggoner’s Lad,” and Young covered “Needle of Death.” —D.B.Key Tracks: “Black Water Side,” “The Waggoner’s Lad”

Derek Trucks

Literally raised in the Allman Brothers family, Derek Trucks — the nephew of Allmans drummer Butch Trucks — started playing slide guitar at age nine and was touring by 12. When he stepped into the late Duane Allman’s slide-guitar spot in the Allman Brothers Band in 1999, at age 20, Derek’s soloing exploded in thrilling directions, managing to incorporate Delta blues, hard-bop jazz, the vocal ecstasies of Southern black gospel, and Indian-raga modality and rhythms. “He’s like a bottomless pit,” said Eric Clapton, who took Trucks on tour as a sideman in 2006 and 2007. “His thing is very deep.” —D.F.Key Tracks:“Joyful Noise,” “Whipping Post” (One Way Outversion)

Ernie Isley

When Ernie Isley first picked up the guitar as a teenager, it was to learn Jose Feliciano’s acoustic version of the Doors’ “Light My Fire” — and, of course, one-time Isley Brothers guitarist Jimi Hendrix had lived with the family when Ernie was an adolescent. So he was ready for the spotlight when he took his soaring solo on “That Lady,” in 1973, done in a single take. ”I plugged in, and when I hit the very first note on the ‘That Lady’ rhythm track, it went from black-and-white to 3D Technicolor,” he recalled. “It was astounding.” The song had an immediate, outsized impact on the Isleys’ sound — his long solos were a feature of both the band’s classic Seventies albums and their live shows — and his irradiated, ecstatic fuzztone remains a marker of a halcyon era. —M.M.Key Tracks: “That Lady,” “Voyage to Atlantis”

Charlie Christian

He never led a recording session, and spent a scant three years in the national spotlight before succumbing to tuberculosis in 1942, but Charlie Christian still managed to become one of the most influential guitarists of all time. He bought his first electric, a Gibson ES150, in 1937, and a year later the company was advertising it “as used by Charlie Christian.” His big break came in 1939, when he was hired by Bennie Goodman, who quickly made him a featured soloist in his sextet, where his punchy, single-note style put him on par with the horn players. “The beat came first,” said Les Paul, a friend. “He locked himself into that driving sound.” —J.D.C.Key Tracks: “Solo Flight,” “Gone With What Wind,” “Lester’s Dream”

Willie Nelson

Like his conversational singing, Willie Nelson’s guitar playing is deceptively laid-back, playfully offbeat, and instantly recognizable. Amazingly, Nelson has been playing the same Martin M-20 classical guitar, nicknamed Trigger, since 1969; it has defined his sound, a nylon-stabbing mix of country, blues, and Django Reinhardt’s gypsy jazz. “I named my guitar Trigger because it’s kind of my horse,” he explained. “Roy Rogers had a horse called Trigger.” Though the guitar now has a large gaping hole, Nelson still plays it nightly. “I have come to believe we were fated for each other,” he said. “The two of us even look alike. We are both pretty battered and bruised.”Key Tracks:“Whiskey River,” “Night Life”

Joan Jett’s future as a rocker was foreordained, she once explained: “When I was 11 or 12, I finally got the balls to say, ‘Mom, Dad, I want a guitar for Christmas, and I don’t want no folk guitar.” By age 15, she was hired to play guitar for the mid-Seventies all-girl raunch-rockers the Runaways — not least because, as their manager Kim Fowley put it, “I could tell Joan wanted to be Keith Richard instead of Duane Allman.” The difference is that while Keef always had a foot in the blues, Jett’s glam-derived rhythmic power is more pile-driving and straight-on: She’s a punk lodestone as much as Johnny Ramone was. —M.M.Key Tracks: “Cherry Bomb,” “Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)”

Ritchie Blackmore

Best known for the gargantuan riff at the heart of Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water,” Ritchie Blackmore helped define heavy-metal guitar by mixing intricate classical composition with raw-knuckled blues rock. Blackmore made waves on 1972’s Machine Head; his solos on the boogie rocker “Highway Star” and “Lazy” remain models of metal pyrotechnics. He looked back toward early European music with his next band, Rainbow — even learning cello to write 1976’s stomping “Stargazer” — and has explored Renaissance-style fingerpicking with Blackmore’s Night. But it’s his Deep Purple work that influenced a generation of headbangers. “Blackmore epitomized this fascination I had with the bare essence of rock & roll, this element of danger,” says Metallica‘s Lars Ulrich. —R.T.Key Tracks:“Smoke on the Water,” “Highway Star,” “Speed King”

The massive slabs of rock-candy noise that J Mascis heaved from his Fender Jazzmaster in Dinosaur Jr. contained multitudes: Black Sabbath savagery, melodic Neil Young soul, punk-rock pig slop. His greatest moment may be the sputtering solo on “Freak Scene”, which is so captivating he barely pauses it to wedge in the final verse. Mascis’ 2011 solo set, Several Shades of Why, also showed he can get shamelessly pretty with an acoustic, too. “I remember seeing Dinosaur play this soft, plaintive song — and then it was just completely detonated by this ravaging solo that J did,” says Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore. “The whole room was incinerated.” —W.H.Key Tracks:“Feel the Pain,” “Little Fury Things”

Hubert Sumlin

“I love Hubert Sumlin,” Jimmy Page has said. “He always played the right thing at the right time.” During more than two decades playing alongside Howlin’ Wolf, Sumlin always seemed to have an almost telepathic connection to the legendary blues singer, augmenting Wolf’s ferocious cries with angular, slashing guitar lines and perfectly placed riffs on such immortal songs as “Wang Dang Doodle,” “Back Door Man,” and “Killing Floor.” Sumlin made such an impact, in fact, that Wolf’s greatest rival, Muddy Waters, even hired him away for a stint in 1956. Sumlin, who passed away in 2011 at age 80, played until the end, sometimes turning up onstage in the company of such acolytes as the Rolling Stones, Elvis Costello, Eric Clapton, and the Allman Brothers Band. —D.W.Key Tracks:“Smokestack Lightning,” “Spoonful,” “Killing Floor”

John McLaughlin

John McLaughlin was invited to record with Miles Davis while still in his twenties, co-parenting jazz fusion on Bitches Brew (which includes a song titled “John McLaughlin”) and the sublime In a Silent Way, among other Davis LPs. But he achieved guitar-god status with his own Mahavishnu Orchestra, where he made his Gibson spit fire like a many-headed dragon. A breakneck stylist, McLaughlin was peerless, mixing psychedelic rock, R&B, gypsy jazz, flamenco, and Indian raga techniques. He was also an acoustic guitar visionary: see 1970’s My Goal’s Beyond. That polyglot mastery earned him huge respect from jazz and rock peers alike: Jeff Beck called him “the best guitarist alive.” —W.H.Key Tracks:“Right Off,” “The Noonward Race”

Franco Luambo

A towering figure in the history of African music, Congolese singer-guitarist-bandleader François Luambo Makiadi, better known as Franco, released 84 albums in a 31-year career and earned nicknames like Sorcerer of the Guitar and the Grand Maître of Zairean Music — all in just 51 years of his larger-than-life career. A patient, fluid musician who mastered the art of simultaneously glistening off and digging into a repetitive groove, Franco and his band OK Jazz began playing Afro-Latin “rumba” in the Fifties and hit their peak in the Seventies and Eighties as that sound sped up and blossomed into the high-energy guitar weaves of soukous. A team player who enjoyed full-band synergy more than flashy solos, he balanced muscularity and grace like few players in any genre. —J.D. Key Tracks: “Ngungi,” “Mario”

Django Reinhardt

Born in Belgium in 1910, Django Reinhardt was one of first players to unlock the potential of the guitar as lead instrument suitable for single-note soloing. After a tragic injury early in his life caused him to lose the use of his third and fourth fingers, he learned how to approach the instrument with only two functional digits on his left hand. Reinhardt eventually connected with violinist Stéphane Grappelli in Paris, and in 1934 the two would form the legendary Quintette du Hot Club de France, a group in which the guitarist would perfect the sinuous and fluid improvisatory style that would not only influence jazz legends like Charlie Christian and Wes Montgomery, but also rock innovators like Jeff Beck and Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers Band. —T.B.Key Tracks: “Django’s Tiger,”“Djangology, ”“Honeysuckle Rose”

Robbie Robertson

When Bob Dylan described the Band’s “wild mercury sound,” he was really talking about Robbie Robertson’s guitar, as exemplified by his torrid, squawking solo on “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” from their 1966 tour. But by the time the Band were making their own LPs, Robertson had pared down his approach, evolving into a consummate ensemble player. As much as any guitarist of his era, Robertson demonstrated the ways guitarists could contribute to ensembles without overpowering them. “I wanted to go in the opposite direction,” said Robertson, “to do things that were so tasteful and discreet and subtle, like Curtis Mayfield and Steve Cropper … where it was all about the song.” —D.B.Key Tracks: “The Shape I’m In,” “Like a Rolling Stone (Live 1966)”

Les Paul is best known as the genius who invented the solid-body Gibson guitar that bears his name. But he was just as imaginative as a player. “He made the very best guitar sounds of the 1950s,” said Brian Wilson. “There’s nobody that came close.” A long string of hits in the Forties and Fifties (on his own and with his wife, singer-guitarist Mary Ford) established his signature style: elegant, clean-toned, fleet-fingered improvisations on current pop standards. Paul created a groundbreaking series of technical innovations, including multilayered studio overdubs and varispeed tape playback, to achieve sounds nobody had ever come up with — check out the insect-swarm solo on his 1948 recording of “Lover.” —D.W.Key Tracks:“How High the Moon,” “Tiger Rag”

Kevin Shields

Kevin Shields pursued his own vision of heavy bliss with the angelic sludge of My Bloody Valentine, and he completely transformed the next 30 years of indie-rock. His signature reverb-heavy, quavering “glide guitar” style — created on his Fender Jazzmaster by moving the tremolo arm while strumming — created sheets of gorgeous, overlapped noise that gave the impression of an artist subsuming his ego into oceans of sound. The results affected scads ofbands that wanted to be painfully loud, deeply mind-blowing, and uncannily intense without reverting to hand-me-down rock-hod tropes. Over three decades after the release MBV’s epoch-making album Loveless, it remains the shoegaze grail. As Shields told Rolling Stone 2017, “When you play punk-rock guitar or sounds-based guitar, it starts to become more about your ability to transcend yourself.” —J.D.Key Tracks: “Only Shallow,” “Soon”

Ry Cooder once likened his playing — a sublime amalgam of American folk and blues, Hawaiian slack-key guitar, the Tex-Mex zest of conjunto, and the regal sensuality of Afro-Cuban son — as “some kind of steam device gone out of control.” As a sideman, Cooder has brought true grit and emotional nuance to classic albums by Randy Newman, the Rolling Stones, and Eric Clapton. Cooder is also a soulful preservationist, keeping vital pasts alive and dynamic in the modern world. A good example: the night Bob Dylan showed up at Cooder’s house asking for a lesson on how to play guitar like the bluesman Sleepy John Estes. —A.L.Key Tracks:“Memo From Turner,” “Boomer’s Story”

T-Bone Walker

When B.B. King heard T-Bone Walker, he “thought Jesus himself had returned to Earth playing electric guitar.” Walker invented the guitar solo as we know it, building a new style on fluid phrasing, bluesy bends, and vibrato. It was the clear tone and melodic invention of his 1942 single “Mean Old World” that blew everyone’s mind, and Walker refined his approach through hits like “Call It Stormy Monday.” “I came into this world a little too soon,” Walker said. “I’d say that I was about 30 years before my time.” —A.L.Key Tracks:“Call It Stormy Monday,” “T-Bone Shuffle,” “Mean Old World”

Carrie Brownstein

Carrie Brownstein makes her Gibson SG ring out like a fierce voice of rage and exuberance. When Sleater-Kinney rose out of the Pacific Northwest riot-grrrl scene, Brownstein loved to shred—now here was a shameless guitar hero, a punk claiming the whole rock heritage as her turf. She even busted out the Pete Townshend windmill move. She traded riffs with Corin Tucker over Janet Weiss’ drums for the almighty roar of 1997’s Dig Me Out and 2005’s The Woods; she teamed up with Mary Timony in The Spells and Wild Flag. “I wanted the guitar to feel weaponized,” Brownstein once said. “It could tell stories or sing on my behalf. I wanted it to be trenchant, also a little scary.”–R.S.Key Tracks: “Call The Doctor,” “Get Up,” “Entertain”

Richard Thompson

Richard Thompson has been one of rock’s most dazzling stylists since his days with Fairport Convention, a British folk-rock band that veered into English traditional music. Shooting out life-affirming riffs amid lyrics that made you want to jump off a bridge (literally: see Richard and Linda Thompson’s 1982 classic “Did She Jump Or Was She Pushed?”), he combined a rock flat-pick attack with speedy fingerpicking. His electric-guitar solos, rooted less in blues than in Celtic music, can be breathtaking, but his acoustic picking is just as killer; no one knows how many tears have been shed by players trying to nail “1952 Vincent Black Lightning.” —W.H.Key Tracks:“Shoot Out the Lights,” “1952 Vincent Black Lightning”

Peter Green

In late 1966,Peter Green had the job of replacingEric Claptonin John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Mayall told his producer, “He might not be better [than Clapton] now. But you wait … he’s going to be the best.” Soon, with the originalFleetwood Mac, he was Britain’s most progressive blues guitarist, with a Chicago-informed aggression heightened by the melodic adventure on albums like 1969’sThen Play On. Green soon entered a dark age of mental and health problems, returning in the Nineties with more subdued but recognizable gifts. “It doesn’t mean a thing, playing fast,” Green told the British music paperRecord Mirror. “I like to play slowly, and feel every note — it comes from every part of my body and my heart and into my fingers. I have to really feel it. I make the guitar sing the blues.” —D.F.Key Tracks:“Albatross,” “Rattlesnake Shake”

John Mayer’s explosive success as a pop singer-songwriter in the early 2000s overshadowed his playing, but his guitar chops were there right from the beginning. Just listen to the slick city gem “Neon” on his 2001 debut, Room for Squares, or anything he’s ever done with the John Mayer Trio, and you’ll hear his expert blending of Stevie Ray Vaughan-esque blues and addictive pop licks. Mayer’s 2006 magnum opus, Continuum, contains some of his greatest solos, from “Gravity” to “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room” to his cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Bold as Love.” And in 2015, he gained an entire new audience as a member of Dead and Company, expanding his resume to Jerry Garcia acolyte. According to Mayer, it’s all a dream that stems from his childhood. “I had this vision, sitting by a window on a rainy afternoon, just playing guitar,” he told Rolling Stone in 2007. “I said to myself, ‘If I have enough strings and electricity, I can play guitar forever. I don’t need anything else.’” —A.M. Key Tracks: “Gravity,” “In Your Atmosphere”

Scotty Moore

On July 5, 1954, Elvis Presley, guitarist Scotty Moore, and bassist Bill Black messed around with a hopped-up version of Arthur Crudup’s “That’s All Right” during a break in a session at Sun Records in Memphis. The guitar would never be the same: Moore’s concise, aggressive runs mixed country picking and blues phrasing into a new instrumental language. The playing was so forceful that it’s easy to forget there was no drummer. If Moore had done nothing but the 18 Sun recordings — including “Mystery Train” and “Good Rockin’ Tonight” — his place in history would be assured. “Everyone else wanted to be Elvis,” Keith Richards said. “I wanted to be Scotty.” —A.L.Key Tracks:“That’s All Right,” “Mystery Train”

Robert Fripp

Since King Crimson‘s first rehearsal in 1969 right up to their last tour in 2021, Robert Fripp was their distinguishing instrumental voice, a singular blend of distorted complexity and magisterial sustain. “Crimson was always a players’ band,” Fripp told Rolling Stone in 2019. “My interest was to present platforms where you take good musicians to a certain point and then say,‘Go.’” That duality is best heard on the most progressive prog-rock album ever made, Crimson’s 1973 thorny-metal classic, Larks’ Tongues in Aspic. Fripp’s most famous guitar line is the fuzz-siren hook in the title track to David Bowie‘s Heroes. Fripp would “start up without even knowing the chord sequence,” said producer Brian Eno, adding that Fripp’s work on the 1977 Bowie album “was all first takes.” —D.F.Key Tracks:“21st Century Schizoid Man,” “Heroes”

Alex Lifeson

Even if he never progressed beyond the brain-rattling riffing of “2112” and “Xanadu,” Rush’s Alex Lifeson would have still exerted a huge, if unheralded, influence on Metallica and other metal acts. But he went on to fill out Rush’s power-trio sound with a seamless mix of lush arpeggios and rock crunch that sounded like at least two players at once — and reinvented his sound further as the Eighties approached, finding his own take on Andy Summers’ echo-and-reggae approach. “Playing in a three-piece band always seemed a little empty to me,” Lifeson says, “and the guitar just had to make a broader statement.” But Lifeson reserves his most daring playing for his solos, which often use wildly exotic note choices: Just try to wrap your head around the extraterrestrial lunacy of, say, his “Freewill” solo. —R.T.Key Tracks:“La Villa Strangiato,” “The Spirit of Radio”

Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo

Starting in the Eighties, Sonic Youth decided the rock handbook didn’t apply to them: Songs didn’t need traditional structures, voices didn’t have to be perfectly in tune, and feedback could easily overtake everything. That subversive approach also applied to the dual guitar work of Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo. Each man had a very distinctive style — Moore’s rooted in punk, Ranaldo’s in everything from the Dead to classic rock — but both attacked their beat-up, reconstructed instruments with screwdrivers or drills or waved them around amps for as much distortion as possible. Trading textures more than solos, they created, in tandem, a new wall of sound and rewrote the rules for how guitars should not only look but sound. —D.B.Key Tracks: “Silver Rocket,” “The Diamond Sea,” “Theresa’s Sound-World”

Johnny Marr

The Smiths’ guitarist was a guitar genius for the post-punk era: not a showboating soloist, but a technician who could sound like a whole band. As a kid studying Motown records, Johnny Marr would try to replicate not just guitar riffs but piano and strings too, all with his right hand. His voluptuous arpeggios — often played on a chiming Rickenbacker with incredible flow and detailing — were every bit as essential to the Smiths’ signature sound as Morrissey’s baritone. And he was a tireless explorer: For 1983’s “This Charming Man,” Marr dropped knives onto a ’54 Telecaster, a revelatory incident that Radiohead may have been alluding to in their Smiths-inspired “Knives Out.” “He was a brilliant rhythm player, rarely played solos, so full of sounds,” said Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien, part of an entire generation of British guitarists who took their cues from Marr. —W.H.Key Tracks:“This Charming Man,” “How Soon Is Now?”

Mick Taylor

“I was in awe sometimes listening to Mick Taylor,” Keith Richards wrote in his memoir. “Everything was there in his playing — the melodic touch, a beautiful sustain and a way of reading a song.” Taylor was only 20 when the Rolling Stones recruited him from John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers as the replacement for Brian Jones in 1969. His impact, on masterworks such as Exile on Main Street and Sticky Fingers, was immediate. The down-and-dirty slide on “Love in Vain”; the jaw-dropping precision on “All Down the Line” (where his playing brilliantly mimics the sound of a harmonica); the extended, Latin-jazz-inflected coda on “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” — it’s no accident that Taylor’s stint coincided with the Stones’ most consistently great recordings. —A.L.Key Tracks:“Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” “All Down the Line”

Bonnie Raitt

Bonnie Raitt may have been the daughter of Broadway star John Raitt, but her surrogate parents were Howlin’ Wolf, Furry Lewis, and Mississippi Fred McDowell, whom she met and toured with early in her career. And it showed: Starting with 1971’s acoustic slide workout on “Walking Blues,” Raitt revealed an effortless command of blues guitar licks and feel. She could fingerpick with the best (1972’s “Love Me Like a Man”) or play slide like an old master (1973’s “Kokomo Blues/Write Me a Few of Your Lines”), and her 1989 breakthrough hit “Thing Called Love” slammed electric slide onto the pop charts. As heard in the work of successors like Susan Tedeschi and Kaki King, Raitt broke genuine ground when playing vernacular guitar was still considered a man’s game. —D.B.Key Tracks:“Runaway,” “Something to Talk About”

Trey Anastasio

It’s one thing to influence other guitarists, but Trey Anastasio’s expansive approach to the instrument has proved to be nothing less than a cultural beacon. Anastasio and his Phish bandmates, much like the Grateful Dead before them, have created a tribe of obsessive fans who follow the band from show to show and vigorously debate the merits of both official and bootlegged live recordings. And while psychedelic recreationis certainly part to the Phish ritual, it’s Anastasio’s preternatural ability to keep his slippery and sly modal improvisations fresh, kinetic, and almost telepathically connected to his bandmates that guides fans through their musical trip. It’s no wonder that everyone from Dave Matthews to the New York Philharmonic are eager to collaborate with the guitarist when Phish is on hiatus. “During a lot of Phish jams, I’ll land on a simple phrase, almost childlike, and then run with it,” he told Guitar Player. “Some of my favorite improvisers work that way.” —T.B.Key Tracks: “Stash” (A Live One version), “Divided Sky,” “Fluffhead” (8/26/89)

John Lee Hooker

“I don’t play a lot of fancy guitar,” John Lee Hooker once said. “I don’t want to play it. The kind of guitar I want to play is mean, mean licks.” Hooker’s style couldn’t be defined as urban or country blues — it was something entirely his own, mysterious and funky and hypnotic. On monumental classics like “Boogie Chillen” — a Number One R&B hit in 1949 — “Boom Boom” and “Crawlin’ King Snake,” he perfected a droning, stomping groove, often in idiosyncratic time signatures and locked on one chord, with an ageless power. “He was a throwback even in his own time,” Keith Richards said. “Even Muddy Waters was sophisticated next to him.” Hooker was a critical figure in the Sixties blues boom; his boogie became the basis for much of ZZ Top’s early sound; his songs were covered by everyone from the Doors to Bruce Springsteen; and then, well after turning 70, he won four Grammys in the 1990s. “When I was a child,” said Carlos Santana, “he was the first circus I wanted to run away with.” —A.L.Key Tracks:“Boogie Chillen,” “Boom Boom,” “I’m in the Mood”

Tom Verlaine

Patti Smith famously described Tom Verlaine’s guitar sound as “a thousand bluebirds screaming.” Television’s leader soaked up the flavor of favorite records by John Coltrane, the Stones, and the Dead — then synthesized them into something entirely new on the band’s 1977 debut, Marquee Moon, spinning out endless fluid solos in concert with fellow guitar aesthete Richard Lloyd. Verlaine kept a low profile in subsequent decades, but he remained a model for generations of guitarists with a taste for both punk violence and melodic flight. As he told Rolling Stone in 1977, “There are any number of ways to get from one place to another on the neck of the guitar that I don’t know about.” —W.H.Key Tracks:“Marquee Moon,” “Little Johnny Jewel”

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uDiscover Music presents a selection of 20 key events and discoveries in Knopfler’s life and career, as described by the man himself.

Published on

Mark Knopfler  doesn’t spend much time looking over his shoulder, so we’re going to do it on his behalf. This is a chance to review the remarkable career to date of a man born in Glasgow on 12 August 1949, as remembered by Mark himself. uDiscover Music presents a selection of 20 key events and discoveries in his life and career, as described in numerous interviews over the last two decades with this writer.

1: On his early love of records

“I’d grown up listening to the Everly Brothers and Ricky Nelson . One of the first records that really knocked me out was [Nelson’s 1959 hit] ‘Just A Little Too Much,’ which had some tremendous stuff by James Burton on it.”

Cover To Cover: The Story Of The Great American Songbook

2: on how his love of guitars developed as a boy.

“I knew what the Fender catalogue smelt like, what the grain of paper was like, I wanted this thing so badly. I was always in trouble at school. I would be making metallic noises at the back of the class and playing ‘Wipeout’ runs on my desktop.”

3: On his first guitar, a twin pick-up Höfner V2

“I managed to get my dad to buy that, bless him. It cost him 50 quid, which was a big stretch for him. I didn’t have the nerve then to ask him for an amplifier, so I used to borrow friends’ acoustic guitars. Looking back, they were pretty bad, pretty often, but I learned to play on them.”

4: On teaching himself to play

“I learned to fingerpick on acoustic guitars, and playing with a flat pick on the electric, so I had that sort of dual education. Being self-taught, you can really go off in the wrong direction for years. It’s a guitar teacher’s nightmare.”

Photo: Derek Hudson

5: On cultivating his love of folk music

“Folk joints were the first places I started to play, just through not being to afford an amplifier. That’s never really disappeared. My sister came home with the first Bob Dylan album when I was 11 or 12, and I’ve just always been into folk music. I’m still listening to it now.”

6: On how his sound developed from the teenage folk duo he was in with school friend Sue Hercombe

“For me, a lot of it was to do with experimenting, as I moved on from being in a duo with a girl at school playing folk songs to having a little band with a pianist — wow! Then making things bigger, then coming back around again to a stripped down thing. As long as it’s going somewhere. I don’t like things being static.”

7: On the first gigs he went to see

“Newcastle City Hall is where I went as a kid, that’s where I saw my first shows that made me want to do this in the first place, like Chuck Berry . And I saw my first British rock star there, Joe Brown.”

8: On his love of the American National steel guitar, featured on one of the most famous album covers of all time, Dire Straits ’ Brothers In Arms

“I got into Nationals when I moved to Leeds. Steve Phillips [his early creative partner, and later colleague in the Notting Hillbillies] had a Duolian [National]. When he upgraded, I bought his Duolian, the one with palm trees on it. It’s on songs like ‘Romeo And Juliet’ and a lot of other records.”

9: On his first visit to the USA

“By the time I got to America, I was on a Greyhound bus ticket and not a lot else, just a shoulder bag. That was in ’76. I was really excited about getting there at last, especially with the music, and not just because I was a complete blues nut. I was really into folk music, but also I was more aware that Irish and Scottish and English folk songs had gone to America and come back. This interaction between the continents always interested me, even from the first songs I was writing in trying to make a parallel.”

10: On how a song on the debut, self-titled Dire Straits album was inspired by his own situation

“‘Southbound Again,’ there’s the mythical journey from the north to the Delta, and there’s the other journey that was always taking me from Newcastle to London. When I was wasn’t hitchhiking, when I was lucky enough to get a train ticket, I would always be looking out of the window looking out over the River Tyne, and it was always the same feeling when you’re going home. All Geordies will know what I’m talking about.”

11: On life in the fast lane, at the height of Dire Straits’ success

“Back in the days of 250-date tours or whatever it would be, I think I was just running. At some point, you’ve got to look at yourself, and decide what’s a more balanced way of being. I think you get a better grip on the pace.”

12: On wanting to change to a more intimate way of working

“It got so big, I just wanted to go another way. I wouldn’t say I felt out of place in it, but I never really felt it was a fix that I needed as a permanent part of my life, and I thought if I was going to improve as a writer and a player, I was going to have to get myself into another situation. I was getting away from being the guy writing the song with his guitar. To me, that’s the centre of the whole thing. I don’t want to get too far away from him, ever.”

13: On British Grove, his studio in west London that he opened in the mid-2000s and where he now records all his work

“It’s a difficult place to leave at nighttime. The studio is the same size as the bedroom in a little mews house where I used to do a lot of recording, whenever the builders were quiet or there wasn’t an aeroplane going over. It was a frustrating place to work in, so eventually I decided to do it properly and get a proper studio.”

14: On recording the album All The Roadrunning with his friend Emmylou Harris, and their subsequent tour together

“That was a pleasurable thing from beginning to end. Whenever something is fun, I look for a way to make it last longer. It was the same with the Notting Hillbillies. With Emmy, we thought we’d do some dates. Every night, there’d be something in there that was new and fun.”

15: On following an album with an extensive tour

“I’ve always made a record then gone out and played the songs. A lot of other people would rather be feeding the fish or something. But it’s always great playing around Europe and rekindling the relationship with those countries. Finding new towns is great, and going back to places you’ve enjoyed being in.”

16: On playing the old Dire Straits hits

“People will always want you to play songs from the songbook, that’s part of what you’re doing playing live. You’ve got to please yourself, but at the same time it’s a celebration. You’re all there to have a good time together. I enjoyed writing the songs, I enjoyed recording them so I’m going to enjoy playing them. If I get up there and play ‘Romeo & Juliet’ or ‘Brothers In Arms,’ it’s because I want to play them. It’s important to me that it’s important to people, that you’ve created milestones in people’s lives.”

17: On why he remained a songwriter, rather than becoming, say, a novelist

“I think people arrive at being a novelist and it’s a compulsion. Being a painter or a poet is the same thing. Playing the guitar for me was a compulsion, then realising what I wanted to do was write songs. You have to follow what’s compulsive. I think what you should try to find is not what you can do, but what you must do.”

18: On what inspires him

“The things that broke my heart when I was a kid, and I would write songs about, still do now. I still write about the same sorts of things. Essentially ordinary people, Making something of it can be quite difficult sometimes. But I’m eternally grateful for having that as my rather strange occupation.”

19: On the compulsion to capture moments from real life in a song

“Sometimes there are just circumstances that tell you there’s a song brewing, and you’re kind of helpless at that point. If I saw the Sultans of Swing now in a pub in Deptford, I think I’d go off and write about it.”

20: On still loving what he does

“My enjoyment of making records has increased with age. I love to write. The feeling of being inspired, for want of a better word, is one of the best feelings you can have.”

Listen to the best of Mark Knopfler on Apple Music and Spotify .

70 Comments

peter pontikos

January 9, 2015 at 4:37 pm

MK, you are one of a kind just like so many of your Spiritual Brothers; those present and those passed..

Bart Saelens

December 22, 2015 at 11:21 am

Very well said !

January 9, 2015 at 4:58 pm

I’ve loved Mark’s work from the first time I heard him (and Dire Straits). Every album, all the songs, every one of them are wonderful. I go back and listen after a time and still hear new things, I can honestly say that every song has an appeal that comes forward even if the first time wasn’t as important as the blossom moment.

Steve Petersen

January 9, 2015 at 5:33 pm

Mark is special his songs and getar work are a gift to those who love story telling music.

January 9, 2015 at 5:38 pm

What an inspiration and sheer pleasure his music is and always will be. And finding a few life lessons among the above to boot. Thanks, Mark!

January 9, 2015 at 6:10 pm

Despite all the wonderful musicians enshrined there, I will have no respect at all for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame until Mark, or Dire Straits, are admitted.

Zach Elmquist

January 9, 2015 at 6:14 pm

Knopfler has never wasted a note or word in his song writing.

January 9, 2015 at 6:39 pm

I´m addicted to his work .. it´s a great pleasure, listen to all the stuff .. from Dire Straits days, soundtracks, concerts or whenever he does. Keep on rocking Mark!

brad hamblet

January 9, 2015 at 6:44 pm

I enjoy EVERYTHING you’ve done and always look forward to the next…Thank you!

January 9, 2015 at 6:49 pm

Am looking forward to the next album. Adore the story style of Mark’s work & the folk & country influence. Understand how he became suffocated by his involvement as part of Dire Straits but still miss them also. Love all Mark’s solo albums and they are our regular dining in Saturday night accompaniments to fine dining. My grandson Connor Lawlor has just released his first self funded EP “Back to You” and he writes from experience & plays acoustic guitar accompaniment. He just wants to get his music out there & I hope he has the tenacity to see his ambition through. Go from strength to strength Mark.

January 9, 2015 at 9:24 pm

…and the beat goes on…

dave, newcastle

January 9, 2015 at 9:26 pm

An inspiration to us all. Love your enthusiasm towards music and love your music, especially your guitar work.

Faye Campbell

January 9, 2015 at 10:25 pm

Love your philosophy, Love your music. 32 of my favourites on my IPOD. I play them over and over and never tire of hearing them. Thank you for the beautiful gift.

Paul granger

Had many a good night playing music with Mark back in Leeds. We had a couple of bands together and practiced our sets in the village hall at Linton near Wetherby. I now reside in Florida and have my own band playing local gigs around Pinellas county. I also build guitars, coastline bespoke guitars. Com. Waiting for my big order from my old mate Mark. All the best. Paul granger ( Pauly gee )

Leandre Yameogo

January 9, 2015 at 11:34 pm

Greetings from Arriva! When will y ou Côme un Burkina Faso?

Katy Harvey

January 10, 2015 at 12:01 am

Have become addicted to Mark’s wonderful music over the years. I never grow tired of it. The more you hear it the more you love it. Agree with the comment above about the Rock and Roll Hall of fame; it needs revision with Mark at the top!

January 10, 2015 at 10:46 am

Agree 1 million percent with what you write Katy… Rock’n Roll Hall of fame without Sir Mark Knopfler, is like the history of literature having no Shakespeare or history of sculpture having no Michelangelo…

January 10, 2015 at 3:05 am

I’m not a guitar player,but a good listener of all his musics since The first DIRE STRAITS album, the way Mark plays guitar is really like a gift to make it sing! and show us how to follow the mood of each songs! Hoping that someday he makes a concert in Tahiti.

January 10, 2015 at 1:04 pm

I love listening to how Marks song develop over time. None of them sound the same now as when first recorded . I prefer the newer versions than the originals , especially ‘Sultans of Swing’

January 10, 2015 at 1:06 pm

As a musician/drummer, my first influences were the Beatles and the Kinks, the band I most learned how to play drums *thanks Mick Avory). But when Dire straits came along, everything else went by the wayside and I was hooked forever. Mark has always been my favorite artist, seen his shows and actually met him back in 2001. There’s little else to say without making myself sound like a giddy teenager but that’s the effect Knopfler has always had on me. Seriously, why STILL no R&R Hall of Fame?!

January 10, 2015 at 3:10 pm

Thank you for your philosophy ..”You have to follow what’s compulsive. I think what you should try to find is not what you can do, but what you must do”

January 11, 2015 at 4:26 am

Love your music, truly admire you

January 11, 2015 at 6:02 am

Your music is such a personal thing for me, through triumph and tragedy it’s always been there like a good friend and companion. It’s sort of part of me in some strange way. Never gets old, never gets stale, and flows along like life itself. So many songs, so many road trips, so great. And Lady Writer, how many times have I listened to that. Countless, and I hear something new every time? I’m on the ancient battlefield, dying with my comrades in Brothers in Arms. I mean I’m THERE. How do you explain that kind of writing and music? Thanks for everything.

January 12, 2015 at 11:54 pm

If I had the opportunity to say one thing to MK it would be just, thanks… never lonely when I have his music. So a big big thank you. God bless.

January 14, 2015 at 10:03 pm

Thanks Mark, for creating milestones in my live. Sultans of Swing: I could not believe what I heard, aged 16, went off to buy the record, without having a player. The record player never came, but I do have most of your records. Lifetime companions. Thanks.

January 15, 2015 at 11:55 pm

I’m just now listening your new Beryl.. I listen to it once, twice and again, and again.. Can’t stop.. You music is what I breath since I wake up until I go to sleep. I feel so grateful to you for creating the soundtrack of my life: first with DS and later on your own, with those sounds that feed my soul. When I listen the wonderful music you do, I feel so small. Please never stop. THANK YOU

January 16, 2015 at 6:24 pm

All MK’S songs are the soundtrack of my life,i love each album.Mark is a genius.Long life to MK!!!!

john r. luton

January 16, 2015 at 6:49 pm

M K music turns my brain into sponge. Once heard , it is in planted and I cant help it but want to sing them all day long. Love them all . My fav. ‘ Ticket to heaven’. class act . Love the man. He lets us enjoy in his gift . God bless him again.

Stephane Lajoie

January 16, 2015 at 10:58 pm

Mr Mark Knopfler…It was around 1979 in Melbourne, Australia, as a small boy at the age of 8 when I heard Sultans of Swing on the radio…a few years passed and by chance I saw DS on TV at Alchemy…I remember to this day that something happened to me when I saw that footage…I was spellbound and have been ever since.

I’m 42 now and have been a musician ever since. Thank you for your great music, both in DS and the solo albums….but more importantly thank you for being an inspiration…you saved my life.

Thom Vervalin

January 18, 2015 at 3:43 pm

From your first Dire Str through today I have admired your work. I am sure you do not need to be told you are truly gifted. Nothing great is easy and I am sure you have worked hard to get where you are. I just want to thank you, your music has made my life better in so many ways. If you ever stop making music the world will be a poorer place. Thanks again and good luck.

January 25, 2015 at 11:33 am

Go on Maestro, go on …..! :-)))

Yanick Vigneault

February 24, 2015 at 3:37 am

My son and I are going to see Mark Knopfler October 7, 2015, in Montreal Place des Arts. This will be the culmination of a dream for both of us. His music is a balm for the soul and it would be a great honor to meet him backstage.

John Wilson

August 12, 2015 at 6:43 pm

You won’t be disappointed – enjoy!! Have seen him several times now in the UK.

John Sheppard

September 13, 2017 at 7:31 pm

I have always loved Mark’s music from Mr Dire Straits Knopfler to the present day. Despite being undoubtedly one of the cleverest most talented guitarist of all time it’s the music writing ability that has given me a portion of life and living that has propelled my satisfaction for music into heaven. I listen to all the MK music over and over and with a similar voice to his I’ve learned practically every word sung. I wish I’d had a tiny piece of Mark’s playing ability, but I gave the odd piece a try. I will never tire of listening….not ever!

Frank Graybeal

August 12, 2015 at 8:06 pm

Happy birthday to my favorite artist. Saw you in May at the Newcastle Radio Arena…..wonderful. I’ll see you in the autumn at DPAC, Durham, NC. Can’t wait. All the best, and thanks for your work.

August 13, 2015 at 12:49 am

The best memories of my working life were looking after the trucking for some Dire Straits tours down under especially the big one Brothers in Arms through Australia and NZ and having the opportunity to listen to so many of Mark’s concerts. One outstanding night was during a very wet outdoor concert where the show went on in very difficult circumstances, many lesser performers would have not played that night Mark and Jack finished the night without their wet shirts which made for an iconic front page photo in the paper the following day with the pouring rain highlighted by the concert lighting. Happy Birthday Mark and thank you for all the great music

Paul Granger

October 9, 2015 at 5:34 pm

Contact me Mark. I have a nice Coastline guitar , hand built by me !!! Hope you will give one a test drive. Many thanks. I’m in San Fransisco on a working vacation showing our Guitars to some smaller guitar stores. Lots of interest because they compete quality and sound wise to 4 and 5 thousand dollar guitars. We can beat them hands down in all areas. Paul.

October 21, 2015 at 4:08 pm

Thankyou for your music, over the years. Never get tired of hearing your music. Are you guys coming back to Australia some time?

Ellen Gershenbaum

November 14, 2015 at 4:02 am

mark’s music takes me away to another world. his storytelling in each song mesmerizes me. just saw him in philly, and i wish i could watch him live every week. he is a genius.

December 8, 2015 at 9:53 pm

I just want to thank you for the years of great music. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t listen to something by you or your fellow musicians. Sultans of Swing is timeless…every bit as enjoyable today as those days playing foozball at the local corner lunch during high school. Every album since has been like a new chapter in an amazing story. You have given me and my family endless hours of enjoyment. You are a classic…From the son of a Geordie lass….be well.

Leo woehlcke

December 8, 2015 at 10:38 pm

This is, perhaps, the closest I’ll ever come to thanking you in person. One of our fondest memories is coming home to the Shangri La album and dancing to Our Shangri La. To use one of your lines: And if we get to heaven….maybe l’ll see you. Until then, thank you !

scott graham

December 9, 2015 at 2:06 am

MK has been my “go-to guy” since S of S first aired in Seattle in ’78. few pop writers have been able to hold my attention with interesting lyrics and subjects for so long and so completely. and that guitar work!!!!!!!!

caroline jarvie

December 9, 2015 at 10:17 pm

This mans dedication to music is Legend!! We watch YouTube clips avidly, we care for a lady with Parkinsons disease and she finds Marks music truly healing-lone may you continue my friend, you bring Joy to us all! Now, when are you coming to New Zealand ????

David Ehrenfeld

December 10, 2015 at 3:32 am

Just retired in Nashville last year. One of my favorite things to do is play the ending of Tunnel of Love, cranked up as loud as possible in my apartment.

Dave r Jotski

February 25, 2016 at 11:20 am

Listing to Dire Straits is like breathing mountain air, I have always known MK is a brilliant guitarist, but it was only when I saw him perform in the ‘Music of Monserrat’ DVD, that I saw his true genius! Fan for ever…………………..totally addicted!

Tomas Vikman

April 29, 2016 at 9:33 pm

Thank you for the music Mark. Love it.

April 30, 2016 at 12:51 am

Or @trippindaisiess on twitter Dearest Mark Knophler, Thank you for sharing this. I find it very endearing when an artist, of your caliper takes the time, or let’s the fans in on the ones they admire most or grew up trying their hardest to sound half as good as you, only to finally figure out that there is, and always will be, just ONE of you! I have had tickets to see you perform twice, many years ago, but was unable to attend due to deaths in the family both times. I don’t want to die with the regret of having never watched/heard you play, live! Regardless, THANK YOU for all the great music, so far, and my wish for you and yours is peace, love and happiness to you and yours, ALWAYS!

brendan kilcoyne

April 30, 2016 at 3:08 am

Oh, man, I don’t know what to say-Mark’s music and his guitar style are like no others. The music is so evocative, so full of imagery; I can smell the coal smoke, I can hear the far-off fog horn, the train whistle, I can see the rough, greasy haired lads stumbling out of the bars, and I can taste the hard-earned ale. Dire Straits are one of the bands I most regret never having seen. Mark Knopfler is a working class genius, and I hope he lives forever.

Luana Bardavid

April 30, 2016 at 6:29 am

A Soul who plays like this – will only ever “share” like this……your Secret was always to feel the moment and not like anything static- as long as it was going somewhere…. You harnessed your “gift” and… PS your voice isn’t too bad either….thank-you for sharing -“human” is one thing “genius” is another…. Luana

April 30, 2016 at 9:23 am

I don’t necessarily like all his music but he makes a guitar come alive….my favourite – Sultans of Swing.

April 30, 2016 at 9:00 pm

Just before MK got married in Barbados I received a phone call from Gerry Rafferty (who I knew from his visits there) to see if I could find which hotel Mark was staying in. Unfortunately, it was a closely guarded secret. Did Gerry manage to track MK down?

Harper Behrends

May 3, 2016 at 3:38 pm

Always loved your music from day one!!

Zehava Gross

May 3, 2016 at 3:59 pm

Flew from Israel with my husband to hear you perform in Berlin. Tore my hair like a teenage girl. Would you it again anytime. First row!!! Divine. Intoxicating! Dying to meet and interview you.

May 3, 2016 at 7:44 pm

May you keep writing, recording and performing for years to come! Every time I listen to one of your songs I hear something new. We have all been blessed by your compulsion. I’ve been fortunate enough to attend a few of your concerts – not nearly enough – and hope for more.

May 4, 2016 at 11:27 am

Brothers in arms … All time best … Each time I listen, I explore …

May 4, 2016 at 8:40 pm

Great article but, light gray letters on a light blue background? Seriously?

You guys need to get your careless web design sorted!

May 4, 2016 at 8:41 pm

Oops! The damn thing hadn’t loaded the white background the first time. So, please, ignore what I’ve just written above.

May 7, 2016 at 12:36 am

Dear MK, I am happy,sad and proud about your wonderful music.LG

May 9, 2016 at 5:33 am

Come back to B.?

Ruth Davies

October 8, 2016 at 10:41 pm

So glad to hear Dire Straits through the 1980s. Would have been a cultural desert otherwise.for me.

Garry Richardson

October 9, 2016 at 12:25 am

Mark Knopfler’s songs make me smile when I haven’t smiled in a while. Thanks Mark.

Tom Brabazon

October 10, 2016 at 3:42 pm

A true genius who can cross over traditional sounds with rock. Every time I listen to Mark’s music I hear something new. The clear distinct note and tone from his guitar playing reflects the wonderful music tradition that departed Ireland and Scotland for the New World and it has come back again across the Atlantic Bridge stronger and better for the experience styled and played by Mark in his own very unique way. Piper to the End and Telegraph Road accompanied me on my morning run today. What a way to start the day! Keep it going Mark, love those sounds – keep ”em coming!

January 8, 2017 at 5:05 am

when I first heard Marks songs during the Dire Straits days, it was really something like it capture my heart, as he said it is a way of life for people. Later Marks songs is about life, Get Lucky, it seems a story but relates to realistic events in life. His compositions are not mere imaginations but realistic that is why it is appealing to listeners. We need to clone Marks talents, MK is a musical milestone…..

Randolph Wylie

January 9, 2017 at 9:10 am

have a 59 Hofner president, pride of my fleet, love your work.

March 26, 2017 at 12:13 am

A musical maestro!

Michael Cooke

May 29, 2017 at 7:07 pm

Mark, I would love to have an aleor two with you.

When next you are in Sydney, Australia, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Mauro Maciel

August 13, 2017 at 1:21 pm

Aprecio as canções de Mark K. desde a adolescência. Já se passaram mais de trinta anos e continuo fã.

Grant Hegranes

August 14, 2017 at 3:09 pm

I first saw and heard you when you were playing with Chet Atkins on a TV show. What a great show, yet you never mention it? It was then that I became a fan. Thank your music. I play it every day.

June 20, 2018 at 4:22 pm

Mark , you arey all time favorite artist. Have had the bighest crush on you since I was a little girl, and i still love you sone 32 years later. You have such a talent and a way of making one feel the way you want them to feel in your songs. You have a one of a kind sound. I love all of your music. Some I like better than others but there is not one I don’t like. Thank you Mark for all the wonderful memories and inspirations you have given me. There are good artists out there but you are THE best of the best

Roger Jones

January 4, 2020 at 5:18 pm

Mark I just want to say thanks for the music and great guitar, it’s been 43 years since I’ve even laid eyes on any of my fellow musical friends , thanks for remaining a class act and true to form.

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AC/DC’s Brian Johnson and Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler to star in new docuseries ‘Music Legends’

The show will see the two classic rockers explore the careers of some of their contemporaries

AC/DC ’s Brian Johnson and Dire Straits ’ Mark Knopfler are set to star in a new documentary series, named Johnson and Knopfler’s Music Legends .

• READ MORE: AC/DC on their explosive comeback record ‘Power Up’: “This album is for Malcolm”

The six-part series will see the two classic rockers explore the lives of six other music legends, with the show set to run weekly on Sky Arts from April 25.

Each episode will see Johnson and Knopfler examine the careers of, respectively, Tom Jones , Sam Fender , Cyndi Lauper , Nile Rodgers , Carlos Santana and Emmylou Harris , with the hosts also playing live with the guests on the episodes.

In addition to Sky Arts in the UK, the show will be available to stream via NOW TV internationally.

An official description reads: “Join AC/DC singer, Brian Johnson and Dire Straits singer and guitarist, Mark Knopfler as they share their incredible knowledge and experiences with each other — and a hand-picked selection of music royalty.”

“Guests including Sir Tom Jones, Nile Rodgers and Cyndi Lauper share stories from their own careers and discuss the tracks that shaped them as musicians and fans. Mark and Brian do the same, painting a fascinating portrait of their shared musical lives.

Recommended

AC/DC also recently re-released their first nine LPs on gold vinyl to celebrate their 50th anniversary as a band , with further re-releases still to come later in the year.

Elsewhere, the  band recently announced a huge UK and European stadium tour for 2024 . The Australian rock legends will perform 21 dates in 10 countries this summer, which will mark their first tour in Europe for eight years.

The ‘ Power Up ‘ tour – in support of their 2020 album of the same name – will kick off in the Veltins Arena in Gelsenkirchen, Germany on May 17, followed by dates in Spain, Austria, Switzerland and more.

The run also includes two dates at London’s Wembley Stadium on July 3 and 7, before they continue on to more mainland Europe dates. The tour will wrap up at Dublin’s Croke Park on August 17. You can  visit here  to purchase tickets for the UK dates and  here  for the EU dates.

In a four-star review of ‘Power Up’,  NME  wrote that the “Australian rock icons stick to their guns”  on a “rollicking 17th album”, adding: “After 50 years in the game, the band don’t reinvent the wheel – when they basically created it, why would they? – but their timely comeback is a hell of a ride.”

Knopfler, meanwhile, recently released a re-recorded version of his song ‘Going Home’ for Teenage Cancer Trust , featuring Brian May , Bruce Springsteen , Tony Iommi , Eric Clapton and Ronnie Wood .

• Related Topics
• Brian Johnson
• Dire Straits
• Mark Knopfler

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Mark Knopfler

Legendary guitar supremo who founded Dire Straits in 1977 and subsequently led them to chart success across the world. The multiple Grammy award more...

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