How Eric Clapton rates Mark Knopfler as a guitarist

Eric Clapton is part of an incredible generation of British guitarists who helped Blues and Rock evolve and paved the way for how music would sound after the 1960s. In the following decades, he remained interested in the talented guitar players who emerged in his home country and gave his opinion on many of them, including Dire Straits’ leader Mark Knopfler.

How Eric Clapton rates Mark Knopfler as a guitarist

Eric Clapton has been a big fan of Mark Knopfler‘s guitar playing since he first heard Dire Straits music. “Well, Mark Knopfler, I think, is totally unique. He’s a great craftsman, which brings it back to that. I mean, with Dire Straits, if you listen to any of their albums the first time, it sort of goes by you a bit. Then gradually it just gets better and better, and it stands the test of time. They’re fantastic craftsmen,” he told Rolling Stone in 1991.

Curiously, Clapton once said that Mark Knopfler was the only guitarist he never felt any sense of competitiveness with while playing together, at least until the late 80s. “Well, I find that sometimes I get very uptight around other guitar players. If they’re younger than me, they’re either in awe, or they have an attitude before they start, you know. (Something) I have to kind of try to break down. Sometimes it means that they’re going to be flying all my old licks at me, or kind of making me too aware of my past, and we get stuck with that.”

“The only time this hasn’t happened has been when I’ve worked with Mark Knopfler. Although he’s very appreciative of what I’ve done, he’s kind of a forward-looking guy and we’re about the same age, so there’s no competitiveness or anything like that. So we work very well together,” he said in an interview with Guitar Player magazine in 1988.

Eric Clapton said Mark Knopfler was a guitarist he considered a true peer

Eric Clapton had the chance to play with some of the greatest guitar players in the world and in the mid-80s, when talking to Musician magazine, he mentioned Knopfler and Jimmie Vaughan as musicians he considered to be his true peers. “Well, they’re the people whom I do see as being my true peers, and I’m very comfortable with that. I mean, it’s a very secure feeling. They are great players of taste, and I think that’s what you’re talking about, taste, really,” Clapton said in 1986.

The first time they performed together was in 1985, when Clapton joined Dire Straits on stage at their show at Hammersmith Odeon in London. That night, they played “Two Young Lovers”, “Cocaine” and “Farther Up the Road”. The following year, they played together again at the Prince’s Trust 10th birthday celebration. In 1987, Clapton began his Royal Albert Hall residency with Mark Knopfler as the second guitarist.

In 1988, they reunited again for another Prince’s Trust show and the Nelson Mandela tribute concert. Knopfler then joined Clapton’s band for his American tour celebrating 25 years of his career. The final shows, which took place in Japan, also featured Elton John and Sting as special guests. In 1989, when talking about the period Mark played with him, Clapton said he was in awe of the guitarist most of the time.

He said:

“I love it. In many ways, you sacrifice a lot when you bring another great guitar player in. It’s kind of a novelty at first; it’s something you have to get over. With Mark I went through a great deal of being in awe, and again with Phil (Palmer). The first week or two of playing together, I was listening to him too much, being too self-conscious about the situation. But when you get over that, you get used to him being there. I don’t ignore him, but I just go ahead as if there was no other guitar player. And I’m quite narrow and selfish, both about my boundaries and where my limits are. I don’t let anyone try and knock me off,” he said in an interview with Guitar World.

Why Clapton is a special as a guitarist according to Mark Knopfler

In Mark Knopfler’s view, a guitarist can be really talented, but if he doesn’t have a background in Blues, he can’t really play that kind of music, something Clapton, of course, has. “With Eric, it’s just really (has) been a Blues-based thing, that has been refined here and there. Extended backwards in time and refined around what there is then. It’s an excellent base for explorations, really, and for just doing different things.”

“In fact, you can hear it, when you get figures who are maybe popular in Rock bands who play, but they don’t have that basis. When they try and do bluesy things or Blues type things… I remember Eric laughing at some people’s efforts to do that. Because I suppose people achieve a sort of facility on instruments. So they think they can therefore play that stuff. It’s not as easy as that. The other thing about Eric that I’ve always said, he’s one of my favorite singers. To me, he is kind of like a white Ray Charles, you know, in a way,” ” Mark Knopfler said in an interview for the documentary “Eric Clapton: Standing at the Crossroads” (2009) (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

During the past years, Eric and Mark recorded together a few times, like on the J.J. Cale tribute album “The Breeze: An Appreciation of J.J. Cale” in 2014. They appeared together on “Someday” and “Train To Nowhere”. 10 years later, in 2024, it was Clapton who appeared on a project led by Mark. He was one of the many legendary guitarists who played on a charity version of “Going Home (Theme From Local Hero)”.