Classic Rock
Mark Knopfler recalls his journey from being a journalist to a songwriter
The legendary Dire Straits guitarist, singer and main songwriter Mark Knopfler first worked as a journalist before becoming a musician. In an interview with Guy Pratt (Transcribed by Ultimate Guitar), the musician recalled his journey from working for newspapers to becoming a songwriter.
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Knopfler is currently promoting his new solo album “One Deep River”, which was released last April. Since Dire Straits came to an end in 1995, Mark Knopfler released 9 studio albums. He also made many soundtrack albums and collaborated with artists like Chet Atkins and Emmylou Harris.
Mark Knopfler recalls his journey from being a journalist to a songwriter
“I didn’t see myself as a songwriter at all. I was just a strummer. I remember some of the stories that I was doing for the paper. I’d see bits of them in my notebook afterwards, and they’d start creeping into the songs. So if I were sent to interview the city varieties in Leeds, go and talk to the cast of the pantomime. I’d be talking to the ugly sisters, you know, a couple of old dudes… And that became ‘One More Matinee.’ I started taking their lines and making them into lines of a song.”
“I think that’s when I transferred. I might have had bits of songs, but I was busy copying songs. I didn’t see myself as a songwriter at all. And so, I sort of eased into it that way, and ended up being the guy who writes the songs. Now, I think I’m a songwriter [first] and a musician second. [Being a musician is] very different from being a songwriter, to me.”
He continued:
“[When] I think about a musician, I think about, say, the guy who plays bass in my band, Glenn Wolf. There’s a man with a relationship with his instrument that is enviable. And also, he can play, which got me tied up with him in the first place.”
“What I mean is that if you take someone like Ianto [Ian Thomas, drummer] or someone like Jim Cox on the piano, the relationship with the instrument is absolute. And I can’t get that going with the guitar. No, I’ll be spending time looking at the songs, the songs, the songs,” Mark Knopfler said.
