Born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1949, Mark Knopfler was in love with music since he was young and over the decades developed a unique way of playing the guitar which was an important part of the sound created by Dire Straits, one of the most successful bands of all time.
He formed the group in 1977 alongside his brother David Knopfler, John Illsey and Pick Withers and in the following year, on their self-titled debut album, they already had the huge global hit “Sultans of Swing”. Until the group came to an end in 1995 they had many line-up changes with only Mark and Illsey being the only constant members and they sold an estimated amount of more than 100 million records worldwide.
One of the secrets for the unique sound Mark Knopfler created on the guitar was that he used mainly only his fingers instead of using a guitar pick. But why he usually doesn’t use a guitar pick to play?
Why Mark Knopfler usually doesn’t use a guitar pick to play
After a few years using the guitar pick to play when he was young, Mark Knopfler started to learn how to finger pick, which is basically a technique to play the guitar only using your fingers. At the time he started to play in Folk with other musicians and that was how almost all the music from that genre used to be written on guitar.
That technique was crucial for him to write some of the most famous Dire Straits songs like “Sultans of Swing” which was quite different from what was being made in Rock and Roll music at the time. He uses the finger picking technique in the song, including the incredible guitar solo.
In an interview with BBC (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage), he explained how he developed that kind of playing, saying: “I think I did most of my learning, in the very beginning it was on my electric guitar, using a pick. The thing is that with a pick, it is the biggest amplifier that there is. It’s just a piece of plastic like that (holds a pick). I’ve learned the first chords, E minor and of course the natural thing is to go down. (But) you have to learn to go up (too), to get some speed, because it is much faster than the fingers.”
“A pick is louder, faster and it makes a better recording noise. Is the act to go up and down, to alternate. It didn’t take me long before I was learning to finger pick, just backing (the big sister of a friend). She wanted to sing in Folk clubs and stuff, so. I had a little pal who was one Everly brother and I was the other one.”
He continued:
“(With finger picking) I think I started using three (fingers). But the tricky bit was making that big step, lead forward into the claw hammer style where the thumb is playing four beats to the bar and not like one. (…) But getting (all this) was a breakthrough point definitely for me. Because once the fingers start finding a way around suddenly (it’s something you get) a rhythm to it. Then you learn to pick out tunes with the licks going on. I suppose I began with a basic Folk pick and then gone into the Country Blues players. You start to play more like a piano style (…), you start to play like a little ragtime.”
“(Then) I started to develop playing rhythms and my fingers start to come up. They’re breaking the rules, coming down onto the lower strings and the thumbs coming up to the top strings. This is a guitar teacher’s nightmare, because I’m not really doing the way it’s supposed to be done. (No one taught me that) not really. I started with a basic little chord book and I think it was The Shadows‘ guitar tutor book. I don’t even know whether it had much to do with them. You know, the story of my life (laughs). You start somewhere and you go somewhere else. (I used to fall asleep) playing. (It’s something) you’ve got really want to do to do it. You really (have to) want to be able to play,” Mark Knopfler said.
He first wrote Sultans of Swing on the acoustic guitar
Curiously, he composed the classic song “Sultans of Swing” on the acoustic guitar first. But when he tried to play the track on the Fender Stratocaster, he was impressed by how good it sounded. So he ended up re-writing the entire track for the guitar. He recalled that in an interview with “Soundbreaking” in 2016 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
“I write songs now most of the time just on an acoustic guitar. But the first time I got a Fender Stratocaster, it was after I got Dire Straits going and it was my last object as a child. When I heard the sound of it, when I wrote ‘Sultans of Swing’ for instance, I’d written on an acoustic guitar and it was different. The sound of the strings together and the tonality of the guitar made me wanna write another way,” Mark Knopfler said.