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FORGOTTEN HISTORY: 2 | History Defined

"Once I’ve played those four notes, then I can start to improvise”: Mark Knopfler on the Dire Straits song he's come to accept that he has to start in the same way every time

"People have bought tickets," he says

MusicRadar

“Being called a guitar hero was just awkward. Whether I’ve written a good song or not, that’s what counts to me”: Mark Knopfler on 40 years of Dire Straits’ Brothers In Arms – the guitars, the riffs… the pressure of learning to play in time

From his lucky ’83 Les Paul and Fleetwood Mac-inspired soloing to “getting away with murder” at the sessions, the Dire Straits legend opens up in his most revealing interview in years

Guitar World

“I get a lot more feeling when I play with my fingers. Wes Montgomery was my reference as a kid for not using a pick”: Championed by Fender and signed to Blue Note, Maya Delilah might just be the most melodic guitar soloist since John Mayer

After being named as a member of Fender’s Class of 2024 and lauded as a 2025 Spotify Artist to Watch, Maya Delilah makes good on those promises with her Blue Note debut, The Long Way Around

Guitar World

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“I could hardly believe it when James reached over to the guitar case sitting opposite and lifted out his Olson acoustic”: What I learned from interviewing folk-rock icon James Taylor

Neville Marten recalls interviews with one of his musical idols, the singer-songwriter supreme and total legend, the great JT himself

Guitar World

'They saved my mental health': BBC Radio 2 host Shaun Keaveny calls on government to protect canals

The presenter says canal walks have become essential to managing his ADHD - and wants ministers to protect these spaces for the millions who rely on them

Evening Standard

“Chet had such facility and knowledge, and yet what he wanted to do was play two chords all morning long. He’d say to me, ‘You’re pretty good, but you’re no Mark Knopfler’”: Mark Knopfler looks back on his jams with fellow fingerstyle legend Chet Atkins

The pair traded licks after the release of Brothers in Arms, and went on to release an album together

Guitar World

“He reached under the sofa and pulled out this dusty old case. And he says, ‘Mark, I want you to have this guitar. I don’t play it anymore’”: Mark Knopfler on the treasured Gibson he received as a gift from a rock hero – which became his studio go-to

Last year, Knopfler parted ways with 120 of his prized instruments for charity, including much of the Brothers in Arms gear

Guitar World

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This iconic guitar appeared on the cover of one of the most successful albums ever – but what’s the story behind it?

It’s one of the most famous guitars in music – and its picture is in more than 30 million homes

Louder

“I gave up trying to be a great guitar player. I have enough to get by in the studio – I got away with murder”: Mark Knopfler on why he doesn’t consider himself a “guitar god” – and the ones in the industry who deserve that title

40 years after the release of the Dire Straits’ seminal album, Brothers in Arms, Knopfler reflects on that game-changing period and why he was always a reluctant rock star

Guitar World

“I didn’t take it to the extreme of getting into trouble”: Mark Knopfler recorded this solo on a cheap guitar and did “everything wrong” with it – but it’s still his favorite

One iconic cut from his solo work sticks out for the right reasons, Knopfler believes

Guitar World

“It’s a cheap guitar, it sounds very direct, I did everything wrong, but I think they’re perfect notes”: Mark Knopfler names his favourite guitar solo

“I just said what I had to say. I didn’t go too far”

MusicRadar

How Dire Straits outsold everyone, hijacked MTV, and accidentally made a classic: Only in the new issue of Classic Rock

Also in this issue: Iron Maiden, Alice Cooper, Mike Peters, Buckcherry, Adam Duritz, Battlesnake, Eureka Machines, H.E.A.T, Steve Lillywhite, Live Aid USA and more

Louder

“Playing four notes to the bar with your thumb... That changed everything for me, because that’s what I wanted to be able to do”: How Mark Knopfler grew up wanting to be Jimi Hendrix until he ditched the pick and went fingerstyle

Or how one lesson with a folk singer from the northeast of England (and a bunch of lost picks) changed the history of electric guitar

MusicRadar

"Pure manna for a fanbase denied any whiff of a reunion": Dire Straits' 30-million-selling Brothers In Arms celebrates its 40th birthday with energised extras

Mark Knopfler’s crowning achievement: mildly dated, largely evocative, expanded with live shows

Louder

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MusicRadar

"Everybody was going 'Does anybody know how to work this thing?'": How Guy Fletcher and a classic ‘80s synth became Dire Straits’ secret weapon on Brothers In Arms, and helped to turn it into one of the biggest albums of the decade

“Without him there, we would have probably been completely lost"

MusicRadar

“I remember thinking: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if I could ask Sting to sing that line?’ Suddenly someone said: ‘Sting’s here on holiday! He’s on the beach!’” How Mark Knopfler got lucky with Money For Nothing

It’s amazing who you can bump into in the Caribbean…

The Guardian - UK

Mark Knopfler on Dire Straits’ Money for Nothing: ‘I wrote it in the window display of a New York appliance store’

‘A big bonehead of a delivery guy was looking at all these TV screens tuned to MTV and the lines he was saying were too good to be true. So I borrowed a pen and paper, sat down and started writing’

Louder

“He thought that the band should be a democracy, and it was more like a brutal dictatorship as far as he was concerned”: The tangled story of Dire Straits, the million-selling band who quit at the height of their fame

How Dire Straits went from the pubs of London to become one of the biggest bands of the 1980s

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Guitar World

“What’s going through our mind is ‘What the…?’ And if you see Bob’s face, you could see he’s thinking the same thing”: When Bob Dylan played with an LA punk band to promote the album he made with Mark Knopfler

1983's Infidels, Dylan's first secular album in half a decade, was graced with a bounty of sweetly tasteful leads from the Dire Straits man. To recreate two of its songs on Late Night with David Letterman, Dylan hired LA punks the Plugz

Guitar World

“Jeff was playing through his dodgy Marshall and didn’t like the sound. He said, ‘We’ll do it again, later on…’” Mick Rogers may be in possession of Jeff Beck’s last-ever studio recording

Mark Knopfler’s charity single Going Home, released in March 2024, was widely thought to be Beck’s final recording, but Rogers says he has an unreleased studio track that may very well take that crown

Guitar World

“If you just want to see a YouTuber, then fine. But the people who know me, and have watched me for years, know I’m a little bit more than that”: Mary Spender on the tones, tunes and heartache behind her debut breakup album

Featuring a guest spot from Ariel Posen and some of the most gourmet tones you'll hear all year, Super.Sexy.Heartbreak. finds Spender processing a lifetime of broken hearts through fingerstyle guitar

Louder

10 huge hits given away from one artist to another

From Prince to Joni Mitchell and Macca to the Bee Gees, the stars who were in such a creative purple patch that they had classics going spare and shopped them elsewhere.

Guitar World

“I don’t think they do too well living in a case all their lives”: Mark Knopfler parted ways with his guitar collection – but he hopes they all get played

2024 Year in Review: The Dire Straits icon raised a huge amount of money for charity selling off 120 prized instruments, including his 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard

MusicRadar

"I remember saying to Eric, 'I'm going to play him off the stage one day'. But what Eric did was even more peculiar, he said, 'Well, I'm going to pretend that I am Jimi Hendrix!'": Pete Townshend looks back in this classic 1990 guitar interview

Best of 2024: "The thing that really stunned Eric and me was the way he took what we did and made it better"

Evening Standard

The big quiz of 2024: How well do you know this year's biggest headlines and memes?

It was a year defined by famous hippos, assassination attempts and Photoshop fails. Take our quiz to prove you can sort 2024 fact from fiction

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