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The general view of Mark Knopfler in the wider
world is that in many ways he's a 'lazy' creative, with increasingly lengthy
gaps between Dire Straits albums that even his prolific solo years haven't
prevented. However Mark spent an awful lot longer in the recording studios than
many fans realise, becoming in demand as a producer and as a guest guitarist
for a number of musicians known and unknown who either befriended him or asked
for his help by name. It was also a useful 'procrastinating' device in the long
gap between 'Brothers In Arms' and 'On Every Street' when Mark couldn't face
trying to top his fame all over again. Mark started at the top too with his
first guest appearance coming by request from none other than Bob Dylan when
Mark was all of a year into his stardom. Since then he worked regularly with
other artists all the way through the Dire Straits years to the mid-1990s. Sometimes
you can't hear him, hidden behind a wall of production noise and other times
Knopfler is so recognisable it's like a mini Dire Straits record (and let's
face it, there aren't that many of them!) So to save you searching here's as
complete a list as we could manage - no doubt we've missed a few odd
appearances on some obscure album somewhere, so if you know something we've
missed then why not write in?!
1) Slow Train Coming (Plays Guitar on Entire Album, Bob Dylan,
1979)
Mark was thrilled when he got a call from one of
his idols asking him to add his distinctive guitarwork to a new album of retro
1950s songs he had coming out and even Knopfler's nerves didn't get in the way
of him thinking 'I could do that!' Mark was thrilled when he discovered that Bob
was in his born-again Christian phase and wanted to record a set of religious material
that he didn't feel suited to at all. 9and nor did Jewish producer Jerry
Wexler!) Bob for his part had been an early fan of the [2] 'Sultans Of Swing'
single and wanted a similar feel, even travelling incognito to see a Dire
Straits show at the Roxy club during the band's first American tour. Needing a
drummer for the sessions, Mark nominated Pick Withers to join them too. The
result is one of those albums that only a Dylan fan could love, but you can
tell it's Mark's playing once you know, most famously on the acerbic 'Gotta
Serve Somebody', parodied with much glee by a housebound John Lennon in 1979.
The highlight though is the reggae-ish single 'Man Gave Names To All The
Animals', the one song where Dylan almost hits the 'right' key!
2) Time Out Of Mind (Plays Guitar, Steely Dan, 'Gaucho', 1980)
Mark sounds much more at home
on the rockabilly grooves of Steely Dan's seventh record, the jazz-rock fusion
band's 'guest star' album which features another forty-odd big star names to go
alongside Knopfler. Mark is better used than most though and almost turns this fantasy
song about chasing dragons into an earthy rootsy Dire Straits song thanks to
his Chet Atkins style guitar bursts.
3) King's Call (Plays Guitar, Phil Lynott, 'Solo In Soho', 1980)
Mark's less obvious on this
song by the Think Lizzy vocalist, at least until a typical solo some two
minutes into the song, but there is a very 1950s groove to this 'Notting
Hillbillies' style groove and the similar style big wide open drums so common
to period Sire Straits recordings. The lyrics are a little bit like [2]
'Sultans Of Swing' too, Lynott getting drunk to the sound of his hero's songs
'always true in the darkest of nights'. This song for Elvis may well have
inspired the similar [46] 'Calling Elvis' with its haunting refrain that, day
or night, 'you can always hear the King call'. Sadly Lynott himself will be
dead in six years, his battle with heroin leading to septicaemia at the age of
just thirty-six. Funnily enough, while Lynott's career is almost over by this
point and Knopfler's is just beginning they are contemporaries born a mere
eight days apart in August 1949 (Mark being the older).
4) Ode To Liberty (Plays Guitar, 'The Phil Lynott Album', 1982)
The pair's second and last
collaboration sounds much more like you might expect, with Mark's finger-picking
all over this breezy ballad with synth strings which sounds not unlike the
songs he'll be writing himself by the time of the 'On Every Street' record. There's
a hint of the just-released [22] 'Romeo and Juliet' around his playing on this
song too, which would have been a nice track had Phil sung it rather than spoken
it. 'This is no Shakespearian speech' indeed!
5) Love Over and Over (Plays Guitar, Anna and Kate McGarrigle,
'Love Over and Over', 1982)
For those who don't know Kate
and Anna are the mum and aunt to Rufus Wainwright, although I've always
reckoned his younger sister Martha to be the real talent in the family. They're
both toddlers at this point in the folk singers' career who turn in one of their
poppiest, simplest numbers here with a boogie-woogie bass riff and a honky tonk
piano. Mark sounds a bit in the way on guitar, trying to fit his 1980s-1950s hybrid
sound into what's a very 1960s track but you can certainly recognise his
playing here.
6) Cleaning Windows and Aryan Mist (Plays Guitar, Van Morrison,
'Beautiful Vision', 1982)
Now this is an interesting
one. Van Morrison came to fame in rock group 'Them' before carving out a niche
as one of the early 1970s sensitive singer-songwriters. Mark Knopfler, by this
point in his career, is best known for pure 'solid rock' and is only slowly
beginning to develop his storytelling credentials. The two new friends getting
together seemed to have a big impact on both of their future styles though with
'Beautiful Vision' the long lost Grandaddy of Mark's 'Golden Heart' LP from
1996 and many of the other solo albums to come. It's a Celtic music record for
the most part, built on tin whistles and flageolets and though the two songs
Mark plays on have a good-time rock groove you could easily see these songs as
later Knopfler originals. Unusually Mark plays as rhythm guitarist on both
tracks, with the bubbly poverty-stricken window-cleaning narrator of the first song
the better of the two.
7) Infidels (Produced Entire Album, Bob Dylan, 1983)
Clearly a glutton for
punishment, Knopfler returned to the studio to produce another Dylan LP after
the songwriter reached out to him for help with the 'new-fangled equipment' he
was trying to work with. Used to drilling the disciplined Dire Straits boys
through multiple rehearsals, Mark found keeping up with Dylan challenging to
say the least but had fun playing on a hand-made acoustic Greco guitar he was
leant for the sessions from a local rental shop to get the 'feel' Bob wanted. Looking
around for a keyboardist, Mark nominated his own player Alan Clark whose
stylistic touches can be heard all over this varied set more than his own
guitarwork. The slow-burning ballad 'Sweetheart Like You' was my favourite song
from the album, a [22] 'Romeo and Juliet' style ballad but made for the piano
with Mark's flamenco style flitting through the song. The album itself went
under numerous re-mixes that changed the essence of what Mark was trying to do
and he took his name off the album as a result.
8) Blanket Roll Blues (Plays Guitar, Scott Walker, 'The Climate
Of The Hunter', 1983)
Mark does pick them doesn't
he? His next moody rule-breaking songwriter was Scott Engel, formerly of The
Walker Brothers, who was busy making his first LP after quite a long break (one
so long you could even have slotted two Dire Straits albums in there!) and his
first to be, well, not that normal. Mark is right at home on the song's Edith
Piaf/Jacque Brel acoustic vibe though and this is one of his better and
certainly more audible contributions on this list, Mark picking away at a song
like he's in a Parisian nightclub. A lucky thing it wasn't Scott's next album
'Tilt' or Mark's contribution would have been slapping chunks of meat!
9) She Means Nothing To Me (Plays Guitar, 'Phil Everly', 1983)
Mark was an obvious choice
for the one-half of the Everly Brothers' attempt to make a contemporary album
that still retained elements of his favoured 1950s style. Phil sounds great,
fellow guest Cliff Richard sounds awful and Mark? He's stuck to a
boom-chicka-boom rhythm part somewhere down the bottom of a busy mix. Like many
of the Everly's solo stuff you long for them to have cut this song together as
it's crying out for harmonies!
10) Knife (Produced Entire Album, Aztec Camera, 1984)
One of the prettier albums Mark
ever worked on, his personal touches are all over this 1980s prog rock album by
one of the decade's finest bands. There's a lot of 'space' here on this record,
which is unusual for Mark but can be heard on parts of 'Brothers In Arms' to
come. The highlight is surely the pretty nine-minute title track which is less
intense than [28] 'Telegraph Road' but is similarly epic and is structured in a
similar way. The album is a 'big' one for Dire Straits fans as Mark found
himself producing alongside session musician Guy Fletcher for the first time -
the pair get on so well he'll be in Dire Straits himself in a couple of years.
11) Cosmic Square Dance (Plays Guitar, Chet Atkins, 'Stay
Tuned', 1985)
The genesis for the
Atkins-Knopfler duets album 'Neck and Neck' is this sweet little instrumental,
taped for a popular EP that did rather well in the wake of 'Brothers In Arms'. Mark
always loved Chet's style and never sounded better playing it here alongside
the great man himself, darting around in the left-hand channel (with a very
1980sish Dire Straits sound) while Atkins dances in the right (with a very
1950s style). The pair sound great together on one of this article's must-have
moments for any Knopfler fan.
12) Overnight Sensation (Played
Guitar and Produced 'Break Every Rule' Tina Turner, 1986)
This song too is one of the
most 'important' in this list, given that it's a rare case of a Knopfler song
written for an outside artist. Mark and Tina sound natural bedfellows here,
with the raunchier side of Mark's writing and a reprise of his [30] 'Industrial
Disease' riff a good match for Tina's larger-than-life personality. The
postmodern lyrics refer to Mark's problems 'trying to make a song fit that
never was mine', before turning into a song about never being denied and
overcoming stage fright. This was something both Mark and Tina shared to some
extent along with their delayed entry to fame which came later in life than it
did for most (the title, surely, is ironic!) and suggests Mark have had a good
ol' natter with Tina before sitting down to write (or perhaps re-shape?) this
song to something they could both believe in. It's good fun and it would be
nice to hear a Knopfler version of this track one day.
13) Miracle (Produced Entire Album, Willy De Ville, 1987)
One of the more obscure
entries on this list, Willy De Ville came to sort-of fame with his 1980s pop
band 'Mink Deville' and sounds not unlike a huskier, booze-swigging Knopfler.
That might be why he approached Mark for help producing his first solo album
(mark doesn't sing or play, as far as I can tell). It's a whole different
kettle of fish to Dire Straits: noisy and production-heavy and will come as a
shock to anyone who ever loved the 'inner space' of a Dire Straits record. It's
a sound Mark never really returned to again, although some of his noisier film
soundtrack albums headed in that direction.
14) Save The Last Dance For Me (Plays Guitar, Ben E King, 'Save
The Last Dance For Me', 1987)
Ben E King prepared to
celebrate his 50th birthday by re-recording some old favourites with some new
friends. Once again Mark's retro sound came in useful on this very 1980s
re-tread of one of this 'Stand By Me' writer's favourite songs and Mark turns
in a nice stately performance, a notch slower and more disciplined than the
bouncy dancing going on all around him.
15) Death Is Not The End (Produced 'Down In The Groove' Bob
Dylan, 1988)
Mark's final Bob Dylan
collaboration is easily the pair's best, a sad slow stark and sombre song about
meeting your maker that's not unlike the recordings Johnny Cash was making by
the end with producer Rick Rubin. It's a great song from a ghastly LP, with
Mark and Bob's twin guitars really setting the scene, much more fitting than
the other religious songs from the last album with the upbeat thought that,
however lonely you are in life, you will have companions galore in death.
16) Land Of Dreams (Produced Entire Album and Plays Guitar,
Randy Newman, 1988)
mark doesn't seem an obvious
choive for one of Randy's most autobiographical albums, all about his upbringing
in upstate New York. That must have been very different to Mark's Tyneside
upbringing and yet the two have a sympathetic bond here, with producer Knopfler
effectively turning this into a Dire Straits album but with the piano more
upfront and the guitar lower down. Mark does play occasionally, such as on the
album highlight, the self-hating 'I've-never-known-love-song 'I Want You To
Hurt Like I Do'. To think, almost Randy's next career move was writing songs
for the 'Toy Story' franchise?!?
17) Did I Make You Up? and The Shouting Stage (Plays Guitar,
Joan Armatrading, 'The Shouting Stage', 1988)
Perhaps my favourite song
from the whole list, Joan and Mark sound great together, her giving him soul
and passion and him giving her discipline and focus. Mark's guitar sounds
superb, dancing from note to note as he entwines himself round Joan's voice and
nicely complementing her lyrics of shock at finding someone to love after
decades of loneliness on the delightful 'Did I Make You Up?' and playing some
bluesy [45] 'Brothers In Arms' style guitar on the title track break-up song. Though
Mark keeps quiet and doesn't sing my instincts tell me their voices would go
together well too, dark and husky as they both are - perhaps even more than
Emmylou's on the one duet record Mark did make.
18) Foreign Affair (Plays Guitar On Entire Album, Tina Turner,
1989)
With their last collaboration
being quite a hit Mark was lured back to play on the whole of Tina's next album
this time around. Not that you'd know it, however, as Mark's contributions can
only occasionally be heard beneath a bank of synthesisers and noisy drums. 'Look
Me In The Heart' is the place where you can hear Mark best, although he's
playing in quite a different style to usual, more choppy and less fluid than
usual.
19) [1] Water Of Love (Plays Guitar and Sings, The Judds, 'River
Of Time', 1989)
This country music sister duo
were The Corrs of their day (and rather more talented too dare I say it!) Mark
was so pleased with their demo when they asked to sing one of his earliest Dire
Straits songs that he dropped in to play the characteristic steel guitar part
as well as his own usual style. The result is one of the best Dire Straits
covers out there, the song sped up ever so slightly and spaced out so that it sounds
like a much more hopeful song than the 'marriage just broken up' way Mark sang
his original. The result shows what the first Dire Straits record might have
sounded like had it been done more in the production style of the later band
albums - fabulous, in a word! Highly recommended, as is much of the LP actually.
Note the lyric change to 'Once I had a man, but now he gone' for obvious
reasons!
20) No Money At All (Plays Guitar, Brendan Croker, 'The 5
O'Clock Shadows', 1989)
Before the pair founded The
Notting Hillbillies together, Mark got together with Brendan Croker to play
some characteristic guitar flourishes to one of the latter's better songs. This
is a sad song about poverty, albeit performed like an upbeat pop song, that
would have fitted in well on 'Love Over Gold', Mark's most politically minded
LP. It's a lot better than anything that made the Hillbillies record, performed
with real passion and drive and Mark gets to join in with a terrific riff!
21) [38] Money For Nothing-Beverly Hillbillies (Vocal and Guitar,
Weird Al Yankovic, 'UHF: The Original Motion Picture and Other Stuff', 1990)
One day there's going to be a
'Weird Al's Album Archives' even more surreal than this site! Till then there's
a few of the comedian-singer's records featuring guest appearances by various
AAA members including Mark Knopfler. The pair have fun desecrating a Dire
Straits classic with the familiar noisy drum-battle opening (re-recorded)
giving way to a new variation on Mark's familiar guitar part. The result is close
enough to convince most casual fans maybe, but when the vocals come in it
becomes a song about a guy called Jed eating food in Beverly Hills?!? Money for
nothing perhaps, like many a parody, but all done in good fun.
22) Wonderful Land (Plays Guitar and Sings, Hank Marvin,
'Heartbeat', 1993)
Hank Marvin had a problem
when trying to shepherd guitarists onto his Shadows soundalike solo album. They
had to have distinctive styles that wouldn't clash with his while the album was
all instrumental. Mark Knopfler was an obvious choice, then, humming on the
right hand channel alongside Hank's characteristically shuddery guitar on the
left. Only a very 1980s production (yes even in 1993!) gets in the way of this
simple toe-tapper.
23) The Lily Of The West (Played Guitar and Sings, The
Chieftans, 'The Long Black Veil', 1995)
A million miles away from the
signature Dire Straits sound, but somewhere within the same postal code as the
more Celtic solo albums to come, this is (along with the Cal soundtrack maybe) the
world's first evidence of where Mark's musical heart really lay beneath all
that stadium-arena rock. Mark sounds great singing his way through this
traditional Irish folk song about his lovely girlfriend Molly, envied by all
the other boys.
24) All Over Again (Sings and Plays Guitar, 'BB King and
Friends' 1995)
Mark had fun guesting with
all his heroes. BB King was another guitarist he had long admired and you can
hear a lot of similarities with the signature Knopfler sound. That similarity
is more noticeable than ever when the pair got together for one of the highlights
of BB King's all-star set, grooving away in the left-hand channel. It's unusual
to hear Mark play a 'real' blues (as opposed to the parody [33] 'Badges Posters
Stickers T-Shirts') and on this evidence he should play them more often, as he
has a real feel for the genre without going over the top. By contrast BB is
having perhaps too much of a good time on his vocal here!
25) Nobody's Here Anymore (Plays Guitar, John Fogerty, 'Déjà Vu
All Over Again', 2004)
Once again, Mark's guitar
style goes well alongside the swampy blues of the former Credence Clearwater
Revival lynchpin, but that growly voice is more of a struggle against his fluid
guitar tones. Mark's double-tracked guitar part, which plays more or less
throughout, is the closest he's yet come to returning to the one for [2]
'Sultans Of Swing', albeit slower and for a whole song as accompaniment rather
than purely as a solo. As for the lyrics, this is a song about how all the
greats have died off - which seems a bit rich given how many Mark still had in
his address book by 2004! Proof that Mark could still play in his old style
when he wanted to.
26) Not One Bad Thought (Plays Guitar, Tony Joe White,
'Uncovered', 2006)
Do you remember the early
1970s band Brook Brenton? Yeah, only hazily here too - their big hit was 'Polk
Salad Annie' if that helps? Anyway Tony Joe is a good friend of Mark's whom he
met when they were both working on the Tina Turner album Foreign Affair' in
1989. It seems odd, then, that the guitarists had never crossed paths before
this and a shame given how well Knopfler's finger-picking goes alongside
White's straight-line fuzz groove. The opening guitar peals are glorious - it's
just a shame when the vocals kick in to be honest...
27) The Sailor's Revenge (Produced Entire Album, Bap Kennedy,
2012)
Finally, Mark's most recent
collaboration is with Van Morrison's occasional writing partner (born Martin
Christopher Kennedy) who was also in the band The Energy Orchard at the same
time as launching his own career. 'The Sailor's Revenge' is Kennedy's sixth
solo LP and not one of his best, a little one dimensional and folkie
throughout. You can hear lots of pretty Knopfler touches along the way though
and ther title track has the laidback grandeur of [45] 'Brothers In Arms' about
it.
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