Mark Knopfler on the end of Dire Straits: ‘Maybe I should have kept playing, let it get as big as Brazil’
Reluctant to coast on old glories, the guitarist is about to release One Deep River, the 10th in a series of soulful and virtuosic stand-alone albums
Mark Knopfler was never a reluctant rock star. In the glittering, go-go 1980s, he had the time of his life leading Dire Straits to the top of the charts with monster hits such as Money for Nothing and Romeo and Juliet. Over time, though, the novelty wore thin. Once you have sold 100 million records and played 248 concerts in a single year, as Dire Straits did touring their 1985 behemoth Brothers in Arms, the thrill starts to go. He is glad he got off the juggernaut when he did. In the end, megafame was not for him.
“It suits some people. You can get used to the scale of it. I don’t know if I ever really did. What happens there is that the gig becomes an event. There’s a different energy,” he says.
Knopfler is speaking from his home in London, where he is promoting his new solo album, One Deep River. He cuts a cheerful, inquisitive figure: ask him a question and he may (very pleasantly) shoot back with one of his own. There is little of the strutting guitar hero about him: it is hard to reconcile this softly spoken individual with the stadium overlord in the neon headband from Dire Straits’ Money for Nothing video.
That track, with its blistering guitar intro and backing vocals by Sting, represented the commercial high-water mark for Knopfler and Dire Straits. It was also the beginning of the end, as he discovered when taking it on the road. Night after night, he would look out at the vast audiences coming to see the band and wonder if it was too much of a good thing.
“If you’re playing events all the time – some great blown-up festival, some great inflated thing, then you are losing something as well,” Knopfler says. “That’s how it seemed to me. Maybe I was overthinking it. Maybe I should have kept playing, let it get as big as Brazil.”
Dire Straits broke up for the first time in 1987 and finally called it quits in 1995, after which Knopfler focused on his solo career. He is in no mood to go back – when Dire Straits were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, in 2018, he was the only member not to attend.
Reluctant to coast on old glories, he has released a series of soulful and virtuosic stand-alone records, of which One Deep River is the 10th. It is a contemplative listen, more Romeo and Juliet than Money for Nothing.
Recorded as he was about to turn 74, it is also an unapologetically wistful reflection of his upbringing in Blyth, a coastal village outside Newcastle, and his early years in London, when he was just another guitarist trying to break into the music scene. “There’s always going to be some autobiography there. Maybe there’s a bit more than usual,” Knopfler says.
He singles out the autumnal track Watch Me Gone, in which he reflects on leaving home in pursuit of fame and fortune: “I knew there was something/ And I knew there was no choice.”
“Watch Me Gone – there’s a big splash of the autobiographical about it,” says Knopfler. “The cover [of the LP] – that’s me crossing [Newcastle’s iconic Tyne Bridge] and leaving, me going down to London. You’ve got to be ready to leave and fall in love with the big city.”