With Dire Straits no more, Knopfler sails solo

By the 1980s, he was touring the world with trucks full of amplifiers and guitars as Dire Straits rocked stadiums, and radios, with hits like Sultans of Swing, Romeo and Juliet and Money for Nothing, all vehicles for Knopfler’s melancholy voice and distinctive finger-picking style.

But in 2000, Dire Straits is ancient history, after having sold a reported 103 million albums worldwide.

Knopfler, now 51, ended the band’s 15-year run at the end of 1992 after a grueling world tour. "I just felt it was just too damn big, and I just wanted to improve as an artist," he told Reuters in an interview.

Reportedly worth about $ 80 million, the Newcastle-raised London resident focused on movie soundtracks and motor racing. He has three children and recently married for the third time.

He has just released his second solo album, Sailing to Philadelphia (Mercury/Warner Bros). With Celtic-folk blues influences and guest vocals from James Taylor and Van Morrison, the soulful album is unlikely to blow out any radio speakers.

Knopfler hopes it resonates enough with record buyers to create demand for him to undertake an expensive tour in support of it. He is doing his bit with some heavy promotion, which he does not often do.

Prospects in the United States, where his 1996 release The Golden Heart

sold about 200,000 copies, may be helped by the album’s eulogies to America and Americans. From the title track to Do America (on the US version only) to closing song Sands of Nevada, Knopfler sings of strength and endurance.

But he is not afraid to expose America’s deficiencies. The song Baloney Again was inspired by reading how the black gospel group the Fairfield Four were denied access to white establishments in the 1930s.

The American angle stems from his love of music. He started torturing his parents when he was 6, playing bad boogie-woogie on the piano until they caved in and got him the Hofner guitar. He used to strut around school like Elvis, with upturned collar and twisted face, and he fondly recalls seeing Chuck Berry perform at Newcastle City Hall when he was 15.

"I actually know what the Fender catalogue smells like, and I still regard Fender and Gibson as two of the finest words in the English language," he said proudly.

"My guitars are just a source of such pleasure to me. They just arrive and they’re like people and they all have their own voices and songs in them."

He has about 70 guitars in his collection, but he most prizes the National steel acoustic guitar that adorns the cover of Dire Straits’ blockbuster 1985 album Brothers in Arms and the electric pair of his 1961 Stratocaster and 1958 Les Paul.

His obsession has led to two misconceptions over the years:that he is a perfectionist and a workaholic. Dire Straits’ albums were generally precise affairs but Knopfler credits (others might blame) the engineers.

He says he gets involved in film soundtracks — most recently Wag the Dog, Metroland and upcoming Robert Duvall soccer drama A Shot at Glory — to keep the muscles working. "Otherwise I’m very much a goof-off kind of person and I’ll be searching for a motorcycle race on satellite TV. I really am not as driven as people seem to have thought I was."

Indeed, the album took about four years to record, in London and Nashville, with frequent breaks for other pursuits.

Knopfler reunited with old pal Van Morrison on The Last Laugh, but two songs with Emmylou Harris, Donkeytownand Red Staggerwing, did not make the final cut. He hopes to dust them off for an album of duets with the prolific country star.

Alternative country duo Gillian Welch and David Rawlings help out on Prairie Wedding, based on a play Knopfler saw about mail order brides, and Speedway at Nazareth, in which he sings about his love for speed.

A historical novel buff, he turned Thomas Pynchon’s 1997 Mason & Dixon into the title track, an ode to English duo Jeremiah Dixon and Charlie Mason, surveyors who gave their names to the line popularly considered the division between free and slave states before the Civil War.

Knopfler voiced Dixon, with Taylor bringing a yearning quality to his role as Mason.

Rock historians have generally been kinder to Knopfler than to Dire Straits. He often makes top 10 guitarist lists but Dire Straits exists in a vacuum as the pub combo that made it big. While the recently remastered back catalogue sells steadily, not many young rockers cite the band as an influence.

"You get associated with a time," Knopfler sighed. Indeed, many people associate Dire Straits with the early days of MTV and the compact disc.

The group satirised the video revolution in 1985 US No 1 Money For Nothing, while electronics giant Philips sponsored their last two world tours to help promote CD technology.

They went into a hiatus after their 1985-86 world tour, during which they played to more than 2.5 million people in 23 countries, but the 1991 album On Every Street and resulting yearlong tour sold below expectations.

Knopfler loved the buzz of playing stadiums illuminated by "a lighting rig from Star Trek", but he does not seem to mind the downscaled life either. "To want to sell loads of records would seem to me to be slightly silly," he said.

"I don’t need to do that … I’m looking forward to getting out live. I’m one of those lucky ones and I enjoyed it all."