Many of us are not a “fan” type of persons, but many of us love Mark Knopfler and he is maybe the greatest guitar idol of many people. We love his music from the first moment when we listened to it. Knopfler composed songs lot of years and he has amazing experience and music career.
He has amazing clean melodies with emotional solos. His music influence is incredible. Here we presented you 12 interesting facts about Mark Knopfler that you may didn’t know.
1. He was born as Mark Freuder Knopfler in 1949 and his father was Hungarian, but due to his Jewish origins his father had left the country in 1939.
2. After he graduated he worked as journalist (reporter and music critic) for Yorkshire Evening Post and later when he started his musical carrier he stabilized his income as part-time English teacher. You can certainly realize his great skills in Literature in his poetical lyrics.
3. Mark is originally left-handed but he plays guitar by right-handed. He told that helped him a lot to bend even 2 strings together by 2-3 semitones.
4. His unique fingerpicking style started to develop on a night when he spent with his friends and found a pretty bad quality acoustic guitar with thin strings and badly curved neck. The only way to make sound enough loud was to using his fingers.
5. Mark played 130+ guitars in his life but he’s not a collector. Each and every guitars he owns (about 50) have their role and he used to play them in various songs.
6. His signature clean Strat sound first was appeared on the album “Dire Straits” in 1978. He played on 1961 Fender Strat and had very little effects.
Rumours say that his main device was a Dan Armstong Orange Squeezer that is a subtle compressor/enhancer box, not even a pedal. Later he replaced the Fender guitars by early Schecter “Dream Machine” Strats until he got his first custom built guitar (Pensa-Suhr MK-1).
7. The Pensa-Suhr MK-1 guitar was born on napkin at one small coffee’s bar called “Prince’s” in New York. Rudy Pensa, employed John Suhr that time who built the first custom guitar MK-1 by his specs and sketch on the napkin.
The guitar is fitted with EMG active pickups and a Floyd Rose tremolo bridge. However, Mark has never used the tremolo. Actually, it’s fixed by screws to act like a hardtail bridge. He just preferred the Floyd Rose system because of the unbeatable tuning stability.
8. There are three signature guitar models dedicated to Mark Knopfler: a Fender Stratocaster Mark Knopfler Signature, a Martin 000-40S Mark Knopfler and a Martin HD-40 MK.
9. He has been awarded with the “Officer of the Order of British Empire” for his musical achievements.
10. Mark Knopfler is a collector of classic race cars and he also an enthusiast race driver. He owns a Maserati 300S and an Austin-Healy 100 and some more vintage race cars.
11. His name also inspired a scientific name of a dinosaur. The scientist listened Dire Straits when he found the fossils, so he called it ‘Masiakasaurus Knopfleri”. That’s the real fame, huh?
12. One of songs from Mark solo albums is “Boom, like that”. Did you know, that it’s actually about how McDonald’s franchise was born under the leadership of Ray Kroc? Mark plays a Danelectro Silverstone 1452 Hornet.
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