All of us know Mark Knopfler. He is a true musical legend. For nearly 40 years of his career he has amassed fans that love his music. With his special talent, guitar playing, singing, composing and producing he is best known as the front man of Dire Straits, but he has also launched a very successful solo career.
Mark is one of the greatest guitarists of all-time, he possesses world famous ability to play the guitar with special technique which is called “finger-pick”. He developed his signature style during a jam session where the only guitar available for him to play was badly damaged. It was so difficult to play that all Knopfler could do was finger-pick the strings. Knopfler looks back on that night not as a disaster but the moment he discovered his guitar “voice.”
Mark formed Dire Straits in the late 70’s. The band released their first album in 1978 with the same name like the band “Dire Straits”. Their hit album was in 1985 – Brothers In Arms, which was also the first compact disc to sell a million units. Overall, the album was sold in more than 30 milion units.
Many of hit songs from Dire Straits such as “Money For Nothing”, “So Far Away” and “Walk of Life” all were written by Mark Knopfler. “Money for Nothing” was the first music video played on MTV in Great Britain. But for many fans 1995 was a sad year, Dire Straits disbanded that year and it was devastating to figure out that they will never get back together.
However, Knopfler released his first solo album Golden Heart in 1996, and till 2015 he had nine solo albums in his career. When we look back from now, what an absolutely amazing career that was. We do not know if Knopfler will make more albums, but for now we have the Tracker album with amazing good songs by Mark Knopfler.
In 2006 he relased his alubm named All the Roadrunning which was in collaboration with Emmylou Harris, and the album had good success. Knopfler also was known as a rock and roller, but he has dabbled in several other genres including country music. In the late 1980’s, Knopfler formed a country band called Notting Hillbillies. He has also collaborated with such Nashville luminaries as Chet Atkins, John Anderson, George Jones, and Kris Kristofferson.
Mark has scored several major motion pictures including The Princess Bride, Local Hero, Last Exit to Brooklyn, and Wag the Dog. Before becoming a guitar god, Kopfler was a lecturer at a college. He has an English degree from the University of Leeds and spent a couple of years as a reporter for a local newspaper.
In his rich career he has worked with bunch of big names in music industry such as: Aztec Camera, Bob Dylan, Chet Atkins, Elton John, Emmylou Harris, Eric Clapton, George Jones, John Anderson, Kris Kristofferson, Paul McCartney, Phil Collins, Randy Newman, Sting and Tina Turner.
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