In the video below, you will have a chance to listen to the classic hit song ‘Sultans of Swing’ by the British Band Dire Straits, in performance from Marcy Marc – musician and guitarist from the United Kingdom.
Namely, Marcy Marc bought his new Fender Stratocaster so he had only one choice when it came to recording his first song. He chooses to play and sing the classic hit song ‘Sultans of Swing’. We have talked with him, so here is what he said for our blog, a little bit about himself and how he recorded the track.
“I was introduced to Dire Straits in 1985 by a friend of mine at school. We were both 13 years old and living in Torquay in the UK. My friend had the chrome edition cassette version of each album, and it blew my mind hearing the crisp guitar sound that Mark Knopfler produced. ‘Brothers in Arms’ had just come out, but it was the ‘Sultans of Swing’ that really caught my ear.”
“At the time I had no idea that Knopfler used a Fender Stratocaster or that he played with his fingers and thumb – however, after video recording the 1985 Wembley concert off the television one evening, I was opened into a whole new world, and begged my Dad to buy me a guitar,” he said.
“At the aged of 15, that finally happened and I remember practicing for 10 hours a day during the school summer holidays. By then, my heroes were Knopfler, Brian May, and Dave Gilmour – probably quite a few people would say the same!”
“At Imperial College in London in the early 90s, I was living very close to Freddie Mercury’s house in Kensington when he sadly passed away. I had dreams of being in a successful band like Brian May (I even had hair then), but I never really had the drive (or talent most likely) to succeed. However, I always played my guitar as a hobby. As a scientist, I was interested in the recording process and started investigation using computers to record my own songs in my spare time. I continue to mess around doing this in my spare time, normally adding a silly video to help accompany the music,” he added.
“In all this time, I never owned a Fender Stratocaster, and so in the last few weeks. In April 2019 I bought a Mexican Stratocaster. When it arrived in the post and I plugged it into my Hughes and Kettner Switchblade combo amp with some boss compression…I was blown away by how similar to Knopfler’s guitar it sounded, so decided to try playing the ‘Sultans of Swing’ again for the first time in years.”
“It came back pretty quickly so got hold of a backing track with just the bass and drums (I think it’s actually the authentic Pick Withers and John Illsley album performance), I set up a couple of microphones and cameras and recorded the track live on my PC. You can see that I’ve got a Bluetooth earpiece on – that’s so I can play along with the track whilst singing and playing the guitar. I’m not a great singer but I think the end result came out well with some good energy. Let me know what you think!”
“I’m tempted to try ‘Tunnel of Love’ next, but I need to practice it a little bit more. I can’t believe that Mr. Mark Knopfler is now pushing 70-years-old. He remains a legend to me, but I’m not a massive fan of his solo output. For me it’s all about Dire Straits up to ‘Brothers in Arms’,” he finished.
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