12 MARK KNOPFLER

Touch, tone and playing ‘for the song’ are Knopfler’s stock in trade

If you take only one thing from Mark Knopfler’s playing style, it must surely be his fingerstyle technique. Though his pick-hand position might appear unusual, Mark is able to control every nuance of his sumptuous tones and Strat cleans with a beautifully sensitive touch. Fingerstyle offers unique phrasing options too; the ‘thumb, pull-off , thumb, first finger’ picking pattern of that lick in Sultans Of Swing can’t really be played another way if you want Mark’s feel. “With me”, Mark says, “there are two sides to it. Most of the time I just use the guitar as something to help the songwriting. But every now and again, if I’m sitting down and trying to learn something, moving it forward a little bit, you realise the depth of the thing. It’s a whole different thing being a musician from being a ‘guitar player’.”