Special relatiOnShip

Mark Knopfler on his first ‘proper’ guitar

Though he’s best-associated with Strats, it was something else that kicked off Mark’s collection, many years ago. “The first proper one was the Les Paul Special – £80-worth of Gibson,” he recalls. “Double cutaway and neck perched on the end of the body. I’ve still got that guitar and I spent a long time trying to get the black paint off it and get it back to [the original] cherry finish because I’d realised that was still there underneath. God bless him, Steve Phillips finished it off for me. But I did a lot of it myself – you know, just chip away at it. Now, if you looked at it, it would look just like a perfect Les Paul Special. I used it for lots of stuff and gave it slide duties after I didn’t need a workhorse any more.”