When people contemplate Mark Knopfler’s past, they tend to think of rock music on a stadium scale in the mega-platinum pomp of Dire Straits. He, on the other hand, remembers an earlier truth, inhabited by dodgy digs and even dodgier gigs, built on spit and sawdust, and hopelessly badly paid. Never mind them getting money for nothing — those were the days of nothing for money.
The songwriter and guitarist is not often given to overt reminiscence, but he does cast a glance over his shoulder in the context of his excellent new solo album, Tracker. More prolific, at 65, than any of his contemporaries, he has released nine studio albums since the band he co-founded, and steered to worldwide sales of 120m records, went on permanent hold in the mid-1990s.
Tracker is another charming alloy of Knopfler’s folk influences, the latest manifestation of the often acoustic sound that has naturally succeeded his reluctant years as a rock god. Yet there’s a deliberate nod to the Dire Straits sound in its single, Beryl, and the album opens with Laughs and Jokes and Drinks and Smokes, in which he recalls the first days of pursuing his dreams in London.
“Laughs and jokes and drinks and smokes was what it was all about when you were young,” he says. “You’re so resilient, you don’t even think about the wear and tear at all. I certainly didn’t. When we were going at the beginning, there was a pub circuit, but usually all the money we got went on hiring the PA system. There was nothing really left at the end of those gigs.
“I remember we did four shows at the Marquee, on Wardour Street, and I think we got £120 for the gig. The PA cost £100, so there was a fiver left each, then we’d buy some beer, and that’d be it. You’re just going from gig to gig, hoping to keep it all together.”
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Knopfler grants interviews sparingly, and on our first encounter, nearly 25 years ago, he was a rather gruff figurehead, clearly unable to find inspiration in mere celebrity. But repeated meetings have revealed a softer, self-effacing, relaxed family man who appreciates everything he has, would rather talk about guitars and football than promote himself, and cannot wait to write his next song.
That London milieu of the 1970s was reportedly enveloped by new wave, but it was also nurturing other talent held together with more than a safety pin. I saw Dire Straits at what may have been the 10th or so gig they ever did, in a Covent Garden basement called the Rock Garden. It’s more than a rose-tinted memory to say that one could tell these real-life sultans of swing were going places.
“I remember the Rock Garden really well,” Knopfler says. “That was another place where you had to load in all the gear, going up and down the stairs to the street. I used to sweat so much on stage in those days, it came off me in sheets. That’s how the headband started. I literally couldn’t see — the sweat would sting my eyes and I used not to be able to see my chords through my tears.”
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He laughs as the memory becomes clear. “You would have to make your own way to the gig. I remember one night at the Marquee, there were sheets of sweat going out into the crowd, and this little fella stuck a note up, and I read it. It said, ‘More liquid gumption, please.’ As my manager likes to say, it’s character-building. You’ve got to want to be there.”
Decades after Brothers in Arms conquered the world and removed the financial imperative from Knopfler’s agenda, he still wants to be there. It’s proved again by an international tour behind Tracker that starts in May and lasts for most of the rest of the year.
Laughs and Jokes barrels along like a sea shanty, appropriately for an artist who often talks about his own cherished band setting sail on another adventure. “Tracker is, in many ways, keeping track of time. Also, you’re on the trail of an idea, of a song. Writing songs and travelling around the world and doing all this stuff is a funny way of tracking time.
“I mean, look at my band — heavens above. We spend an awful lot of the time laughing anyway, so that keeps the whole thing rolling on. I’m a lucky guy, there’s no two ways about it.”
Knopfler is naturally, but not studiously, private. He has redrawn his career while retaining his huge audience with a low-key dexterity. Fans still come to enjoy Sultans of Swing and Telegraph Road, but each new record is welcomed so warmly, most of them no longer bother to ask whether Dire Straits will re-form — a pointless question given how much fun he has now as a front man.
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“People are great, all around the world, so I haven’t really had to suffer too much in terms of all that,” he says. “There are always going to be those who want to know exactly what instrument you played and how you got the sound. Half the time, I can’t remember. I just plugged it in and fiddled about. In fact, I was looking today at the instruments I used on Tracker, and I couldn’t remember exactly which they were. So, if it’s years ago, then good luck.”
With such a healthy disregard for the trappings of success, Knopfler’s only touring proviso is that the itinerary doesn’t encroach on the school holidays. For all his inexhaustible passion for his work, his family life — with his second wife, the actress and writer Kitty Aldridge, and their daughters, Isabella and Katya — remains non-negotiable.
I ask if the kids ever mind their dad being away for long spells. “They’re much better off without me hanging around the house,” he laughs. “They do come out for strategic gigs. That’s always great, too, when we’re camped in one town for a bit.”
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That is about as personal as Knopfler will be on the record with the fourth estate, even if he used to be a member of it. He depicts his days as a 15-year-old copy boy on the Newcastle Evening Chronicle in a new song, Basil, about the poet Basil Bunting, a reluctant staffer on the newspaper. It’s another vivid snapshot, juxtaposing the world-weary protagonist and the songwriter’s eager young self.
“It was clear that he’d rather be writing poetry than copy for the Evening Chronicle,” he remembers, “and he didn’t really fit. So it was the contrast between us — because, at that age, I had the whole world in front of me. I had a different way of looking at the world entirely. You’re thinking it’s all rosy promise.”
Knopfler has made that rosy promise into something of lasting substance, and anyone who thinks only of that MTV icon in a headband should know the toil that went before. “I remember once hitchhiking from a gig in Penzance on Christmas Day, trying to get back up to Newcastle from the southern tip of Cornwall,” he says, returning to those formative years. “I used to hitchhike then, climbing up into lorry cabs with bags and guitars. There was snow everywhere, and I got put off in the middle of the country somewhere — in the Midlands, I think — on a slip road off the motorway. I’m standing up there, and there’s nobody. I can see 360 degrees for miles all around, and there’s nothing moving, just the sun shining down on all this snow. And I remember getting a very clear idea of what I’d decided I was going to do with my life.”
Tracker is released by Virgin/EMI on March 16. Mark Knopfler and his band start a tour of the UK and Ireland on May 15