When Dire Straits front­man Mark Knopfler was a kid grow­ing up in New­cas­tle-Upon-Tyne, Eng­land, he dreamed about get­ting his own gui­tar. “I remem­ber stand­ing out­side music stores with my nose pressed up against the glass, just star­ing at those elec­tric gui­tars,” he told Peo­ple mag­a­zine in 1985. “I used to smell Fend­er cat­a­logs, I want­ed one so bad.” Knopfler even­tu­al­ly talked his father into buy­ing him a Höfn­er Super Sol­id V2 gui­tar for £50. The only prob­lem was, it did­n’t come with an ampli­fi­er. “I did­n’t have the nerve to ask poor old dad for an amp,” Knopfler says in the doc­u­men­tary above. “I blew up the fam­i­ly radio in fair­ly short order.”

Knopfler tells the sto­ry of that first gui­tar and five oth­ers that shaped his career in this fas­ci­nat­ing 45-minute doc­u­men­tary that aired in Britain last Octo­ber on the Sky Arts tele­vi­sion chan­nel. Gui­tar Sto­ries: Mark Knopfler is host­ed by Knopfler’s friend and co-founder of Dire Straits, bassist John Ill­s­ley. The film offers a num­ber of insights into Knopfler’s music and the key instru­ments that influ­enced his evolv­ing style.

From the open­ing scenes at a music shop in New­castle’s Cen­tral Arcade, where the young Knopfler spent hours star­ing at gui­tars through win­dows, Ill­s­ley and Knopfler move on to the city of Leeds, where Knopfler once worked as a junior reporter for the York­shire Evening Post. There they meet up with his long­time friend and men­tor Steve Phillips, a mem­ber of Knopfler’s post-Dire Straits band The Not­ting Hill­bil­lies. An afi­ciona­do of the Delta Blues, Phillips intro­duced the young Knopfler to the dis­tinc­tive sound of  “res­onator” acoustic gui­tars.

Although it was­n’t the first res­onator gui­tar he ever owned, Knopfler choos­es as his sec­ond key gui­tar a 1937 Nation­al Style “O” gui­tar he bought from Phillips in 1978. The dis­tinc­tive nick­el-plat­ed brass gui­tar, with its palm tree etch­ings around the edges and on the back, was fea­tured on the cov­er of Dire Straits’ best­selling 1985 album Broth­ers in Arms, and was used for some of the band’s best songs. At one point in the film, Knopfler picks up the Nation­al and demon­strates how he hit on the famous arpeg­gio lines in “Romeo and Juli­et,” from the Mak­ing Movies album, while exper­i­ment­ing with an open G tun­ing.

From Leeds, Ill­s­ley and Knopfler trav­el to the loca­tion of the orig­i­nal Path­way Stu­dios in Lon­don, where they record­ed their 1978 debut album, Dire Straits. Knopfler picks up his third key gui­tar, a 1961 Fend­er Stra­to­cast­er, and plays a few notes from the band’s break­through song, “Sul­tans of Swing.” The Stra­to­cast­er was the gui­tar Knopfler had always want­ed, but as his music pro­gressed he sought to diver­si­fy his sound. Knopfler’s fourth key gui­tar, which he played on Broth­ers in Arms, is a sun­burst 1958 Gib­son Les Paul. In one par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing moment in the film, Knopfler explains how he came up with the dis­tinc­tive gui­tar sound for the hit song “Mon­ey for Noth­ing” by play­ing the Les Paul through a sta­t­ic, part­ly depressed wah-wah ped­al.

While tour­ing with Dire Straits, Knopfler found it dif­fi­cult to con­stant­ly change back and forth between gui­tars, so he decid­ed to look for a sin­gle gui­tar that could pro­duce a vari­ety of sounds. To explain what hap­pened next, Knopfler and Ill­s­ley trav­el to the SoHo neigh­bor­hood of New York, where they pay a vis­it to Rudy’s Music on Broome Street and talk to the pro­pri­etor, Knopfler’s long­time friend Rudy Pen­sa, who has built cus­tom gui­tars since 1982. Knopfler and Pen­sa describe their col­lab­o­ra­tion on the design of Knopfler’s fifth key gui­tar, the Pen­sa MK‑1, which he played dur­ing his final years with Dire Straits.

The film ends with a vis­it to the Long Island work­shop of mas­ter luthi­er John Mon­teleone. In 2008 Mon­teleone built the sixth key gui­tar in Knopfler’s life, the acoustic “Isabel­la” arch­top, named after Knopfler’s eldest daugh­ter. Knopfler was so inspired by Mon­teleone’s crafts­man­ship that he wrote a song called “Mon­teleone” for his 2009 solo album, Get Lucky. The song speaks elo­quent­ly of Knopfler’s admi­ra­tion of Mon­teleone and, between the lines per­haps, of his life­long love affair with gui­tars:

via MetaFil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

Eric Clap­ton Tries Out Gui­tars at Home and Talks About the Bea­t­les, Cream, and His Musi­cal Roots

J.J. Cale died on Fri­day. Cale was one of the great­est and most influ­en­tial gui­tar play­ers of the rock and roll era. “Of all the play­ers I ever heard,” said Neil Young, “it’s got­ta be Hen­drix and J.J. Cale who are the best elec­tric gui­tar play­ers.”

It’s hard to imag­ine a musi­cian more dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed to Jimi Hen­drix than Cale, who was the mas­ter of nuance and under­state­ment. Per­haps the best word to describe his coun­try swing-inflect­ed gui­tar play­ing would be “cool.” The restrained dynam­ics, the del­i­cate touch — Cale’s play­ing demand­ed close atten­tion and sen­si­tiv­i­ty in a lis­ten­er. His vocals, too, were kept way down in the mix, a reflec­tion of his intro­vert­ed per­son­al­i­ty. “The effort­less­ness, that restraint and under­play­ing, under-singing — it was just very pow­er­ful,” said pop musi­cian Beck to the Los Ange­les Times in 2009. “The pow­er of doing less and hold­ing back in a song, I’ve tak­en a lot of influ­ence from that.”

Per­haps the great­est exem­plar of Cale’s wide influ­ence was Eric Clap­ton, who made hits out of two pre­vi­ous­ly obscure songs writ­ten by Cale — “After Mid­night” and “Cocaine” — and pat­terned much of his ’70s music after the Tul­sa Sound Cale helped cre­ate. When asked by Van­i­ty Fair to name the liv­ing per­son he most admired, Clap­ton was unequiv­o­cal: J.J. Cale. “In my hum­ble opin­ion,” Clap­ton wrote in his 2007 auto­bi­og­ra­phy, “he is one of the most impor­tant artists in the his­to­ry of rock, qui­et­ly rep­re­sent­ing the great­est asset his coun­try has ever had.”

To remem­ber Cale and his artistry, we bring you a 1979 video (above) of Cale and his band play­ing live at Rain­bow Stu­dios in Los Ange­les with his old friend and fel­low Okla­homan Leon Rus­sell. Here’s the set list:

1. “T‑Bone Shuf­fle” (pro­logue)
2. “Nowhere to Run”
3. “Cocaine”
4. “Ten Easy Lessons”
5. “Sen­si­tive kind”
6. “Hands Off Her”
7. “Lou-Easy-Ann”
8. “Going Down”
9. “Cori­na Cori­na”
10. “Roll On”
11. “No Sweat”
12. “Crazy Mama”
13. “Fate of a Fool”
14. “Boilin’ Pot”
15. “After Mid­night”
16. “T‑Bone Shuf­fle”
17. “T‑Bone Back­wards”
18. “Same Old Blues”
19. “Don’t Cry Sis­ter”
20. “Set Your Soul Free (Tell Me Who You Care)”
21. “24 Hours a Day”

Mick Jag­ger turns 70 today, and I think we can safe­ly say at this point that he’s going to stick with this rock star thing. But if at some point in his youth he had decid­ed on a dif­fer­ent career, he might have gone with “post-drug bust inter­view sub­ject” (or civ­il lib­er­tar­i­an activist). It’s a skill he prac­ticed often. Take the clip above, filmed after the leg­endary 1967 Stones’ drug bust after a News of the World arti­cle exposed the band’s recre­ation­al use, along with that of the Moody Blues and The Who. The bust, it turns out, was an L.A. Con­fi­den­tial-style frame-up between the tabloid and the police, and includ­ed the col­lab­o­ra­tion of a deal­er known appro­pri­ate­ly as “Acid King,” real name David Schnei­der­man. Accord­ing to Simon Wells’ exhaus­tive But­ter­fly on a Wheel: The Great Rolling Stones Drug Bust, Schnei­der­man “remains prob­a­bly the most enig­mat­ic fig­ure in rock and roll folk­lore” and claimed to work for the CIA, MI5, and oth­er secret agen­cies (turns out this may have been true).

So the Stones were set up, which doesn’t mean they weren’t also real­ly high (hear Wells tell the sto­ry in detail in an author inter­view above). But they took it in stride, using the pub­lic­i­ty to sub­stan­ti­ate their image as rock and roll’s bad boys and send­ing the suave, vol­u­ble Jag­ger out on press jags, like the very strange pan­el inter­view with the show World in Action, from which the above excerpt comes, where Mick sits down with a cou­ple chap­lains and a cou­ple suits and defends the rights of the indi­vid­ual. Jag­ger proves him­self a very able spokesman for his generation—intelligent, poised, and yes, ridicu­lous­ly hand­some. He not only stood up to defend him­self in inter­views through­out the Stones’ tur­bu­lent drug-fueled hey­days, but he stood by his man Kei­th as well. Check him out below field­ing press ques­tions with aplomb for a slight­ly addled Richards after one of Keith’s drug tri­als.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mick Jag­ger Tells the Sto­ry Behind ‘Gimme Shel­ter’ and Mer­ry Clayton’s Haunt­ing Back­ground Vocals

Mick Jag­ger, 15 Years Old, Shows Off His Rock Climb­ing Shoes on British TV (1959)

The Rolling Stones at 50: Mick, Kei­th, Char­lie & Ron­nie Revis­it Their Favorite Songs

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness