"Loving guitars means you've got to love the cheap ones as well," says Mark Knopfler, who can certainly afford the very best nowadays as another of his regular visits to Ireland beckons in 2019.
"A really powerful part of my childhood was gazing longingly at those things," the musician told Music Radar. "I didn’t know whether it was going to be a Futurama or a Hofner or a Burns Sonic that I was going to get first. But I was desperate for something. Boy, I loved them and I still do. You never escape that."
He recalls a 12-string Danelectro guitar which he had as a kid. "I was getting up from my chair and I put my thumb straight through the top of it. Straight through the body, and I realised, ‘Oh, this thing’s chipboard - there’s nothing to it.’"
After his early Newcastle years, the members of Dire Straits convened in Deptford and struggled to gain notice in the early years.
When they cracked the single charts in 1978 with the sparky Sultans of Swing, Knopfler was already 28, and had spent ten years trying to make a name for himself. Dire Straits became a global force and America and Europe sat up and took notice too.
Seven years later, in 1985, their Brothers in Arms album became the first CD to sell one million copies and was also the first CD to outsell its LP counterpart.
The ace guitarist, songwriter and former front-man of Dire Straits has just released his latest album, Down the Road Wherever, judged by aficionados to be his most autobiographical in years.
In the middle of the slide guitar solo on Just A Boy Away From Home, the guitarist essays a little quote from You'll Never Walk Alone, inspired by the time when his father was in hospital in Newcastle-on-Tyne.
His father has suffered a heart attack after retirement, recalls the musician, "and he’s lying in there in the middle of the night feeling maybe just a little bit sorry for himself, when he hears someone singing as they’re walking past.
"It’s right near St James’ Park and it was in the middle of the night. So it was obviously a Liverpool lad who had missed his train or his bus home, you know? And he’s on his own and he’s singing You’ll Never Walk Alone – and I think my dad found it sort of like a little sign to keep his chin up.
"It’s great that that should happen and I’ll tell you this as well: somebody will have helped (the Liverpool fan) out, taken him down to the station, got him a cup of tea, asked him if he’d got any money, you know… put him on a train or told him what time the first train for Liverpool would be and all of that. That’s Newcastle for you."
Many would love to see Dire Straits reform but it seems unlikely, and the band did not reassemble for their induction into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame. Mark Knopfler and his band play 3Arena on Friday May 24 2019.
