This article is taken from MUSICIAN Sept. 1985. It is written by Bill Flanagan.

DIRE STRAITS' MARK KNOPFLER
An Inside Look at the Outside Man

Mark Knopfler is an Englishman, but his wife Lourdes is a New Yorker. They have a house in London, and a house in Greenwich Village. Right now they're in the New York house, which has been in the same unfinished state for the past couple of years. Sheets and plastic cover most of the furniture, protection from the sawdust and splatters left by the procession of wall-busting carpenters, circuit-shorting electricians and backward plumbers who've extended a simple renovation into the greatest archeological reconstruction since the excavation of Pompeii. Lourdes Knopfler has been keeping tabs on the sandblasting and fee inflation all winter, while Mark has been in the Carribean recording a new Dire Straits album. Now Mark lifts the plastic off a cassette player and puts in a rough mix of "So Far Away," a loping tune about separation. "You've been in the sun and I've been in the rain," Knopfler's taped voice sings, "And you're so far away from me."

Lourdes perks up. "Hey, just a minute," she says. "Who's been in the sun and who's been in the rain? I'm the one who spent the winter fighting with plumbers in New York! You've been in Montserrat."

Knopfler just smiles. Far be from him to sweat the little stuff. His life, as Randy Newman would say, is good. Knopfler's a superstar in Europe, Asia and Australia. Dire Straits even enjoy great popularity in Latin America and the Middle East. If his band's substantial American success is not equal to the stature they enjoy elsewhere, it doesn't seem to bother Knopfler one bit. In fact, he takes a sort of perverse pleasure from his low American profile. When Dire Straits made their last studio album,1982's Love Over Gold, the band asked Warner Bros. to release as a single "Telegraph Road," a track that lasted fourteen minutes. Dire Straits last toured the U.S. in 1980. Five years later, they've finally consented to make another pass.

"The fact that we don't HAVE to 'break America' has become one of the main reasons we don't," Knopfler says. "It would be great if we had a bigger audience here in the States, but it's very nice as it is. We do have a big audience here. It's not anything like other countries, but we're not going to kill ourselves in Holiday Inns in order to achieve it. 'Cause once you do, so what? We don't feel we have to play the Astrodome. We do enough of these gigs in the rest of the world. We enjoy them, they're events. But a lot of these acts who are trying to make it in the States just seem like rats in a barrel, scrambling for every bit of billboard space, air space, chart space. I mean, I think I'd be a liar if I said it didn't bother me that so much mundane stuff is being touted as the greatest thing-- but hey, you know, it's popular."

Knopfler takes another slug of wine, no rat in a barrell he.

"I was just told that we're apparently one of Warners' top selling acts over here," he goes on. "Which suggests to me that they must have a few horrendously big ones and then they fall to what they call 'majors.' From 'Humungous' to 'Major" must be a big drop."

You can't blame Knopfler for snickering at show biz priorities. When Dire Straits arrived to play their first American club tour in 1979 they parachuted into a hurricane of hype, a monsoon of media. "Sultans of Swing" was all over the radio and the band's debut album was rocketing to the top of the charts. (Well, to number two anyway. Number one was Saturday Night Fever or Grease-- one of those pre-Rolling Stone Travolta vehicles.) Everywhere the four-man band played, they were crowded into corners by disc-jockeys, rack jobbers and record company whazoos telling them, "I was the first on to play" or break or stock or hear "your record!"

Knopfler and company were amused and puzzled by this American criterion. One night David Knopfler, Mark's brother and the band's original rhythm guitarist, couldn't take it any more. "What," he asked, "is this American obsession with being first? Who cares?" And ya know, until you hear it put like that the goal IS sort of childish.

Jack Sonni was one of the fans who squeezed into the Bottom Lineto see Dire Straits' first New York show in '79. Jack worked at Rudy's Music Shop, a guitar store on 48th Street, and was delighted when David and then Mark Knopfler began patronizing the store and chewing the fat. David even invited Jack to come visit him in London. When Jack got there he commented on how wild it was that David had no bars on his windows. Jack Sonni is a true New Yorker.

Jack had bars on HIS windows. He lived in a tiny, seedy ground floor in Hell's Kitchen. The toilet didn't even flush. When Mark Knopfler would come by to play on Jack's spare guitar it was a perfect study in how differently fortune can treat two talented musicians. Jack and Knopfler would sit with the window open, playing guitars in the little room. Then Mark would go off to Europe or the Carribean and Jack would go back to the little guitar shop.

Just before Christmas in 1984 Knopfler approached Jack with a problem. Hal Lindes, the guitarist who replaced David, had been fired and the group had a world tour coming up. Could Jack possibly see leaving the guitar store to join Dire Straits? Legend has it that Jack Sonni's head made a sizable indentation in Rudy's ceiling. And Rudy's has a high ceiling.

Knopfler said to his manager, "It's nice to play father Christmas."

"Jack was in a real bad way for a real long time," Knopfler explains. "Frustration, just working at his guitar. I said to him, 'Just one condition. Whatever I do, man, try your damnedest not to let it affect our friendship."

To the American public Mark Knopfler IS Dire Straits. He writes and sings all the group's songs, produces their albums, and plays the distinctive, haunting guitar that is the band's sonic signature. In the five years since Dire Straits last played in this country Knopfler's name has been before the public as a record producer (Bob Dylan's Infidels, Aztec Camera's Knife), a film composer (Local Hero, Cal, Comfort and Joy) and session guitarist (Van Morrison's Beautiful Vision, Steely Dan's Gaucho, Bryan Ferry's Boys and Girls and a host of others). The other Dire Straits only recent American splash was as Tina Turner's backing band on "Private Dancer," a song written by ...Mark Knopfler.

"We are going to put 'Private Dancer' on Love Over Gold," bassist John Illsley explains. "But in the end I don't think Mark really wanted to sing it; it's really a woman's song." Illsley is having breakfast in a restaurant on Central Park West. "Tina heard a very rough tape and loved it so much she asked if the band could play on it." Knopfler had other committments (Jeff Beck came in to play the guitar solo), but the other Straits agreed to record with Tina Turner. "It was tremendous fun," Illsley says. "Tina came in and recorded it live in the studio with the band. She gave it three hundred percent energy. You'd think she was in front of 20,000 people rather than four guys. We were putting down the tracks"-- the Straits backed Turner on their pal Paul Brady's "Steel Claw" -- "and she was goin' nuts."

Illsley is a great believer in soul over dexterity. "I'm almost totally impressed by amazing players," the bassist says. "Sometimes the whole technique thing just knocks the soul out of music. You're not thinking about feeling, gut reaction. "You're thinking about technique. So you produce something that goes over most people's heads. Oh yeah, it's great playing." Illsley taps his chest. "But touch something here."

Handsome, proper and very tall, Illsley is the only original Dire Strait besides Knopfler. He's come to cover many of the band's business decisions. "Mark does between sixty and seventy-five percent of the music in the band," the bassist says. "The rest is worked out by the guys. I do an awful lot of the administration and stuff. I'm the link between the band and the management. I also just filter out a lot of stuff, make non-musical decisions. Mark trusts me to do that. I think we're a good team. I think we complement each other musically, too. I'm an emotional bass player. I respond to the song and ideas."

Holding onto a fragile emotional spirit in an expanding musical ensemble has required determination from Illsley and Knopfler. Dire Straits onstage includes two guitarists, two keyboard players, a bassist, drummer, percussionist and sax player. It's not always easy to keep that sparse, soulful throb; it's not easy to keep young players from wanting to show off.

"The parts are worked out real carefully," Illsley says. "So when somebody starts to mess around with them it throws everybody off. The last keyboard player we added would learn his part, play it in rehearsal, and then when we got on stage we'd all go 'What was THAT?' If we were a blues band, okay-- but when we play something like 'Romeo And Juliet' you can't mess about."

Illsley finishes his breakfast and walks down to the Power Station, the Manhatten studio where Dire Straits are finishing the album they've dubbed Brothers In Arms. The record's running late. Come hell or high overhead, it has to be finished in time for Dire Straits to begin a year-long world tour in May. To speed things along the whole band has been brought over to New York to rehearse for the concerts in one Power Station room while album mixes and overdubs are worked out in the booth.

At the studio Knopfler sits conferring with Neil Dorfsman, his Greenwich Village neighbor, long-time engineer, and now co-producer. "Neil's always had a lot of input," Knopfler explains. "But he's developed more and more, he's become a more experienced record maker. If anything, I would say that I wrote the songs and helped organize the music and Neil produced this record.

"I'd like to move now away from these little excursions into writing film scores and producing other people, and just tour with the band and then make another Dire Straits album. To me the band is the best thing. I've always enjoyed it more than anything else. And of course, you know I'm very slow. I have to do all these other things to find out just how much the band means to me." Knopfler grins. "I'm so slow that I have to be bashed over the head more than once; I have to learn the nuts and bolts of record production to figure out that I don't really get off on record production. It's when I'm rehearsing with the band that I'm totally in tune with what's going on. That's when I really am happiest. Making a record is beautiful when it's happening. But when it's not happening-- for any reason-- it can be a diabolical pain."

One diabolical pain that erupted in the making of Brothers In Arms was a defective batch of recording tape that scotched three tracks while Knopfler and company were recording in the Caribbean. That set the old schedule back by about a week. Now it looks like one of the Power Station's super-duper computerized digital zillion track egg-beating coffee-making guitar tuning state of the art recording consoles has LOST Michael Brecker's sax solo on the jazzy "Your Latest Trick." Dorfsman gets Brecker on the phone and the horn player makes it down to the studio. Knopfler, avoiding the buzz of panic in the air, goes into the next room and starts leading the band through "Six Blade Knife," a tune from the first album that most of the current group has never played before.

Brecker plops down in the control room and adjusts his reed while Dorfsman hits switches and bangs gears like Han Solo looking for warp drive. Suddenly elation lights the producer's face. Brecker's lost solo has been snatched from the computer's labyrinthine memory. The sax player listens, amazed, while Dorfsman explains the complex mechanics of retrieval in terms only a Vulcan could comprehend. Two glass partitions away, Dire Straits have found their way into the staggered, bluesy groove of "Six Blade Knife." Knopfler's face radiates contentment.

"I like the emotional impact and the simplicity in the way Mark writes and plays," Brecker says as he packs up his horn. "He likes to get to the essence of something without too many frills. I have a way of articulating notes that Mark likes, a kind of inflection he does on the guitar, too. It's not quite blues-- it's almost a kind of urban-country tenor. It came out in the Local Hero soundtrack."

A sense of the roots that that came to American music through Appalachia, but which go back to Ireland and Scotland? "Exactly," Brecker nods. "You can hear it in country music, in Cajun stuff. He has a very strong melodic conception. Mark's willing to experiment, but he knows what he wants."

That Knopfler is the boss in Dire Straits has not been questioned in some time. Those who resent his boss-hood tend to exit through the band's revolving door. David Knopfler, who had a hard time regarding his brother as his superior, was the first man out-- during the recording of Making Movies, the band's third album, in 1990. Pick Withers, the Straits' original drummer, was replaced by ex-Rockpile Terry Williams right after finishing Love Over Gold, the fourth album, in '82. Williams himself took a backseat to Weather Report's Omar Hakim on the new album, and Hal Lindes, the blond Californian who replaced David Knopfler, went off to Monserrat with the band to record Brothers in Arms and was back home without a job before he knew it. For all his good humor, Knopfler doesn't stand for any crap when it's time to work. That attitude, together with the aural luster of the Knopfler-produced records, has won him a reputation as a studio perfectionist.

"I don't believe in perfect," Knopfler protests. "There's so many ways to do any song. Perfection's just a cloud in the air. People say I'm a perfectionist. It's just not so."

But surely he'll admit to great...self-confidence.

"Well," Knopfler smiles, "I have the self-confidence to go gaily steaming off in completely the wrong direction." He laughs. "Yes, that's the kind of man I am. Musically, it's very easy for things to get out of hand with me. Just because I've got the confidence. I continually put myself in situations where it's made absolutely obviuos that the directions I feel like charging off in aren't the right directions at all.

"Neil's probably lost count of the times that I've been working away quite happily with something and he's had to say, 'It's not really working.' It's always most humbling, educational and delightful to learn that you are in fact wrong."

Knopfler jokes about it, but if he wants something done right he is inclines to do it himself. Despite his position as ringleader, there's a lot about him that's always on the outside looking in. Knopfler's father, a Hungarian Jew with leftist sympathies, escaped Europe when the Nazis took over. He married an Englishwoman and settled in Scotland. Mark grew up a bit an outsider. "It's very easy, if you grow up in England, to become very fixed in your views of what constitutes breakfast, what constitutes everything. I'm profoundly thankful for the fact that I had that added intensity of vision as a child. It's very fortunate for a child to get an outsider's view of his own environment. It's more sensitized. In England if a kid has a name that's different..." Knopfler abruptly shifts away from the personal. "I always felt sorry for the fat girls, the kids who never got a dance at Christmas time. I wrote a song about it called 'Secondary Waltz.'"

In the songs on the first two Dire Straits albums, the singer was always observing other people without ever making direct contact. Whether watching the Sultans of Swing play to a unappreciative pub, watching the Lady Writer on television, or watching mystery women in "Wild West End,""Follow Me Home" and "Portobello Belle," the narrator was always a stranger standing apart from the insiders. In "Water of Love" Knopfler sang of being "high and dry,""lost and lonely," completely cut off.

It was only after those first two albums were written and recorded that Dire Straits became successful and Knopfler found himself a local hero, the leader of his own gang. His writing reflected the shift. When Dire Straits arrived in New York to record Making Movies in 1980 Knopfler had moved his narrators to the center of the action. He could still stand at a distance to observe the rollergirl in "Skateaway" or the lead-footed homosexual cabaret team in "Les Boys," but the singer was front and center in "Hand In Hand," "Romeo And Juliet" and "Expresso Love." "Solid Rock" was Knopfler's declaration of independence-- a pronouncement that he was taking full responsibility, nothing was going to get in his way, and those who wanted to come along on his terms were welcome to share the ride. "When you point your finger 'cause your plan fell through, "Knopfler sang, "you got three fingers pointing back at you." Mark saw that as an image of accepted responsibility. Brother David took the other three fingers to be the other three Dire Straits. David left the band during Making Movies. The last song Mark added to the album was "Hand In Hand":

If I've been hard on you I never chose to be
I never wanted no one else
I tried my best to be somebody you'd be close to
Hand in hand like lovers are supposed to

Maybe it was unintentional that the song worked as well for "brothers" as for "lovers."

It was at the same time-- the summer of 1980-- that Mark met and fell in love with Lourdes Salamoni. Lourdes was working at the Power Station and when Mark announced their betrothal there were mumbles among some of his distant north country relations. Who was this woman who wanted to marry their rich grand-nephew? An American gold-digger? Well those suspicious aunties were set back in theor rockers by the revelation that Lourdes was herself from New World wealth and had been working for her money not because she had to, but because she wanted to. Kind of brings to mind another Randy Newman song; the one where the groom comes out of the bathroom on his wedding night and tells the startled bride, "I ain't no negro, I'm a millionaire!"

Knopfler says that he always figured he'd live in America eventually. "Just because of rock 'n' roll music," he explains. "America's made up of Everyman , and in some ways I feel like I'm made up of Everyman, too." Knopfler taught college, worked on a farm, been a reporter, and figures he fit in at each stop.

"I feel I have things in common with almost every place I am," he says. "The only time I feel really at odds with all the people around me is when I'm near a mob. That's when I really feel like an outsider. I remember once going to a football match where the guys liked to fight one another, and feeling so utterly separate from that. Maybe they were kids who were made to feel like rejects, and this was their way to release all that energy. I got into plenty of fights growing up in Glasgow and Newcastle. I enjoyed playing all the war games as a kid. But I still fear it and feel terrible about that so many people are not averse to waving a broken bottle in somebody's face; so many people walk around with guns; so many people feel it's perfectly alright to send armies into places to shoot 'em up. What the hell is that? In World War I my grandfathers were probably fighting in the British and German armies. If they'd killed each other there'd have been no strummin'."

His empathy for the downtrodden and Knopfler's political sympathies have resulted in a whole suite of anti-war songs on Brothers In Arms. "The Man's Too Strong" is delivered in the voice of an aging war criminal, apparently a Nazi.

"It's a study in guilt, hatred and fear," Knopfler explains "It could be a Hess-like figure in the depths of Spandau Prison, or anybody who's not at peace with himself."

Could this new subject matter be connected to the fact that Knopfler, now in his mid-thirties, is the same age his father was when he fled the Nazis?

"I don't think so," Knopfler says. "If you're involved in poetry and music, that's different from being involved in anything else. We're all different people. There are similarities, obviously, but it's a mistake to start identifying with your fathers... or your brothers.

"On 'The Man's Too Strong' I was just trying to get into the mind of somebody who's lived his life that way. It's an experiment in character, in play-writing I suppose. 'Brothers In Arms' is written from the point of veiw of a soldier dying on the battlefield. To write something like that you can't just write off the top of your head. You have to dig deep if the thing's going to be realistic. You're an outsider, but to do it properly you're also digging inside. I don't think you can get away scot-free. If you do the song's not going to work.

"The whole area of creation plays all kinds of tricks on the writer. It can fool him into thinking it's easier than it is; it can fool him into thinking it's harder than it is; it can fool him into thinking it's working when it's not; or not working when it is."

So which Dire Straits songs are completely from the inside? Which are Mark Knopfler speaking in his own voice?

"I suppose 'Hand In Hand' ," Knopfler answers. "And 'Water Of Love' because I was so fed up. I felt I was going no place. I could see my future stretching out in front of me long and bleak."

Every writer has some subject that aludes him. "I've never felt moved to write about particilarly obscene people," Knopfler says. This upright impediment presented a problem when the songwriter put together 'Money For Nothing," a lyric inspired by an appliance store employee Knopfler heard mocking the MTV rock stars shining down on him from a row of display televisions.

"I borrowed a bit of paper and actually wrote that song while I was in the store," Knopfler recalls. "I wanted to use the language the guy really used. It was more real. I did use 'that little faggot,' but there were a couple of good 'mother-fuckers'-- which mean nothing to you in a hardware store in New York City, but which might mean something to people who live in Tallahassee. There's no way I could expect people to receive that in the spirit it's intended. They'd probably think I was just being vulgar. Still, if we have time, I might record a version with the real language, just to have it for myself."

Knopfler figures the logic of the songwriting process becomes apparent only in retrospect. "It's always based on music you like to play," he says. "It's a weird business. It has to have a whole harmonic balance. You try to create something that will work on a number of levels-- it's functional, it's beautiful, it makes a point, it has its own reality. I'm not saying that everything is a crises, but everywhere there are choices. You try staying outside while being inside, too. You can't just enter into the depths of the thing and have bits of paint flying all over the place. It's also important to stand back and look at what you're painting."

Bring into this discussion Knopfler's status as a guitar hero and he denies it. Press the point and he says, "Aw, come on. You know very well that sort of thing doesn't really enter into it. You've been talking to me about songs, and then all of a sudden you come hula-hooping out with this guitar-hero stuff."

Well, okay. But it is sometimes strange to see the eternal outsider up there on a big stage making oversize gestures to the far balconies and receiving the homage of thousands. His love for playing is always apparent, but one sometimes feels Knopfler has to remind himself that there are 20,000 fans out there and it's been five minutes--oops--time for another big gesture.

Knopfler laughs at the scenario. "Well.... I suppose. That's partly true but... I'm just really happy to be with a crowd that's into the band. I always wave a towel 'cause THEY'RE all waving. It's to give people a positive charge. I'm sure that's what most musicians want to do. It's not like 'We Are The Champions!' It's not jackboot rock."

The '85-'86 Dire Straits tour will take almost a year to go from the Middle East to Europe to North America to Japan to Australia. The band's set itself a crazy schedule-- usually five nights in a row and then one night off. While they struggle to finish rehearsals and their album, word comes to Dire Straits that their ten nights at London's Wembley Arena sold out in no time, and extra shows are being added. The City of London has also given permission for the Straits to play a free concert in Hyde Park (the first such event since the Stones' bon voyage to Brian Jones there in '69) to accomodate all the fans who couldn't get tickets for Wembley. John Illsley gets on the trans-Atlantic phone to debate the pros and cons of that gig, which he's told would draw an estimated crowd of half a million.

The next day, Illsley, in an attempt to keep himself healthy, goes jogging in Central Park, slips and sprains his wrist: The impending tour and unfinished album are getting to be a real concern. Illsley and Knopfler decide to bring in hotshot bassist Tony Levin to cut "One World," a tune which becomes more upbeat in the transition. Illsley, his forearm in a cast, sits drinking coffee while Knopfler adds guitar to the song.

"The first leg of the tour is three months with hardly a day off, Illsley sighs. He studies his injured arm. "I'm just worried about somebody breaking a wrist or getting seriously ill. In seven years we've never canceled a date. We just commit ourselves to a ludicrous schedule and try to stick to it."

Later on Knopfler recalls some of the special effort that dedication to scheduling has caused. "We once had to put John onstage in a chair," he chuckles. "In the very early days John decided he knew how to ride a horse. My brother David's girlfriend said, "Let's go riding! John said, 'I can do that!' See, it comes back to that confidence we were talking about. Anyway, this horse took off down the field, jumped a haybale, and John went sailing off and landed on his back. Went straight to the hospital. We had a gig that night at the Albany Empire in Deptford. So we got him out of the hospital, gave him his bass, and stuck him onstage in a chair. He looked like King Arthur."

On the day the rest of the Dire Straits are to depart New York for London and final tour preparations, Knopfler and producer Dorfsman are still mixing Brothers In Arms. Everyone's trying to to cash checks, and those who do succeed lend dollars and pounds to those who don't. Jack Sonni, looking about as happy as the grand prize winner on Wheel Of Fortune, can't wait to get airborne. John Illsley hopes Jack won't flip when he sees his first Dire Straits audience-- 30,000 Israelis in Jerusalem. Illsley needn't be concerned. In the spotlights Sonni turns into a duck-walking extrovert. "He was BORN to it," Knopfler laughs after a months of dates. "Born to boogie, born to rock; pick your cliche, they all fit Sonni."

Everybody says bands are a pain," Knopfler says. "But it's worth it. I realized that the first time I went out and did a session with somebody else. It's always great to get back to the band. If I went in to do a solo record and I wasn't feeling good that day and all I had was a bunch of hired people, it would be hard. Peer pressure can keep the ball rolling, keep the vibe going. And you'd be alone a lot of the time. If you had to do a TV show you'd turn up by yourself, you'd be traveling through Germany in winter with a bunch of hired hands. You'd sit in airport lounges by yourself. With Dire Straits we all see things at the same time. I travel through an ever-changing world with SHARED eyes."

Thus does the eternal outsider come in from the cold.

Mark Knopfler is the son of a Hungarian father and a British mother raised in Scotland and England with an American wife, homes in two hemispheres and a life on the road.

Asked where he thinks he'll close his eyes for the last time Knopfler says, " I think it's England. I'd like to die with my boots on. I don't see myself dying in some place where they play dominos. It'll probably be in a little club. I'll be playing guitar, an old walking stick hung over me amp."

A few weeks later, David Knopfler calls from Europe, where he's touring to promote his second solo album. "Have you heard the new Straits record?" he asks, and I wonder for a moment if the old fraternal rivalry still stings. "God, it's great," he says. "'Brothers In Arms' brought tears to my eyes. Someday I'd love to make a record like that."

Wired Straits

Mark Knopfler's favorite guitar is a red Schecter with Seymour Duncan vintage pick-ups. (They're a lot less powerful than stock Schecter pick-ups," guitar technician Peter Brewis says, "and get much closer to a Strat sound.") He has several other Schecter Strat-style models, that he uses for special jobs. For example, Knopfler plays "Tunnel Of Love" on a Schecter sunburst, which Brewis says has more kick. Mark also has a Schecter Tele which he used on the soundtracks Comfort and Joy and Cal.

"It's not a matter of preferring Schecters to Strats," Knopfler promises. "It's just that Schecters are better for taking around. I've got an old Strat, I think it's a '61, that I don't want to bash around the planet."

Mark also plays a Gibson Chet Atkins nylon string on light-fingered numbers like "Private Investigations." It's a solid body guitar with contact pick-ups in the bridge. Knopfler uses Concertise strings on that guitar. He puts Dean Markley custom lights (.009 to .046) on the electrics, and when he reaches for an acoustic guitar you can bet that boy's picken' on an Adamas.

Knopfler'e effects rack holds a Roland 555 chorus echo; a Delta lab delay unit; a mike mix flanger unit; a master room reverb; a Roland 31 band equalizer (used when he plays his National Steel), all controlled by a switching system built by an Englishman named Peter Cornish. "Mark never plays completely dry," Cornish explains. "He likes to have at least a touch of reverb."

Jumpin' Jack Sonni is bringing his proselytizing authority to his bandmates. Jack plays Schecters, but lately favors Frankenstein-like creations made from Schecter parts and Seymour Duncan pickups in Rudy's lab. Jack doesn't care what kind of strings he uses, and plays Adamas acoustics onstage. John Illsley claims that though Jack will be playing he will not be plugged in. Jack has also convinced Mark to try out Kelly amps onstage.

John Illsley uses Wal basses (custom made by England's Ian Wallace), fretted an un-, with Dean Markley medium lights or LaBella strings. Illsley pumps that bottom through two Ampeg SVT heads and a Crown crossover. He has a Clark Technique 31-band equalizer, and a cabinet built by Mega.

Drummer Terry Williams plays Ludwig drums and Paiste cymbols.

Ask Mark Knopfler about the barrage of synths cluttering up his once skeletal sound and he'll say, the Keyboard twins (Alan and Guy) collect them. They seem to have made it their life's mission to to find as many keyboards as they possibly can and try to MIDI them all up so that simply by playing one note on the piano they can play either the 1812 Overture or simulate the end of the universe as we've come to know it. We've just bought a new Synclavier; it's stereo, touch sensitive and the whole thing's far superior to the old. We have an Emulator which Alan's totally in love with, two Yanmaha DX7s, and a DX1.