“Those Dire Straits songs walked away from me long ago. They belong to you now”: the life and times of Mark Knopfler, rock’s reluctant superstar
Ex-Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler on motorbike crashes, the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame and his complicated relationship with his old band
Mark Knopfler is one of the most successful British musicians in history, and one of the most admired guitarists. With his former band Dire Straits, he sold more than 100 million albums worldwide, and he’s worked with everyone from Chet Atkins to Bob Dylan. In 2019, as he prepared to release his ninth solo album, Down The Road Wherever, he sat down with Classic Rock in West London to look back on a career like no other.
Several years ago, Mark Knopfler was riding his motorbike not far from his home in central London when he was sideswiped by a car. The impact sent him spinning, smashing his bike and breaking his collarbone and seven ribs. His injuries could have been worse, but they were still serious enough to make a man whose entire career has been built on playing the guitar worry if he would ever be able to pick up the instrument again.
“I had what they called frozen shoulder,” Knopfler says today. He mimes stiffly attempting to hold a guitar. “I couldn’t get a Fender in. Apparently if you’ve got a broken collarbone your body stops it working. I asked the doctor how long it would last. He said: ‘I don’t know. Could be a short time, might not come back at all. Good luck.’” He chuckles, which he does often. “That was quite scary.”
The fact that Knopfler has just released his ninth solo album, and he’s currently sitting here in a discreetly classy West London restaurant talking about it, is a large spoiler as to what happened next. The ensuing course of physical therapy worked, his shoulder unfroze and he picked up where he left off with both his guitar and his bike.
But the drama of the crash isn’t really the point here. It’s the fact that Mark Knopfler – who as the former leader of Dire Straits and subsequently a successful solo artist has sold upwards of 100 million records and was recently estimated by the Sunday Times Rich List to have amassed a fortune of £75 million – was pootling around central London on a motorbike when he could have called up a gleaming chauffeured limo to transport him in considerably more style and with considerably less peril.
“Why would I do that?” he says, looking genuinely baffled. “Two wheels. There’s no other way to get around London. Except the Tube. When I played the O2 [in 2015], I got the Tube from South Kensington. Said hello to a lot of people. They were very nice.”
