Mark Knopfler- Get Lucky

Bob Seger and Mark Knopfler were both about ten years older than most pop stars when fame and fortune arrived, so each was a little bit more prepared when celebrity gobsmacked them. Not totally, mind you, but just a tad. But the relatively older age is significant in at least two ways: it allows each solitary songwriter the ability now to look at the star-making experience with a slightly more detached, philosophical perspective; and secondly, it provides a singular empathy for the youngsters who have not surfed the tsunami of fame quite so gracefully.

“I recommend success to anybody, but I can’t think of one thing that’s good about fame. If you can, let me know,” Mark Knopfler intones with knowing gravitas. When I shared that no less than Beatle George Harrison and Creedence Clearwater Revival genius John Fogerty had both intimated to me that fame had actually retarded their growth as guitarists, Knopfler could easily believe it. “Yeah, it changes your life…I was older, thankfully, but when you’re young, just a baby, a kid in your teens, it’s a heck of a thing to even SURVIVE it…You feel as though you’re being unraveled a lot of the time, like somebody’s got hold of a thread on your sweater and just keeps pulling at it.”The September 2009 release Get Lucky included the songs “Border Reiver” about outlaw truckers who worked the Scottish border with northern England; the Tulsa shuffle a la’ J.J. Cale on “Cleaning My Gun”; the melancholy “Before Gas and TV”; and a rare live 2019 performance of “Sailing to Philadelphia”. Mark Knopfler is my guest here In the Studio  for his Top 10 UK/ Top 20 US seller Get Lucky. And be sure to hear his latest, One Deep River. -Redbeard