As promised in the comments on one of the last articles, I tried to find all pictures of one of Dire Straits’ first gigs – the one at the summer party for Charlie Gilett’s Honky Tonk Radio Show, on the Clapham Common bandstand, September 10, 1977. Unfortunately there are only 4 pictures it seems, not 5 or 6 as I hoped (the one on the sleeve of the Honky Tonk Demos compilation turned out  to be the same as the one in Michael Oldfield’s book about Dire Straits).

First the two pictures from the Vibrolux article again:

Knopfler is tuning his # 68354 Strat here (the ‘61 with rosewood fingerboard), plugged into the brown Vibrolux. You cannot really see what the amp next to it is, but my guess is a blackface Fender Concert Amp, the same you can see in this article of this blog. I suspect it was borrowed from Mark’s Notting Hillbilly friend Brendan Croker. On the right side you can see the neck of another guitar: Mark’s ‘59 Gibson Les Paul Special. The bass amp seems to be a …, well, a weird amp .

Picture number two:

John Illsley already has his Precision bass, and David seems to play the black Telecaster Thinline that Mark plays on Water of Love in later concerts. Both the picture above and this let us assume that David plays the Tele through the Concert amp, but theoretically it is possible that Mark plays through both of these amps (just like in the Roundhouse, January 29, 1978), and that David plays through an amp outside the picture, e.g. on the left side of these amps. There is absolutely no evidence for it, just a vague feeling …

The following picture is the one from the Michael Oldfield book. Meanwhile it  turned out that it is cropped  in the English version of the book,  while the French version includes a full-size version of the same pic (Thank you for sending me the pic, Jean-Francois) . The difference is just some mere 15 %  at the right side, but these 15 % just show an essential detail: the backside of the Strat.

… and a zoom:

Unfortunately you cannot really find any new information about the early Dire Straits Strat here, the resolution of this black/white picture pretends us from seeing any interesting details. I am almost sure that this is the same Strat as in the pictures above (the # 68354, which probably still was bare wood finish here), and that Mark plays the Les Paul Special. A lot of cables on the floor, why not some effect device never seen before which would finally tell us why Mark’s guitar sounded so beefy, warm and fat on some of these old recordings? Well, dream on…

… and here the fourth picture:

… and a zoom into it:

I can imagine that it is taken just some seconds before or after the one before, so I think he plays that Gibson on both pictures. Note that pedal: a colorsound. This can be a volume pedal, but more likely it is a wah or rather wah/volume (most of the colorsounds you find are this combination). They came in different colors, like yellow, blue, silver, purple, etc. It is a bit noisy but sounds really fine otherwise, it has its own character, like most good wahs have. I even  remember reading somewhere that Mark used a wah on this or the very first gig they did on a lawn before their house in Deptford, London.

Some other bands that played on this summer party gig were the Darts and Rico. In the evening of the same day Dire Straits played in the Hope & Anchor pub in Islington.

The photographer of all these pics is Andra Nelki.

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I recently watched the video clips of Dire Straits performing Sultans of Swing and Lions live on the British Old Grey Whistle Test again.  It is one of the earliest videos that exist, recorded in Manchester on May 15, 1978, about three months after the first CD.

Sultans of Swing

Lions

Let’s have a look at the gear we can see in this clip. Knopfler plays his red maple neck Fender (# 80470) with the greenish pickguard that originally belongs  on his other red Strat (click here for more info). The black volume knob is missing, just like on all pictures from early ‘78. He had the brown guitar strap on all pictures before late October 1979, an easy way to tell the year an old Dire Straits picture is from. The intro and the middle solo of Lions are played with the middle pick-up it seems, the verses and Sultans of Swing with bridge & middle pick-ups.

The amp is a silverface Fender Twin Reverb, probably the same he played with a Marshall cab on the two videos  from middle 1978 (a playback of Sultans of Swing and Wild West End from June 12, and Sultans of Swing in the Revolver show, July 9.) He actually had the Twin until October 1978 when he replaced it with the Music Man HD 130 212 .  David plays a Twin, too. There is another guitar amp: a small Peavey backstage amp, on the left side of the stage near the bass amp. I have no idea what it is intended for. On the mentioned playback videos of Sultans of Swing and Wild West End you can see it there as well (note that although these are only playback, the stage is properly built up with all their normal  gear it seems, maybe for the next day’s gig, Sheffield, June 13).

Knopfler definitely uses the Morley volume pedal here. And the green MXR analog delay can be seen on the right side of the microphone stand at the beginning of Sultans of Swing. What is strange however it that at the beginning of Lions Knopfler taps with his right foot on two effects it seems, first the MXR right of the microphone stand, then on something left of it (but right of the Morley). I have no idea what this is, but this article seems related here. Maybe a compressor or some boost?

The sound on both clips is fat and warm with some distortion. If you have ever played a silverface Twin this is a bit surprising because the Twin is rather associated with a crsip, cristal clear sound.

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• Gear on one of the first Dire Straits gigs on the Clapham Common bandstand
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Jean-Francois wrote in a comment:

I didn`t know where to post this :
Somme years ago, I remember you talked on mKnews forum about Six blade Knife on 17/02/1979 in Cologne that has a longer solo in the middle than usual.
I`ve never heard it. It would be very nice from you if you could send it to me, or at least put it on your blog.
Also, I`ve never heard Six blade Knife from Split 85, but read great reviews about it (T.Molin or JVT). I know it isn`t complete, but I`m very curious to hear how it sounds.
Could you do to me(or to us) this favour please ?

No problem, here are audio clips from both. The first is from Cologne, February 17, 1979 – one day after the Rockpalast TV show. This was a radio broadcast for “WDR Nachtmusik” on Germany’s radio station WDR2. The broadcast was about 55 minutes and was recorded at the “Große Sendesaal” at WDR’s headquarter in Cologne – a room that had been well-known for radio concerts for some decades. Unfortunately they had some problems with hum from the lights so they decided to play without a proper light show (there was just a small audience).

I am not sure if it has to do with the right timing to fill exactly the given time frame, but Mark played the solo in the middle of Six Blade Knife longer than he normally did, and they started What’s the matter with you Baby differently (with a longer drum intro, something they did also in Rotterdam 1978 – another radio show).

There are a few different versions of this show around. There was a vinyl bootleg by the La Salle label which has the intro of Down to the Waterline but the last two songs are missing (a vinly LP only allowed about 45 minutes).The sound is alright but there are audible variations of the tape speed – in German we say “leiern”.

A few years later this concert was re-broadcasted and I recorded it myself on a tape cassette. The sound was good, but it was without the intro of Down to the Waterline and the last verse of Southbound Again. When I got my first CD writer, I made a CD-R from this tape and added the intro of the vinyl bootleg. I think this is still the version that is around among fans who collect bootleg recordings.

I also had a tape with the complete show (but in worse sound quality) that also had the end of Southbound Again, but this tape has disappeared somehow, I have not seen it for many years but I still believe it must be somewhere here.

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The other Six Blade Knife clip is from Split, former Yugoslavia, April 25, 1985. This was the beginning of the Brothers in Arms show. They soon dropped the song so there are no further recordings of this different version. Unfortunately we only have an incomplete clip of it.

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Mark Knopfler got his first Strat only shortly before Dire Straits were formed. Before that time he had played a Gibson Les Paul Special through a Selmer tube combo amp in a band called The Cafe Racers. It is not clear if he owned the Selmer amp or if it was borrowed. What we know is that when he got the Strat, he plugged it into a Fender Vibrolux which probably belonged to Dire Straits’ bass player John Illsley. Today however, it is still in Knopfler’s possession.

This amp was a Fender Vibrolux from the early 60ies  – from the brown-tolex era. Internally Fender called this model 6G11 (first revision), or 6G11-A (second revision, the more common version to be found).

The brown Vibrolux is a really wonderful amp: with about 30 watts from two 6L6 tubes it has enough power to be played in a band with drums and bass, yet it is  small and light. It has one 12″ speaker (an Oxford 12L6 or 12M6)  and a tremolo effects. Unfortunately it has no reverb (a feature Fender introduced with the later black face series, the only brown amp with reverb was the 2 x 10″ Vibroverb from about 1963), with reverb the Vibrolux might have been the ultimate small combo amp. The rectifier is also a tube.

The controls are pretty much standard: One channel with Volume, Treble, Bass, the second channel with Volume, Treble, Bass, and two tremolo controls (Speed, Intensity) which affect both channels. There are no bright switches – another feature introduced with the black face amps. However, the second channel is called “Bright” as a small condenser across the volume poti adds some treble – the same circuit as a bright switch, just not switchable.

The Vibrolux does not have a Fender logo on the front grill cloth – the one on Knopfler’s amp is not original.

Knopfler played this amp live in 1977 and early 1978. There is only a limited number of live pictures  from 1977, and most do not show any amps.  We have the following sources from this period that mention the Vibrolux:

a) Knopfler himself said in a an interview that Sultans of Swing was first written in open tuning on a National steel guitar, but it was totally changed when he got his Strat and played it through the Vibrolux.

b) There are two pictures from an early live gig at the bandstand on Clapham Common, London, September , 1977 (two months after recording the demo of Sultans of Swing, five months before the recording of the first album in February 1978)

c) Two pictures from the Roundhouse, London, January 1978 (more info).

d) One picture from the Marquee, March 1978

e) A personal interview with Chas Herington who was the engineer on both the demo and the single version of Sultans of Swing (both recorded at Pathway studio, July 1977 and April 1978, the song was re-recorded two months after the recording of the first album because the record company wanted more of a rock sound for the single). He also told me that it was mic’ed with a Neumann mic.

There is no evidence that this amp was played on the Sultans of Swing version of Dire Straits’ first album (recorded in February 1978). Possibly different amps were used here (Twin Reverb, Jazz Chorus, and the Vibrolux). In about May 1978 Knopfler started to play Fender Twin Reverbs on stage. The Vibrolux reapperad with the Notting Hillbillies and is still frequently used these days in Knopfler’s British Grove studio.

I know that Knopfler’s amp does not have the original Oxford speaker anymore. I talked with Knopfler’s guitar tech Glenn Saggers about this amp some years ago on on a Notting Hillbillies gig, and he told me it had a Celestion speaker. Unfortunately he did not remember which model (they can sound very different) so I gave Glenn a self-addressed postcard and asked him if he might send it to me after checking the amp the next time. I did not really expect he would remember it, or find the time, but some months later I in fact  got a card with the answer: a Sound City speaker  -these were often produced by Fane (Thank you Glenn if you ever read this )

Here are some detail pictures of a 1961 Vibrolux:

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A red Stratocaster has always been one of THE rock’n'roll logos – something that started with Hank Marvin, guitarist of the Shadows, who had the first red Strat in England. He started a desire for exactly this guitar among thousand of English kids in the early 60ies, under them a kid named Mark Knopfler. In fact it was rather coincidence that Hank Marvin got a red Strat: he wanted a guitar like his idol James Burton (guitarist for Ricky Nelson) but unfortunately nobody knew for sure what guitar Burton played except that it was a Fender – no internet, hardly magazines, only little information in the 60ies.  So Marvin ordered the most expensive Fender (Cliff Richard bought it for him) from the catalogue – and this was a maple-neck Stratocaster with gold parts and custom colour – fiesta red. (James Burton played an ‘ordinary’ Telecaster by the way.)

Hank Marvin soon became a synonym for the red Strat. The next picture shows him with a fiesta red Strat with rosewood fingerboard. There is even a rumour that Selmer (Fender’s UK distributor back then) could not satisfy all demands for red Strats and thus simply refinished sunburst Strats in their own factory. (There is contradicting information about if this is really true and to what extent.)

In fact, Fender did not only offer Fiesta red but also some more, different kinds of red. One is Dakota red which is darker than fiesta and closer to the firebrigade red .

And a third one was a metallic red called candy apple red which looks similar to Dakota on many pictures that often do not justice to that metallic look. Candy apple red means the guitar is finished in silver or gold first before a translucent red finsih is added. For this reason there are two different variations around (over silver and over gold), the one over gold looks warmer. Mark Knopfler’s red Schecter is an example of this finish.

The following pictures (courtesy of curtisnovak.com) show the different colours in direct comparision.

The two red Fender Stratocasters that Mark Knopfler played in the late 70ies when he started with Dire Straits were both refinished. As at that time noone refinished to any exact vintage Fender specifications, they were simply ’some’ red, both did not not meet any of the original Fender colours. The one with the rosewood board (S.-No. 68354, he still has this one) was lighter and more of an orange, and closer to fiesta red than the one with the maple fingerboard (S-No. 80470), which was darker and more towards Dakota red. However, the 68354 was ‘redder’ than fiesta red which sometimes has a tendency towards tomato soup, while the 80470 was lighter and brighter than Dakota red.

When Fender built something like a reissue of Knopfler’s red Fender with the MK signature model, it seems they copied this red and called it hot rod red. Note however that as it seems meanwhile Knopfler’s 68354 Strat was refinished again as the old finish cracked (see picture below) so it can’t be said with certainty if this hot rod red is the same as that Dire Straits red.

All kinds of red are generally photo reactive which means they easily fade when exhibited to light, something that was especially true for vintage laquer. Especially some fiesta red guitars today look rather pinkish so that names like Salmon Pink are also common. As said, this is the same as fiesta red, there has never been an official name like this in Fender’s ‘official’ custom colour chart.

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