What I mean with double-string bends are licks that are played on two or more strings and one or more of these are bent. Such licks appear in countless Mark Knopfler or Dire Straits songs.

The following video clip demonstrates how to use such licks, and their relation to the chords they are based upon. Note that the last licks (Once Upon a time and Sultans of Swing) were covered in one of my former articles.

Most stuff in this video should be self-explaining, so here it is.

This video is in high quality. If your connection speed is too low, click here to watch it on youtube in normal quality.

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In 1980 Mark Knopfler bought some Schecter guitars (probably 4 Strats and a Telecaster) at Rudy’s Music Stop in New York. These were two red Strats (see my article about these here), one blue Strat, a black Telecaster, and a wonderful sunburst Strat. The last was the guitar that was played on the song Tunnel of Love on the Making Movies album. It seems he liked especially this one very much, he even said in an interview that it was possibly the best sounding guitar he ever had (however, this is something he used to say rather often about the latest guitar he got ).

Unfortunately this guitar was stolen soon after the recording of Making Movies (if I remember correctly out of the car in Deptford, possibly after a rehearsal). This was some time before the first gig of the Making Movies tour because on this tour he played another sunburst Schecter Strat that he bought as a direct replacement for the stolen one. Both were similar, had probably the same pick-ups and the same basic features. Some differences that make both easy to distinguish on pictures are the dot markers (the first one had them while the second one was without) and the location of the output jack (the first had the normal Strat type recessed output jack, the second one had it on the body side, just like a Telecaster).

There are not too many details that are known about the stolen Schecter. The pick-ups  were most likely Schecter F500Ts (quarter inch alnico magnets, the T stands for tapped coil), just like in the replacement guitar. According to Tom Anderson (former employee at Schecter who now builds his own guitars) the body of the sunburst Strat was birch (unfortunately we don’t know of which of the two sunburst Strats). The neck was beautifully figured bird’s eye maple.

As he did not have it for a long time, there is only a small number of pictures of this guitar which all seem to be from the same photo session. To me this guitar looked incredibly cool, I love the two-tone sunburst which looks for some reason much better than on the replacement Strat. Below you can see all pictures I have of this guitar.

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When I started playing the guitar in 1979 (after hearing a certain Mark Knopfler playing Sultans of Swing) I wanted a Strat of course. At that time Fender made exactly one model – the “Stratocaster”, no Deluxe, Standard, Hot Rod, Super, Extra, and the like – only and simply the “Stratocaster”.
On the other hand you had Japanese copies by a zillion of manufacturers it seems. At that time nobody knew that there were actually only a few Japanese companies who produced them and that they were marketed under many different names here in Germany or in the rest of the world.

My first Strat was a 2nd-hand Fender Stratocaster from 1976 in sunburst with a black pickguard and white knobs. It was very heavy but looked pretty much like Mark Knopfler’s guitar – well, it was a real Strat – and differed only in details like the bigger headstock or the bigger Fender decal.

Prices for a new Fender were about 900 – 1200,- DM (would be 450 – 600 €), while the Japanese copies were about 175 – 350 €.

My first Japanese Strat was a Tokai: I was in a guitar shop and there was this fiesta red Strat (you never saw a red guitar because Fender had discontinued all red colours in the late 60ies !!), it even had a small headstock like an early 60ies Strat (this was a sensation, all Strats and all copies had the big head), and it was feather light, played and sounded really cool. Even the decal with the Tokai logo looked like a Fender script logo! It was the perfect 1:1 copy of a ‘64 Strat. Fortunately this was shortly before Christmas so I got this guitar (which cost the equivalent of 420,- €) for Christmas. It became my number one Strat then and sounded much better than my Fender.

Soon after Fender reacted to these high-quality copies of vintage Strats in two different ways: a) they copied the ‘57 and ‘62 Strat themselves (the birth of the “Vintage Stratocaster” model) and b) they made a deal with the Fujigen Gakki company (who built e.g. Ibanez and Greco guitars) to produce a Japanese version of the vintage Strats for Fender. These were marketed under the name “Squier”.

Both appeared about the same time in the shops here in Germany. I remember that we all were surprised that the Japanese Squier guitars did not sound inferior to the US versions, in the contrary, in many cases I liked them better. The first Squiers were available in three-tone sunburst (‘62 model with rosewood fingerboard) and two-tone sunburst (‘57 model with maple neck), but a few months later they were available in white, black and fiesta red as well.

The fiesta red was too light and rather orange compared with the original, but it looked great! I bought a ‘57 Squier Strat in fiesta red in 1983 which I will feature in one of the next articles.

Mark Knopfler himself also got one of these Japanese vintage copies: a blue Fernandez Strat which he used for some stuff around the time of Love over Gold. John Suhr said that this guitar was one of the best-sounding guitars Mark had.

Fender took legal actions against these copies and won, so about 1984 the period of ultra-close copying came to an end. In the last years prices for these guitars have gone up more and more, but with prices about 500 – 1000,- € they are still affordable. There are more and more websites dedicated to these Japanese vintage guitars, a sure sign that they are becoming cult guitars themselves. If you want a real 30ys old vintage guitar, look out for the Japanese Greco (“super real” series), Tokai (“springy sound”), Squier JV (JV for Japanes vintage, later Squiers came from Korea or other Asian countries), or Fernandez. I am sure it is not only a good investment but also a good chance to get a perfect sounding guitar.

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Whenever people are listed who influenced Mark Knopfler to come up with that Dire Straits sound, you more or less will find the same names: J.J. Cale, Bob Dylan, Hank Marvin, Ry Cooder, Eric Clapton, sometimes Django Reinhardt or Richard Thompson, etc. I remember that I was surprised to hear another name, a band that I had never heard of before. This was in the “Unauthorized Mark Knopfler Biography” by Myles Palmer.

Palmer wrote a book about Mark Knopfler based on interviews with all kind of people who used to know Knopfler before Dire Straits or around the time they started, even people like his school teachers or work mates. I think it was Dave Pask, the lead singer of the Cafe Racers, the band Mark Knopfler played in just before Dire Straits, who mentioned how enthusiastic Mark was about the Amazing Rhythm Aces, an American band that sounded like a mix between Lynnard Skynnard (‘Sweet Home Alabama’) and country roots.

Dave Pask was quoted: ‘Basically, the sound comes from the Amazing Rhythm Aces’ lead guitarist Barry “Byrd” Burton,, and J.J. Cale, who he was listening to a lot of the time. [...] There is a song he was influenced by called “The End is not in sight”. Listen to the guitar playing on that.’

This song is from the band’s second album called “Too stuffed to jump”, and in fact it is an absolutely great song. You can hear it here on youtube:

The guitar solo reminds me of things like Down to the Waterline. The melody itself has not much in common, but both the chord changes (A and E compared to G and Bm; note that Bm is the minor chord to D, and G and D would be the same one note lower), and the way the solo takes over after the verse create a similar feel. The first song of that album – “Typical American Boy” – is also stunning.

If you like the song and want it in better than youtube quality, you will find the album on a remastered CD at Amazon. The better buy seems to be the ‘two albums on one CD’ version at the same price which you can directly order at Amazon from here (simply click on the link for your country to get it from your local Amazon):

Amazon.com————Amazon.co.uk———–Amazon.de

If you are inetersted in the Myles Palmer book (it is reviewed a bit controversial, nevertheless it contains a lot of exclusive information), you can still get it at Amazon as well. Unfortunately it seems to be very rare and is partly rather expensive there:

Amazon.com————Amazon.co.uk———–Amazon.de

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