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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Related articles

• Gear on one of the first Dire Straits gigs on the Clapham Common bandstand
• Mark Knopfler’s Sultans of Swing amp – The brown Fender Vibrolux
• Mark Knopfler’s Morley Volume Pedal
• Tone King Imperial: Played on which songs?
• The Hotcake overdrive pedal
• Sultans of Swing – backing track for long live version available

The last poll about what you would like to read here is still running (so vote if you haven’t yet), but it seems to be clear that many readers want to read about licks (or rather want to see something as video I guess). So here a quick reaction (to be honest, I started to work on this video anyway )

This post is about a typical Mark Knopfler lick which is based on the notes of the 7/9 chord, the chord we are talking about is the following one (in this example a E7/9):

This chord is nothing special, special however is Mark Knopfler’s way to fret it, which is often like this:

The difference is the bass note, instead of an E (the root note) he plays the B on the low E string (the fifth note o fthe E major scale).

Now add the following notes which are played before the chord is played. First play the red notes, then the blue notes, then the chord (black notes). The left hand fingers remain the same on all those notes on the low E and D strings, if you want you can slide from one position into the next.

Watch the following video to see what kind of licks you can do with these notes (excerpts from The Bug / Eastbound Train, Mississippi Blues, Lions).

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Related articles

• The 6/#9 chord – Mark Knopfler’s Train Chord
• Eastbound Train: opening chord analysis
• Calling Elvis chord analysis – Major, minor, no-third, power chords
• A plumber’s C chord
• Sultans of Swing solo
• The Dan Armstrong Orange Squeezer compressor – Did Mark Knopfler really use it?

Today I messed around with an audio player plug-in for WordPress (the software used to create this blog). In some other post I wrote something about the Hamburg concert (Musikhalle, Hamburg, Germany, Oct. 28, 1978) and mentioned that I slowed it down to the original speed (the concert around in some fan hubs or on torrent trackers runs almost ridiculously fast), so I added the audio player with a sample song from this legendary concert. See the original post (click here), I added the audio player below the pictures (so you have something to look at while listening).

The song I selected is Lions. Note how the sound changes when Mark switches between bridge and middle pick-ups to middle pick-up for the solos. He used the ’61 red Strat with the rosewood neck (#68354) on probably all concerts in late 78 (see this post for more about this).

Enjoy!

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Related articles

• Mark Knopfler licks around the 7/9 chord
• Dire Straits at the Hope & Anchor pub 1977 – new picture
• Sultans of Swing – backing track for long live version available
• Dire Straits Water of Love guitar tutorial
• Video Clip of Dire Straits – Lady Writer – Pinkpop Festival 1979
• Early Dire Straits radio interview from 1978