Somewhere, where the Delta meets the Tyne

By David Mead - Guitar Techniques, 1996

When we visited Air Studios last year, Knopfler's solo album was within sight of the finishing line after a two year slow race. Or so we all thought. Originally, 'Golden Heart' was penned for release in the autumn of '95, but a subsequent phone call confirmed that the release date had been put back to this spring because Mark had written some more material and wanted to add it to the record. At the end of the day, studios and musicians from Nashville, Dublin and London have each contributed a different stylistic flavouring to the record which is held together by Knopfler's distinctive guitar lines and basso profundo gravel-laden vocals.

'Golden Heart' is Mark Knopfler's first solo project and should not, he says, be confused with the various film soundtracks he has produced or, for that matter, the Notting Hillbillies project. "This thing's different," he insists. Neither does it necessarily sound the death knell for Dire Straits, the band that he refers to as a 'sleeping beast', although it's more likely that we can expect to see them perform at charity bashes in future - there are no projects in the pipeline.

But what about 'Golden Heart'?

"I went over to Nashville and did some sessions and recorded some songs and I did some here and I did some in Dublin. So it's been basically Tennessee, Ireland and London and that's it. It's been going on for a couple of years, I suppose, but I mean, I've spaced it all out easily over a period. The actual studio time hasn't been that much - we just take a while off and go back in. It's not as if I had four or five weeks to do the whole thing."

Are these just songs that he felt were outside the province of a Dire Straits project? "No, they're just songs that had to be recorded, that's all it is. I've never thought in terms of that; the song, to me, dictates the way you treat it. It's nothing more complicated than that. A couple of them I wanted to do here, but most of them I wanted to do with players from Nashville, although they're not country songs. There's only one country style song on the record, but I just love playing with these guys, they rock'n'roll like nobody's business. There are a couple of songs that I could have done in Ireland and didn't but that was just a time thing, so I ended up doing them in Tennessee, But they would have been different, they would have still been okay." The Irish sessions yielded the distinctive intro to the album's opening track where traditional instruments take the melody before the whack of electrick guitars and other modern rock paraphernalia take over.

"I was taking a break, upstairs making a cup of tea or something at the studios in Dublin and a guy who worked there, a young lad, said to me, 'Those are the finest musicians in Ireland that you've got down there' and I said, I know, I know. And it's true. Paul Brady put together the session with a wonderful group of people and we managed to get a couple of good things recorded. It was the same in Nashville; Paul Franklin fixed a lot of things earlier on, so I'm very grateful to them for all of that. And even when Paul Franklin wasn't on a session, he wasn't involved in the last sessions I did, but he would still take an interest and be involved and come by and all the rest of it."

"The last session in Nashville was really busy because I didn't have much time and I wanted to do about six songs, but I also wanted to do a thing with Waylon Jennings for the Buddy Holly tribute and that took a day and then I had to do this Shadows thing for Miles Copeland and that took a morning and then Clive James came down doing a TV thing called Clive James Goes Country and I ended up helping Clive out with this demo and a whole bunch of other stuff, so it's quite a busy time. There was no time to sit around at night and drink, unfortunately. Not enough, anyway."

At the studios in London, the floor was littered with guitars (Strats, Teles, Dobros, Pensa Suhrs, etc) and a selection of amplifiers (vintage Fender, modern Crate and a couple of Marshall cabinets, to mention a few) all ready to scramble at a moment's notice. Any recent changes in preference for Knopfler in the equipment stakes?

"I've just had another guitar built for me and I'm using ordinary pickups in it and not active. I I find I prefer the sound now for some reason. And this Crate amp just turned up the other day so that just got in on the end. I plugged my 54 Strat into it and it was just instant Hank [Marvin]! Obviously not as good but it sounded right."