A Conversation with Mark Knopfler – HuffPost 10.8.13
Mike Ragogna: Hello, Mark and thank you so much for the interview, I really appreciate it.
Mark Knopfler: Oh no, it’s my pleasure, Mike, how are you?
MR: I’m fine today, how are you doing?
MK: Well, I’m actually very happy because I’m in my studio in London and every time that I am, I just feel like the luckiest man in the world in this place.
MR: Yeah, and apparently you have a really beautiful studio, British Grove.
MK: Yeah, it’s just such a great place to be able to come and turn around in. It’s wonderful. It’s my big paint box.
MR: Nice. Let’s talk about your new album, Privateering. “Privateering,” loosely means an authorized attack on another ship in the name of whatever country. Now, you’ve conquered a lot of territory on this album from blues to roots to rock, so beyond it being a track on the album, is that the reason for calling it Privateering?
MK: I suppose, yeah, in some ways it is. I’ve always been a roots enthusiast really, it’s always been based around the blues and folk music, so there are large areas of influence there. I didn’t just want to just make a straight blues album. I’m sure I could’ve done that and I’m sure I could now, I could bring one out next week, I suppose. But it was great fun doing those songs because we put them down on the floor the way they should have been done and what you’re hearing is pretty much exactly what happened. That’s very exciting to be able to have a band like that. I had a great time with Kim Wilson and I had Tim O’Brien where I wanted a mandolin, it was just a lot of fun to do. To make the whole record was tremendous fun because again, a lot of it got the band on the floor playing and that’s tough to beat.
MR: Right, and this double disc takes on a lot, especially subject-wise. Many of the people you write about are living hard lives with deep stories. You ended up with a “bigger picture” album.
MK: Yeah, it is. Some of them, I suppose, are just continuations of themes that I’ve had in lots of records before. There’s a song on Privateering called “Yon Two Crows” and that’s just a hill farmer’s song, but I had a song on a record before called “Hill Farmer’s Blues,” which is the same kind of character. I’m just not finished with him. I had a song called “Song For Sonny Liston” on an earlier album and yet there’s a blues on Privateering about, basically, the same character that maybe, as a writer, I haven’t necessarily finished with. It’s unfinished business. I also had a song about Tom Parker on an earlier album called “Back To Tupelo.” Then I have a song on the Privateering album called “Gator Blood” that’s about him as well, so again, it’s all unfinished business.
MR: Mark, other than being a musician, do you think one day, you’d also want to be a novelist?
MK: You know, I think I’d be a terrible novelist. The thing is that just because you can write a song doesn’t mean you can write like a novelist. It’s a different set of muscles, it really is. The same applies to poetry. A poem is different. When you’re working as a lyricist, it’s a different thing. To give you an example, a poet would use certain words from the lexicon that a songwriter just wouldn’t use, or I certainly wouldn’t use. Songs employ a different vocabulary that seems to have been dictated over time. A poem is probably more of a meditation on mortality or on time and it can get quite complex. Although, I have to say, I think that getting older, I am probably working more in an area where I’m thinking about time more, and you look at the past from a different perspective. When you’re young, you look in front a lot of the time, at what’s coming towards you and what’s happening to you. When you get a little bit older, you’re able to look at the past and you see something different and time becomes much, much more interesting to you.
MR: And perhaps having more life behind you gives you more references from more experience and knowledge of the world to flesh out characters better. Maybe that tempts you to write songs that are continuations of earlier characters.
MK: Exactly, maybe it is to do with that, that’s exactly it. But also, with your own life and your own experiences in life, you reach points where the past becomes, in some ways, more important than the present.
MR: I also noticed with the songs “Privateering,” “Dream Of The Drowned Submariner,” “Haul Away,” etc., it seems like you’re working metaphors for life on the high seas, so, I guess you’ve still got a lot of traveling and journeying in you right now.
MK: Yeah, I think that’s absolutely right. A lot of my towns have been river towns, from Glasgow to Newcastle to London to New York. I don’t suppose I could settle in anywhere else. I think it would have to be a river town.
MR: There’s that identification with the sea coming from your roots. But does the nature of the sea, its qualities, also speak to you?
MK: I think so, and also, the fact that my music is so transatlantic all the time. It’s a kind of transatlantic blues that I’m playing all the time and thinking about all the time.
MR: By the way, you scored Local Hero. I think it’s one of the best scored movies of its era.
MK: Oh, wow, that’s very sweet of you to say. The only thing that I can say about that is that Celtic music never seems too foreign to me. It never seems far away. I guess mine is probably more Scottish than anything else but it’s still basically Celtic music. It seems that I can compose it, I can somehow get it from somewhere and I guess that’s possibly from hearing Scottish country music from a very early age, like Jimmy Shand And His Band.
MR: Jimmy Shand!
MK: It would be connected with that somehow I think.
MR: Mark, given your experience in life and given music these days, what advice do you have for new artists and people who want to pursue music?
MK: Well, I think that it always was hard and time will be the judge, but one thing I do know is that everybody gets their shot. It may be a little harder to get gigs than it was being on the minus side, but on the plus side, you’ve got the internet, you’ve got Facebook, and all of that. So I figure I would be doing exactly the same thing, I’d just be trying. I’d just be going and trying and trying. It’s a very frustrating thing, trying to get a band going and it can be a very frustrating thing having one and just fighting to get a gig and all the rest of it. But basically, what will happen is what will happen if you’ve got it, whatever “that” is, and they start queuing down the stairs, out into the street and around the corner and you turn up for that. You’re out there doing it, then the word gets around and you’re away. So I think everybody does get their shot.
MR: Beautiful. What’s your next journey? What’s left for Mark Knopfler to conquer on the high seas?
MK: [laughs] You know, I’m looking at a file of songs, there’ll probably be about sixty of them and I’d just like to try getting some of those songs made into good records. You hope that some of them will be good songs and that is as exciting to me as it ever was. That doesn’t change. The idea of writing a good song and making a good record of it, that doesn’t change.
MR: And I imagine when a creative idea comes to your mind, you have to get on it, don’t you.
MK: I do actually get on it, hopefully, if I haven’t forgotten what it is by the time I’ve finished shaving. It’s not like being a musician, really. You’re kind of lumbered with all of this stuff going around, but I wouldn’t change it for anything else. I love it, but it’s not the same as being a musician. A lot of it’s really mysterious. A lot of it, you can’t really explain. I would choose songs to talk about. I was telling you the song about the boxer, “Today Is Okay,” that was the other Sonny Liston story, and I could talk about that because it’s fairly straightforward. But a lot of the other stuff, I just couldn’t, because I’d start to explain it to you and we’d just end up deeper in the mud than when I started. So honestly, if there was a formula to it or if it was explicable, I promise I’d tell you, Mike. Do you understand it? I actually love the fact that I don’t understand it. If I created section A, then where does section B come from?
MR: It’s almost like the continuation of a sentence, isn’t it?
MK: Yeah, it is. The first thought gives rise to the second, something like that.
MR: Do you understand your place in music history at this point?
MK: Well, I think that everybody just takes their place in the chain. That’s all it is. When I went to see Son House when I was at University, I was sitting in the front row with Steven–Powerline Steve–who I was playing blues with. I was sitting there watching Son House, I was just six feet away from him and he was an old guy playing a guitar. That’s what I figure I’m soon going to be, just an old guy playing a guitar. If anybody wants to listen, that would be great, but I’ve got the feeling that I’m just an old guy playing his music, and I’m not really too worried about whether people are going to listen to it or not. It’s just what I do, you know? I don’t really have the choice. I don’t think I could hang it up.
MR: Yeah. Well a lot of people will be happy to listen as you play on that porch, I’m sure.
MK: Oh, well that’s very kind of you, Mike.
MR: This has been very enjoyable, I don’t want to take up any more of your time. I really appreciate this interview and I hope we can do this again in the future, Mark.
MK: I hope so. All the very best to you.
MR: You too, all the best. Take care, man.
Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne