Solo sultan of soul

HANDS up, those who hate Mark Knopfler's music. Okay, point taken, now sit back down. Because the had news for you guys is that there is more than one Mark Knopfler and he seemingly inescapable these days. One is the man who obviously set himself up to be left in dire straits, among rock critics in particular, simply because he formed a group of the same name which seemed to create music for nothing other than wafting away as a backdrop in a world of CD's, and microwave ovens.

On the other hand, there's also the Knopfler who is hauled on board musical projects by talents as mammoth as Scott Walker, for avant garde albums such as Climate of Hunter, or multi cultural excursions such as the Chieftains' Another Country, where he delivers guitar and vocal lines that even his severest critics would regard as quite sublime. Likewise, the soundtracks he created for movies such as Cal and Last Exit to Brooklyn, plus his production assignments on albums such as. Bob Dylan's Infidels.

In the world of tabloid gossip there is also the Mark Knopfler who keeps an almost paranoiacally low profile but set printer's ink a-flowin when he began dating actress Kitty Aldridge, following the breakdown of his relationship with Lourdes Salomone, which was his second marriage. Look closely at the sleeve notes of his debut solo album and you'll see a dedication which reads: "To My Darling Kitty."

If you meet him, you'd better whisper that line as softly as he sings his love songs, because, towering above all, is the Mark Knopfler who never talks publicly about his private life and rarely even grants interviews. All of these Knopflers arrived wrapped up in one not so neat knot on a phone line from London, to talk about that new album, Golden Heart.

From the outset he almost apologised for being relatively monosyllabic, explaining that the previous day he was working on a "Jools Holland TV show" with "the best your country has" - Irish musicians Donal Lunny, Sean Keane, Liam O'Flynn and Mairtin O'Connor, who also turn up on the album. But our Mark is not so "shagged" that he won't address the suggestion that as part of Dire Straits, he made somewhat vacuous music for "yuppies", which earned him his title as The Sultan of CD", or the claim that Celtic influenced albums like Golden Heart (and his Learning the Blues track on the current Buddy Holly tribute album) are an attempt to reconnect with his roots, the soil, his soul for I've never made any music to order, or a anyone other than myself - except for choosing that Buddy Holly song, for example, and arranging it and singing it, if I didn't want to.

"I don't create music for the marketplace, or a type of person, or a particular profile. Besides, what does yuppie mean? The only way that shit happened is that Brother In Arms coincided with the advent of CDs," he responds, referring to the work that is still the biggest selling album in British rock history.

No doubt the royalties from that album have helped boost his income to an estimated £65 million, according to a recently published list of the 500 richest people ink Britain and Ireland. However, Knopfler rejects the "naive notion" that wealth distances a musician from the basic need for self expression, or neutralises one's art, a claim made in Q magazine about the Dire Straits album On Every Street.

"I don't take notice of that kind of review," he says. "You can't legislate for stupidity. That kind of analysis just doesn't interest me, though I can see it comes from some kind of belief that the purest musicians create out of a background of poverty, or whatever. But it really is stupid to say that wealth removes you from a need to express yourself. If it did, I wouldn't be here, doing the kind of work I do, would I?"

That said, Knopfler darts back like a frightened deer when asked whether - it would worry him if love songs on his new album, such as Are We In Trouble Now were interpreted as personal statements, directly related to his love life. "Privacy is a gem a diamond, isn't it? It's everybody's right and people don't realise how valuable it is until it's threatened. But, no, I don't really worry if songs are read as personal statements. It's something you have to get used to, in this business," he says, shifting focus.

He's clearly more comfortable talking about the more technical and already highly praised Celtic influence on at least two of the album's other love songs, Darling Pretty and A Night In Summer Long Ago. And yet "Celtic" in Knopfler's case means the music this self professed "Geordie" heard growing up.

"The album opens with a piece of a tune which was recorded in Dublin, because it seems to me that music like that would have sprung from a Celtic root," he explains. "But then the point is that I started out wanting to play with Celtic musicians, because I grew up playing in folk clubs and all that stuff. It's Geordie from living in Newcastle and hearing all those Tyneside songs but also, having been born in Scotland, there is so much Scottish music "must have heard in the first few years of my life. Because I didn't have the equipment to be in a band, I borrowed a friend's guitar, learned how to finger pick and that's how it all started for me. So there always were those dual paths - folk, and my wanting to be in a rock n roll group."

THESE are the dual influences that inform Golden Heart. Indeed, Mark Knopfler freely admits that the album's "work song", No Can Do is not "half as good" as Jimmy Reed's classic, Big Boss Man. He still regards some of the earliest rock songs he ever heard, such as Chuck "Berry's Promised Land and You Never Can Tell as "some of the best songs ever written", and "role models" to this day. Another early, seminal influence makes his its presence felt on the new album in Nobody's Got The Gun, when Mark's guitar lick at one point echoes Sam Cooke's "don't know much about history" line from the song Wonderful World.

There are no prizes for guessing that Golden Heart is obviously a roots album in more ways than one, including the fact that on I'm The Fool he plays a 1954 guitar which he affectionately calls a "Jurassic Stratocaster".

"That kind of thing with the Sam Coke line just happened naturally in the studio, but the guitar was a present from a friend and it was lovely to play that strat, which really gave me a buzz, winged me back to the feelings I got when I first picked up a guitar. I like the old ones because they made the real thing then, instead of the stonewashed stuff you get now," he recalls, warming to this part of the conversation as only a true "muso" could. In fact, he suddenly becomes so sentimental that he all but gushes, "and things like that, plus playing with all these great musicians on this album really were an absolute joy."

But where, on this album or in his entire body of recorded work does Knopfler feel he matched the purity of the best music made by his heroes'? "At most, it would be an occasional single note somewhere," he says, verifying claims that he is one of the more modest of musicians. "I always try and find little ways that might be different from the strict genre thing, as in the heavy guitar in Are We In Trouble Now?, or the long play out. Likewise, when I do a movie score like Last Exit To Brooklyn where I tried to soften the unremitting gloom, because the movie had no pity whatsoever.

But I wouldn't pull back from the emotion on my own songs, on the new album, for example. I go right in there and do whatever has to be done, even if that means going beyond the edge. None of it seems to me to be playing safe."

Yet the image persists of Mark Knopfler being the quintessence of soul less Adult Oriented Rock. In the reference book Cultural Icons, his life's work is summed up thus: "Provides entertainment for couples in their mid 30s who wish to consume music less bland than that enjoyed by their parents but feel too mature to skip about the pop chart." And what, pray, is Mark's response to that?

"I repeat what I said earlier about stupidity," he says, laughing. "But the moment I know for sure that all such criticism is basically crap, is the moment when the greatest musicians in the world give me their love and respect. That's what matters to me: respect from my peers, who obviously have a better idea of where I'm coming from."