Dire Straits keyboardist Alan Clark turns 67 today (March 5th). Clark is currently part of Dire Straits Legacy, the touring band made up of former members of the Hall of Fame group. Mark Knopfler gets his song inspiration from real life observations. Money for Nothing came from a conversation he overheard from workmen wanting to be rock stars, Sultans of Swing came from seeing a band in a small club. The Dire Straits song “Walk of Life” came from a photo of kid playing guitar in the subway. Mark Knopfler:
“The fact that he turned his face to the wall to get a bigger sound. I liked that. When I was a kid playing electric guitar, I didn’t have an amplifier, but I had this solid body electric guitar, so I used to put the head, like, against the leg of the chair to make it louder and put my head down on the guitar so that it would sound louder. That was after having destroyed the family radio — blown the thing up. Many a tape recorder has gone west via guitar.”
Photo Credit: Landmark / PR Photos
