Why Mark Knopfler's Strat Sounded Like Nobody Else

You can play every note of Sultans of Swing exactly right and it still will not sound like the record. Thousands of guitarists have tried - the red Stratocaster, the solo learned note for note, the clean Fender amp - and what comes out is correct and lifeless. Every note on the record jumps out of the speaker with a little snap at the front. The secret was not in the guitar or the amp. Mark Knopfler never used a pick. In this video: London 1977: punk everywhere, and a 27-year-old former reporter in a Deptford flat The trad-jazz band in an empty pub that called itself the Sultans of Swing Why the song was dull on a National steel guitar and came alive on a 1961 Strat The Pathway demo, Charlie Gillett's Honky Tonk, and number four in America Thumb and two fingers: pulling the string up so it snaps back against the frets The in-between switch position and the hollow quack of two pickups at once Why a quiet, clean guitar cut through the loud records of 1978 Brothers in Arms, Chet Atkins - and the British single that sank first time round