Mark Freuder Knopfler, OBE (born August 12, 1949, Glasgow, Scotland) is a British guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is best-known as the lead guitarist and vocalist for the band Dire Straits, but has also made albums as a solo performer and played in other bands (such as the Notting Hillbillies). He has also performed on work by other artists, such as Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and Chet Atkins, and produced albums for artists such as Tina Turner, Randy Newman, and (again) Bob Dylan. In addition, he has scored the music to several films, including Local Hero, The Princess Bride, Cal, Last Exit to Brooklyn and Wag the Dog.
Mark Knopfler is the son of a Jewish architect whose communist sympathies forced him to flee the fascist regime in his native Hungary. When Mark was about nine years old, the family moved to Newcastle upon Tyne. At fifteen, he got his first guitar. Not long after, he cut his first record in a London studio, an unreleased demo of an original song, "Summer's Coming My Way". Knopfler worked as a journalist for the Yorkshire Evening Post, and then as a lecturer at Loughton College, before he became a full-time musician in the late 1970s.
He is noted for being left-handed, but playing right-handed, and for fingerpicking instead of strumming or using a plectrum; fingerpicking is usually associated with the acoustic guitar, but Knopfler usually (though not always) plays an electric guitar, particularly the Fender Stratocaster (sometimes uses also Gibson Les Paul). Although at present he has a signature guitar from Fender, he is also known for his signature Pensa-Suhr MK series (now known as Pensa).
