Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler has revealed he got his guitar playing style from strumming tennis rackets with his sister as a child.
The 74-year-old said he had always been left-handed, but said while he was pretending the racket was a guitar in his youth, his older sister had turned it round and told him “that’s the way you play it”.
Knopfler was speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, during which he explained his family had played a big part in his music career.
When asked by presenter Lauren Laverne about his guitar playing, he said: “Well, it’s because of my big sister Ruth, and I think big sisters are very important in this world.
“We had these dodgy little tennis rackets that you could get for not very much money, we used to use the tennis racket as a guitar.
I was playing it, I was pretending it was a guitar, and she turned it round so that I was holding it right-handed, and she said that’s the way you play it.”
Knopfler explained that, as he was a left-handed man playing a right-handed guitar, this meant his stronger hand was forming the notes.
He said his sister turning around the tennis racket had given him “a little bit of flexibility”, and allowed him to do a vibrato (bending the strings vertically) on “two or three strings at a time”.
The guitarist began his career with Dire Straits in 1977, and continued with the band until their 1995 break-up.
He has also had a solo career which has seen him record the film score for 1983’s Local Hero.
With the band, Knopfler has had five UK top 10 singles and four number one albums and as a solo artist he has had three UK top 40 singles and nine top 10 albums.
Some of his most famous songs include Money For Nothing, Sultans Of Swing and Going Home: Theme Of The Local Hero.
