Music |
Mark Knopfler: Shangri La
By
Published: Jan 01, 2004
Category:
Rock
Mark Knopfler strums the electric guitar as if it were acoustic, the sound gentle as a snow flurry. His voice is almost conversational:
5:15 A.M.
snow laying all around
a collie cycles home
from his night shift underground
past the silent pub
primary school
workingman’s pub
on the road from the pithead
the churchyard packed with mining dead
Do you see it? (Is there any way you don’t see it? This is world-class short story writing: The scene is set.)
A drum now: Chad Cromwell playing time on the rim on the snare, tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock. Richard Bennett’s guitar steals in. You hardly notice — the focus is still on the lyrics and the discovery ahead:
then beneath the bridge
he comes to a giant car
a shroud of snow on the roof
a mark ten Jaguar
“Shroud” is the tipoff. Inside is a man. The collie (in Northumberland, slang for a “miner”) thinks he’s asleep, but he’s “but dead and cold, shot through with bullet holes.”
Jim Cox’s piano joins in as Knopfler tells us about the victim: “a one-armed bandit man,” who came “from cockneyland” to “fill his boots.”
Now the drums kick. Glenn Worf’s bass begins its steady pulse. And the field of vision expands, in time and distance.
nineteen sixty seven
bandit men in birdcage heaven
la dolce vita, sixty nine
all new to people of the Ty
Ah, a mediation on Knopfler’s childhood home. (Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he and his family moved to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in the Northeast of England when he was 7.) A sacred place, a scarred place:
generations toiled and hacked
for a pittance and black lung
crushed by tub or stone
together
and alone
how the young and old
paid the price of coal
They always did (“eighteen sixty seven/my angel’s gone to heaven”). And always will. The giant car from the south with the gangster who did — or didn’t — skim the pot that represents their meager spare change is a novelty, a rare intrusion of the big city life. In his world, there’s glamour. And danger: “who knows who did what/somebody made a call.” In the miners’ world, there is only the daily grind, the cup of black tea, an hour at the pub, the hacking cough and the early death. Which, you wonder, is worse?
And yet, and yet — halfway through the song, you notice the tapping of your foot, pumping smooth and regular as an e-type Jag. You feel the power surge of this great band, as Knopfler applies the gentlest of touches to the accelerator. No flashy solos here, just the most lyrical guitar in all of rock. Other guitarists peal, chime, gleam; Knopfler’s guitar is a choir unto itself. In my pantheon of Guitar Gods, there is Hendrix and maybe early Clapton and then there is Mark Knopfler, who corners the part of the market that craves nothing more than the right note in exactly the right place. [To put the CD from Amazon and get the MP3 download free, click here. For the MP3 download, click here.]
You can’t help it. You want to be on your feet, you must dance. Because this is music that gets inside you and lifts you up — this is sailing through clouds at 30,000 feet music, riding a gentle Caribbean wave music, taking a long bike ride on a summer night music. There’s Guy Fletcher’s organ under it now, and a wall of guitars, and those tasty drums, all pushing you onward. It’s the music of glory, the sound you’d send out into the cosmos along with the Mozart. How can you not let go? How can you not let it free you?
And then it’s just guitar and drums again. We’re back at the Jag. A crowd gathers: the men of the mine. 5:15 A.M ……
What happened there? A guy got shot, a century of miners struggled for a living — and you danced? Well, brace yourself for the rest of “Shangri La,” for song after song matches tough-minded lyrics against thrilling music. “Boom, like that” — the single, about Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s — talks about “dog eat dog.” The third song, about a bar owner lecturing his hostess to be sure and get the customers to order refills, reminds us “It’s kill or be killed/honey, you know the drill.”
This is the world that Mark Knopfler — who started out as a journalist — sees these days: nasty, unforgiving. But not bleak: Personal relationships (the Shangri La of the title) are the refuge, the great relief. And then there’s the little matter of alchemy, and the magical way Knopfler converts his dark vision into music that challenges but does not sting. Butler can’t remember when brutality sounded so sublime.
No, there are no stinging guitar solos. Yes, if you don’t pay attention, this is adult easy listening, the best dinner music of the year. Ignore all that talk. Put your headphones on and listen.
