AN ACOUSTIC-ELECTRIC 12-STRING GUITAR MADE FOR MARK KNOPFLER, ADAMAS

MARK KNOPFLER’S ACOUSTIC-ELECTRIC 12-STRING, USED TO RECORD BOB DYLAN’S ‘BLIND WILLIE MCTELL’

Ordered as a pair with the previous lot in early April 1979, Knopfler’s 6-string and 12-string Adamas guitars became some of his longest serving instruments, still in studio use up to 2022. See the footnote to the previous lot. Like the 6-string Adamas, this 12-string was first used during recording sessions for Bob Dylan’s 19th studio album Slow Train Coming at Muscle Shoals in Alabama, April-May 1979. Cited in Clinton Heylin’s biography Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades, Knopfler said of the sessions: 'Bob and I ran down a lot of those songs beforehand. And they might be in a very different form when he's just hittin' the piano, and maybe I'd make suggestions about the tempo or whatever. Or I'd say, "What about a twelve-string?".' Knopfler specifically recalls that he played the 12-string on the uplifting ballad ‘I Believe In You’.

On completion of Dire Straits’ third studio album Making Movies in August 1980, the band expanded to a quintet with the addition of keyboard player Alan Clark and guitarist Hal Lindes, the latter replacing David Knopfler, who had left the group to pursue a solo career that July. Technician Ron Eve, who joined the crew as keyboard tech ahead of the band’s forthcoming On Location Tour (and would later become Mark’s guitar tech from 1986-1996), photographed Alan Clark playing this 12-string Adamas during tour rehearsals at Wood Wharf studios in Greenwich, London, circa September 1980. The Adamas was most likely taken on the tour as a backup for a Baldwin-Burns electric 12-string, which he used for performances of the song 'Angel Of Mercy' from the 1979 album Communiqué. Following the recording of Dire Straits' fourth studio album Love Over Gold and Knopfler’s soundtrack for the 1983 film Local Hero, from March to September 1982 (see footnote to the previous lot), Dire Straits headed out on their Love Over Gold Tour, from November 1982 to July 1983.

In a break between the Australian and European legs of the tour from April to May 1983, Mark Knopfler and Bob Dylan assembled a team of accomplished musicians, including guitarist Mick Taylor and Dire Straits keyboardist Alan Clark, at the Power Station in New York, to co-produce Dylan’s 22nd studio album Infidels. Notably, Knopfler used the 12-string Adamas to record his haunting guitar part for the Dylan composition 'Blind Willie McTell' on 5 May 1983. Named for the blues singer and 12-string guitarist of the same name, the song was ultimately omitted from the final cut of the album and did not receive an official release until 1991 when it appeared on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991 and the 2007 anthology Dylan. Knopfler told us: 'I remember doing a song with the 12-string with Bob – he didn’t want to put it onto the record – it was called 'Blind Willie McTell'. I remember telling Bob, because he was talking about Robert Johnson, “I love Blind Willie McTell”, and I think Bob knew who he was… but after a while this song 'Blind Wille McTell' turns up. Bob sings, and he was playing piano, and I was on this 12-string. I didn’t have any other acoustic 12-strings, I still don’t.' Despite the exclusion, the song was soon recognised by critics as one of Dylan’s finest compositions, named by biographer Clinton Heylin as 'Dylan’s one indisputable masterpiece of the early eighties.' Writing in 2021, cultural critic Greil Marcus opined 'It’s nothing more than a rehearsal between Dylan on piano and Mark Knopfler on guitar… [yet] over three decades, that little rehearsal has emerged as one of Dylan’s greatest songs - or even, perhaps, in the right mood, his greatest recording.' Two alternate full-band versions from the first Infidels session on 11 April 1983 were officially released in 2021. Recording sheets from the 20 April session note an incomplete take with the working title End Bob 12-string – perhaps indicating that Dylan had briefly played around on the same 12-string, as it was likely the only one in the studio. Guitarist Richard Bennett has most recently been photographed playing this 12-string during 2022 recording sessions at British Grove Studios for Mark Knopfler’s tenth solo studio album, expected for release in 2024.