A SOLID-BODY ELECTRIC GUITAR, LES PAUL REISSUE 1959 HISTORIC

According to Mark Knopfler’s guitar tech Glenn Saggers, Gibson’s then entertainment relations director Pat Foley asked him to take measurements from the neck of Knopfler’s 1958 Les Paul Standard so that Gibson could craft the reissue models as closely as possible to the original. Saggers arranged for British luthier Bill Puplett to take imprints from the ’58 neck, which were provided to Gibson circa 2000. In return for sharing the stats of his vintage Les Paul, Foley presented Knopfler with this Les Paul Reissue on behalf of Gibson in 2001. The guitar was immediately put into use on Knopfler’s 2001 Sailing To Philadelphia Tour for performances of the album track ‘Junkie Doll’, which had been inspired by an account of a heroin addiction he was reading at the time. Photographs confirm that when American guitarist and singer songwriter Bonnie Raitt joined Mark on stage for a couple of numbers during the show at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on 20 May 2001, Knopfler played this guitar (with a capo on the third fret) for their performance of ‘Pyroman', an unreleased track from the Sailing To Philadelphia sessions, which Knopfler would usually perform on his 1959 Les Paul (lot 42). According to Saggers, the three Les Pauls slated for specific song use on this tour were occasionally interchanged, particularly on ‘Brothers In Arms’, so it is probable that the 1959 Historic was also used for the occasional performance of the 1985 Dire Straits anti-war anthem over the course of the tour, from March to August 2001. Reportedly, the show at Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas in Madrid on 2 July 2001 was filmed for a live concert DVD that was never released, however various fragments of fan footage from the tour are available online. The guitar has since been used by Knopfler’s sideman Richard Bennett for performances of ‘Speedway At Nazareth’ on every tour since 2005.