AN ACOUSTIC GUITAR, DOVE

Mark Knopfler purchased this guitar from Sound Stage Studio in Nashville, Tennessee, in May 2007. Knopfler tried both this guitar and a second Dove, which remains in his collection, during recording sessions for the Celtic folk song ‘Piper To The End’, the closing track on his 2009 solo studio album Get Lucky, which was recorded at British Grove Studios from October 2008 to March 2009. Keyboardist Guy Fletcher captured the guitar for his online studio diaries as part of a group shot of instruments used during these sessions. Mark wrote the song for his uncle Freddie, who was a piper of the 1st Battalion, Tyneside Scottish, the Black Watch, Royal Highland Regiment, who carried his pipes into action and was killed with them at Ficheux, near Arras, in May 1940, aged just 20. 'I didn’t know him, of course,' Mark noted, 'but I was close to my uncle Kingsley, my mum’s brother. He first taught me to play the boogie-woogie piano, and Freddie was Kingsley’s older brother. The pipes always made sense to me, and growing up in Glasgow as well as Newcastle, in my grandmother’s home, there were Jimmy Shand records, so the sound of Celtic music always seems familiar to me.'