A Mark In Time
Mark Knopfler Discussion => News Articles and Interview Transcripts => Topic started by: Leprechaun on January 19, 2014, 10:45:20 PM
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I haven't found any posts about it, but maybe I'm wrong.
Currently, I'm reading the in January 2013 published biography of the polish author Leslaw Halinski entiteled "Mark Knopfler" which by now is only out in polish language:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mark-Knopfler-Leslaw-Halinski/dp/8360157758
Lots of information about MK, the band and his songs as well as album recordings, but also collected snippets of interviews which MK gave over the last decades and also articles that MK wrote working as a journalist for the Yorkshire Evening Post. The book chronologically tells the MK story from the beginning till the recent US-tour with Bob Dylan. Many facts which were not known for me, e.g. that MK is left-handed but plays the guitar right-handed. Very interesting is one chapter containing statements from intervies titled as "Mark Knopfler about..." Here we learn that one of MK's favourite singers is Eric Clapton (beside Van Morrison), that he would take Dylans "Blonde on Blonde" album with him on a lonesome island and he also lists his favourite songs when he was a kid.
Let's hope for translations to be followed in other languages as there are hardly no books about MK. 8)
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yeah, i hope for a quick translation too..
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Does Kindle have a translation device? ;)
Looks like one in a series of books called "In Rock."
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Interesting!
But I think it contains nothing that we don't alredy know.. nowadays you can do such things by Internet, Google, AMIT... ;), and then you never have to see and speak to MK to release a book called "biography"... But if there is one new snippet or the other, it would be nice...
LE
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Interesting to see this book showing up here at AMIT. Almost exactly a year ago I was contacted by Les?aw Hali?ski asking me if I was interested in writing a chapter of his new MK biography. He was looking for somebody who could write a thing or two about Mark's guitars as an appendix to the main biography part. Well, I was really intrigued by the idea but before I decided to contribute I asked him to send me the manuscript, which he did. The text was indeed quite thorough and well researched albeit obviously adding nothing really new for die hards like us. I nevertheless said yes, and within a month I wrote a chapter on MK's most important axes. The strength of the book is that it contains many quotes from MK almost at any occasion. The author describes each album, the backgrounds of songs, known inspirations, citing Mark and other closely related people from his camp.
I decided to make the contribution because this is really the first full biography of Mark on Polish market. The only other book was the famous Oldfield's one. This one includes Mark's solo career until Privateering. I ended up being the consultant for the book which was great fun for a fan (pun intended) - as you can imagine.
There is also a chapter on Mark's passion for cars and racing and a chapter compiled by fans describing MK's concerts in Poland, Polish Knopfler fan community, and opinions about Mark's music by Polish musicians. I'm sure it is a valuable piece of information for anybody who has any interest in Mark's music, excluding the die hards who already know everything. There are quite a few pictures from across MK's career including snippets of a comic book about MK made by one of the French fans (Frank Thuillier). The book was published in April 2013, shortly before Mark's last concert in Poland.
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So another good reason to expect a translated version, is your involvement koobaa! ;)
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Even the die-hards would be excited about this, especially with your contributions, koobaa, all that technical information about the guitars gathered in one place. Thanks for these details!