Funny what you find on the internet, if you have time to spare! This quote from here:
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1090I chose the most controversial, so knock yourselves out.
"The "Guitar George" and "Harry" who are mentioned in the lyrics are George Young and Harry Vander, who were guitarists in the band The Easybeats. George Young is Angus Young's older brother and Harry and George helped get AC/DC recorded."
"We did our best to learn more about this, but we could neither confirm nor disprove this entry. If you know more about it, send us a note:
There is a CD which contains 24 tracks which were from a production company which recorded various artists between 1989-1995. One of the tracks was by an artist only identified as "B. Wilson." There was an asterisk after his name and on the CD it says that this was from a live show performed at The Warehouse which was in Indianapolis, Indiana. Before Wilson plays his song he says the following:
"I do this thing I cowrote about, I guess, it's been about 12 years ago I wrote the lyrics and a friend of mine used to work a lot of sessions for my old producer, Bob Johnston, and worked a session with this fellow from England by the name of Mark Knopfler. Has his own group over there called Dire Straits. He had this little melody. It sounded like "Walk, Don't Run." And he had this little story concerning a band that nobody wanted to listen to. Only a few people show up to hear. So we got together one night after the session and tossed these lyrics around on a napkin and I guess I wound up writing most of the lyrics to the tune. made enough money to buy a new Blazer that year I remember, so... didn't do too bad. It goes like this..."
Then he starts playing an acoustic guitar, strumming Spanish style and sings Sultans of Swing. The lyrics are pretty close to what Mark Knopfler recorded but are slightly different. (thanks, JJ - Bloomington, IN)"
"Brooks and Dunn used the guitar riff from the chorus and outro of this song (Sultans of Swing) for their Only in America. To my knowledge this has never been brought up and I don't know if permission was used"
"Trey Anestasio from Phish covered this when he went solo, it was an amazing version i saw it live, He added trumpets as kind of joke ("don't give a damb about no trumpet playin band") They played the whole solo on brass it was amazing, and of course they busted out some guitar solo's too, i would love to have a recording of this."
"Knopfler has sited David Gilmour of pink floyd as an inspiration. some of his solo licks could be taken as complete rip offs, althought his solos are different in a sense."
"It's funny listening to so many people wax poetic about both Sultans of Swing and Knopfler. There's no doubt he's a fine player but he's also a magpie or to put it more politely, he was only VERY HEAVILY influenced by a Van Morrison song when choosing his guitar playing style for SOS. Take a listen to Bulbs on Morrison's 1973 album Veedon Fleece. Mr Knopfler wasn't hit by a rush of brilliant inspiration, more like, 'ehh, I like the sound of that Morrison song, I wonder will anyone notice if I lift it'. As Morrison wrote in one of his songs, 'Copycats ripped off my songs, copycats ripped of my words, copycats ripped off my melodies'... well I'm sure he was tempted to include the line, 'Copycats ripped off my guitar fills'."
