A HOLLOW-BODY ELECTRIC GUITAR, ES-350T

Specifically searching for a Gibson ES-350T model, as played by one of his earliest musical influences - rock and roll legend Chuck Berry, Mark Knopfler purchased this guitar from Rudy Pensa in the mid-1980s. Interviewed by Neil McCormick for The Telegraph in 2012, Knopfler recalled: ‘I fell in love with songs when I was very, very small. Chuck Berry made a huge impression, where the rhythm of the lyrics is as important as the music, there’s a ricocheting effect.’ As a music-mad teen, Knopfler saw Chuck Berry live at Newcastle City Hall in May 1964, later noting to journalist Joe Jackson, ‘I knew I was going to see something good, but I was completely mesmerised,’ and jesting that he has been known to do Berry’s duckwalk on occasion. Knopfler elaborated on the significance of Berry’s influence in 2014, telling Vintage Guitar magazine: 'I have always thought in terms of the transatlantic nature of music. My idea of heaven is somewhere where the Mississippi Delta meets the Tyne. What I wanted, from the very first album with Dire Straits and songs like ‘Sultans Of Swing,’ was to write my own geography into the American music that shaped me, to identify the English, Irish, and Scottish landmarks on Chuck Berry’s Road.'

When producing American singer songwriter Willy DeVille’s 1987 album Miracle, which was recorded at AIR Studios London in early 1987, Knopfler used this Gibson ES-350, played through a Fender Vibrolux, to record his solo pass on DeVille’s Van Morrison cover 'Could You Would You?'.