Apparently he is a secret so well kept only guitarists know about, or appreciate, him. ;)

Gilmour is probably my 2nd favorite guitarist, behind Page.

Youre always a funster Snipper. Dire Straits would be one of he biggest selling bands of all time, filled stadia all over the world (still would) Knopfler has gone on to write film scores, work with likes of Chet Atkins and pretty well everyone else- and you say he is a secret.

By the way, Page is getting sued -again- this time over this:

YouTube - Jake Holmes - Dazed and Confused

There are countless such guitarists. I could rattle off about 50 names most non-guitarists have never heard of, but who are near gods among guitarists.

BTW, it's not Dire Straits's fault that Sultans of Swing became a big hit. I doubt they wrote it at the behest of the record company in order to get a hit on the radio ASAP. But the fact that it became a hit is what finances other songs and albums of theirs that will never be so popular, but are still excellent music.

I've never been a big Dire Straits fan, but every guitar player out there respects the hell out of Mark Knopfler. He is a master. He also owns a Ferrari 250GTO, which was featured on Victory By Design and that makes him extra cool.

Dire Straits is blaise' (spelling?) IMO.

I don't really care who is suing who, or why. I don't follow any of that stuff. All i care about musicians is how their music makes me feel. When i listen to Dire Straits music, it makes me feel like i'm listening to a mediocre band.

When i listen to Jimmy Page/Led Zep- perhaps the greatest rock band of all time (they were outselling elvis and the beetles in the 70s, when both were still in the hearts of their careers), i feel as if i am listening to the hammer of the gods. :)

Its not a competition.

Isn't it though? They do keep lots of records in the music industry.

Anyway, i'll have to sift through some old dire straits music and see if i can find any of the brilliance others are speaking of here. I have very diverse and wide ranging musical tastes, and i'm always looking for something new that i can "feel."

He was one one of the greats in recordings, but his live playing (at least from all the footage I've seen) always sucked. He was sloppy live and I'm not talking about the kind of sloppy you get from being wasted all the time. He just wasn't a great live player. I absolutely love his studio work though, except for the studio-version of the solo for Heartbreaker, which is is terrible. As great a producer as Page is, how did he listen to that and think, "Yeah, I think we'll keep that one?" It's soooo sloppy.

You're actually the guy that was ragging Jimmy in an old thread here some years ago that i was referring to in my last post. LOL.

When i think of live Jimmy Page, i think of the bow. Some of his live work is not that great, but hey....he was a heroin addict.

Kind of to be expected IMO.

Beat me to it. I didn't really get into Dire Straits and Knopfler until I got a listen to some of their non-chart-toppers. Most of their top 40 work is dreck - though Money For Nothing really is good. The stuff you never hear on the radio is blues-infused wizardry.

Same thing with lots of bands - Yes being a prime example - the really good stuff is never on the radio. In Yes's case, I'll let the radio industry slide - their great songs are anywhere from 8 to 22 minutes long :). Hard to pay the bills with play times like that.

Now Yes i liked a lot back in the day.

Don't get me wrong. I was a Page disciple in my youth. I even bought a bow at a flea market when I was about 13 and had just seen the Dazed and Confused live version. I was one step away from drawing track marks in my arm with my pen while daydreaming in school. Believe, I lived for the guy's guitar playing. It was cool and it was easier than playing Eddie Van Halen or Randy Rhoads (the kings of that era). I can still probably bang out most of his solos and haven't practiced them in ages.

But as I got older and did some live playing myself, I learned a lot more about the difference between sitting in my room and playing along with the stereo and putting it together with a band and then crushing it in a live situation. The two are night and day. And I wasn't even drinking yet back then.

Page is one of those guys who was just amazing in a studio situation. His main body of work was done long before computers and CuBase and all that fancy recording stuff. His talent was raw and true. I still struggle to bang out Babe I'm Gonna Leave You on my acoustic and make it sound just right. And I do have the BBC Sessions CD where he crushed it live. So I know he could do it. There's no cheating on that stuff. You just have to have the chops. Still, the guy was grossly inconsistent and it always chapped my hide because he was often and could be so great.

I saw him live three times. At live Aid, and twice with "The Firm."

I thought he sounded great in both concerts with "The Firm," but he sounded pretty rough during Live Aid, but then again the whole band didn't sound very good that day, and still they had 100,000+ people standing in a deafening ovation for over a half hour after they stopped playing.

Page is to me, the epitome' of a rock god.

i got it too, when it came out. still have it all these years later and listen to it. yakety ax!!!

the best thing about mark is that he totally 100% ripped off JJ Cale...so, its almost like there are 2 JJ Cales which is a great thing in my opinion

Listen to the little fill when he sings "get a bullet in the chest" on this live version:

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For the less guitar-sophisticated, here's one you might recognize. Take a look at who is playing back-up for Knopfler. He first shows up at around 1:55:
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here's Eric Clapton, Tina Turner, Phil Collins, Mark Knopfler & Elton John. It's amazing how a no-talent nobody like knopfler gets to hang around with so many giants in the business:

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some decent picking tips from mark
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BTW, when I was in high school I was the typical jimmy Page wanna-be.
I studied everything about the man, played his music for hours a day, tried to be just like him and play just like him and sound like him. I had those huge posters of Zep on the walls of my room.
If anyone bad-mouthed Page in front of me he would likely end up in the dirt back then.
I played in a party band and we were lucky to get $25 each and all the beer we could drink at Saturday night kegger parties.
back then I thought Page was the best ever. As I grew up and learned a little more and discovered there was a big world out there with all kinds of different styles and sounds, I quickly learned that page is not the sheet I thought he was.
On a good day when Page wasn't strung out on heroin or acid or drunk off his ass, he played really well.
But there are many others who have had as much or more influence on music and guitar playing. BYW on my best day I sucked as a guitar player and I could do a decent job of sounding like Page. His music and style weren't that difficult, at least not the stuff on their albums (which I still have). His 25 minute solo-snooze-fests were interesting and entertaining, for the first 3 minutes. then it was just higher and deeper.

Knopfler has his own unmistakable style and sound. he mutes certain notes, he picks with his fingers, he does a lot of left-hand striking, he has a unique guitar voicing that would be very hard for anyone to duplicate. There is a reason that other guitar giants want to play along side him.

To compare Mark Knopfler to Jimmy Page is to compare a Ferrari GTO to a jacked up '69 Camaro with Daytona 60 tires on chrome Cragar mag wheels and side-pipes.

People get off on the sound from both...but not the same people. :D

FWIW, Zepplin is one of my favorite bands (top 3) but they were a band that was greater than the individuals. Plant was IMO the only stand-out talent, but as a group they made wonderful music. Page showed talent, but not a lot of depth.

I always thought John Paul Jones was the genius and unsung hero of that band. Bonzo was also one of the all time greats. As much as I love and respect Page, I'd put him last in that band.

Aside from anyone's chops or abilities, I have to give props to any famous musician who inspires countless others to pick up an instrument and learn to play. I got my first Kiss 45 single (Shout It Out Loud) when I was six and had a Fisher Price record player. But Van Halen was what made me get a guitar and really learn how to play. John Bonham and Neil Peart did the same for countless drummers. Such musicians will always be heros for that, even if they don't remain someone's favorite forever.