Sultans of Swing

Knopfler wrote it on a National steel guitar in open tuning and found it dull until he bought his first Stratocaster in 1977. Once he played it on that 1961 Strat, he said, it came alive. The lyric is about a very ordinary Dixieland jazz band he heard in a nearly empty pub in Deptford. Knopfler has recalled asking them for Creole Love Call or Muskrat Ramble, and thinking they were amazed that anyone in the room knew the titles. Nobody in that band, that night, he said, was a sultan of anything.

It was first taped at Pathway in July 1977, the demo Charlie Gillett played on the radio, and re-recorded at Basing Street with Muff Winwood in February 1978. Winwood doubted that a song about a trad band in a pub could sell. Released in May 1978, it missed the British chart and broke in the Netherlands and Belgium that September. In early 1979 it reached four in the US and eight in the UK. Greil Marcus called it a true pop epiphany, and it is the band's only entry in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.

Live

It is the song Dire Straits played most, 471 times by setlist.fm's count, from the Roundhouse in London on 29 January 1978 to Zaragoza in 1992. On Alchemy, recorded at Hammersmith Odeon in 1983, its coda stretches to nearly eleven minutes. It closed their Live Aid set at Wembley in 1985, and at the Nelson Mandela tribute there in 1988 Eric Clapton played rhythm guitar. Knopfler still plays it on his own tours. The upload in the hypersongs web is the official music video, which at 4:26 is shorter than the 5:47 album track.