Mark Knopfler

Mark Knopfler plays guitar without a pick. He plucks the strings with his thumb and fingers, a style borrowed from country and folk guitarists, and the result is the clean, rippling sound of "Sultans of Swing," Dire Straits' first hit in 1978. The song, about a pub jazz band playing to a nearly empty room, introduced one of the most distinctive guitarists in rock.

He was born on August 12, 1949, in Glasgow, Scotland, at 9:50 in the evening, as his birth record shows. His Sun is in Leo, with Pluto also in Leo, and Mercury, Venus and Saturn are in Virgo, all five in the sixth house, which concerns craft, daily practice and skilled work. Virgo is meticulous, precise and devoted to technique, and the sixth house is about honing a skill through repetition. Few placements could better describe a guitarist whose playing is defined by precision and nuance, and who has said he practices every day.

With Pisces on the Ascendant, he comes across as gentle, dreamy and somewhat introverted. Knopfler has always seemed uncomfortable with stardom, preferring the studio to the spotlight.

His father, Erwin Knopfler, was a Hungarian Jewish architect who fled the Nazis and settled in Britain. When Mark was seven, the family moved to Blyth, near Newcastle upon Tyne. Mars and Uranus, both in Cancer, sit in his fourth house of home and roots, describing a family history marked by upheaval and displacement.

His Moon is in Aries in the first house, adding directness and a quiet stubbornness beneath the shy surface.

Before music took over, Knopfler worked as a newspaper reporter in Leeds and then as a lecturer in English. In 1977 he formed Dire Straits with his younger brother, David, John Illsley and Pick Withers. Their 1985 album Brothers in Arms was one of the first albums to sell a million copies on compact disc, and its single "Money for Nothing" became one of the most played videos on MTV.

Jupiter, retrograde in Capricorn, falls in his eleventh house of networks and collaborators. Knopfler has worked with a wide circle of musicians, from Chet Atkins and Emmylou Harris to Bob Dylan, whose album Slow Train Coming he played on. He has also written film scores, including Local Hero and The Princess Bride.

Neptune in Libra sits in his seventh house, describing an idealistic, gentle approach to partnership and collaboration. After Dire Straits disbanded in 1995, he began a long solo career of quiet, folk- and country-influenced albums, far from the stadium shows of the 1980s.

He was appointed OBE in 1999. In 2024 he sold more than a hundred of his guitars at auction, raising millions of pounds, much of it for charity. The Virgo planets in his sixth house made him a craftsman first; the Leo Sun gave him the stage he never quite wanted.