Interesting to see this book showing up here at AMIT. Almost exactly a year ago I was contacted by Les?aw Hali?ski asking me if I was interested in writing a chapter of his new MK biography. He was looking for somebody who could write a thing or two about Mark's guitars as an appendix to the main biography part. Well, I was really intrigued by the idea but before I decided to contribute I asked him to send me the manuscript, which he did. The text was indeed quite thorough and well researched albeit obviously adding nothing really new for die hards like us. I nevertheless said yes, and within a month I wrote a chapter on MK's most important axes. The strength of the book is that it contains many quotes from MK almost at any occasion. The author describes each album, the backgrounds of songs, known inspirations, citing Mark and other closely related people from his camp.
I decided to make the contribution because this is really the first full biography of Mark on Polish market. The only other book was the famous Oldfield's one. This one includes Mark's solo career until Privateering. I ended up being the consultant for the book which was great fun for a fan (pun intended) - as you can imagine.
There is also a chapter on Mark's passion for cars and racing and a chapter compiled by fans describing MK's concerts in Poland, Polish Knopfler fan community, and opinions about Mark's music by Polish musicians. I'm sure it is a valuable piece of information for anybody who has any interest in Mark's music, excluding the die hards who already know everything. There are quite a few pictures from across MK's career including snippets of a comic book about MK made by one of the French fans (Frank Thuillier). The book was published in April 2013, shortly before Mark's last concert in Poland.
