The Mark Knopfler song inspired by John Lennon’s death: “It took a long time”
Writing news can be tricky at times; you want to create a headline that is true to the story you’re telling but that is also enticing enough to make a reader want to engage. That’s why so many articles will use a pun or alliteration to lure in a casual onlooker; it makes the piece pop and means more people will likely feast their eyes on the contents. But then, sometimes, a catchy headline isn’t necessary, as the news is often so shocking, so devastating, that simply stating it is enough to damn near stop the earth from turning. This happened on December 8th, 1980, when on a small kiosk on a street corner in Manhattan, the New Standard’s front page read, “John Lennon Shot Dead”.
It’s impossible to truly dissect John Lennon’s importance and everything that he managed to achieve throughout his life. He was one-half of the most prevalent songwriting duo in the world, the founder of the most important band ever, and a complicated individual with an innate ability to connect with his fellow humans through sound.
Whether they admit it or not, every musician out there has been impacted by John Lennon in some way. His influence was too vast and wide-reaching not to trickle down into even the most niche elements of noise. Whether they make indie, rock, rap, alternative, or R&B, all of it has a stamp of Lennon embedded somewhere, no matter how clear or faint.
When he passed away, the news shook the world. Shot in the street, in the few seconds it took for a trigger to be pulled, one of our greatest creative minds was gone. A barrage of influence poured out of the chamber of that gun as people tried to show tribute to the songwriter in the best way they knew how. For many musicians, that meant making music, and one of the creatives who found themselves writing following the death of Lennon was Mark Knopfler, as his song ‘Rudiger’ has a clear Lennon homage present.
A steady and tranquil number, ‘Rudiger’ is filled with musical majesty. A song with borderline sinister undertones is given a heavenly backdrop. Knopfler’s mapping out of a narrative throughout the track is uncanny, as something that could be dedicated to the pages of a short story finds its place in sound.
In talking about the writing process, Knopfler spoke about how some songs come immediately, and others take a while. In the instance of this piece, it was both. “It took a long time for ‘Rudiger’ to arrive because I wrote the lyrics without changing a word right after John Lennon was assassinated,” he said, “We went to Germany, and that’s where I saw him, met him, and I was obviously thinking about the shooting in New York City. But for the music to arrive good and ready, it took years. In my case, there doesn’t seem to be a hard-and-fast rule about that stuff, and I never panic about it because I know it’ll turn up eventually.”
Knopfler went on to describe his mind as a scrapyard, saying that he retains some information and can write about it at will, while other things take their time to come to him, and he seems to have no choice in which is which. “It’s amazing how much rubbish a mind can retain, isn’t it?”
