(Credits: Far Out / Apple Music)
Sun 24 August 2025 5:00, UK
“When you’re eighteen, you think you’re the centre of the universe. And unfortunately, you go round behaving like you are.” – Mark Knopfler
One of the most startling facts about some of our favourite rock ‘n’ roll bands is that they were all powered by youth. It’s an obvious fact, really, but one that is also fairly easy to forget under the haze of the legacies and myths that make them some of the most interesting people to ever walk the earth.
Let’s think about it for a moment. Mick Jagger was 19 when The Rolling Stones formed. So was Ozzy Osbourne when Black Sabbath formed in 1968. Sid Vicious was 21 years old when he was accused of murdering Nancy. Almost 58 years ago to this day, Keith Moon was 21 when he initiated a food fight and other raucous antics that ended in a visit from the police and a $24,000 fine for damages.
And there’s plenty more where they came from. But even more startling than these are the ones where there wasn’t the veil of youth cushioning the blow, the ones with fully grown adults involved, and no excuses for bad behaviour. Ozzy Osbourne was 33 when he peed on the Alamo in Texas in 1982. But he also started out in the business at 19, which, according to Mark Knopfler, is also reason enough for such outlandish actions at a later age.
Because, in his view, if you haven’t lived a life – a proper one – before entering the business, there’s no real way of learning right from wrong. There’s no wisdom collected from years of working as a “normal” person, and no way of navigating social situations the way that’s deemed socially acceptable. When you’re young, according to Knopfler, you think “you’re the centre of the universe”. Worse, you go around “behaving like you are”.
When Dire Straits had their breakthrough in 1978 with ‘Sultans of Swing’, Knopfler was almost 30. He’d also had several jobs up until that point, which he credits with being the reason for his being able to keep a level head when fame came knocking. “It tickles me sometimes, reading what people do when they’re young because it’s part of that rock’n’roll dream – being successful, being too young to cope with it,” he told Louder.
“Sometimes I look into the faces of kids who are nineteen or twenty-two or something, and I’ll try and see them twenty-five years ahead, try to imagine what’s going to happen them,” he continued. “But then you can’t really know what will happen. Being the age I was, that means everything. If I’d been eighteen I’d have been dead.”
Going into more detail, he indirectly discussed how most scandalous rockstars are just damaged people with big egos. “How many people do you know who have been worshipped and deified as children who are undamaged? Do you know any? It’s a very small list, your honour,” he said. “I’d already done loads and loads of jobs by that point. If you haven’t unloaded a lorry, you can never quite come to grips with reality. You have to know what work is like. And know what’s in people’s heads.”
Being slightly older also meant Knopfler didn’t let praise go to his head. While stars on the younger side might hear something validating and let it feed their ego, Knopfler knew how to be humble, even when he had every reason not to be. “If you’re in the eye of the storm, you’re cushioned inside it,” he said.
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