RIP Jack Sonni

Dire Straits Second Guitarist Gone Too Soon

It was sad to learn that the ‘second guitar’ of Dire Straits heyday passed away, aged 68 today, the first of September. Mark Knopfler is of course the name we all associate with their signature sound, but Jack was also a key member of the band, joining in 1984 and was part of the line-up on that awesome album Brothers in Arms, which is my favourite of all time from that band.

Sonni left the band in 1988 to become a marketing executive at Seymour Duncan but later joined the Dire Straits Legacy band, a group made up of old Dire Straits musicians, and toured with them from 2013 until last year, 2022. The others were Trevor Horn on bass, Primiano Di Biase on keys, and Marco Caviglia on lead vocals and guitar. Dire Straits Legacy disbanded after the death of keys player Alan Clark in May of 2022, although he wasn’t a member of Legacy.

Check Sonni out in this video below from Auckland, on their Australasian Tour at Mt Smart Stadium, in May 1986, which was the only time I saw them live. It was AWESOME.

In the winter of 1985, I got to know pretty much every note of Money for Nothing, and it never got tired.

My father had a business called 200 Flutes. We were building a family ketch which we constructed piecemeal as the money came in.

It was a labor of love that took seven-and-a-half years. Leo made all manner of ethnic musical instruments, and the core products were bamboo flutes and panpipes, mostly faithfully reproduced based on South American Indian instruments. He and my mother worked out that if they sold 200 flutes, they would have enough money to buy their first drum full of resin for the outer core of the hull.

My father Leo, was already selling many instruments through the top musical instrument shops in New Zealand, and in 1985, he invested in an exhibit site at the National Music Expo in Auckland. This is not to be mistaken for the Auckland Music Expo also held in 1985, which featured bands over 4 nights at Western Springs, including Dire Straits, the Police, featuring Sting (one of Knopfler’s great friends), INXS, and The Pretenders.

I helped on the stand at the other expo, taking orders from New Zealand stores.

There was a big exhibit next to our stand, and while I loved it, my father hated it! They were exhibiting sonic curtains, that essentially cut out almost all sound in either direction. The only direction that really mattered was on the outside of the curtains because on the inside they had a sound system and video of Dire Straits playing Money For Nothing at an incredible volume level, pretty much constantly throughout the show. It blared whenever the curtains were opened, and I recall some exhibitors loudly complaining about the noise. But when the curtains closed, you could hardly hear a thing.

I swear I heard the musical hook in my head for weeks afterward. You will of course recognise the guitar riff immediately. Put this on your home theatre and crank it up! It probably contributed to my ongoing tinnitus, although to be fair I have spent many hours in front of big bass bins and horn speakers over the years.

Just for contrast, I bought a beautiful handmade Takamine guitar from John Smith of Musical Imports (who was also a wholesaler of my father’s work) at the expo. We spent a lot of time talking at the expo and I fell in love with a beautiful electric acoustic nylon string guitar, which at the time had an RRP of NZ$4,000, which would probably have made it one of the most expensive classical style guitars I had seen on the New Zealand market. Remember this is the 1980s, it’s not 2023 dollars.

Fortunately for me, John saw how much I loved the guitar and let me have it at below wholesale, on the promise that I would never tell New Zealand music store owners like John Eady and Al Kingsley Smith, that he had done this deal for me. I think John Eady, who I spent quite a bit of time with, would have been fine with it, because he liked me and thought my father had the Midas touch with his instruments, but Al, I have to say was all about the money, and would probably have asked for a commission.

I have to tell you a little story, one of many I have about Kingsley Smith. At one stage, in the early 1980s, I was living in Nelson, and playing covers at pubs and private gigs. One day I was in the audience at a gig and recognized the PA the band was using at the DB Rutherford Hotel, which was the premier location for indoor concerts at the time.

I had a chat with the guy who owned it. Now I don’t remember his name or the band, but this is what had happened. I also don’t remember the numbers. Anyway, I had set up a band in Auckland, and the deal was that I would buy the PA system for the band, and pay it off with a share of gig revenue. I bought a set-up from Kinglsey Smith, which included very big JBL bass bins, Altech triple horns, and a stereo 16-track mixer which was pretty rare back then.

Stuff happened, the band never got to its first gig, and I was left with the PA. I kept it for a few years, mostly for jamming, at the odd gig, including a music festival for musicians (that’s another story), and as my very loud but stunning quality home stereo system, think tinnitus again.

Anyway, I was leaving Auckland, needed the money, and had nowhere to store the PA, so I went to Al and told him I needed to sell it. He explained that times were tough in the music industry, and he could either sell it on my behalf, but it could take as much as a year to sell, or he could buy it from me, for half of what I had paid him for it.

He did a good job, and I left his store on Customs Street with the cash, feeling very sorry for myself.

Flash forward to Nelson, where I recognized my old PA system that I had sold to Al. Sure enough, when I asked about it, not only was it the exact same rig that I had bought from him and sold back to him for half of what I paid for it, but within a few weeks, he had resold it for the same amount of money, that I had originally bought it for, i.e. applying a 100% markup.

I can tell you I was not impressed, but as I learned, this was the normal business for Al, who would often buy and sell the same instruments and sound gear many times, along the same lines. He was one of the most, if not the most successful retailer of electric musical instruments and sound gear in the country.

In fairness, I have to also say that I really liked the diminutive man who supported many a music festival in Auckland and was known on a first-name basis by all working musicians at the time.

As to the Takamine, I still have it. It is looking a bit tired, but acoustically it sounds as good as it ever did, after a rebuild by the famous ex-Fender luthier Zell Tate, after an accident when I was playing on a yacht as it crash-jibed, and I almost got thrown overboard by the boom, which hit the soundboard. I didn’t see the guitar for about 6 months because he would not repair it until he could get the humidity in his workshop close to zero, which in Auckland is a big ask. Our average humidity is 82% here!

Anyway, I have digressed from the sad loss of Jack Sonni, but all these events are part of the story. Another music legend of my time, gone too soon.