The “otherworldly” 1980s jam-session Mark Knopfler will never forget: “You’re pretty good”When Mark Knopfler split from his band Dire Straits in 1988, they were arguably the biggest group in the world. However, it was all that excess success which led Knopfler to take a step back from the band in the first place. Immediately after Dire Straits broke up, he began work on the Uli Edel film Last Exit to Brooklyn. The collaborative album of duets, Neck and Neck, that Atkins and Knopfler put together across studios in Nashville and London, was the coming together of icons from two very different ages and worlds. He’d say to me, ‘You’re pretty good, but you’re no Mark Knopfler’.