The rock group Dire Straits, known for its classics Sultans of Swings or Money for Nothing, announced on Friday the death of Jack Sonni, “the other guitarist” of the formation of virtuoso Mark Knopfler. “Jack Sonni, Rest in peace”, soberly wrote the group on the social network X to announce the disappearance of its historic second guitarist. Born in Pennsylvania in December 1954, Jack Sonni, whose real name is John Thomas Sonni, was working at Rudy’s, a famous guitar store in New York, in the late 1970s when he befriended Knopfler, who had just founded in London the Dire Straits.
The group then experienced a glory as intense as it was sudden with Sultans of Swings, its still most emblematic title where clear, rhythmic chords reverberate in chorus, and cascading guitar solos tinged with blues. Jack Sonni entered the band in the mid-1980s to replace guitarist Hal Lindes while Dire Straits recorded Brothers in Arms, an album which propelled him once again to the fore with the track “Money for nothing”, his greatest commercial success broadcast on a loop on the music channel MTV.
There followed a dizzying world tour and participation in the cult concert Live Aid at Wembley Stadium in 1985 to raise funds against the famine then raging in Ethiopia. After briefly participating in the group’s boom period, Jack Sonni branched out into marketing, but focusing on the music industry, before the Dire Straits broke up in the mid-1990s. According to the trade press, ” the other guitarist” of Dire Straits, a nickname he did not deny, died Wednesday at the age of 68.
