(Washington) The rock group Dire Straits, known for its classics Sultans of Swings or Money for Nothing, announced Friday the death of Jack Sonni, “the other guitarist” of the formation of virtuoso Mark Knopfler.

“Jack Sonni, Rest in Peace,” the band soberly wrote on the X social network to announce the death of their former 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 joined the band in the mid-1980s to replace guitarist Hal Lindes when Dire Straits recorded Brothers in Arms, an album that propelled him to the fore again 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 Live Aid concert 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 disown, died Wednesday at the age of 68.