Knopfler modelled his guitar sound for the recorded track after ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons’ trademark guitar tone, as ZZ Top’s music videos were already a staple of early MTV. Gibbons later told a Musician magazine interviewer in 1986 that Knopfler had solicited Gibbons on how to replicate the tone, adding, “He didn’t do a half-bad job, considering that I didn’t tell him a thing!” Knopfler’s “not a half-bad job” included his duplication of Gibbons’ use of a Gibson Les Paul guitar (rather than a Fender Stratocaster), which he plugged into a Marshall amplifier. Another factor in trying to recreate the sound was a Wah-wah pedal that was turned on, but only rocked to a certain position. The specific guitar sound in the song was made with a Gibson Les Paul going through a Laney amplifier, with the sound coloured by the accidental position of two Shure SM57 microphones without any processing during the mix. Following the initial sessions in Montserrat, at which that particular guitar part was recorded, Neil Dorfsman attempted to recreate the sound during subsequent sessions the Power Station in New York but was unsuccessful in doing so.