Phil Manzanera: Roxy, Rock en en Español y Mucho Más (Part 1 of 3)

Portions of this interview were published previously on The Tonearm.

While he’s best known as the innovative guitarist with Roxy Music, Phil Manzanera’s musical endeavors have long extended far beyond the limits of that boundary-pushing art rock ensemble. From his time with pioneering Canterbury group Quiet Sun to his many solo albums, from his work with artists like David Gilmour, Brian Eno and Godley & Creme, from his production work for (and songwriting with) prominent rock en Español artists, Manzanera has always charted a fascinating path.

Phil Manzanera published his memoir/autobiography Revolución to Roxy in 2024, and this year he is mounting a tour in support of the book. Part solo concert and part Q&A session, Manzanera’s live dates explore not only his musical adventures – curating festivals, having his work sampled by hip hop giants and much more – but his personal life as well. That life has seen him experience the Cuban revolution as a child, and in more recent years, embark upon a journey to untangle the complicated story of his heritage.

At age 75, Phil Manzanera is still bursting with boundless creativity, energy and wit. Ahead of his run of U.S. appearances, I spoke with Manzanera about Revolución to Roxy, his famous band’s often fractious history, his deep and lifelong immersion in Latin music and culture, his myriad musical projects and what the future holds.

Bill Kopp: What inspired you to write the book?

Phil Manzanera: When you get to a certain age, you begin to ask questions. And you realize that your parents aren’t around anymore; they died many years ago, so you can’t ask them. There are things that I should have asked them, to make sense of how come I’m sitting here now and I’m a musician.

So I followed the trail, and it led me into all sorts of areas. And I thought, “I’ve got a load of cousins on my mother’s side in Colombia; 60 of them. They would be fascinated to know where the hell we came from.” And on my father’s side, that led me to all sorts of things which even are ongoing; they’re not in the book. It turned out he was illegitimate. I never knew that his father was a touring Italian oboe player from Naples. I only found this out a couple of months ago.

This whole thing is like a TV show in England called Who Do You Think You Are? where people find out about [their family histories]; they go back and back. So quite apart from my musical career, there’s this underlying narrative of where the hell we came from. And it’s great fun; you begin to think, “Did they know? Did my mother have any idea about my father’s side, that my grandfather wasn’t the real grandfather?” and all these things that happen.

It’s like a journey, and it’s good for me to leave that to my children and my grandchildren when I leave this mortal coil. So that’s the reason for doing the book: for me to discover and try to make sense of what happened in my so-called career and what happened in the family.

Bill: Reading Revolución to Roxy, I was impressed with your approach to potentially difficult subjects; you set out the circumstances of what happened, but you left it to the reader to glean from context clues exactly how you reacted emotionally to those situations. One of the specific things I’m thinking of is the time that you were involved in another project and you came back to work on sessions for Roxy Music’s Avalon only to find that someone else had recorded the parts that you were hoping to record.

Phil: That was the beginning of the end of the second period of Roxy. The group seemed to work in five year chunks, and then everyone wanted to kill each other. And then we didn’t work together for three or four years. And then [we were together] another five years, and it got seriously bad. And then there was an 18-year [break].

But miraculously in 2001 we ended up back working together. And in theory, we’re still working together now. We’ve got stuff coming out in September: the For Your Pleasure deluxe boxed set.

Bill: You assert several times in the book that you didn’t perceive a lot of musical opportunities within the framework of Roxy’s first run to express your interest in Latin music and culture, in your Latin roots. Are there any examples at all from that period where you did manage to work any of that in?

Phil: Well, I’d like to think there’s a riff in the first part of “Mother of Pearl” [from 1973’s Stranded] which has a Santana-type Latin groove to it. But you’re right. Being in a band can be a series of compromises. You’re trying to serve the song, as they say. So you don’t want to put in stuff that doesn’t seem to make any sense at all, just for the sake of doing it.

But because we all started doing solo albums pretty much immediately from the second or third Roxy Music album onward, I got a chance to do something with a little Latin feel on [1975’s] Diamond Head, my first solo album. The first track [“Frontera”] is sung in Spanish, and it has a cumbia feel. And there’s also a guitar instrumental on Diamond Head that I did with a West African group. It sounds like a Latin track even though it [features] West African percussionists. So I was chugging along, slipping in bits. Because I like all different kinds of music, I was being tempted by all sorts of things. I was not being strategic; I was just pinballing all over the place.

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