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

Continued from Part Two…

Bill Kopp: Something else I learned from the book: there was originally going to be a group with you, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme. Were you involved at all with 1977’s Consequences?

Phil Manzanera: I was there when they were doing Consequences. I was up at The Manor, because Kevin used to live next door to me. We all used to go on holiday together; the whole of 10cc went on holiday together, and we came back, and then they split up. I said, “We’ve just been on holiday together; how could you?” I’ve got footage that Kevin filmed of us all having a barbecue around a pool and. And then a week later…

But, yeah, me and Kev did all these tracks, and some of it ended up on an album called Freeze Frame [1979]. But then I was hauled back into Roxy.

Bill: When you were playing with Godley & Creme around the time of Consequences, did you use their Gizmo/Gizmotron invention?

Phil: Yes, I always had to give a go on the Gizmo. In fact they gave me a Gizmo, and about five years ago I gave it to some luthier to put on an old Strat. And in my diary I have a note: “Find where the Gizmo is.” Somewhere in south of England, there’s a guy who’s got my guitar with the Gizmo on it!

Bill: As a guitarist, you’re recognized for – among other things – your mastery of tone and texture. How much has modern technology changed your approach to the guitar, and to recording the guitar?

Phil: What I like to do now is to record the guitar myself in my little garden shed at home, with one mic, one amp, and maybe this thing called a Universal Audio aux. What I used to do on all the albums was work on stuff at home on a Revox tape recorder. I’d work out ideas, and then go into the studio and record it in there. Now I like to just do it straightaway.

So I can put a track up, and I can play it 20 times, record 20 versions. And then I listen – what I call “panning for gold” – to see if there’s any interesting ideas. And then I whittle it down, strain it down. It’s a bit like cooking, where they reduce the thing to create a great sauce. And I like that, because it’s tedious for other people to be around when you’re doing that kind of thing. So I thought, “I might as well just do it myself.”

When I worked on the [David] Gilmour stuff, he would do 10, 12, 15 takes. Then me and the engineer would have to pick out the bits and distill it down and then ask, “Can you do another one?” And then you do another 15! And it’s like, “Oh, no!” But he is also good at doing it himself at home and then saving everybody the grief. And he knows when he’s got it.

So that’s the way it’s changed. I can do that now with the tech and the software that’s available. But I make sure I go through valves and amps and have a nice mic and stuff like that. Although it’s not going on to analog tape. When we did David Gilmour’s On an Island [2006], we recorded the whole album on digital and analog.

Bill: And you decided digital sounded better…

Phil: Well, David and Chris Thomas decided it was better. I really couldn’t tell the difference! They got it right. It was a real fun thing to sit there and say, “Right, which one’s which and which one do you prefer?”

Bill: Since the book came out, has there been any progress on your application for Portuguese citizenship?

Phil: One of the reasons I did it was that three, four or five of my cousins have Portuguese passports, and they can come to Europe – into the Schengen area – without having visas. So it does work.

After all that trouble I went to, and since the book, I got all the certificates and things in Curacao. But my wife said, “Yeah, but hang on. You’re going to be going straight through [immigration checkpoints] and I’m going to be in a queue. This is not going to work.” So I haven’t pursued it.

Bill: Have you had any progress finding more about your birth father from Italy? At the beginning of our conversation you mentioned that you discovered that his father was an oboe player; that’s not even in the book…

Phil: No, it’s not. His father was a musician from Cava de’ Tirreni, which is on the Amalfi coast, just south of Naples. We have tracked down potential cousins. My nephew went to Rome a few weeks ago to meet up and tell these people, “Your great-grandfather had an affair, and you have some step brothers.” I said to my nephew, “Let’s do DNA testing first before we go to Italy and have a celebration; I need to be absolutely sure.” But yesterday a thing turned out from MyHeritage.com, and there it was. He had the name of my father as one of his sons.

Bill: The older I get, the more I’m convinced that every family has a convoluted history like that…

Phil: Every family does. It’s so much fun to try to find out about where you came from. When you get a certain age, it’s nice to write it down for the future generations.

Bill: Beyond the book tour, what projects do you have coming up?

Phil: We’ve done a new version of the Quiet Sun album. It’s going to come out in August with Dolby Atmos 5.1, some extra tracks, things like that. And of course at least three [songs] from the album were used on 801 Live.

And on Wednesday we start to finish off a brand new Quiet Sun album; it’s 95% done. Some of it’s using material that was written in 1970; we found these old scores and recorded them. It’s some crazy music, and I think it sounds great. So for people who like Quiet Sun, to have a follow up album 52 years later, I think it’s time.