Phil
Manzanera
guitarist
Interview
June 1986
Making
Music magazine June 1986
Interview
November 1978
Sound International
magazine November 1978
ΜΟΥΣΙΚΗ
Phil Manzanera
Phil
Manzanera
Phil Manzanera talks
Tony Bacon through some of Roxy Music's finest moments.
Nowadays, Phil
Manzanera busies himself with the “Explorers”, his group with Andy Mackay and
James Raithe, while another current project sees him teaming up with John
Wetton aided by drummers like Alan White and Carl Palmer.
But today we're here to talk about the
past. You may have spotted a new Roxy Music/Bryan Ferry compilation,
"Street Life", snaking up the charts. What an opportunity, we
figured, to listen back to a few old favourites in the company of the guitarist
who made them all possible.
What about a
lightning overview of Roxy's career? How does it pan out in retrospect?
"You
start off as a band, you all play together, and it's quite easy to play
together - you've been on the road," explains Phil Manzanera.
"The first two albums were like that.
Then you get successful, you don't play together very much, you get rusty and
you find that it's not easy to play together in the studio. From the second
album up to 'Manifesto' we would
rehearse for a week with some backing tracks, do all the overdubs, and then
Bryan Ferry would try and write a top line.
"And then people invent rhythm
boxes! The big difference occurred when I got my studio - 'Flesh & Blood',
'Avalon', 'Jealous Guy' were all started with the Linn and built up. The end
result was that 'Avalon' type of sound, working in lots of different studios.
So it was easy to do backing tracks again, quickly - but then you wonder if
you've lost the feel, and you go back to the idea of rehearsing a band for six
weeks before you even start recording, and try to combine both. It's funny how
things come around..."
let's go back to the records...
VIRGINIA
PLAIN
[ their debut single
Released in
August 1972 ]
(45 released: 8.1972)
/ - το εξώφυλλο από το
δίσκο 45 στροφών 1972
Side A: “Virginia Plain”
(composer:
Bryan Ferry)
Side B: “The Numberer”
(instrumental) (composer: Andy Mackay)
(φωτο: discogs)
When Phil Manzanera joined Roxy Music,
replacing the shortlived David O'List (ex-Nice), Phil brought with him his
semi-acoustic, jazzy Gibson 335. "None of the other guys from Roxy liked
it," he complains. Why was that? "The sound was a bit too
mature," he laughs. "Well, unrock, if you like. It suited my previous
group “Quiet Sun” fine.
[ “Quiet Sun”
(1970-1972):
progressive rock/jazz band
Phil Manzanera: guitar
Bill MacCormick: bass
Dave Jarrett: Keyboards
Charles Hayward: drums
]
Anyway, the others said what you need is a Strat as
well. I got one, but the 335 was great, that sort of thicker sound. So I did
'Virginia Plain' with the 335."
The screaming
feedback sound of the guitar you hear on the single shows how the 335 reacts to
being wound up and pushed a little: people have often asked Phil Manzanera about
'That great synth bit on the first album' which invariably turns out to be
feedback or treated guitar. "All the sounds are very confused," he
remembers. "We did that on purpose at the time, and Brian Eno would treat
them through the VCS3, which was an early synthesiser."
Oh, and the opening surges over the
piano are Rick Kenton's fuzz bass, not guitar, OK?
PYJAMARAMA
[ Released in February 23, 1973 ]
(45 released 2.1973)
/ - το εξώφυλλο του
δίσκου 45 στροφών 1973
Side
A:
Pyjamarama
( composer: Bryan
Ferry)
Side B: The pride and the pain
( composer:
Andy MacKay)
(φωτο:
discogs)
Pyjamarama, Roxy Music (live 1974)
[ πηγή:
Y-tube ]
Pyjamarama, Roxy Music (live 1974)
[ πηγή:
Y-tube ]
Not only did Phil's early purchases
include a Strat, but soon after the first album he bought a guitar that has
been his trusty companion ever since, an original 1963 Gibson Firebird 7
complete with gold-plated fittings. Maestro wang bar, three chunky humbuckers
and an ebony fingerboard. Phil's never seen another red one, and nor have we.
"I
bought it from an American kid, sort of a rich kid whose parents had bought it
for him, they lived in a big posh house in Regent's Park. He'd bought the
Firebird in Chicago when they first came out. It's on the cover of the second
album and I've used it on every album I've done since. "
"It
doesn't sound like a Gibson Les Paul, it's not big and thick. The bass strings
are very tight in their frequency for some reason. They don't resonate and have
a lot of bass end to them, which is very useful for power chords and things
like that. It has a tight power chord sound, not spread out like a Les Paul. It
works very well for recording - you can place it in the background and you'll
always hear it, it doesn't take up any space. It makes its own space."
No wonder he's used it so much. An early
appearance was on 'Pyjamarama': and that intro - what we might call the
'chug-a-chang' sound - seems familiar.
Do we hear
echoes of Pete Townshend? "I was always a Who fan," admits Phil.
"It was
that idea of having an open tuning, I think it was something silly and not
particularly flash, maybe E, B, E, G#, E and E. Yes, very E! It was one of the
first times I'd used notes ringing through, leaving the same notes here and
there and changing a few other notes in the chord. It's a nice way of getting a
big sound when you're not playing with anyone else, as well - you've got these
sympathetic strings, really. And it's more enjoyable to play if you can't play
great finger style, you have these strings resonating to keep the beat
going!"
DO
THE STRAND
(from "For Your Pleasure" LP 3.1973)
Do The Strand, Roxy Music (Live 1973)
The Old Grey Whistle Test, April 1973
[ πηγή:
Y-tube ]
Do The Strand, Roxy Music (Live 1973)
The Old Grey Whistle Test, April 1973
[ πηγή:
Y-tube ]
Do The Strand, Roxy Music (Live 1973)
The Old Grey Whistle Test, April 1973
[ πηγή:
Y-tube ]
Do The Strand, Roxy Music (Live 1973)
The Old Grey Whistle Test, April 1973
[ πηγή:
Y-tube ]
This has always seemed not so much a
song, more a repeated chorus with the occasional join. "Yes, sort of stop
and start," suggests Phil Manzanera.
"Bryan
used to come up with a chord sequence and then sort of flog it to death,
really. And so because we were into very textural and atmospheric sort of
ideas, all of us, we could take one idea that was strong and make it work.
Actually there are two parts to 'Do The Strand', an intro bit with the piano
sound, and the 'do the strand...' bit.
"The
real cream on the cake was the lyrics. No-one had any idea what they were going
to be, not even Bryan Ferry. The whole instrumental thing was totally recorded
before there was any idea at all about what the lyric was going to be. We added
textures, and Bryan put it all into focus by adding the lyric, which was
brilliant. Bryan may have had an idea, but he certainly never told anybody.
"
"That was the beginning of a
method of working where we'd record everything, do all the overdubs, and then
he'd take it away, scratch his head, and try to write a top line. I think about
60% of the time over the whole period of Roxy Music it worked really well - 40%
was pretty average. When it worked it was tremendous."
The middle
section of 'Do The Strand', over a couple of repeated chords, is a good example
of how in this period Roxy Music managed
to slip a few layers of their more adventurous tapes-and-treatments experiments
into good pop songs.
Phil Manzaner
and Brian Eno were both using Revox tape machines then, on stage and in the
studio, modified to give ADT and layering facilities; Phil's also had a pedal
to adjust the machine's motor speed for echo effects. On stage Phil's guitar
would be split from his Pete Cornish pedalboard to the Revox and to Eno's famous
'treatment' VCS3 synth.
"You can see it on that 'Whistle
Test' film of 'Ladytron' that they keep showing - at the end there's supposed
to be a solo between the two of us where he treated what I played. But a lot of
the time the sound that was coming out of the amp didn't seem to relate to what
I was playing at all. I'd be looking at Eno: what are you doing?"
σύνδεσμος ακρόασης “Ladytron”:
Roxy
Music - Ladytron (Old Grey Whistle Test, 1972) - YouTube
"LOVE
IS THE DRUG"
(45 released 10.1975)
Side A: “Love Is The Drug”
(composers: Bryan Ferry / Andy
Mackay)
Side B: “Sultanesque”
(composer: Bryan Ferry)
“Love Is The Drug”, Roxy Music, 1975
O δίσκος 45 στροφών (αγγλική κυκλοφορία, 1975)
/ - το εξώφυλλο του δίσκου 45
στροφών
(γαλλική-ιταλική κυκλοφορία,
1975)
(φωτο: discogs)
/ - το εξώφυλλο του δίσκου 45
στροφών
( ισπανική κυκλοφορία, 1975 )
(φωτο:
discogs)
/ - το εξώφυλλο του δίσκου 45
στροφών
( Δυτικογερμανική κυκλοφορία,
1975)
(φωτο:
discogs)
Once the basic chord sequence,
written by Bryan Ferry and Andy Mackay, had been recorded in mid 1975, things began
to sound "very dirgey" as Phil Manzanera describes it.
Suddenly, Johnny Gustafson put
down the simply brilliant bass line you hear on the record, instruments
instantly found themselves surrounded by space, and the future of the track was
clear. It's the peak, reckons Phil, of the 'part-playing' method shown them by
producer Chris Thomas: from the second album on Thomas had taught Roxy how to
layer parts and, crucially, to understand how less (going on) is often more
(coming out the speakers).
A strong reggae influence guides
the spare rhythm guitar on the verse, while a whiter Beatles/Byrds flavour is
evident in the jangle of the chorus chords.
As was nearly always the case with
Roxy Music, no-one had any idea what they lyric would be until everything was
recorded and Bryan Ferry went away for some lonesome head-scratching.
"It's not that removed from
if you're writing a song on your Portastudio and you create an atmosphere with
synths and guitars," Phil Manzanera reckons.
"People do it different ways,
but if you create an instrumental mood and texture first, then quite frankly
it's easier to write lyrics. And if you get used to doing that then you get
better and better at it. By this stage there'd been 40 songs or something
written in that way, so Bryan Ferry was getting very good at it. But it didn't
always gel. When it did, like on 'Love Is the Drug', it was a big hit."
“Love Is The Drug”, Roxy Music (Live, 1975)
[ πηγή:
Y-tube ]
“Love Is The Drug”, Roxy Music (Live, 1975)
[ πηγή:
Y-tube ]
“Love Is The Drug”, Roxy Music (Live, 1975)
[ πηγή:
Y-tube ]
“Love Is The Drug”, Roxy Music (Live, 1975)
[ πηγή: Y-tube ]
σύνδεσμος ακρόασης:
Roxy
Music - Love Is The Drug 1975 Live Performance
𝐑𝐨𝐱𝐲 𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐜 - 𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐈𝐬 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐫𝐮𝐠 - 𝐎𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥
...
Αποσπάσματα από συνέντευξη του Phil Manzanera
“Manzanera Memories”
By Tony Bacon
Making Music magazine, June 1986
/ - το εξώφυλλο του τεύχους
Δημοσίευμα 2:
Συνέντευξη 1978
Phil Manzanera
By Ralph Denyer
At the age of nine Colombian-born
Phil Manzanera was living with his family in Venezuela. He began to develop an
interest in music through American visitors to the country, boys a few years
older than himself who would play electric guitars at parties and get a lot of
attention.
Phil's father was an airline pilot
who took advantage of free air travel for his family, so between the ages of
ten and 16 years Phil was commuting back and forth to England for schooling. At
the same time he was being exposed to the explosive Beatles/Rolling Stones era
first hand. Still thinking that being popular with girls at parties could be
quite enjoyable, he became more and more interested in music.
'By the time I was around ten years
old I was totally obsessed by rock music. I was spending all my money on
records and anything to do with music. Then I bought a cello guitar with a
Hofner pickup and later nearly bankrupted my father by getting a Hofner Galaxy
for £50, a lot of money in those days.'
He worked at learning to play just
like the other kids he knew who had guitars. He sent off for a book on music
theory. Somehow he just wasn't getting on as well as the other kids.
'I used to try to learn how to play
solos from records, I tried slowing them down. But I could never do it properly
and there was always someone who could play better. So I gave that up and
decided I would just have to try and play my own way and that if people didn't
like it, that was just too bad.'
Towards the end of his schooling in
England Phil Manzanera formed “Quiet Sun”, which was to be his only band before
joining Roxy Music.
'When Quiet Sun was first going Bill McCormick (bass player) and I used
to listen to every kind of music we could lay our hands on. Varese, Bartok,
Charles Ives, all the Miles Davis stuff and freeform jazz. Even the whole
American east and west coast things. We just used to try and freak each other
out with amazing records.
We were friendly with Robert Wyatt
who was in Soft Machine at the time and we admired that group. In fact I always
wanted my guitar to sound like Mike Ratledge's Lowrey organ which he used to
play through a fuzz pedal, a very smooth sound.'
In two years Quiet Sun rehearsed an awful lot and did three gigs, so when the
chance arose to join a new and interesting band Phil checked it out.
'I got in touch with Bryan Ferry when
the group first formed, before Dave O'List joined (in the band for five months
only), but at that time they wanted a name guitarist to help launch the group.
I met them in September '71 and
Dave joined in October. They did gigs until Christmas but it didn't work out
with Dave - though I think he is a great player. They rang me up, I went round
to see them and it gradually worked out.
I'd been playing quite structured
music in Quiet Sun, with complicated
time signatures for that long ago. In fact my 801 Live album is similar to the
music that band used to play. I wanted a complete change and there was Bryan Ferry,
Andy Mackay, Brian Eno, and Graham Simpson, the original bass player, with music that seemed
incredibly simple but very atmospheric with a real strong vibe about it. I
really felt I was getting into rock music, but the type of rock that was more
interesting. At the time I considered myself to be going from jazzy music into
something really simple. It was amazing because having to deal with one or two
chord numbers was much more difficult than playing complicated stuff. I added
another dimension to my whole musical outlook by joining Roxy, creating moods
and textures.'
By the time Roxy Music had recorded
their third album [Stranded, November 1973], Manzanera had gone
through considerable conceptual development and established an individual
reputation.
In 1974 he went on to contribute,
be it as guitarist, co-composer or producer, to Roxy's Country Life [November 1974],
Brian Eno's Here
Come The Warm Jets [February 1974] and Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) [November
1974], Bryan Ferry's Another Time, Another Place [July 1974], John
Cale's Fear
[October 1974] and Nico's The End [November 1974].
'I like to think of myself as the
typical primitive guitarist, I do everything on pure speculation. I'm always
exploring the fretboard and sometimes hit bum notes, it's almost integrated
into my style because I do it naturally.
'My whole approach has always been to
see playing the guitar as a lifetime thing. A lot of people come into the
business from different areas, art schools and the like, and have something
else they can do which I always find incredible. But I've only got this one
thing. I didn't want to learn everything about the guitar in a year or two, or
improve my technique quickly. I just want to learn gradually and keep myself
interested. Every year I learn something new.'
With two albums still to come from
Roxy Music, Phil Manzanera made his first solo album Diamond Head with help from Brian Eno,
among others [April 1975].
He went on to reform Quiet Sun to record the Mainstream
album, teamed up with Brian Eno, Simon Philips, Francis Monkman and Lloyd
Watson for the infamous 801 Live set [March 1976].
/ - το εξώφυλλο:
801 Live
Phil Manzanera in 1977 released
his Listen
Now album [September 1977] on which Kevin Godley and Lol Creme were
among the players. The latter duo are good friends of Phil's, and in fact Lol
played some gizmo on one Listen Now track.
Sound International magazine, November 1978.
ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΟΓΡΑΦΟΣ
[ ανάρτηση 10 Απριλίου 2024 :
Phil Manzanera
guitarist
Interview June 1986
Making Music magazine June 1986
Interview November 1978
Sound International magazine November 1978
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