Phil Manzanera Confirms Roxy Music Won’t Play Live Again

Roxy Music has played their last concerts, according to Phil Manzanera. “It was a good time” to say goodbye, he tells UCR. “We might bring out a recording of that tour. I don’t think we’ll do any more live gigs, ever. I think that was it.”

When they first revealed plans to return to the road for a run of dates in September and October 2022, Roxy Music positioned it as a chance to celebrate their 50th anniversary. But even then, the guitarist felt the gravity of the moment.

“You never know when you get to this stage in one’s trajectory whether it’s going to be the last time, so you treat it as if it’s going to be the last time,” he said back then. “I’m gonna have the most fun possible.”

Manzanera has continued to work on a flurry of various projects since then. Of special note is Revolucion to Roxy, his memoir, which arrived earlier this year. He has long been a vivid storyteller, so the book is reliably engaging. It offers a fascinating view into the formative years of Manzanera’s upbringing and how they ultimately influenced the life in music that followed. A companion soundtrack adds an audio component to the autobiography, featuring 10 tracks. Five of them were previously unreleased.

He joined UCR to discuss a number of topics during a lengthy Zoom interview from his London studio.

I love that you made a “soundtrack” to go along with this book.
It came as an afterthought. You know, I thought about doing an audiobook and then I thought, “Oh no,” because it takes so long to do and it’s actually an incredibly tricky process. That’s why a lot of people get actors to do it and stuff like that – because it’s a nightmare for the actual person to do it. I can’t remember, did Keith Richards do his audiobook?

I think he did, at least parts of it.
Well, hats off to him, because it must have taken him forever.

It’s a pain in the ass.
It must have taken him forever to do. I thought, well, I’m a musician, I’m not really a writer. I have written some anecdotes and this memoir and stuff, some funny things. But since I’m a musician, I thought it would be good to have some music to illustrate a little bit of what I’m talking about. When I came to choosing the first track, “Magdalena,” it’s the name of my mother. She taught me how to play guitar in Cuba, just very simple stuff. She was from Colombia and they were South American-y type songs, with a little bit of a flavor that had the Latin thing with it. Halfway through the track, which is some sort of dream sequence [there’s] a bit of Latin music which really, I think comes mainly from my remembrance from what a Brazilian number, “Orpheus Negro,” was like. And then it goes into almost like a Santana-type track and comes to life [in that way].

Listen to Phil Manzanera’s ‘Magdalena’

I thought, well, that’s quite fitting, because [Carlos] Santana was the first guy to really integrate rock with Latin beats in that way — and he’s a beautiful guitarist. So there are things like that. Then I’ve also got some pizzica music, which relates to the chapter when I was the [musical director] for the La Notte della Taranta, which is in Puglia in the south of Italy. It was a genre of music that most people had never heard of. It has a thousand-year-old tradition — and who knew that? Until I was asked to do it, I’d never heard of pizzica. Then, you start analyzing it and you find that Alan Lomax, who discovered and did the whole history of the blues in the States and everything, went over to Puglia and did a whole lot of research on pizzica music. So it’s like wheels within wheels. There’s connections all over the place.

So, some of this music is like a springboard that I can then talk about my anecdotes with. The whole end sequence is when I did Guitar Legends in Seville and that relates to my encounter with Bob Dylan. [Laughs] And all of that kind of stuff. I could have gone on forever, but obviously, you can only have [so much music]. I only wanted 10 tracks. There’s a couple of new things in there. For instance, “Lady of the Lake,” most people think is written by Schubert. It has a sort of religious connotation, which is not what he intended at all. It was grabbed hold of by the Catholic Church and turned into “Ave Maria.” Well, it was about a Scottish poem! It had no religious [intent]. But people know it in one way, so I liked the idea of that. Also, it shows the diversity of the music that I like and the music that I like to play.

READ MORE: Roxy Music Inducted Into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

You mentioned Bob Dylan and obviously, he’s known to be a quirky person. How much were you aware of that going into the whole experience?
No idea at all. [Laughs] Apparently, everybody’s got a Bob Dylan story – because the guy is a genius and he’s so famous. I adore everything he does. But naively, you know, I was a certain age and I thought, “Right. He’s coming down and we’re going to rehearse.” I was the musical director for the whole five nights. I had a budget of seven million pounds, so it was like 10 million dollars. I could ring anybody in the world — famous guitar players, bass players, drummers, you name it — all of the top people, to come and play each night in Seville. It was a pre-event for Expo ‘92. The venue was beautiful and everything. Live on television in the U.K. and America. It was a big deal. I could choose the concepts for each night.

So obviously, I went through [all of it]. “I’m going to have a blues night, we’re going to get B.B. King. We’re going to have a rock night and get Brian May.” All of that kind of stuff. Then, we’re going to have a country night, a folk night — we can get Roger McGuinn. We’ll have Les Paul there. I ran out of concepts, so the last night was my night that I was in charge of as well. So I got supposedly all of the others. And the “others” were Bob Dylan, Joe Cocker, Steve Cropper, Keith Richards, Jack Bruce. All of these kinds of people and I chose some Spanish people as well. My job was to also go through with Bob what we were going to play and rehearse it with the rest of the band. We had the most fantastic group. The Miami Horns, I had Simon Phillips on drums, Jack Bruce on bass, the best people. I’m thinking, “How am I going to approach this?” I thought, “I’ll go to a record store in London and just make sure I’m covered for every Dylan song ever.”

He arrives and his manager comes up and says, “Hi, Phil, this is Bob.” It’s like, yeah, I know who this is! “Hi, I’m Phil. It’s great to meet you!” I say to him, “We’ve got all of your tunes. Choose anything you want to play.” He says, “Oh, do you know a Tex-Mex song from 1947?” And I think, “Oh shit.” I thought we were going to play Dylan songs! I said, “No, but you play it to us and we’ll learn it.” He proceeds to play it differently every time. I’m looking at Jack Bruce and Simon Phillips and they all start making excuses to leave the room. [Laughs] I’m left there with Bob. We’ve got this amazing band and he says [after they leave], “Perhaps we should just play with two acoustic guitars.” Shit! I said, “But, it’s called Guitar Legends and they really want us to play ‘All Along the Watchtower.’” The thought bubble came out above my head, sort of saying, “Don’t say this.” I said, “….but it’s the Hendrix version, not your version.” [Laughs] I thought, “Oh no, we’re screwed.”

But genuinely, upon reflection, I think he probably thought I was Mexican, with a name like Manzanera and he was being nice to me. Or was he playing with me? You know, you read all of the stories about The Last Waltz with the Band, and George Harrison at Madison Square Garden and you think, “Oh, no, he’s just playing with you, because he’s Bob Dylan.” But in my mind, I thought, well, he’s Bob Dylan, he can do whatever he wants, so I’ll just suck it up, I guess! As long as he comes out! And then the manager said, “Well, he might come out — he might not.” He said, “Who’s going to sing if he doesn’t come out?” I looked at Jack Bruce and [he said in so many words], “Fuck, I’m not doing that.” At that point, I’m the musical director for the whole thing and it’s going live on TV. The manager [followed that] and said, “If he does come out, can you introduce him, please?”

So obviously, [I felt] relief when I looked around and saw the black shirt with the white spots on it at the back of the stage, “Oh, phew, he’s coming out.” So I said in Spanish, “Senors and Senoritas, Senor Bob Dylan!” We had no idea what he was going to play. So if you watch on YouTube, you can see me looking at Richard Thompson going, “Wait, so is that G or C? What song is this?” You know, you can hardly decipher sometimes what the songs are — and that’s his mythology. But you know what? I saw that special thing that he did recently that was pretending to be in a club and it was absolutely brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. So you know, hats off to the guy. But it was a challenging experience.

Watch Bob Dylan Perform ‘All Along the Watchtower’ in Seville

What’s the moment where you realized the essence of who Brian Eno was creatively?
When I went for the audition, I met the four guys who were there that day, Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry, Andy Mackay and Graham Simpson. I don’t think Paul Thompson was there that day. I knew they were special. They’re a bit older than me. And they were grownups. They’d been to university, they had degrees, they had bank accounts. They had a car! They had taken out a loan and bought a little PA. I was very impressed. I can spot talent. That’s one thing I think I’m good at. I was brought up with my friends at school listening to everything that happened in the ‘60s. Frank Zappa, obviously, the Beatles, the avant-garde music. Everything. I could tell what was what. There was just something about these guys that was special and something that was very unique about Eno as well – because he was good at chatting and explaining why he was a conceptual artist, really, but that he was a non-musician. Evidently, he wasn’t a complete non-musician. [Laughs] But he certainly liked to have that idea that he was a bit of a disruptor. We got on very well. We used to experiment a lot around his apartment and stuff with tape recorders and stuff like that. It was great. And he’s still the same person he was when I first met him. What he believes in and everything, he’s been incredibly successful doing exactly what he set out to do. It was just a wonderful happenstance that I met these guys. Of course, I did fail the audition to start with.

That’s a minor complication.
Yeah, but lucky them! They eventually came back and asked me to join — and lucky me.

READ MORE: The Day Brian Eno Left Roxy Music

Given your vast body of work, what record do you think would be the best introduction to you for younger players that are unfamiliar with what you’ve done? Where do you start?
Well, personally, I would say For Your Pleasure [by Roxy Music], which has “In Every Dream Home a Heartache” on it, which that was really what we were all about at that stage in Roxy. It’s a million miles away from Avalon. Really, on our farewell tour which we did in the States two years ago in October, we got a chance – and I got a chance – to show what I do virtually for the first time, really. Because I had the technology, I had the visual context for our farewell tour. It’s not maybe what a lot of people thought. You know, when I said I was a primitive guitarist, I really meant it. It’s somebody who decided when he was 17 or 18 that he wanted to spend the whole of his life learning a certain technical thing and not to have too much technique, to deal in other commodities and sound textures and feeling in music.

It wasn’t about a blur of notes — just making every note count, whether it’s sound-wise or by choice. If you hear “In Every Dream Home a Heartache,” you’ll hear the way me and Eno used to work together on treatments — treating my guitar or [using] heavy guitar. In the track “Ladytron,” from the first album, you’ll hear again, that same sort of thing. That was my happy place. You know, when you’re in a band and you’ve got songs with someone singing, you have to serve the song. When you get the instrumental bits, it’s like, you’re free and you can fly. But that’s part of the thing about being in a band. You have to be restrained and people want to hear the words that the singer is singing. But then when he stops and it becomes like a free-for-all, then we really get going. [Laughs]

Listen to Roxy Music’s ‘Ladytron’

READ MORE: Top 10 Roxy Music Songs

You mentioned the Roxy Music farewell tour. How did you all arrive at the idea it was time to wrap it up?
Well, when it was mentioned that it was going to be our 50th anniversary…actually, I got a call from Bryan Ferry. He said, “Do you fancy doing some gigs? There’s a promoter in America who says he’d have us to do some gigs.” I’m always saying, “Yeah, sure. If you’re up for it, I’m up for it.” He said, “Yeah, I’m up for it.” So he went and got in touch with Andy, who said he was up for it — and Paul [was also interested]. Then, we realized, we haven’t got a manager, we don’t have a structure. We haven’t been together for 12 years. What are we going to do? We had to put all of that stuff together and luckily, it went [really well]. People were very kind and they knew it was a sort of farewell tour.

It finished at the O2 in London and it was all sold out. I think we thought, “Whoa, we haven’t said goodbye to Europe.” Then, we thought, “Oh, hang on — Brexit happened. It’s so difficult to go play in Europe.” And then the thought occurred, “Well, we finished on a great high. Perhaps we should just say, like poker, or something, ‘I’m out of here, that’s it.’” Let’s finish with something really good and not try and flog it and then people [might] say, “Oh, nah, [they’re] no good now.” So to a certain extent, we did our best and it was very, very enjoyable. As I said, I think it was the first time I thought we were able to play in the visual context we liked, with all of the imagery coming up — and put those songs into that visual context in the live situation. So it was a good time to [say goodbye]. We might bring out a recording of that tour. I don’t think we’ll do any more live gigs, ever. I think that was it.

When the tour was in the planning stages, what sort of conversations or interactions were there with Eddie Jobson?
Well, Eddie had played at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with us. But you know, he lives in New York and we’re in…it would just be too difficult. And we’re looking at the whole period of 12 years that Roxy existed. He was with us for about three years. Eno was with us for two years and then other people were in it. The four of us are still here talking to each other. Eno doesn’t like to go and deal with nostalgia. I do. [Laughs]