Phil Manzanera / 50 Years of Music – review

There are many kinds of guitarist in rock music, and there are many roles for guitarists, too. Some of them are wild axe heroes like Jimi Hendrix or Ritchie Blackmore, carving out massive solos in the middle of otherwise perfectly innocent songs. Others are happy to add a discreet bit of rhythm here and there, like whatever the guitarist in Coldplay is called. And there’s a third, arguably more important, kind of guitarist – the enabler.

The enabler is a musician who has talent, and originality, but who is sought after for their skills in making things better: not just adding brilliant bits of guitar, but doing what people insist on calling Realising The Vision – taking ideas and ways of doing things, and turning them into something clearer, more focussed.  Not just in the way a great session person does, a musician who does what they’re asked, but someone who brings forth sweetness from something unformed. The best example of this is probably Mick Ronson, who not only gave his employer David Bowie some much-needed rock credibility early on in Bowie’s 1970s career, but also famously shaped some incredibly vague song ideas into the Ziggy Stardust sound that made Bowie a star and rode him out of glam rock on the crest of a stompy-booted wave.

And, just as famously, Ronson’s own work as a solo artist was somewhat underpowered. A brilliant guitarist, Ronson never seemed to quite commit to being a star: his own records lacked the spark of ambition and untrammelled invention. Some people, it seems, are just better off as enablers (and Ronson did find a new, happier home as Ian Hunter’s musical collaborator, where once again he translated someone else’s ideas into something different and better).

Phil Manzanera is undoubtedly one of rock music’s great enablers. His work with Roxy Music took Bryan Ferry’s songs into new directions and away from the 12 bar blues ordinariness that Ferry sometimes drifted into. Manzanera’s guitar playing could be both conventional and ‘rocking’, but was also open to experiment and novelty: sometimes quite literally, on early tracks where his playing was filtered through Eno’s mechanical devices. In later years, Manzanera’s work with Roxy was funky, sometimes reflected his own Latin American roots, veered towards hard rock and, on the band’s final recordings, took on Ferry’s smooth, melancholic 80s direction without a hiccup.

And it wasn’t just with Roxy Music that Phil Manzanera did his best enabling. He was the guitarist who gave a kick to the quirk of Brian Eno’s early solo albums, becoming as much a part of the Eno sound as Eno himself. He worked with old friend Robert Wyatt on Wyatt’s marvellous Shleep album. He was a member of several bands, most notably the avanty Quiet Sun and the Eno-featuring 801. And, perhaps most visibly, he was one of David Gilmour’s small crew of collaborators when Gilmour resuscitated Pink Floyd in the 1980s. 

All in all, if you wanted your vision sharpening, Phil Manzanera was the person to turn to. But what about Manzanera’s own work? Because aside from the collaborations and the guest appearances and the co-writes, Phil Manzanera has also managed to maintain an extensive – very extensive – solo career. Which brings us here, to his latest release.

Phil Manzanera: 50 Years of Music is a massive set of 11 – that’s right, ladies and gentlemen, you heard correctly, 11) Manzanera solo albums, from 1975’s Diamond Head to 2015’s The Sound Of Blue (there’s also a disc of rarities in case you panicked and thought you might run out of Phil Manzanera solo albums). Along with the music, if you’re looking for something to do with your hands, there’s a 100-page book full of photos, drawing, sleeve notes, unused artwork, and probably a map of the universe with all known time portals circled in red. It is an epic collection, put together with the kind of love and care usually reserved for a royal baby. But is it any good?

The answer, fortunately, is yes. While there isn’t an enormous amount of change between 1975 and 2015 – Manzanera would probably disagree, but these records largely ring the changes on a musical style that’s established fairly early on – they all sound pretty good. And there is enough variety to make the listener want to return to the attractive slipcase and slide out another CD.

Perhaps most significantly, the album here which stands out the most is 50 Minutes Later, which is in part a tribute to Manzanera’s youth as a kid in the world of psychedelic rock. As he sings and reminisces about those old Floyd gigs at the UFO Club, the music twists and turns into aptly psychedelic shapes and for a moment, Manzanera seems to assume a character, giving him a Bowie-like confidence, as if working from behind a persona gives the music a new edge.

By and large, consistency is in fact part of the vibe: again and again, the same names occur. Fortunately, these are names like “Brian Eno” and “Robert Wyatt” so there’s quality in large amounts. There are other, less expected names, like 10cc’s Godley and Crème, and Neil and Tim Finn, who worked with Manzanera on his album K-Scope, when they were still in Split Enz. And throughout there’s Manzanera’s consistent, reassuring, often Latin-inspired groove: he’s always had the funk, which is why he’s been sampled by everyone from Ice T (That’s How I’m Livin’) to, most famously, Jay-Z and Kanye West (the riff from ‘K-Scope’ underpins ‘No Church In The Wild’, a song which Manzanera covers here, bringing it all full circle).

Everything connects to Manzanera’s musical motto, “sin fronteras” – without frontiers. This is a musician who’s not content to stand on stage and fill in the bits where the singer’s having a glass of water: he may be a modest man (he somewhat under-described his role in Roxy Music as  “a puppet in this sort of art project”) and he may be more famous for his bug shades than his face, but Manzanera is a unique and extraordinary talent.

Review by David Quantick. Phil Manzanera: 50 Years of Music is out now, via UMR.

• Order 50 Years of Music at the Sound of Vinyl

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