Фил Манзанера: гитарист, продюсер и автор песен

English guitarist (born 1951)

Phillip Geoffrey Targett Adams (born 31 January 1951), known professionally as Phil Manzanera, is an English musician, songwriter and record producer. He is the lead guitarist with Roxy Music, and was the lead guitarist with 801 and Quiet Sun. In 2006, Manzanera co produced David Gilmour's album On an Island, and played in Gilmour's band for tours in Europe and North America. He wrote and presented a series of 14 one hour radio programmes for station Planet Rock entitled The A Z of Great Guitarists.

The Roxy Music "long break" came to an end in 2001 with a critically and commercially successful 52 date world tour. In the summer of 2003 Roxy Music played 10 dates in the US, followed by 13 European gigs in 2004, including performing at Live 8 in Berlin. The ongoing reunion went on hiatus after their last performance of 2011, and they would not give another commercial performance for over a decade. Manzanera had a state of the art studio, Gallery Studios, in West London (now Songphonic Records). The first recording was Robert Wyatt's album Shleep (1996 1997) and the client list included Brian Eno, David Gilmour, Annie Lennox, Kevin Ayers, and Chrissie Hynde. Wyatt's critically acclaimed album Comicopera was recorded at Gallery in 2007. Manzanera began singing on his own albums with Vozero in 2001, followed by 6pm in 2004 and 50 Minutes Later in 2005. He appeared at The Strat Pack celebration concert at Wembley Arena in 2005, alongside other musicians such as Hank Marvin, Ronnie Wood and David Gilmour. He also worked as session musician on Eno and David Byrne's 2008 album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. Between 2003 and 2008, he collaborated with Colombian artist/sculptor Lucho Brieva in the group Corroncho. The project sprang from a Spanish version of the track Complicada, written by Brieva's wife Chrissie Hynde. The resulting album comprises a set of songs about two corroncho characters ("corroncho" being the pejorative name given by people from Bogotá to fellow Colombians from the Caribbean Coast, particularly Barranquilla). The album includes the musical styles of salsa, cumbia, pop music, ballads, and chill out and has guest appearances. Firebird V11 (2008) was another all instrumental album, recorded with a 3 piece backing group that included his old Quiet Sun bandmate Charles Hayward on drums, Polish jazz pianist Leszek Możdżer and bassist Yaron Stavi from the Gilad Atzmon band. It includes two original Quiet Sun tracks, written in 1970, which had never been previously recorded. As the title indicates, the album is a tribute to, and feature for, Manzanera's signature guitar, the red and black Gibson Firebird V11 guitar which he has played throughout his career – he can be seen holding the guitar in the "centrefold" photograph on Roxy Music's second album For Your Pleasure in 1972, and a photographically distorted image of it was used on the cover of Primitive Guitars. In 2011, Jay Z and Kanye West used a sample of a guitar riff from Manzanera's 1978 solo album K Scope in a track on their Watch the Throne album. Manzanera was allocated one third of resulting royalties and publishing revenue for the song. The album went Gold in the UK and Platinum in the US, and the song was used in the film The Great Gatsby and in tv commercials. Manzanera commented in 2024 that he had earned more from "a brief sequence of maybe twenty notes" than he had in his 50 years with Roxy Music. In 2015, he directed the final concert of the Notte della Taranta Festival, in Salento (Italy.) In March 2024, Manzanera published "Revolucion to Roxy", a memoir of his life and his time with Roxy Music.

Manzanera co produced David Gilmour's album On an Island. Manzanera also played rhythm guitar on Gilmour's world tour to support the album in 2006 and appears in Gilmour's concert films Remember That Night and Live in Gdańsk. Manzanera appears briefly playing a guitar solo in Red Dwarf series 6 episode "Psirens". Only his hands appeared playing the guitar, and his credit on the IMDb lists his role as "Hands of Psiren Lister". On screen he is credited as "the hands of Phil Manzanera". He wrote and presented a series of 14 one hour radio programmes for station Planet Rock entitled The A Z of Great Guitarists.

Manzanera has played a variety of instruments throughout his career, but he is best known for his "signature" guitar, a 1964 'Cardinal Red' Gibson Firebird VII, with gold plated pick ups and tuners. This guitar became widely known to fans after Manzanera posed with it during the photo session that produced the inner gatefold photo for Roxy Music's second album For Your Pleasure in 1972, and he has used it regularly throughout his career. Manzanera also frequently uses two custom made Gibson Les Paul guitars, one of which (picture above) features a mother of pearl inlay in the shape of an iguana. On tour and in the studio, Manzanera also regularly plays Fender Stratocasters, a Fender Telecaster, and Blade guitars. On the evidence of the cover photographs for the 801 Live album, he also played a Yamaha SG 2000 guitar (as used by Carlos Santana) during the 801 period. Beginning in the early days of Roxy Music, Manzanera's guitar sound was often heavily treated using various electronic devices and techniques, including processing the output of his guitar through Eno's synthesizers, both in the studio and on stage. This allowed him to create a wide range of sounds and textures, many of which are not immediately identifiable as having been produced by an electric guitar. On his solo album Primitive Guitars, all the sounds on the album except the drum machine and the bass played by John Wetton (on one track) were produced by Manzanera's guitars.

In 1977, Manzanera purchased St. Ann's Court, in Chertsey, consisting of a coach house, which Manzanera converted into a recording studio and a main house, designed in 1936 by the architect Sir Raymond McGrath. The gardens were created by Christopher Tunnard. The recording studio was used to record Manzanera's solo albums and Roxy Music's Flesh & Blood and Avalon. The main house later featured in the television production Poirot. Manzanera sold the property to 3Dlabs founder, Osman Kent, in 1997.