Revolución To Roxy EXPRESSION
A most enjoyable dive into the Roxy Music guitarist’s storied past.
Phil Manzanera is one the true gentlemen of music. “I hope you’ll find my family’s history every bit as fascinating as anything in my 50-year career in music,” the guitarist writes in this entertaining autobiography. “Of course, it’s no problem if you want to skip straight to Roxy, but I think you’ll be missing out on some cracking stories if you do.”
This much is true. While future Roxy Music bandmate Bryan Ferry was dreaming of America in the north east of England, Manzenera had already seen the world. Born Phillip Targett-Adams in London to an English father who worked for the BOAC (the precursor to British Airways) and a Colombian mother (from whom he took his stage surname), he had lived in Hawaii, Argentina, Columbia, Venezuela and Cuba before he reached his teens. Today, that past would be a badge of honour for a group, but back then Manzanera would “apologetically say in press interviews that my trajectory was a million miles from theirs, but that wasn’t what they wanted to hear”.
Revolución To Roxy is full of the detail that’s to be expected from a player as fastidious as Manzanera. Heath Row (as the airport was then called) is vividly recreated, as is his flight as a six-year-old on a BOAC Stratocruiser, and watching the Cuban revolution unfold through the eyes of a child. Yet if an in-depth expose of the ups and downs of Roxy’s career is required, look elsewhere. Like the group’s l
