Q&A: Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera shares stories from the Cuban Revolution to stardom

In 1971, guitarist Phil Manzanera was a 20-year-old rock guitarist without a band. Then, a friend showed him an ad in Melody Maker magazine for a band that needed someone just like him.

“The Perfect Guitarist for Avant-Rock Group,” the ad read. “Original, creative, adaptable, melodic, fast, slow, elegant, witty, scary, stable, tricky.”

Call Roxy, it finished, and Manazanera did just that.

“I was sort of up to here with playing prog rock,” Manazanera says of his previous band, Quiet Sun.