Phil Manzanera

Phil Manzanera's solo career started spectacularly...working on:

Brian Eno's Here Come The Warm Jets 1973 &
ex-Velvet Underground member John Cale's Fear 1974
then co-writing the album Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy 1974 with Eno once more

And by the time Manzanera released his first album Diamond Head in 1975, things were going, as they used to say, swimmingly.

Phil Manzanera Diamond Head

Phil Manzanera: Diamond Head

Reviewed as a real critical success with Manzanera keeping his famous friends:

Eno
Soft Machine's Robert Wyatt
King Crimson's John Wetton (founding member & singer for Asia)
Roxy Music's Paul Thompson, Eddie Jobson & Andy Mackay

...well in check, producing what was, for me, the last great Prog-rock album, one which I still play reasonably often.

Phil Manzanera

LIVE with Roxy Music: Diamond Head (+ nasty edit!)

Half instrumental, Diamond Head does have some vocals:

Robert Wyatt singing the first track Frontera, all in Cockney-tinged Spanish
Eno's droll sounding on Big Day, with bizarre sometimes nonsensical travelogue lyrics about Peru
John Wetton's stud-and-his-babe-duo with Roxy Music back-up singer, Doreen Chanter, Same Time Next Week &
Eno again with the simply superb and utterly memorable lyrical nonsense of Miss Shapiro

However, the vocals and lyrics are merely accents for the music and the restrained, tasteful guitar of Phil Manzanera.

Diamond Head is a wonderful, almost unclassifiable album...and a real glimpse of a much funkier Roxy Music had Bryan Ferry been less of a control freak and kept working consistently with the band.

Phil Manzanera: Diamond Head

"...The whole album is excellent, mixing a sort of Pink Floyd-esque psychedelia with a bit of Eno-like weirdness..." Amazon reviewer Gus

"...Take the unmatchable majesty of Phil Manzanera's kookiest guitar, shake it up with the madness of King Eno and...well, just listen to those chorus lines. On Miss Shapiro for example, go ahead and make sense of that:

Discover Eno retailing crumbly cosmetics on his journeys round the world
Meander through trans-global music before anyone thought it could be cool

...You don't get that from Boyzone...Go out and find a convert. Make their day..." Amazon.co.uk David Cushman

In 1976 Manzanera created a one-off band with Brian Eno called 801, for a series of concerts. They recorded 801 LIVE, an unheralded classic, which included some tracks from Diamond Head.

He has released several largely instrumental SOLO albums and in the 1980s he also formed a band with Roxy Member Andy Mackay, The Explorers. Manzanera now still works as a record producer, mainly with artists considered his peers.