Back in 2006, Phil Manzanera was three years removed from Roxy Music’s latest reunion and back in the mix as a hired gun, working for the likes of Robert Wyatt, Brian Eno, Annie Lennox and Chrissie Hynde, among others, as well as recording his own albums. But a stint as David Gilmour’s right-hand man was a welcome addition to the regimen.
“I met David when I was 15, the week he joined Pink Floyd,” Manzanera tells us via phone from his home in Sussex in the English countryside — next door to Gilmour’s, in fact. “Pink Floyd was the coolest band in the world back then, them and the Soft Machine.”
The two guitarists maintained their friendship, and Manzanera co-wrote the single “One Slip” with Gilmour for Pink Floyd’s 1987 comeback album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason.
Fast forward 19 years and Gilmour was preparing for his own comeback with On an Island, his first solo outing in 22 years and his first album since Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell in 1994. He recruited Manzanera to co-produce with himself and Chris Thomas, as well as play guitar on three of the album’s 10 tracks — joining a corps that included Pink Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright and latter-day bassist Guy Pratt, along with David Crosby, Graham Nash, Robert Wyatt, Jools Holland, Georgie Fame and others.
“David doesn’t need a producer,” Manzanera says, “but he likes to have company to bounce his ideas off of, or to say, ‘I’ve got 10 ideas — any of these any good?’”
There were 153 little bits, so I would take it to my studio and go back the following week and say, ‘Bit number 78 with bit number 13, and then a bit of number 121.’”
— Phil Manzanera
Manzanera created a chart on which he noted which pieces of music might work well together.
“There were 153 little bits, so I would take it to my studio and go back the following week and say, ‘Bit number 78 with bit number 13, and then a bit of number 121.’ And David would say, ‘What’s that?’ and I’d say, ‘That’s you. You did that!’” He laughs. “He’d either go with it or wouldn’t, but he did go with a lot of the stuff.
“He just had too much stuff accumulated and wanted a bit of help to sort it out. I’m used to doing albums and things.”
Working alongside Gilmour at his houseboat studio Astoria and his studio in Sussex, Manzanera helped him complete the album. Nearby sat Gilmour’s circa-1954 Stratocaster with the serial number 0001, which he purchased in 1978 and reportedly used on “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2.”
“I’d just sit there and have his number 0001 Strat next to me, looking at it,” Manzanera says. “It was just a lot of fun.”
Manzanera adds that all concerned were well aware that Gilmour “hadn’t done anything in a while… so I was just trying to be supportive of him, as a friend, and wanting him to succeed.”
He’s also an unabashed Gilmour fan.
When I did ‘Wish You Were Here,’ I got to play it on the actual acoustic 12-string he played on the original, so that was a lot of fun, too.”
— Phil Manzanera
“I love his voice,” Manzanera notes. “Obviously everyone goes on about the guitar, which is fantastic, but I just love that voice. It’s so unique. He does a lot of stuff so well — still does it so well. It’s amazing.”
After On an Island’s release in March 2006, Gilmour recruited Manzanera to be part of the band for a spring and summer tour supporting the album, along with Wright and Pratt.
“When we did ‘Wish You Were Here,’ I got to play it on the actual acoustic 12-string he played on the original, so that was a lot of fun, too.”
Manzanera also co-produced Gilmour’s next album, 2015’s Rattle That Lock, playing both acoustic guitar and keyboards on the album and again joining Gilmour on tour during 2015 and 2016.
In between, he was part of the production team for 2014’s The Endless River — to date the final Pink Floyd album. Intended as a tribute to Wright, who passed away in 2008, the 18 instrumental tracks were built from recordings made during sessions for Floyd’s 1994 album The Division Bell, with additional material added nearly two decades later.
“We were in David’s kitchen one day — this is after Rick died — and there were all these tapes,” Manzanera recalls. “David asked, ‘Do you fancy having a listen and see if you can make anything out of it?’
“So I went away for six weeks and listened to every scrap. I loved Rick’s Farfisa organ from the early Pink Floyd albums, so I particularly chose bits that had it. That was such a unique aspect of Floyd that hadn’t been spotlighted enough.”
After cutting and pasting clips together, Manzanera felt he could create something cohesive from the recordings. Gilmour liked what he heard, but Manzanera was concerned about playing it for Nick Mason.
“I thought, How am I gonna play this to Nick? I’ve taken a few liberties with his drums — one bit from here, one bit from there. Finally I thought, Right, I’m gonna turn the lights off, put the screen saver on and put the music on and just not look at him.
“He listened to it and said at the end, ‘Yeah, there might be something there.’ Phew!”
After a break of a few months, Gilmour pushed everyone into the studio to finish the recording.
“David said, ‘Look, why don’t we all go into the studio at the same time and try and finish this off together?’”
Gilmour recruited his wife, the English novelist and writer Polly Samson, to compose lyrics for the album’s only non-instrumental track, “Louder Than Words.” With assistance from producer Youth, “we all worked together and got it done,” Manzanera says.
The Endless River hit number one in quite a few countries around the world, including the U.K., and number three on the Billboard 200 in the U.S.
Manzanera — who received an Order of the British Empire honor in 2024 — tells many of his other stories in his 2024 memoir Revolución to Roxy, and has brought his An Evening of Words and Music show to the U.S. Current dates include Space in Chicago on May 18, the Shank in Milwaukee on May 19 and the Quinlan Room in Minneapolis on May 20 (tickets and other details via manzanera.com).
In the studio, the guitarist is also prepping a 51st-anniversary reissue (scheduled for September 11) of Mainstream by his pre-Roxy band Quiet Sun, as well as a brand-new album by the band. There will also be a boxed-set edition of Roxy Music’s second album, For Your Pleasure, remastered by Steven Wilson and due out this fall.
“It’s a really great package, with lots of extra stuff on it,” Manzanera says. “I’ve been waiting for this for years, ’cause it’s one of my favorite albums. I heard the Dolby Atmos mix that Steven did; there’s lots of great things Eno had done that I never heard before… ’cause back then you were constrained by the length of sides on vinyl. If you had extra stuff you couldn’t use it, but now it will have a chance to be heard, which is exciting.”
