Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera On His Latest Collaborative Album With Tim Finn

At the moment, British guitarist Phil Manzanera is on tour with his legendary band Roxy Music, who are marking the 50th anniversary of their self-titled debut album. Outside of his famed work with Roxy, Manzanera has consistently maintained a lengthy and adventurous solo career whose music has incorporated experimental rock, prog rock and Latin music. Additionally, he has collaborated with a number of famous musicians such as Brian Eno, David Gilmour, John Cale and the late John Wetton. (His riffs were also sampled by hip-hop stars Kanye West and Jay-Z for their 2011 song “No Church in the Wild”)

Another of Manzanera’s credits includes the role of record producer—among them New Zealand rock band Split Enz’s 1976 album Second Time. Split Enz, which featured singer Tim Finn, previously opened for Roxy Music’s Australian tour in 1975. It marked the start of a friendship between Manzanera and Finn that continues to this day, as indicated on their latest collaborative record The Ghost of Santiago. The follow-up to their 2021 album Caught by the Heart, The Ghost of Santiago is a dreamy, atmospheric, evocative and romantic work drawing from art rock, electronic music, jazz and Latin music.

Both the Finn and Manzanera albums were recorded during the 2020 lockdown and showcase Finn’s warm intimate vocals and Manzanera’s dazzling guitar playing accompanied with sumptuous arrangements and production. The backstory of Manzanera and Finn’s recent collaboration (both of them have previously worked together on each other’s individual projects) could be traced to when Roxy Music were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019 at a ceremony in New York. “Stevie Nicks was getting her award that night,” Manzanera recalls. “A couple of tables away from us was the whole of Fleetwood Mac, and Neil Finn [also of Split Enz and Tim’s brother] was [subbing for] Lindsey Buckingham that year.

“So I bumped into Neil,” he continues. “And the party afterward, I had my picture taken with him and I sent it to Tim in Auckland. I said, ‘Look who I bumped into in New York?’ And he’s said, ‘Great. Do you fancy playing guitar on some tracks that me and Eddie [Rayner] are doing? So I said, ‘Sure.’ That was the year before lockdown. So I played on a project they had called Forenzics, which came out this year. And then when lockdown happened, he sent me an email saying, ‘Have you got any Latin grooves I can write something to, because we’re all locked down.’ I said, ‘You come to the right place, mate.’”

The two musicians worked together, albeit remotely, on about 25 songs—with 10 of them appearing on Caught by the Heart, and the other 10 on the new The Ghost of Santiago. “Those Finn brothers, boy, they just got it,” Manzanera marvels about Tim and Neil. “They’ve written some of the most beautiful songs. I was very, very happy to be working with Tim, who I have known since 1975 and who has worked on my solo albums over the years. Part of an extended family.”

The Latin influence on The Ghost of Santiago dominates the album, which is natural in Manzanera’s case given that he was born to a Colombian mother and British father, and his solo records carry Latin musical roots. And particularly on such tracks as the album’s title song, “Esperando La Caida” and “Costeño,” Finn uncannily sounds like a singer from Brazil or Chile even though he is a New Zealander.

“It’s incredible, isn’t it?” Manzanera says of Finn’s whispery, romantic Spanish-language delivery. “Because actually on the Forenzics album, he sings in French. I have another song, which we haven’t put out yet, which he sings in Italian. Singers actually like to sing in another language if they can, because they don’t really understand words–it sounds good to them. And he’s done very, very well. I’m bilingual in Spanish, so there’s no way I wouldn’t let anything go through that was slightly mispronounced.”

Manzanera is presently on the road with Roxy Music for several dates in the U.S. before heading back to the U.K. for three shows there. Amid this activity, is there a possibility that he and Finn would perform the songs from Caught by the Heart and The Ghost of Santiago in a live setting? “Obviously because of COVID you just don’t know,” explains Manzanera. “But it would be great if we could…because they’re great songs.”

The Ghost of Santiago by Tim Finn and Phil Manzanera is out now on Expression Records.