Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Creem AUGUST 1975 - by Tony Mastrianni

PHIL MANZANERA: DIAMOND HEAD

Okay, straight out, who's the premiere British guitarist of the '70s? Eric Clapton? (A great cure for insomnia.) Jimmy Page? (By the sounds of Physical Graffiti he's running out of riffs.) Jeff Beck? (Blow By Blow merely pays tribute to Roy Buchanan and Jeff's favourite songwriters.) All out of Yardbirds, how about Mick Ronson? (His live gig with Hunter almost restored my confidence in him. Almost.) How about Roxy's own Cuban flamethrower Phil Manzanera?, Remember Re-Make/Re-Model, those psychedelic searings that shot out of the past right into the future like the present didn't even exist? Well, this is a guitar player's solo album. Full of passionate chops and shattering leads. Four solid Manzanera instrumentals, two Eno songs, a Robert Wyatt song sung in drunken Spanish, a John Wetton song (all co-written by Phil) and a song that reveals what his prior band the Quiet Sun was all about. I call that one hell of a package, and yes he gets my vote.