Born into a line of pirates and possible spies, the guitarist went from Castro-era Cuba to art-pop’s greatest group. As his solo work is reissued, he explains why he was too adventurous for his old band

In the booklet that accompanies Phil Manzanera’s career-spanning, 11-CD box set, 50 Years of Music, there is a photocopied page of small ads from a 1971 edition of Melody Maker. In between the news that chart-topping comedy trio the Scaffold need a “sensitive musician” for a university tour, and an unnamed German rock drummer “seeks a good heavy group (no time-wasters)”, lurks an appeal from an “avant-rock group” in search of a guitarist. It says nothing about their sound or their influences, but offers an intriguing set of adjectives: the successful applicant will be “fast, slow, elegant, witty, scary, stable, tricky”.

As Manzanera explains, had he not been sufficiently intrigued to apply, “we wouldn’t be sitting here today” – on a video call, with him in his London studio. He didn’t initially get the job with the nascent Roxy Music, but stayed in the band’s orbit. When their first choice didn’t work out, he stepped in, joining something he wryly describes today as less a band than “an art collective experiment, by two different branches of the art world – Brian Eno’s art education, Bryan Ferry’s art education. And I was just a puppet in this sort of art project, which I’m very proud to have been”.