Phil Manning Band LIVE Around Oz 1975

  
Dave Ridoutt – 1975  and  2018                   Stan Evans 1975

Live Around Oz 1975 is a master lesson on the many shades of blues guitar.

This line-up with Paul Wheeler and Trevor Courtney only lasted a year. But as the performances show, they knew how to come together at just the right time.

(Paul Wheeler is now with The Dave Tice three and The Fred Kitzamura Band and Trevor Courtney is an organic hops farmer in his native New Zealand)

The boys on tour
  
The impression of the live recording is that there’s a lot of improvisation during the show.

But in reality, everything is kept tight and focussed – something Phil Manning learned when he toured with his idol Muddy Waters and his band.

Opening track, Robert Johnson’s “Walkin’ Blues” gets things off to a sturdy boogie start while “Sweet Little Angel” and “Tend To My Friend” are slices of gorgeous slow blues at the other end of the spectrum.

Many of the songs were written just after his first marriage, so Manning’s skill at catchy melodies work well with lyrical heart-on-the-sleeves love songs as “Angel Surrender”, “Sunset Song” and “Lay A Little Lovin’ On Me”.

The band take Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” and “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” and the George Harrison-penned Beatles album track “Tax Man” and put their stamp on it.

In the psychedelic ‘60s, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton saw a generation of Australian guitar shredders rush out to get wah-wah pedals to add to their arsenal of tones.

Phil Manning was no exception. Live Around Oz, 1975 is sprayed throughout with wah-wah sounds, demonstrating his perfect pitch whether using the sound to drive “Lover Baby”, “I’m Free” and “Taking Your Chances” or using it as a sound effect at the beginning of “Train To Ride”.

“I had a wah-wah by 1970, like every other guitar player,” Phil relates.

“There was the Vox Cry Baby which became the Jim Dunlop Cry Baby. I’ve still got my original one, in fact I use it on this ARCA recording!”

Listening to Phil Manning in full blues blast, it’s hard to believe that at one point his music career could have gone in an entirely different direction.

Born in Devonport, Tasmania in 1948, his grandfather was the leader of the La Trobe Federal (brass) Band.
 
Like the rest of the family, at six years old he started studying classical piano, until 14.

“My grandfather had an ill-fated experiment trying to get me to play coronet. That lasted a week.

“But I had a dozen or so aunties, all musical, and every Sunday when they’d visit, they’d all be around the piano singing old songs.

“My grandfather never liked the music of Chain. But he was immensely proud of the fact that one of his family was a professional musician AND had a hit (Chain’s “Black And Blue”) on the charts!”

A number of factors conspired to turn Manning into a blues guitarist.

“An American football coach came to our hometown of Davenport, he had all these records he’d brought from Japan… Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, so I got interested in all that music.

“I used to be able to get the radio from Melbourne.

“(The late legendary disc jockey) Stan Rofe had a show on 3UZ on the weekends, where he’d play R&B covers like ‘I’m A Man’ by the Yardbirds and Stones and then play the original versions by Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley.

“Hearing Muddy Waters doing ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ had a real profound effect on me.”

At 17 Manning went to art school in Hobart.

There an American folk aficionado Bill Hicks turned him on to his collection of acoustic folk blues by Robert Johnson, Bukka White, Leadbelly, and Sonny Terry & Brownie McGee.

Three records had a profound impact: Buddy Guy’s The First Time I Met The Blues, the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “Hey Joe” (“it sounded like it came from another planet”) and the John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton “ it changed the face of guitar playing.”

Phil Manning moved to Melbourne in late 1966 and joined Tony Worsley and The Blue Jays.

He played with a series of bands including Bay City Union, where he met singer Matt Taylor.

The pair later worked closely on Chain, one of the best blues bands to come out of Australia.

Their January 1971 single, “Black and Blue”, which Manning helped write, reached the top 20.

They had a second top 40 hit with “Judgement” issued in July.

That year Phil Manning was voted third best guitarist in Australia by the readers of Go-Set magazine.

Chain’s debut album Towards The Blues went Top 10 and certified gold.
 
Touring American bluesmen like Albert Collins were astounded by the Australian-ness of Chain’s music.

“I know it’s blues but it ain’t anything like the blues I’ve heard!” he said famously.

Phil would go off to do solo projects but would return to Chain to record and perform.

His debut solo album I Wish There Was A Way came out at the end of 1974, after which he formed the Phil Manning Band with an ever-changing lineup.

Through the years came acoustic solo album It’s The Blues (1988), cassette-only album Live At The Storey Bridge (1990), Can’t Stop (1992), The Back Shed (1995), Two Roads (1997), Take Note (2000), Migrants Dance (2003), The Essential Acoustic Collection (2006) and Checkmate Move (2010).

During the pandemic, he made Out Of My Shed, combining the blues (slide and fingerpicking) with a more recent obsession with Irish music.

He took up painting again, with plans for two exhibitions in 2023,at the Post Industrial Design gallery in late February and at Mario’s in July.

He also built his own Telecaster using wood from his back yard.

He has two daughters, a son McKinley who’s a guitarist, drummer and record engineer, and a number of grown-up stepchildren.

The Manning music dexterity has extended to another generation.

“My grandson Raphael is a hotshot guitarist player, he’s 19 and taught himself, and he scares the shit out of me!”