{ Lick That Riff! }

Hello everyone and welcome to another post in the series of Hero Worship, where I take a weekly look at someone who I think is a Guitar Legend. This week is the turn of Blur guitarist, Graham Coxon. A bit different from the flamboyant antics of last weeks Hero, Justin Hawkins. But a Guitar Hero none the less.

Coxon played some amazing guitar and I have already covered one of his classic riffs in the weekly riff section before. From Parklife to Song 2, Coxon has belted out some top quality riffs. So here’s what Total Guitar said about him.

What Total Guitar Said:

You Know Him By His: Bookish appearance and skewed musical vision, usually punched out on a blonde Fender Telecaster guitar.

Greatest Moment: The woozy intro to No Distance Left To Run – the sound of a heart slowly rendering.

Peering out from NHS specs and lumbered with the most bookish name imaginable, Graham Coxon was surely doomed to a life of library monitoring and getting chased by local kids on his way home. Fortunately, neither Coxon’s myopia nor his parents’ unfashionable choice of Christian name could stamp out his stone-dead ability on the guitar; a talent that would burst into glorious bloom on meeting Damon Albarn at Goldsmiths College in 1988.

Albarn didn’t like Coxon’s trainers – a taste of the fallouts to come – but the band they formed, with bassist Alex James and drummer Dave Rowntree, was signed to Food Records within two years. Despite having gigged under the name Seymour up to this point – Albarn’s eye for commercial sucess soon found the quartet renamed Blur.

Fifteen years later and it’s been quite a ride. There was the patchy debut album Leisure and the early sparring with Suede. The the sublime Modern Life and Parklife era followed, elevating Blur to pop aristocracy and Gallagher punchbag status. The bridge-too-far years yielded The Great Escape and finally the ragged experimentalism of Blur, 13 and Think Tank. Throughout , Coxon’s playing refused to stand still, veering wildly between sweet, sour, soft and scabrous. One minute steeped in a virtuosity that leaves his contemporaries for dead, the next as raw and imprecise as a blindfolded schoolboy.

By 2002, the creative tug-o-war between Coxon and Albarn had reached crisis point. While Fat Boy Slim was bought in to smear Think Tank with breakbeats nd bleepy noises, the guitarist quietly left through the back door for a solo career that’s merely confirmed his considerable talent. The library’s loss is our gain.

So that’s what TG had to say about our bookworm guitarist. Fair enough he’s not your stereotypical guitarist; smashing guitars, shagging women and throwing tele’s out of hotel rooms. But he is still one hell of a guitar player. Blur reunited in 2009 with a succession of gigs and festival tours and all seemed quite rosy in the camp of Albarn and Coxon, although they have no immediate plans for the future. So what next for Graham? Well I’m sure he will continue to release his solo work and who knows, maybe Blur might still have another Parklife or Modern Life Is Rubbish in them yet.

Peace x

• Hawkins
• Harrison
• Bolan
• Weller
• Valensi
• Cobain

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