Graham Coxon

Graham Coxon made his name as the lead guitarist and second voice in Blur, the band he helped found, and by the time of Happiness in Magazines in 2004 he'd spent years building a whole other career on his own. Born in Rinteln on 12 March 1969, he has been making solo records since 1998, producing them himself and playing virtually everything on them, and he's the kind of player who can pick up a guitar, banjo, saxophone, clarinet, harmonica or drum kit and make it sound like his.

That restless streak goes back a way. He is heard across every Blur studio album, though his part on Think Tank in 2003 shrank to one album track and two B-sides after he stepped away from the band mid-sessions. A critic once traced his slippery, jagged guitar style back to his training on saxophone, Noel Gallagher counted him among the finest guitarists of his generation, and a BBC poll in 2010 named him the 15th greatest guitarist of the previous 30 years.

Happiness in Magazines, out on Parlophone, is a punchy, tuneful solo set, and "Freakin' Out" is pure scuffed-sneaker punk-pop, all buzzsaw chords and nervy yelps. He's also a visual artist who drew the covers for all his solo albums and for Blur's 13 in 1999, and he now plays in The Waeve.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.