Graham Coxon, former guitarist for Blur, solo artist, multi-instrumentalist, and soundtrack composer, has done it all: headlined Glastonbury, won Brit Awards – he was even described by Noel Gallagher as “one of the most talented guitarists of his generation”. But in the early 2000s, fresh out of rehab and out of Blur, the band he’d helped steer to international success throughout the previous decade, he found himself attracted to something new and challenging: folk guitar playing.
In his autobiography, Verse, Chorus, Monster!, he describes how he first bumped into “one of the most venerable figures of British folk – Bert Jansch” at a show at London's Royal Festival Hall, curated by Pavement's Stephen Malkmus. But as he followed Jansch onstage it all went wrong: “As I started the first song, I felt my knees turn to rubber, and my already weak voice took on an involuntary and very embarrassing vibrato. I was shaking and sweating, and as if that wasn't bad enough, I was struggling with my old, clapped-out Harmony Sovereign guitar. It was absolutely horrific.”
