"It's got the filthiest tenor saxophone solo ever." Blur guitarist Graham Coxon reveals the prog rock song that changed his life

Blur guitarist Graham Coxon has nominated King Crimson's Ladies Of The Road as the song which changed his life.

Coxon revealed his choice in an interview for The Guardian website's Honest Playlist feature.

Responding to the prompt 'The Song That Changed My Life', Blur's guitarist says, "When I was teenager, getting into Van der Graaf Generator, Caravan, Matching Mole and Robert Wyatt, Ladies of the Road by King Crimson changed my life, because it was so odd. I was learning the sax, as well as the guitar, and it’s got the filthiest tenor saxophone solo ever."

Ladies Of The Road, track 1 on side 2 of King Crimson's fourth studio album, 1971's Islands, also features some of the worst lyrics ever committed to tape. A salute to groupies of the era, it features verses such as "Stone-headed Frisco spacer / Ate all the meat I gave her / Said would I like to taste hers / And even craved the flavour" and "High diving Chinese trender / Black hair and black suspender / Said, "Please me no surrender/ Just love to feel your Fender".

Islands would be the last King Crimson album to feature lyrics from co-founder Peter Sinfield.

In a 2022 interview with The Line of Best Fit, Coxon expanded upon his teenage love of prog rock, in a feature called Nine Songs.

"I got into prog through Julia, my girlfriend when I was seventeen, and her record collection," he said. "I’d got out of the mod music a little bit, I'd had a bit of Human League, a bit of Talk Talk and I’d watched South Bank Show about Van Der Graff Generator and The Velvet Underground. But Julia had Relics by Pink Floyd, a couple of Van Der Graaf Generator albums, Patti Smith albums, all of that stuff.

"I started to play saxophone with a band called The Curious Band, which were an improvisational band. Someone gave me a tape which had God Song by Robert Wyatt on it, and Ladies of the Road by King Crimson, which has my favourite guitar solo of all time on it. Incidentally, that tape got broken when I was a teenager, and in about 2011 or 2012, I bought Islands by King Crimson and rediscovered that song, which is amazing. That's one of my favourite songs ever, it should be on this list really."

Although Blur are not generally considered a prog rock band, Prog magazine recently hailed the band's second album, Modern Life Is Rubbish for containing "the spirit of the genre, with its English eccentricities, non-linear approach to playing and rule-breaking flair."

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.