Paul Kossoff

Paul Kossoff is one of those guitarists who makes you stop whatever you're doing the moment he starts playing. His tone on "All Right Now" alone could earn him a spot in any hall of fame — that raw, pleading sustain he coaxed out of a Les Paul was unlike anything else happening in early '70s rock. What gets me is how much feeling he packed into so few notes; there was no showing off, no shredding, just pure emotion bleeding through the strings. Free were massively underrated as a band, and Kossoff was the beating heart of their sound. The tragedy of losing him at 25 to heart failure — ravaged by years of drug dependency — still stings, because you can hear on every record that there was so much more left to say. Rolling Stone put him at number 51 on their greatest guitarists list, which honestly feels low. A quiet giant.

Name (English)

Paul Kossoff

Name (Japanese)

ポール・コゾフ

Reading

ぽーる・こぞふ

Born

September 14, 1950 – March 19, 1976

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Virgo / Tiger

Origin

Hampstead, United Kingdom

Occupation

guitarist / musician

Motto

Private

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%9D%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B3%E3%82%BE%E3%83%95

Tags

• guitarist
• musician

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.