Paul Quinn is Saxon's founding guitarist and, alongside Biff Byford, the band's longest-serving member. Born in 1951, he has been in the line-up since 1976 and remains a member, though he stepped away from touring in 2023. His function was the stable half of the guitar pairing that defined Saxon's sound. With Graham Oliver taking the looser, bluesier side, Quinn built the structure: heavy riffs, harmonies in thirds and a clean execution that gave the classic-phase albums their clarity. The twin guitars of Wheels of Steel (1980) and Denim and Leather (1981) come from that arrangement, and much of the material written in that period is his. His importance shows clearly in what came afterwards. When Oliver left in 1995 and the band faced the legal dispute over the name, it was Quinn's staying alongside Byford that sustained Saxon's continuity as an entity — two founders were enough for the band to go on being itself. In 2023 he stepped back from live performance, replaced on stage by Brian Tatler of Diamond Head, but he remains part of the group.
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