The band Liam Gallagher called “spotty little idiots”
In recent years, being on the receiving end of a scathing verbal attack from Liam Gallagher has become an artistic badge of honour. In the same way that ‘bad publicity, is good publicity’, a quip about your shortcomings from the striding Mancunian is proof you’re tapping into the zeitgeist.
He’s somewhat softened in his elder years, but not so much so that he won’t have any contemporary bands threatening the spot of Richard Ashworth as the support slot for Oasis’ incoming reunion tour. Regardless, the younger generation of bands certainly had it easier coming through than the alumni of the early 2000s.
Of course, Gallagher was the king of the 1990s. His raspy and over-annunciated vocal sound was the voice of the decade, and along with his brother, he helped redefine the landscape of no-nonsense British rock. But as their star began to fall in the 2000s and a major culture shift took place, naturally, the voices who replaced Gallagher represented a vast difference.
Not only was it necessary for progression to be made, but audiences were growing tired of the roaring chorus packed with emotion. Instead, they craved a more nuanced narrative style delivered by more unique and unconventional voices. That was how music could make sense of a shifting social landscape that waved goodbye to the celebratory 1990s and welcomed in economically bleak, conflict-ridden millennium. But of course, those things were by-the-by for Gallagher. No matter the state of the world, good music was good music, and anything that didn’t have his brothers’ open chords and pentatonic scale at the forefront was ‘crap’.
While Arctic Monkeys were filling the void on domestic shores, their emergence was largely down to one band who came before them: The Strokes. Drawing on inspirations from their native New York, they forged a new style of indie music that relied on interweaving guitar lines on a lo-fi soundscape that projected this feeling of futuristic vintage.
They were the arrowheads for a new wave of indie music in the turn of the millennium. In fact, Alex Turner, frontman of the band who would go on to be just as big as them in the years said: “I remember I used to play that first album in college all the time when our band was first starting. Loads of people were into them, so loads of bands coming out sounded like them. And I remember consciously trying not to sound like The Strokes, deliberately taking bits out of songs that sounded too much like them, but I still loved that album.”
Upon the release of their 2001 album Is This It, everyone, like Turner, was trying to be The Strokes. Whether it was their pedal setup, the high-strapped Albert Hammond Jr-inspired guitar or Julian Casablancas’ haircut, they were the templates upon which a brand new culture was born.
The parkas made way for leather jackets and the Adidas samba’s made way for Chelsea boots, which ultimately left the poster boy of the 1990s feeling a little begrudged: “Listen, the only reason The Strokes do a fookin’ video in fookin’ black and white is because they look like a bunch of spotty little idiots in colour” said Gallagher, in a 2002 interview with MTV. In 12 months, The Strokes had changed the course of music with their debut album, Oasis had released arguably their worst album Heathen Chemistry and spotty little idiots around the world began forming world-changing bands.
