The band Noel Gallagher thought carried punk rock forward: “They do gel”
From the first moment he stepped onstage, Noel Gallagher was always proud of his punk credentials. He might not have been the most cordial interviewee whenever he got in front of a microphone, but was anyone expecting him to when his idols were people like John Lydon? The whole point was for him to be as brash as possible in front of the world’s press, but even if that punk mentality showed up in his music, ‘The Chief’ knew when he was seeing the punk ethos being carried on by other bands.
To understand punk, it’s better to understand the mentality before the music. The punk aesthetic was about deconstructing everything manufactured about rock and roll. When it came to the actual music, that meant tearing down anyone who would be labelled as pretentious and reminding everyone why they wanted to play rock and roll in the first place.
And while Sex Pistols are the poster children for this kind of music, The Clash is probably a better version of what the genre stood for in its prime. Joe Strummer and Mick Jones were never afraid to switch things up, and by having such a diverse discography, they proved that punk really meant that you could do anything that you set your mind to, even if it didn’t happen to feature loud guitars.
Then again, there is beauty in seeing bands fly off the handle for the hell of it like Lydon could in his prime. Sex Pistols were far from the most experienced rock and roll outfit, but when they were first cutting their teeth in clubs, seeing Lydon snarl into the mic while Steve Jones abused his guitar was like watching a band at war with its audience, almost daring anyone to disapprove of what they did.
“The stuff that The Prodigy is doing now is just electronic punk music.”
Noel Gallagher
When Oasis was blowing up, though, punk had looked a lot different. The biggest bands in the world at the time were classifying themselves as punk, like Green Day and Nirvana, so that meant the genre had to evolve again, and The Prodigy were the perfect way of subverting everyone’s expectations. While people still have a problem at the mere sight of electronics in rock music, songs like ‘Firestarter’ sound dangerous in the same way that ‘Anarchy in the UK’ did when it was first released.
And despite cribbing his notes from people like The Beatles, Noel knew that The Prodigy had something that the new punk icons had forgotten, saying, “A song’s a song at the end of the day; it doesn’t matter how it’s done. There are extremes of dance music that couldn’t translate with the extremes of rock music, but they do gel. The stuff that The Prodigy is doing now is just electronic punk music.”
Even if Noel was fairly kind to The Prodigy during their prime, the dance music icons weren’t ready to shake hands with them. By the time Oasis played their mammoth shows at Knebworth, Keith Flint managed to give them a run for their money before they even came on, creating raw hysteria from the minute they got onstage.
Noel could have easily made some nasty remarks at the band’s expense, but judging by what he had been doing while guesting on albums by The Chemical Brothers, he at least saw the merit in their music. Punk may have brought rock and roll back down to Earth back in the day, but the best way any genre stays relevant is evolving like The Prodigy did.
