“Not my thing”: the only Beatles solo albums Noel Gallagher actually likes
Say what you like about them, but there’s no denying that Liam and Noel Gallagher are students of rock history. Some will say a little too studious if you listen to the likes of ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’. While the jokes write themselves, it is true that Noel and Liam are classicists. Very few moments of Oasis’ career were spent looking forward. Rather, they were spent gazing lovingly back not on the actual rock history but on its mythology.
There was something special to them about the idea of the rock band overall, of standing on the shoulders of not Lennon and McCartney as artists but The Beatles. It’s not Jagger and Richards, but The Stones, and you get the idea. Put it this way: there was no way in hell that Noel was going to take that stack of incredible songs that made up the first handful of Oasis albums and go solo with them. Even if his voice did suit those songs, he was always going to form a band to play them.
Which is why their respective solo careers felt so weird at the time of Oasis’ split. They must have felt this too, as Liam’s catastrophic stint in Beady Eye can only be explained by some Luddite belief that being in “a real fookin’ rock ‘n’ roll band” is better than making music under your own name. Considering that Beady Eye stalled at playing academies and Liam sold out Knebworth twice as himself, history has shown just what that logic’s worth better than I ever could.
However, perhaps Liam was the only one being honest with himself when he retreated back into the warm embrace of a rock band after Oasis crashed and burnt. After all, Noel had gone on record as saying he wasn’t a big fan of when his beloved Beatles made solo records after their implosion in 1970. Yet still, he was the first to go under his own name, teaming up with his High Flying Birds and releasing his self-titled debut album a few months after Different Gear, Still Speeding.
Yet, that didn’t stop typically forthright Gallagher Sr from showing his own hand just a little. In an interview with The Quietus, he was asked which of The Beatles’ solo efforts he’d compare his record to. After comparing his own album to George Harrison’s impeccable All Things Must Pass, he qualified that statement by saying, “I’m not really into the post-Beatles stuff. I love All Things Must Pass, I’ve only got John Lennon’s greatest hits by him and I love Band On The Run, but it’s not really my thing.”
However, for all my talk of Noel and Liam being classicists, The Chief has always been a savvy operator. After all, he knew his soulful singing voice wouldn’t work for the savage rock ‘n’ roll songs he’d been writing for Oasis. He knew (though he didn’t act upon it) that Oasis probably should have knocked it on the head after Knebworth. Above all, he knew that when the band did implode, the people wouldn’t want a new band; they’d want to see a Gallagher.
While he gave the people a version of what they wanted then, they wouldn’t truly give the people what they wanted until 14 years later.
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