The classic song Noel Gallagher said no one mentions enough: “Easily one of the best ever”
Getting praise from Noel Gallagher isn’t something that most artists can claim to have. The Oasis songwriter would have gladly given a verbal lashing to anyone who he thought wasn’t good enough to be in the charts or dared to say something bad about Oasis in their prime, but if you were on his good side, you had his support for a lifetime. And while it doesn’t take long to see who Noel’s biggest influences were in his prime, there would always be his favourites that fell by the wayside.
But it’s not like Noel spent every waking hour listening to The Beatles and The Stones, trying to find ways to rip them off. Yes, the influence of the Fab Four is one of the most obvious parallels that people have when listening to some of those old Oasis records, but Noel was never afraid to change his sound, even if it meant working with someone who wasn’t necessarily rock like The Chemical Brothers.
That also applied to some of the riffs that he pinched as well. It’s easy to point out the fact that the solo to ‘Supersonic’ sounds a little bit like ‘My Sweet Lord’ or how ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ is a basic retread of T Rex’s ‘Bang A Gong’, but he was also aware of what was going on in the indie scene, like modelling his songwriting on The La’s Lee Mavers or remembering the alt-rock band Grant Lee Buffalo when putting together the riff for ‘Some Might Say’.
But even in that sweet spot on Noel’s favourite artists, Slade tends to get put on the side more than a few times. Oasis may have helped rescue ‘Cum On Feel the Noize’ from Quiet Riot’s version of the tune back in the 1980s, but compared to every other rock and roll in the 1970s, Noddy Holder’s songwriting has always been treated like an also-ran, usually being thrown in the same glam-rock category that Sweet fell into.
Not every one of their songs were meant to completely change the world or anything, but Noel would happily put some of his favourite Slade tunes up there with the all-time classics, saying, “When people think of Slade they think of ‘Cum On Feel the Noize’ and ‘Mama Weer All Crazee Now’, but ‘How Does it Feel’ is easily one of the best songs ever written. That’s such a brilliant song.”
The song is far from the most complicated arrangement of all time, but the chord progression has gone on to show up in a few of Noel’s tunes as well. While Noel had become much better at pinching from his influences, listening to the demo of the song ‘Angel Child’ from the Be Here Now sessions sounded like it could have easily been his take on the Slade classic had it been fleshed out more.
In fact, a lot of Be Here Now feels like it takes its cues from Slade’s music. A tune like ‘All Around the World’ might be one of their most Beatlesque songs that they would ever make, but some of the album cuts like ‘The Girl In the Dirty Shirt’ and even their cooky tunes like ‘She’s Electric’ and ‘Digsy’s Dinner’ have as much in common with Holder’s writing than Paul McCartney’s ‘granny’ songs.
While Noel did the best they could to give more exposure to Slade during Oasis’s run, it’s a shame that they were never embraced by the masses like they should have. For anyone willing to do their homework on Noel’s favourite bands, though, they will be treated to some of the greatest gems that the 1970s seemed to forget.
