The cult album that influenced Noel Gallagher: “I can hear me in it everywhere”
Noel Gallagher’s songwriting influences have been carefully dissected for thirty years now, with the most obvious, deeply rooted DNA requiring no close-up views under the microscope: The Beatles, the Who, the Stones, the Kinks, etc. Beyond the 1960s tent poles, though, Noel has also regularly professed his admiration for many of the bands that were pivotal to the scene in which he grew up: The Smiths, The Stones Roses, and The La’s, among them.
In terms of a single album that stuck with him from his teen years into adulthood, though, few could match the impact of a certain 1986 LP put out by a slightly more obscure Manchester outfit.
The Chameleons, as any loyal fan will tell you to this day, rightfully belong in the discussion among the all-time great Manchester bands. Fronted by singer/songwriter/bassist Mark Burgess (no relation to The Charlatans’ Tim Burgess), the group’s three original studio albums—1983’s Script of the Bridge, 1985’s What Does Anything Mean, Basically?, and Noel Gallagher’s personal favourite, 1986’s Strange Times—all deliver smart, atmospheric post-punk of the highest order, sounding much more like the bands that would follow in their footsteps (Interpol, The Verve, Editors, Smashing Pumpkins) than most of their own contemporaries.
It might seem less obvious on a first listen, but Oasis were proud acolytes of The Chameleons, as well. Or, at least, Noel certainly hears the connection.
Back in 2018, long before the upcoming Oasis reunion was even the faintest notion in his mind, Noel took to Twitter (which was blissfully still the furthest thing from Elon Musk’s mind) to sing the praises of The Chameleons and specifically Strange Times.
“I’d forgotten how much this album meant to me,” Gallagher tweeted. “It came out in ’86. I was 19!! I’ve been listening to it every day since, and I have to say it’s blown my mind… again! It must have influenced my early years as a songwriter because I can hear ME in it everywhere!”
Strange Times was The Chameleons’ unintended swan song, as the death of their manager Tony Fletcher in 1987 short-circuited work on their follow-up, and the band wouldn’t reunite for a fourth full-length studio album again until 2001’s Why Call It Anything? Fortunately, Burgess and original guitarist Reg Smithies have been touring with a new Chameleons line-up in recent years, and the band still sound as vibrant, energised, and pleasantly hypnotic as ever.
Burgess has often shared Gallagher’s opinion that Strange Times was the best work he did with the original Chameleons line-up of Smithies, drummer John Lever, and guitarist Dave Fielding. While the record was hailed by critics and gobbled up by legions of other aspiring guitar bands, it never quite crossed over to a larger audience. The band’s distinctive sound—landing somewhere weirdly between dream-pop, goth, angular post-punk, and the big canyon reverb of U2—was perhaps too many things at once to appeal to the general public. The two best songs on Strange Times are good evidence of this.
‘Tears’, which has separate acoustic and electric arrangements on the record, is The Chameleons’ ‘Stairway to Heaven’, an epic ballad inspired by the death of Burgess’ pet dog, but exploring bigger existential questions and drifting thoughts: “Well, we were younger then and the days were long and slow / But were we wiser then? I couldn’t say. I wouldn’t know”.
On the other end of the spectrum is ‘Swamp Thing’, arguably The Chameleons’ closest thing to a hit — and also probably the best rock song of the 1980s that inexplicably still wasn’t quite a hit. Unsurprisingly, it’s a standout track to Noel Gallagher, too, who made it his first selection when he appeared on a radio show in 2019 tasked with picking some of the best Manchester songs of all time. At almost six minutes long, ‘Swamp Thing’ was maybe cursed by its length in terms of radio play. Burgess doesn’t even start singing until the 1:46 mark, but then again, the swirling, thundering groove of that 1:46-long intro is so good. It’s a wonder why it didn’t help the song’s cause more than hurt it.
There’s a dark edge, a spookiness, and a political awareness in much of The Chameleons’ work that doesn’t immediately remind one of classic Oasis material, but if Noel hears himself in it “everywhere”, one is inclined to trust him. Sometimes, the DNA is harder to spy but every bit as vital.
