The David Bowie song Noel Gallagher calls his all-time favourite
The work of David Bowie has soundtracked Noel Gallagher’s adult life, but it wasn’t love at first sight. Growing up, the Manchester native wasn’t particularly interested in Bowie’s output, but as he grew older, Gallagher understood the material on a deeper level, and one song was pivotal in his awakening.
As a child of the 1980s, it was impossible to avoid Bowie’s hits, but it was nothing more than music to fill airtime on the radio for Gallagher. He enjoyed it, but Noel certainly wasn’t queueing outside record stores to buy Bowie’s albums when they were released.
It wasn’t until he became an artist that Gallagher began to understand the brilliance of Bowie on a technical level. One day on tour, Gallagher lazed around in his hotel room when ‘Let’s Dance’ came on, and he felt inclined to pick up his guitar to play along, which allowed him to get inside the creation.
Everybody has their moment of consciousness about Bowie, which took Gallagher a little longer than most. As he’s grown older, the presence of ‘The Starman’ in his life has seemingly expanded year upon year, but the sheer exuberant energy of ‘Let’s Dance’ which Gallagher believes should be prescribed by the NHS.
“This is arguably my all-time fucking favourite song by David Bowie,” Gallagher said about the track to Rolling Stone. “When it came out in the Eighties, I liked it, and I liked him. But it was just a song that I listened to on the radio. How I really get inside a song is when I pick up a guitar and try to play it. A few years ago, I was on tour in a hotel room somewhere, and ‘Let’s Dance’ came on. I jumped on the guitar and worked out the chords and I thought, ‘What a fucking great song to play on guitar!'”
He continued: “Who doesn’t like jumping out of bed first thing in the morning and singing, ‘Put on your red shoes and dance the blues’? Everyone should be made to do that every fucking Monday morning. And anyway, can you dance the blues in red shoes? Is it possible? I don’t think it is. Maybe it is if you’re David Bowie. It’s not about dancing, do you know what I mean?”
Gallagher praised Bowie’s decision to have Nile Rodgers and Stevie Ray Vaughan on the same track, which he sees as a further example of his unmatched creativity. He quipped: “Who else would have those two on the same record?”
Bowie also gave Gallagher his seal of approval when he ventured down to the Wembley Arena in 1995 to watch Oasis live. However, Noel later admitted that he wouldn’t know the meeting had occurred if there wasn’t photographic evidence of them hanging out together at the show.
Furthermore, Gallagher picked up ‘Best Male Solo Artist’ at the BRIT Awards in 2014 on Bowie’s behalf. That same evening, he received an email thanking him from the man himself, which sadly was the last interaction between the pair.
Listen below to Gallagher’s favourite Bowie track, ‘Let’s Dance’.
