The frontman Noel Gallagher called unnecessary: “I don’t own any of their records”
Rock and roll was never meant to stay the same throughout its evolution. The whole point of the genre was about making something off the beaten path that no one had ever considered, and when one style becomes the new norm, it’s usually time for someone to start a sea change in the industry that everyone could follow. While Noel Gallagher may have been the one to usher in the next phase of music with Oasis, he thought some people didn’t exactly have the same effect that they were hoping to have.
Before Oasis had even formed, though, Noel was listening to everything that he could get his hands on from the underground. Despite their drastic tonal differences, ‘The Chief’ was a massive Nirvana fan, and listening to his influences, there are a lot of alternative classics in his arsenal, whether that’s taking inspiration from The Stone Roses to playing along to the jangly guitar parts on every Smiths record.
While Johnny Marr may have created a new way of looking at guitar playing with his Rickenbacker, he wasn’t the first one to the party in that respect. REM had already been making some of the greatest jangle-pop rock and roll in the early 1980s when Murmur came out, and even if it was hard to decipher what Michael Stipe was saying half the time, it was never that hard to fall in love with what Peter Buck was playing.
And when Oasis got one of their first big breaks in the US, Stipe managed to be one of their major champions. He saw something in that Manchester sense of arrogance, but by the time the Britpop legends opened for them at Slane Castle, Stipe had changed his tune about what the Gallaghers stood for.
“We kind of meet them on the road every now and again.”
Noel Gallagher
The whole point behind REM’s music was to tap into something more emotional, but all Noel had in mind was making the kind of stadium rock that catered to hooligans. And once he started mocking the Britpop craze in some of his songs, the gloves were officially off, with Noel eventually going on massive rants about how bands like REM and Radiohead had no right to complain about how shit their lives were on the road.
Even though cooler heads prevailed later on in their career, Noel never seemed to fully make up with Stipe when talking about the band’s live set-up, saying, “In the case of REM, I don’t own any of their records, but we kind of meet them on the road every now and again. Peter Buck and the bass player are great. But it’s the big blue stripe (makeup that frontman Michael Stipe sometimes wears) — there’s no need for that.”
He might complain about REM all the time, but Noel did know a good riff when he heard one as well. An album like Monster might not have appealed to him as much, but the fact that ‘Morning Glory’ is copied verbatim from ‘The One I Love’ can either be seen as a cheeky dig at the band’s jangle-pop style or a way for Oasis to commandeer the riff to mean something completely different.
Noel has had a reputation for being the more level-headed frontman of Oasis, but he isn’t someone who’s willing to forgive and forget, either. He calls it as he sees it every time there is a microphone in front of him, and if you so much as say something mildly accusatory about him or his music, he will come out with guns blazing.
