Matt Bellamy

For the sheer reason that Muse were one of the major forces to assume the reins after Britpop gasped its final breaths in the late 1990s, its frontman Matt Bellamy was always going to be a subject of ire and annoyance in Gallagher’s firing line. But compared to band leaders like himself and his contemporaries, Bellamy largely represented something far more refined, with Gallagher famously once proclaiming, “They at least play guitars, but when I hear his voice, I’m like, ‘Ah, fuck him’”.

Yet, to be fair to Bellamy and Muse as a whole, they obviously had to offer something entirely fresh in the wake of the Britpop massacre, otherwise they simply would have been described as pathetic wannabes. Of course, the route of moody, dark, and alternative rock, led in the charge by the likes of Muse, was a total pivot, but this had to happen in order for music to have any chance of changing.

Billie Joe Armstrong

Although Green Day mostly rose to prominence in the same period as when Oasis were at their height, they quite patently presented a highly Americanised version of rock music, which hardly rang true to the laddish, quintessential image of rock music which Gallagher and his cronies completely dined out on. Naturally, you would imagine that this wouldn’t exactly please him, to say the least.

Surprisingly enough, it wasn’t actually their difference of sonics which truly riled Gallagher to his maximum wrath, and instead something slightly obscure. It was the shape of Armstrong’s head. “Fuck right off. I’m not having him. I just don’t like his head,” Gallagher once announced in an interview when the subject of the Green Day frontman was brought up. Attack anything you want, someone’s music, their attitude, or even their clothes, but there’s probably not a lot he can do about the ergonomics of his napper.

George Harrison

In most cases, when Gallagher decides it’s time for some insult-hurling, it’s he who somewhat unfairly always has the upper hand, squaring down on the little guy. However, when George Harrison decided that it was time for a swing in the ring, the shoe was most definitely on the other foot, and the effect this had on the Oasis singer was a little perturbing, to put it one way.

All Harrison did was make a simple complaint about how he wasn’t particularly a fan of Oasis or specifically Gallagher, but was met in response with accusations of being a “fucking nipple” and “George was always the quiet one, and maybe he should have stayed that way. I love The Beatles, but what the fuck does he know about rock ‘n’ roll?”. You can’t really justify that one, can you? He was in the biggest rock band to ever exist, and Harrison knew it.

Bob Dylan

Similar can be said for Gallagher’s thoughts on the one and only Bob Dylan. You get the impression that, at times, he slightly lost sight of the fact that these rock legends paved the way for him, and not the other way around. Nevertheless, it still didn’t stop Gallagher from branding Dylan as a “miserable cunt”. Tempered words from a tempered man, of course.

“People go nuts for him,” Gallagher later tried to reason, “but he doesn’t really do it for me”. That may seem a fair enough excuse, but it was clearly a climbdown from his earlier comments, which went to the extreme. In this case, being a miserable so-and-so was actually just examining the world through a lens of truth, rather than just living it large all the time.

Eddie Vedder

Another 1990s Stateside enemy came in the form of Pearl Jam for Gallagher, whose frontman Eddie Vedder was a fellow victim of the Oasis man’s vicious snare. With the grunge scene having taken hold at the same time across the Atlantic as Britpop, they were the rivals held in greatest contempt, but also, by this virtue, the ones that bands like Oasis would have to share the live circuit with.

By the time both bands came together on the line-up of a festival in 2000, Gallagher had clearly had enough. “I’m not into writing fucking morbid music like the rest of these pricks that are playing here,” he said, adding, “They all write bollocks, y’know what I mean, they’re all in pain. Well, my fucking ears are in pain hearing your fucking voice, you twat.” But the facts do the talking: Pearl Jam were indisputably the most successful band of their crowd, and Vedder one of the most celebrated vocalists. You simply can’t deny the truth.