Liam Gallagher on The Beatles album that is almost “perfect”
For the three people who aren’t familiar, it’s clear that Liam Gallagher is a tremendous fan of The Beatles. While the rest of the rock world was embracing the alternative revolution throughout the 1990s, Gallagher was happy to serve as the bold reincarnation of John Lennon for the age of irony, singing songs as earnestly as possible on tracks like ‘Wonderwall’ and ‘Rock and Roll Star’. As much as The Beatles’ psychedelic period drastically affected Gallagher, he thought one of their early albums was close to perfect.
When talking about putting together their first handful of records, Gallagher’s brother Noel would talk about how much they were listening to the Fab Four’s psychedelic songs when making their debut, Definitely Maybe. Although there are more than a few times songs like ‘Live Forever’ echo the same sonic sentiments that took place on albums like Revolver, the band had carved out their unique lane in the music world, operating as a punk rock version of what The Beatles stood for.
The band weren’t exactly subtle about the similarities, either. Apart from showing a picture of John Lennon’s childhood home on the cover sleeve for the ‘Live Forever’ single, Noel would also put together different references to Beatles songs throughout his writing, namechecking ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ in ‘Morning Glory’ and randomly inserting the titles ‘Fool on the Hill’ and ‘I Feel Fine’ into ‘D’You Know What I Mean’.
As far Liam was concerned, though, it was all about John Lennon’s voice on those early Beatles albums, telling Rolling Stone, “John Lennon is the man for me–it’s his voice I got hooked on, then after that I’d listen to the tunes and the words. But even his speaking voice, there’s just something about his voice that does it for me”.
When asked about his favourite Beatles albums, though, Gallagher had a particular affinity for Beatles for Sale from 1964. Recorded in the wake of the massive success of A Hard Day’s Night, the Fab Four had started to delve into the world of folk-rock with songs like ‘I’m a Loser’ and their stab at country on ‘I Don’t Want to Spoil The Party’.
Discussing the impact of the album, Gallagher was shocked by the lineup of original material, saying, “They were getting in tune with themselves, starting to go up as songwriters. They were taking more chances and being more honest. I mean, you’d never catch me singing a song called ‘I’m a Loser’. That’s pretty close to the bone, so I respect them for that”.
The only thing holding the album back in Gallagher’s mind is the covers included on the album. Rather than bash out a handful of their original songs, the band could only record what they had in between tours, putting old favourites like ‘Honey Don’t’ and ‘Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey Hey’ next to originals like ‘Eight Days a Week’ hearkened back to their early balance of covers and originals on albums like Please Please Me.
Although Gallagher has never had a bad thing to say about the band that shaped him, he still thinks that history would have been kinder to the album if they had made all-original tunes, explaining, “I’m not sure about those covers. ‘Mr. Moonlight’ ‘Kansas City’ – they’re not my personal favourites. If you could take them off, the album would be perfect. Because the rest are just top tunes”.
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