Liam Gallagher on the best guitarist in the world: “A lunatic”
Every great rock and roll band is usually only as good as the guitarist behind everything. Even if they aren’t playing at a thousand miles an hour every time they get behind the fretboard, the cornerstone of any good guitarist is to listen to a song and play whatever’s appropriate for what the tune needs. Liam Gallagher may not have much need to brandish a guitar onstage, but he knew a great player when he heard one out in the wild.
Granted, it’s not like Liam’s brother Noel was the most proficient shredder in the world. He played perfectly for what every Oasis song needed, but a lot of what Noel was about revolved around the pentatonic scale and rarely left the same box shape that every kid learns when they are starting out playing lead. Then again, most of Oasis’s heroes didn’t fall into the standard definition of a guitar hero.
In fact, let’s look at the one inspiration everyone goes back to: The Beatles. The Fab Four were certainly all geniuses in their own right, but whereas someone like Erich Clapton or Jimmy Page used their position to showcase their skills, George Harrison was far more interested in creating a certain feeling when he played, almost having a mini song within those few seconds he had to play.
And when moving on to later bands, Noel was always keen to look at those artists who could create textures. While he can fit anyone’s definition of a guitar hero, someone like Johnny Marr was never going to play an Eddie Van Halen-style solo, and he didn’t care, either. It was about making the guitar say something as he was playing, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t opportunities for people to add a little bit of flash.
After all, The Stone Roses were already paving the way for Britpop before Oasis even started, and John Squire was practically a madman whenever he got his guitar strapped on. The idea of flashy playing was starting to go out of style with hair metal bands being the dominant force, but Squire’s playing was all more indebted to the blues players, and listening to The Roses’ debut or the only album by The Seahorses, Squire could take a song into the stratosphere the minute that he kicked on his pedals.
Even though Liam has been praised to the moon and back for being one of the greatest frontmen of all time, he knew that few were able to eclipse what he saw Squire do when he guested at Knebworth, saying, “John Squire, the best guitarist in the world today and was back then. We were all, ‘Fucking hell, man, he’s up for playing with us.’ We were made up. John’s very quiet and you can tell there is a lunatic inside dying to get out, but he’s very reserved and chilled.”
At the same time, that loose-cannon energy that Liam is talking about has relatively chilled out in recent years. Although their collaboration album in 2024 was still a sight to behold for casual fans of Britpop, a lot of its best moments came when Squire was practising a bit more restraint, usually having the kind of gritty guitar tone reminiscent of the early 1960s, like something from The Beatles’ psychedelic period like ‘Get To Get You Into My Life’ or ‘Paperback Writer’.
But moving into that territory is usually all that we can ask for of classic acts that have been around for a while. No one can be expected to go on different tangents like that every time they walk into the studio, but judging by the shows that Squire and Liam played together, that fire that they both had in their prime never really left them.
