Liam Gallagher picks the frontman as important as Elvis
You’re going to have to stick with me on this one because, as always, any level of Liam Gallagher‘s opinion comes with a length analogy. If it’s not a short, sharp takedown or a witty one-liner, his musical thoughts often require some unpacking. Take this comment on one of the best frontmen around, in his opinion, which can only be told through a reference to his all-time musical heroes, John Lennon and Elvis Presley.
But in this analogy, Gallagher is John Lennon—just as how he’s always wanted to be. To understand the importance of the Beatle on the Oasis singer, you only need to remember the fact that he named his first son Lennon. When asked by Rolling Stone magazine to pick between The Beatles and God, he went predictably with the former. Year upon year, interview upon interview, Gallagher has made it clear that there is really no Oasis without The Beatles, as the Fab Four got the brothers into music and inspired them until their own band joined them in the ranks of the most successful and influential British bands ever.
But, similar to how The Beatles always made it clear that they were in no way the first rock and roll act in the world, always willing to share and discuss the people that came before them and inspired them, Gallagher trods the same clear path. While Oasis are often credited with spearheading the Britpop moment, he’s always reminded people of the acts that came before him, especially one troupe.
“I like to think of this as Lennon and Elvis, you know what I mean?” he told Quietus. Let me draw back the curtains on this one. “Nothing affected me until I heard Elvis. Without Elvis, there would be no Beatles,” John Lennon once said, putting all the credit for his whole career onto the shoulders of ‘The King’ who first inspired him. Gallagher has his own personal ‘King’, Ian Brown.
“Lennon wouldn’t have been there without Elvis, and I wouldn’t be here without The Stone Roses,” he claimed. “Ian Brown, as a frontman, had a look, and he was cool as fuck. He was my Elvis. The first time I saw them, that was it! I thought, ‘I want that!’” It’s a story strikingly similar to Lennon’s own, where he described seeing Presley on TV and suddenly having his eyes opened to his own dreams.
But while Lennon’s influence was a distant idol whose inspiration was only just beginning to float across an ocean, Gallagher’s was on his doorstep. There was close to a ten-year gap between when The Stone Roses began and when Oasis would eventually form, but the bands carry the same Manchester makeup, both coming from the same place. In that way, there was undeniably a kind of attainability to Gallagher’s hero that likely spurred him on even more.
“I’d heard our kid [Noel Gallagher, in case you need the northern translation] play ‘Sally Cinnamon’ round the house, and I went to see them just before the album came out, and it was like, ‘This is it, man! This is the next fucking step!’” he recalled. And so, now, with a new idol, a clearer dream of what he wanted and even the motivation of that inspiration coming from just down the road, he made it happen. Just as Presley got Lennon singing, Brown did the same for Gallagher.
