“My inspiration”: the 1989 lyric Noel Gallagher wishes he had written
It was 1994, and as the long-awaited Second Coming flitted casually onto the horizon, The Stone Roses gave a single interview to the Big Issue. When it came to their peers, they were in less than charitable form.
Since their debut album was released in May 1989, the following five years had seen the likes of Oasis, Radiohead, Pulp, Blur, and Nirvana all achieve lofty success. Were they worried that the world had moved on and found new heroes? “Personally,” Mani said, “I don’t think the music scene has been as weak as this… ever!”
Ian Brown’s attention, meanwhile, was on the groups who hadn’t made it big rather than those who had replaced the Roses in the charts. “What I’m worried about,” the snarling singer said, “Is that there are a lot of bands making great records but aren’t getting the attention they deserve.”
He singled out the likes of Cutty Ranks, Leaders of the New School, Dub War, and Burning Spear. With a dub-dominated list, it seems his focus was on anything but rock ‘n’ roll. However, it is not without irony that Brown and his bucket-hatted buddies had helped to bring it back. To the likes of Oasis and a legion of emerging indie proprietors, The Stone Roses had made swaggering guitar music cool again.
“In the case of the Stone Roses,” Noel Gallagher said backstage in 2002, “That was why we started a group. We were into The Jam and The Smiths before that, but The Smiths, with Morrissey and the quiffs and all that, back in the day, we thought that you had to go to college and be an art student to be in a band. Or be Paul Weller.”
The ragtag image presented by The Stone Roses hit closer to home. “Then we knew we could do it,” he said of his first viewing of the Manchester band. “When I heard ‘Sally Cinnamon’ for the first time, I knew what my destiny was.” The song had swagger, last night’s beer on its breath, unemployment in its amble, and the sunny rays of hope that sometimes break through Lancashire’s heavy clouds.
Yet, it was a different lyric by the inspiring band that put the sudden jolt that they dealt Noel into perfectly poised, Mancified words. When picking out his favourite lyric of all time for the HMV ‘My Inspiration’ feature, the ‘Wonderwall’ writer opted for this classic verse from ‘She Bangs the Drum’:
“Kiss me where the sun don’t shine
‘She Bangs the Drum’ – The Stone Roses
The past was yours
But the future’s mine
You’re all out of time”
Noel seemed to take that quite literally. It prognosticated the ‘we’re here to take over’ energy that Oasis would propagate like Vikings docking on the shores of classic rock. It seemed to embody the Roses’ debut before them, too. “It influenced the people who influenced the people who influenced the people who are influencing people these days,” Noel said of the record.
Adding, “It’s that great lineage of The Sex Pistols into The Jam into The Smiths into The Stone Roses into Oasis into The Verve.”
To some degree, the lyric itself embodies that mantle-snatching lineage. Rock bands should have a swagger after all, and Noel has kept this verse close at hand ever since to reaffirm that notion ever since.
