Noel Gallagher names the artist that “influenced everything”
Every rock band will take from something that has been there before. No artist just comes into the music business making original music by accident, so having a knowledge of where the genre has been usually produces artists who are willing to buck the trends of their heroes. While Noel Gallagher never claimed to be a snob about the kind of artists that he loved, he thought that everything there is to know about good rock music comes down to Elvis Presley.
For anyone who has ever listened to Oasis’ music, though, it’s clear that the band worships at the alter of The Beatles before anyone else. From the minute that Liam Gallagher opened his mouth to sing, it sounded like he was trying his best to do a decent John Lennon impression, eventually finding his own style by singing with his distinctive Manchester snarl.
Before The Beatles had even started, Presley was ready to make his mark on music. Being influenced by the kind of R&B and blues records that were making the rounds across the American South, Presley’s first recordings were nothing short of electrifying when they first came out, having the same kind of musical swagger that most would have killed for.
The songs were only a small portion of what he could do when he got onstage. Considering every great frontman that came after him, Presley turned the stage into his personal playground, coming up with his signature hip shakes that left every female member of the audience swooning from the minute that he started.
For most musicians in the audience, it all came back to what Presley was doing when he sang. While rock and roll was still in its infancy, Presley became the unofficial spokesman for the genre, selling the genre to white America with his takes on classics like ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ and ‘Hound Dog’.
Whereas Presley was ‘The King’ on that side of the Atlantic, Britain was about to respond in kind with The British Invasion, bringing The Beatles and The Rolling Stones to American shores playing a more exciting take on rock music than anything Elvis could do. For Noel, he knew that most of the bands that came after were only copying what Presley had done before.
When talking about the biggest names in music, Noel told LastFM that Elvis was one of the few who changed the face of rock music, saying, “He influenced everything. Everything that came after Elvis leading right up to now, it all goes back to Elvis. I’d probably say Lennon and McCartney, but they both got it from Elvis”.
It’s not like The Beatles would necessarily disagree with Noel, either. When talking about their main influences, Presley was a mainstay in the lives of every one of the Fab Four, with John Lennon claiming that he wanted to be a rock star as soon as he saw one of his movies and hearing the audience scream whenever he came on the screen.
Even though Presley may not have been the most innovative musician in the world, what he brought to rock and roll was an uncompromising sense of cool that could never be manufactured. That sense of swagger is something that comes from deep within, and Noel was definitely taking notes on Elvis Presley right alongside his Beatles records.
