“It’s game over”: The song Noel Gallagher believed could destroy any audience
The mark of any good rock and roll band is to make a song that gets the crowd moving. Anyone can spend their time tinkering away in their studio trying to make something that’s technically perfect, but as long as there’s something that the fans can groove to, that’s all that matters half the time. Although Noel Gallagher knew the power behind a band that could keep everything moving onstage, he knew that no one was going to be able to compete with bands that took a more moody approach to rock and roll.
Granted, that didn’t mean that Gallagher would always be listening to the more emotional side of music. The cornerstone of any good Oasis song was about self-confidence, and that didn’t always lend itself to someone who exclusively listened to bands like The Cure and New Order.
As Noel was coming up, though, England was already going through an interesting era for guitar music. While there were bands like The La’s that had been working on the prototype for Britpop years before Noel wrote his first tunes, the alternative movement had brought out bands like The Smiths that were channelling their own version of rock and roll with a moodier edge. Even if someone didn’t necessarily agree with everything Morrissey had to say, hearing Johnny Marr’s guitar parts was too hard to ignore when a song like ‘This Charming Man’ got started.
If someone could squeeze that much emotion out of a single guitar, what would it sound like if they applied that same mentality to a dance beat? Although ‘Madchester’ was considered an offshoot of what Britpop was going to be, The Stone Roses were still the ultimate archetype for what Noel wanted to be, taking the same danceable structures that were played in the clubs and putting massive guitar lines behind them.
While most guitar nerds came to the band for John Squire’s playing, all he needed was a few notes to make something as ethereal as ‘I Wanna Be Adored.’ Despite Reni holding everything down with his drum groove, there’s a certain allure to hearing Ian Brown sing the chorus as if he’s trying to find some spiritual connection through the music as he’s playing.
“I’m sorry but if you walk onstage to a packed house with that song, it’s game over, man.”
noel gallagher
For all of the great ethereal vibes coming off the record, Noel was always more interested in the music, and he still felt that no one could compete with the tune once it came over the loudspeakers, saying, “They used to open up with that every night, and I’m sorry but if you walk onstage to a packed house with that song, it’s game over, man. You know what I mean, it’s like – pack it in, the gig’s done. Once you hear that bassline, it’s like, ‘All right, fair enough, you are the best.’”
Even though Noel’s model for songwriting was based more on the Lennon/McCartney method, there were still a lot of pieces for him to glean from The Roses’ work. Some of their songs may have relied on the hypnotic quality of the backing track, and without them making their first hits, songs like ‘Columbia’ would have probably never existed with its massive swirling outro.
So despite Noel claiming time and time again that Oasis are the greatest of all time, The Roses do manage to give them a run for their money. And since Liam eventually worked on a project with Squire, even he seemed to realise the power that came by getting anywhere near The Roses’ sound. I mean, if he and Noel weren’t on the best of terms at that time, why not settle with one of the best guitarists in the world?
