The 1968 song that gave Noel Gallagher the greatest moment of his life
Noel Gallagher didn’t sit around hoping that he was going to be one of the greatest musicians of all time when he started out.
If there was one thing that Oasis weren’t lacking in, it was confidence, and some of the greatest moments of their career usually came from them talking themselves up like they were the second coming of Lennon, Bowie, and Jagger all at the same time. But whereas most people were happy to hear the band play rock and roll for the rest of their lives, Gallagher felt that one of his finest moments came from working outside the conventional rock and roll format.
You have to remember that Noel wasn’t looking to strictly be a rock and roll star for the rest of his life. Liam epitomised that idea to a tee whenever he stepped up to the microphone, but Noel wanted to be respected as a songwriter. A lot of his tunes didn’t have to mean much or even make that much sense, but when you look through a lot of his best material, it’s the melody that sticks out above anything else.
And that came from years of listening to some of the greatest songsmiths of his time. Sure, The Beatles were going to get heavy rotation in his record collection, and Noel has made it clear that he wouldn’t have been in a band if it weren’t for people like Johnny Marr and Paul Weller, but the real unsung hero of his back catalogue was usually Burt Bacharach whenever he needed to mellow things out.
It’s not every day that the biggest rock and roll stars of all time were talking up Bacharach, but if you look at Noel’s melodies, they’re sophisticated in the same way that Bacharach’s were when working on tunes like ‘I Say A Little Prayer’. But when it came time for Noel to actually collaborate with Bacharach on a version of the song ‘This Guy’s in Love With You’, he remembered feeling like he was floating on air every single second he stood at the piano with him.
This was practically like meeting a musical giant, and Noel felt that he was never going to get the opportunity to make this kind of song ever again, saying, “I go to his room and honestly it was like my favourite moments of my life, just me and him in this hotel room. And he says, ‘Do you want a drink?’ I said, ‘I’ll have 20 beers.’ He sat down with some beer, we’re just chatting away, and then it’s almost like the scene from Pulp Fiction when Vincent Vega goes into the bathroom and he’s like, ‘I’m just gonna go out there everything’s gonna be cool, right. We’re going to try and wriggle out of this gig, gonna be all right, gonna make him laugh and then we’ll just leave.’”
And even though the thought of singing with him live turned Noel into that same starry-eyed kid from Manchester, he actually did a serviceable job singing the song next to the other musical giants with him during one of Bacharach’s shows. He may have had a little bit of practice after ripping the song off for ‘Half the World Away’, but there was never any malicious intention behind using Bacharach as a template.
Because, really, anyone would have been using those classic songs as a way to woodshed some of their finest tunes. The Beatles are a great starting point whenever someone is first trying to make their version of a pop tune, but Bacharach is where you go when you need a little bit more technique, like throwing in a few time signature changes or major seventh chords that sound absolutely beautiful in the right context.
Noel wasn’t one for making music that was all that complicated, but the beauty of performing with Bacharach is that none of it feels complicated. Most people can try their hand at making the best music that they can with a few basic chords, but Bacharach had a knack for taking some fairly strange chords and putting them together in a way that everyone can appreciate.
