The band it took Noel Gallagher 50 years to like: “I don’t know if I should even say this”
When you’re younger, you can hate a band, and I mean really hate a band, because the bassist has the wrong pair of shoes on. As you craft your identity, you can happily dismiss classics over something as simple as a fringe, a vocal inflexion or the fact that Dale Chatterley from number 22 loves them. The problem with getting older is that suddenly you start saying things like, “The thing is with Coldplay, everyone does like at least one of their songs.”
You realise that life is finite, pleasures are few, and the fact you’ve pretended to hate Radiohead for a few decades, for reasons known only to your 14-year-old self, has not mattered to the world a single bit. You may as well enjoy what’s out there to be enjoyed. It took Noel Gallagher to reach the age of 57 before he finally reconciled this when it came to one widely revered pillar of modern music.
Paul McCartney once said, “I figure no one is educated musically ’til they’ve heard Pet Sounds. I love the orchestra, the arrangements – it may be going overboard to say it’s the classic of the century – but to me, it certainly is a total, classic record that is unbeatable in many ways.”
He even finishes the glowing appraisal off by adding, “I’ve often played Pet Sounds and cried.”
It’s unlikely the Gallagher would ever put on an album other than one of his own and weep, but after years of dismissing the Beach Boys as rubbish, he is finally coming around to his hero’s way of thinking about the soulful surf group.
In the past, he has quipped, “Fuckin’ hell—I hate Brian Wilson! And you know what? If there’s a more overrated person in the music business than me, it’s that guy.” And even told The Age “I fucking hate the Beach Boys – I think Brian Wilson is a cabbage.” But that all changed for him a little over a year ago.
“I don’t know if I should even say this,” he told Matt Morgan on their Funny How? podcast, “Because I’ve spent a life, a musical life, dismissing this fucking group. In a sentence: ‘Not interested, fucking dog shit, I’m not having it, I’m not having it’,” But suddenly, perhaps it was lockdown, a divorce, or the simple inevitablity of self-evident brilliance breaking down manufactured defences, something changed.
“I’ve started listening to them,” Noel admitted, “And actually quite enjoying… The Beach Boys.” It was a revelation only to himself. The rest of us – every other musician in history included – have long been singing their innovative praises. “They’re brilliant,” Morgan quips and Noel concedes, “I’m starting to think that they actually might be now.”
Never a man to fully accept a mistake, the Oasis legend did caveat this by quickly claifitying, “I’ve never denied his songwriting, but I don’t like the barber shop quartet element of it. But I heard a couple of tunes, and it turns out they’ve got about 12 tunes that I actually really fucking like.”
There’s a lesson in this notable U-turn for all of us: if you find yourself taking the cool high ground during the Oasis reunion shows, be sure that your naysaying at least comes from a legitimate place.
