The band Noel Gallagher called “The Beatles of the 1980s”
The pure cultural shock of watching The Beatles for the first time will probably never be created again. As much as artists might like to put themselves on a pedestal as the next best thing to the Fab Four, the chemistry and creative synergy between John Lennon and Paul McCartney comes along once every century. Noel Gallagher may have tried to equal that kind of songwriting power single-handedly in Oasis, but he had to admit that one band came closer to The Beatles’ sound a decade prior.
Then again, Noel has never been shy about talking about his favourite band in such hallowed terms. Along with his brother Liam’s fixation with John Lennon, Noel has been indebted to The Beatles’ work since he wrote his first song, whether that’s knicking their style or copying melodies wholesale.
As trends changed, though, the 1980s started moving towards sounds more stylised than the original Flower Power movement. With the advent of MTV, artists were popping up left and right, sporting their own signature fashion sense, either through their teased hair or their sharp mixes through primitive synthesisers.
Although McCartney had tried his hand working in the synthesised realm on McCartney II, Tears for Fears were taking the genre to new places it had never been before. While identifying as a pop outfit, there was a lonely feeling to every song that the duo approached, featuring melodies that were dripping with emotion on songs like ‘Mad World’ and ‘Head Over Heels’.
Even though Noel had been beginning to write his original songs, he thought that Tears for Fears came the closest to sounding like his idols for the next generation, saying, “Tears for Fears are widely regarded in my studio as The Beatles of the 1980s. They had the best tunes. I was a fan…a lot of people don’t know that. I wasn’t a new romantic, but I was a fan of theirs. ‘Shout’ was one of the greatest songs of my lifetime”.
Despite the various fashion trends of their time, it’s easy to see what Noel saw in how the band crafted melodies. Even though many tunes were stylised with various overdubs, an album like Songs from the Big Chair features some of the most piercing melodies of the late 1980s, with ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’ becoming one of their foundational hits.
At the same time, though, Noel was also having his world turned inside out by indie bands, becoming enamoured with artists like The Smiths when he saw them on Top of the Pops for the first time. Once he started getting into groups like The Stone Roses, he knew he had a formula that was familiar to him, making the foundations of Oasis with Liam just a few years afterwards.
As the years have passed, Noel has also been unafraid to let that side of his musical taste show, working with artists like Robert Smith from The Cure to do various remixes of his song ‘Pretty Boy’. Although Noel has carved out a spot in rock history by playing loud guitars that could fill up stadiums, it’s not that far of a stretch between the sound of a blown-out Marshall and the squelching sounds of a synthesiser.
