The band Noel Gallagher thought no one could sing like
It’s not exactly difficult to see where Noel Gallagher cribs most of his ideas from. Since the dawn of Oasis, Gallagher has been known to steal bits and pieces of classic rock history and spread them out for an entire song, whether ripping off Stevie Wonder for ‘Step Out’ or T. Rex’s signature guitar snarl on ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’. Although Gallagher might rip from those he admires most, he still confesses that there’s one band no one could compare to.
Granted, even Gallagher had a penchant for putting himself among the all-time greats. Before Oasis even had a proper album in the charts, Noel and his brother Liam were hyping themselves up as one of the biggest rock acts in the world, saying that they would go down in legend like other artists like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.
Although there were clear indications of where Lennon and McCartney left their mark on Noel, he had the same affinity for The Bee Gees at the time. Then again, this was a different version of the Gibb brothers than people got to know on Saturday Night Fever.
Compared to the medallion-clad men who sang songs like ‘Jive Talkin’ and ‘Night Fever’, the early days of the Bee Gees were modelled after The Beatles. Featuring gorgeous harmonies from every band member, songs like ‘To Love Somebody’ and ‘I Started A Joke’ are explicit odes to the singles that came out of the British Invasion at the dawn of the 1960s.
That sound sold Noel on the group at first, remarking: “I just remember this music being on, and I’m like ‘Who’s this?’. It actually blew my mind. Those early records sounded like the early Beatles records. It had the classic 1960s guitar-pop sound, but it had another thing going on”.
Whereas The Beatles had been known for their signature harmony parts throughout their early years, Noel considered the Bee Gees the prime example of blending vocals, explaining, “When you got brothers singing, it’s like an instrument that no one else can buy. You can’t go buy that sound in a shop. You can’t sing like The Bee Gees because when you got family members singing together, it’s unique”.
Then again, Noel would learn firsthand what it was like to have family members sing together in Oasis. After taking over the group in the early 1990s, the blend of his and Liam’s vocal delivery provided a unique sound that fell somewhere between punk rock and classic rock.
Although Liam was every bit the rock star he talked himself up to be, Noel provided the searing register alongside him, making for musical ecstasy when singing songs like ‘Some Might Say’ together. Even though the band would divide the songs between Noel and Liam on the record, the prime moments in the group come when the brothers sang together in the Bee Gees tradition, like the duets ‘Acquiesce’ and ‘Let There Be Love’.
While Oasis could capture magic through Noel and Liam working in tandem, it wouldn’t be strong enough to last, with the brothers finally having enough of each other in 2009 and Noel packing up the whole operation and leaving before a show in Paris. Noel may have been responsible for writing most of the classic songs, but the magic he heard on those early Bee Gees records would never have happened if he hadn’t sung with his brother.
