The Beatles album that Noel Gallagher hated: “It annoys the shit out of me”
No musical act is perfect. Even if someone claims that everything that their favourite band touched is solid gold, it’s hard to convince even the most casual of fans that anyone can be that perfect from the start of their career to the final note they play. And while Noel Gallagher would be the first to call himself the biggest Beatles fan in the world, he could still be critical when he saw things going a little bit sideways.
Still, ‘The Chief’ behind Oasis probably didn’t have in mind battling the Fab Four in the charts when he started. ‘Cool Britannia’ had already become a major piece of culture by the time The Beatles Anthology came out, and despite ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’ being ingrained in fans’ hearts for years now, it was also given some stiff competition when looking at the Manchester legends racking up hit after hit off of What’s the Story Morning Glory.
Then again, Noel never saw himself as being another version of the Fab Four. That time had come and gone, and given how massive Oasis was becoming, he felt like he was destined to take music even further than where they went. Which, as evidenced by the massive amount of overdubs on Be Here Now, proved to be one of the more controversial moments for any band coming out of the 1990s.
While Noel and Liam recovered from their trainwreck quite nicely, the love for The Beatles never left the world’s ears. People were still eager to listen to what the Fab Four left us when their greatest hits album 1, came out, and when Cirque de Soleil decided to make a show centred around the band’s greatest hits, Giles Martin was on hand to bring the band’s music to the next generation.
And for any aspiring Beatles fan of the modern age, Love is still one of the best ways to get introduced to the band’s music. A lot of the songs might not be exactly the same as what they had done back in their prime, but hearing different songs fade in and out of the mix is the best way to capture the kind of psychedelia that the band were shooting for when making Sgt Peppers and Revolver.
But any record like this is going to have detractors who prefer the pure Beatles sound, and Noel said that he had his reservations with the record at the time, saying, “It’s fucking ridiculous. I don’t like it, and it annoys the shit out of me. I hate everything about it: the cover, the sleeve notes, the way the tunes are mixed and sound. Why would you do that? God forbid that ever happens with our music, although we would be powerless to stop it.”
If Noel was far from in love with it the first time he heard it, he seemed to come around on a few of the tunes. When listening to the version of ‘Within You Without You’ that they covered later on, it seems to take more than a few influences from the remixed version, since the drums keep the massive drum machine-esque fills Ringo Starr played in ‘Tomorrow Never Knows.’
Even on Dig Out Your Soul, the band still used the odd sound effect from The Beatles’ days, featuring a spoken word piece from John Lennon recorded before his death. Noel may not have liked the idea of one of his favourite bands’ music being torn apart like this, but if more people decided to bite the bullet and listen to something that they don’t like, there’d be a few more pleasant surprises in the world.
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