The Britpop bands Noel Gallagher thought matched Oasis: “Not better”
The reliable, lazy myth with Oasis is that it’s a modern Cain and Abel story – or maybe Romulus and Remus – two inextricably linked but diametrically opposed brothers fighting for the glory and total control over the empire they built…until one of them kills the other. Of course, the truth was always a bit cuddlier than that.
If anything, the meaningful part of the Gallagher brothers’ duality was always more internal, inside each of them, rather than the fisticuffs stuff that got written up in the tabloids. They were humble working class lads with god complexes; respectful admirers of their contemporaries and yet viciously competitive with them. Unapologetic but regularly on the defensive.
Back in 1996, with the reality of Oasis’s worldwide enormity having finally set in, Noel Gallagher had a little more trouble delivering the sort of cocky one-liners that he and his brother had so easily served up a year earlier. At the age of 29, he still had some of the streetwise fighter spirit in him, but as a newly minted millionaire with legions of adoring fans, he also felt something else biting at him now: a nagging, mature sensation known as gratefulness.
“I am an old romantic,” Noel told Q magazine in February of that year, after a sold-out show at Earl’s Court. “It makes me cry. It does. It’s beyond special. Until you’ve been in that position, I don’t think you can judge it. The fans confound me. ‘Whatever’ did 350,000 singles. So did ‘Some Might Say’ and ‘Roll With It’ and ‘Wonderwall’. Earl’s Court: 40,000 [people]. Both albums have sold over 900,000 now. I mean, I meet these kids in the street and they’re shaking but I’m saying, ‘I’m honoured to meet you!’”
Even in their earlier days, when they felt the need to make the world aware of their greatness in advance of people actually hearing their music, the Gallaghers still routinely used their platform to boost up the other bands and songwriters they looked up to. That wasn’t always as easy once the mean-spirited, beef-creating industry of Britpop emerged, but Noel, to his credit, was still happy to tip his hat to just about any band that wasn’t Blur, sometimes to a surprisingly effusive degree.
“The Verve are a better band than we are,” he told Q quite matter-of-factly, speaking during a time when Richard Ashcroft’s outfit had only two mildly successful studio albums to their credit. This kind of thing could happen when Noel was in a good mood and almost unable to hold on to all the love and accolades for himself. Or maybe he was weary of the tall poppy syndrome and looking to pass the buck on to some other targets.
“Primal Scream, Cast, Ocean Colour Scene,” Gallagher added, seemingly about to list a half dozen bands better than his own. “All right,” he recalibrated mid-sentence, “What I mean is they’re as good as we are, not better. But they’ve not got involved in media bullshit bollocks like our so-called rivals Blur. They haven’t been dragged into this ‘Who’s bigger? Who’s better?’ thing.”
In this revealing exchange, Noel Gallagher manages to slag off Blur, as per contractual obligation, while also semi-bemoaning the fact that everybody wants him to slag off Blur. If the rock and roll landscape in Britain were a more pleasant and supportive one, he could simply heap praise on his fellow bands and move on with his art, never having to concern himself with stupid questions about where Oasis ranks in the bogus game of Britpop.
“But if it comes down to it,” Noel told Q, almost sheepishly, as if he lost the internal struggle to just move on to another topic, “We are the biggest band in the country”.
