The guitarist Noel Gallagher said was out of everyone’s league: “He’s too unique”
Before Oasis even became one of the biggest names in England, Noel Gallagher already knew they were heading to the top of the rock and roll world.
Any other band would have been called one of the most pretentious assholes in the world for calling themselves the best band in the world, but The Chief’s mantra of self-belief actually managed to deliver for a while when looking at how many classics turned up on the Manchester legends’ first handful of albums. Then again, Noel was the last person to claim that he was God’s gift to guitar players every single time he played a solo.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some great moments in the Oasis catalogue for guitar nerds. Noel was interested in building tracks every single time he made a record, and while the best guitar moments on his records feature multiple guitar parts playing off each other, it’s not like he was going to venture outside of the same pentatonic box that everyone starts off when they first start playing.
But the Britpop scene didn’t really cater to that kind of flashiness anyway. ‘Live Forever’ was probably the peak of what Noel was going to do in terms of technical mastery, but since the world had already become inundated with hair metal bands trying to play a million notes per second, it was much better for everyone to focus on playing chords than going into strange progressive sections or anything.
There were, of course, a few exceptions if you wanted to look for them. John Squire was unapologetic in being an absolute guitar god in The Stone Roses, and looking at the biggest songs by people like Kula Shaker and Cast, there were more than a few times where they would fly off the handle and bring people something that they had never heard before. If those people were just starting to push guitar forward, Johnny Marr had already created an entire environment for the next generation of players.
While plenty of other guitarists from around that time could make their guitar sound huge with effects like Andy Summers and even Peter Buck, what Marr was doing took a lot more than a few pedals to produce. Every Smiths song demanded a bit more than a straight-ahead performance, and listening to everything from ‘How Soon is Now’ to ‘This Charming Man’, every one of Marr’s breaks was about serving the song and doing a sonic dance around Morrissey’s voice.
Noel was practically in awe when he heard that for the first time, and while many guitarists might get more glory, he felt that Marr’s technical prowess was something no one could duplicate, saying, “You can’t be influenced by Johnny Marr because he’s too unique. You can’t play what he plays. Even he can’t play what he plays. He told me stories about trying to recreate ‘How Soon is Now’ and it was like an Abbott and Costello sketch. Even he’s not as good as he is.”
Which explains why Noel eventually began working with him at every opportunity he could. There’s no way that Marr was suddenly going to join Oasis or even become a member of the High Flying Birds, but when you hear him guest on some of his tracks, he creates a certain atmosphere to songs like ‘Ballad of the Mighty I’ and even managed to show up Paul Weller’s original solo in ‘Champagne Supernova’ when he performed it with Noel.
But even for as much flashiness that Marr has in his arsenal, he was never looking to make every song a showcase for his talent. He was one to play for whatever the tune needed, and whether that was playing harmonica or drenching his guitar in reverb, anyone who has ever been blessed with him walking into the studio will tell you how their songs were touched by a guitar god.
