The Oasis song from 2000 Noel Gallagher crowned as “modern day Beatles”
So allow me to drop a bombshell that has never been spoken by anyone in the world: Oasis might like The Beatles.
As much as the Gallagher brothers may like to proclaim themselves as the greatest band in the world, the Fab Four have always informed every move they have ever made. While the Beatles’ influence is painfully apparent to anyone who has working eardrums, Noel Gallagher only thinks that one of their songs came anywhere close to sounding like their idols.
For all of Oasis’ bravado about reinventing rock music, Noel Gallagher was always remarkably honest about where the band’s DNA came from. Rather than hiding their influences, Oasis practically wore them like a badge of honour, building their entire identity around the melodic confidence and swagger that The Beatles had perfected decades earlier.
After playing some of the most straight-ahead rock and roll of their generation throughout the ‘90s, the band decided to take a break following the massive tour behind Be Here Now. While they may have taken time to recuperate from the rock and roll whirlwind, their outlook on the record industry had also changed, becoming more jaded with the business mindset.
That growing cynicism also pushed Noel further inward as a songwriter. The youthful arrogance that had fuelled Definitely Maybe was beginning to give way to something more reflective, with the pressures of fame clearly starting to weigh on the band’s creative chemistry.
As Noel and Liam were starting to cut out any hard drugs from their life, that also meant parting ways with some of their best friends of many years. Leading up to their fourth album, Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, both ‘Bonehead’ and ‘Guigsy’ were ousted from the group for continuing to indulge in drugs and alcohol during the sessions.
Although most of the album might have suffered for their lack of involvement, Noel still considers the song ‘Go Let It Out’ one of his favourites, recalling in Lock the Box, “It’s the first time we ever got close to sounding like a modern-day Beatles, I think, which is what we were striving for for years”.
After a year of silence, Oasis’ return to the stage is delightfully Beatles-influenced, with a straightforward acoustic guitar and Liam’s gravelly vocals having a strong hint of John Lennon in his delivery. The real nostalgic buzz comes from the chorus, where a Mellotron is added to echo the same psychedelic sounds of songs like ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’.
Compared to the rest of the album, though, Noel was never enamoured with the rest of his work around that time. Even though the band tried to recapture the sounds of their previous glory years, Noel reflected that ‘Go Let It Out’ was one of the few songs from the era that he was excited about, saying, “I was pretty uninspired at the time, but ‘Go Let It Out’ stands head and shoulders above everything else. It’s up there with some of the best things I’ve ever done”.
While the studio may have been a hellish experience at times, the tour for the album made for the most tension-fuelled shows of the band’s career, including a disastrous performance at Wembley Stadium. Having been replaced with fill-in guitarist Matt Deighton part-way through the tour, Noel returned to Wembley as Liam relapsed on drugs and shouted nonsense into the microphone.
Oasis may have needed to try and get their rock and roll powerhouse back on track, but ‘Go Let It Out’ was at least the first step in the right direction. After trying his hand at mixing The Sex Pistols and The Beatles, Noel had finally written something that he thought Lennon and McCartney would have been proud to call their own.
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