The Oasis songs Noel Gallagher compared to his rock heroes: “The closest anybody’s gotten”
Oasis have forged that tricky relationship with their audience whereby their greatness is so firmly rooted in such a singular sound. Labelling it simply ‘does what it says on the tin’ music feels somewhat reductive, but in essence, that’s what makes them so compelling. Open chords, pentatonic scale and overly annunciated vocals, and you have yourself the making of an Oasis hit.
While Liam Gallagher proudly wears the band’s ability to do that on his chest, Noel always had a more experimental eye. While it was rarely shown in the early Oasis discography, his later solo career enabled him to dip his toe into the world of more electronic thinking and blend his Britpop sensibilities with the ideas of his innovative forefathers.
On Noel Gallagher and The High Flying Birds’ 2017 solo record Who Built The Moon?, the influence cited Marvin Gaye and Serge Gainsbourg as some of his influences. The record focused more heavily on production. It’s the sort of influential injections you can quite easily imagine being dismissed by Liam and his furrowed brow in the heady days of Oasis’ success. He hadn’t quite transitioned into the more whisky-drinking, jazz club-visiting side of fame just yet and could still be found clutching a warm can of Red Stripe. “Serge who? Sounds crap mate l want to sound like John Lennon” would probably have been his rebuttal.
But there was a time on their 2005 record when his brother Noel believes that the band had reached something Lennon-esque. Speaking of the track ‘A Bell Will Ring’ from their 2005 record Don’t Believe The Truth their Noel said the track was “the closest that anybody’s gotten to sounding like Revolver, I think.”
Tonally, the guitar parts feel like they’re ripped straight out of the iconic Beatles record and Liam’s voice is as raspy as Lennon’s is on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. But it wasn’t the only track on the record Noel was tipping his cap to his influences, even taking over vocal duties on the record’s second track ‘Mucky Fingers’ to do so.
While it has most of the Oasis sensibilities we’ve all grown accustomed to. Noel explained that the inspiration for it was drawn from outside their usual box. “Imagine Bob Dylan singing (The Velvet Underground’s) ‘I’m Waiting For The Man’” Noel said of the track, “with that kind of frantic drumbeat all the way through.”
While their 15-year hiatus robbed fans of many things, perhaps one of them was a time period in which they could have expanded on the more experimental tendencies Noel started to develop in his own solo career. And within that experimentation could have been a sound centred on rhythm.
We know and love Oasis for their masterful melodies, but you can’t argue there were the foundations of a more exciting rhythmic sound for the band. And even though he was dismissed from the band by their second album, drummer Tony McCarroll provided a moment for Oasis that still goes down as one of the band’s favourite songs and nods to another forefather of classic rock.
The pulsing drum beat on ‘Bring It Down’ fiercely introduced Oasis to the world, as voices for the working class and flagbearers for a world of punk rock reimagined. Laid on top of McCarroll’s drums are a quintessential Liam Gallagher vocal take that puts him as the leader of an army of working-class revolutionaries, while his brother raises their pulses further with an electric riff. Speaking of the track in Definitely Maybe The Documentary, Noel explained, “I had the riff, and it sounded like the Sex Pistols” before quite simply claiming, “You can’t write a love song over that, can you? Someone’s fucking having it”.
