The punk gig that “ignited” Noel Gallagher’s love of playing guitar
It’s one thing to receive a semi-musical awakening from hearing a song on the radio, but seeing a band perform live continues to provide unmatched inspiration to pick up a guitar and form a band yourself.
There’s an energy that radiates only from live music when hundreds, if not thousands, have come together in one room to escape from the mundanity of everyday life with a shared goal. For Noel Gallagher, the night he first experienced that, at the hands of punk legends The Damned, has lived with him ever since.
It not only gave him a taste to do it all over again, but to hone his craft as a guitarist and ignite a passion within him to one day be the person standing there on-stage, conducting the evening. It was a mission that he set his mind to and accomplished to a heavenly extent.
Gallagher had just become a teenager at the time of attending his first gig, which came toward the back end of punk’s dominance, but the movement was still managing to cling on to a dissipated level of cultural relevancy.
The Oasis guitarist was raised on punk, once saying: “The most influential record of all time is Never Mind The Bollocks. People who are still working now in the music business did their shit because of that record. It’s the absolute left turn. There is no argument. It cannot be bettered. It’s scientifically factual”.
As much as he would have given anything to have been at that famous Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall gig in 1976, he was just too young for it. With the Sex Pistols off limits and watching his heroes live was out of the question for Gallagher, he settled for the next best alternative: The Damned.
While The Damned could not compete with the anarchy of the Sex Pistols during their brief but legendary pomp, who could? Still, seeing a punk band perform in the flesh was incredibly significant for Gallagher and took him on the path to becoming a professional musician. He recalled to BBC Manchester:
“My first ever gig was The Damned at the (Manchester) Apollo in 1980, and I was a big fan of The Damned, I loved them because I loved punk”.
The Oasis man added: “I think seeing The Jam on The Old Grey Whistle Test, then seeing The Damned live, and then picking up a guitar, and playing Joy Division basslines on the top string for about six months was kind of what ignited my love of holding the guitar, and doing that kind of thing”.
Seeing The Damned perform at the Apollo was more than a concert; it was the night that cemented him on the path that he would follow for the rest of his life. As much as he was already besotted with playing the guitar during any free moment spared, seeing what the instrument was capable of making people feel in a live setting was a game-changer.
It also likely helped that The Damned weren’t the most refined virtuosic band in the world, meaning that Noel knew that he didn’t need to be a perfect player to follow in their footsteps. That ramshackled approach is one that Oasis adopted, along with a chaotic punk spirit, in their early days, even though they wouldn’t be defined as a punk band by pedants.
The baton has been passed on tenfold, too. Countless modern bands were also inspired to dedicate themselves to pursuing their passion, which is, in no small part, a domino effect of Noel being blown away by The Damned in 1980.
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