The two Beatles Noel Gallagher said were complete “arseholes”
No one was ever going to be calling Noel Gallagher a diplomat whenever he sat down for an interview.
His heart may have been in the right place on many different issues, but whenever he sat down for a chat in the 1990s, there was no telling whether you were going to get the rockstar spouting off nonsense about whatever was on the charts or the genuine music fan who loved to talk about The Smiths and The Jam. And when it was the former, Noel was never known to hold back when it came to people he didn’t like.
The obvious example here is Blur, but there are far greater insults that Noel has thrown towards anyone he thought was a disgrace to music. Old age may have helped him become a bit more diplomatic when slagging off people like Ed Sheeran, but if you caught him around the beginning of the 2000s, there was always going to be a little bit of that Manchester attitude coming out whenever he talked about what schlock he felt that Robbie Williams was getting himself into.
And it’s not like any of the legends were off the table, either. There’s already the famous quote that Noel wanted the severed head of Phil Collins by the end of the 1990s, but there were also many bands that he never seemed to enjoy like most of the rock world. He might not have been the one to tell people how to live their lives given his own problems with Liam, but he knew that there was a little bit of a method to playing the game.
After all, what’s the one thing in common between frontmen like John Lydon and Morrissey for instance? Sure, both of them could be brutally honest about their opinion, but when looking at how they conducted themselves, it wasn’t like they were meant to be looked at as the most upstanding members of society. They could be obnoxious when they wanted to, and Noel knew there was power to that.
So, really, the slagging off all seemed to have a purpose. They already talked themselves up as one of the biggest bands in the world, but after one quote after another about how much they hated one band and loved another, the whole thing started to work a little bit. But even when at the top, Noel remembered that even his all-time idols had their moments where they could be insufferable.
During the Heathen Chemistry era, Noel said that it was just as easy to respect what Liam brought to the table because of how much he could tolerate The Beatles, saying, “I still think [Liam’s] an arsehole. I can separate the two – the music and the person behind it. I mean, I like John Lennon’s music, but I think he was probably one of the biggest arseholes to strap on a guitar. I like McCartney’s music but he was a bona fide arsehole – and still is.”
To Noel’s credit, there are always going to be people bringing up the fact that The Fab Four weren’t always perfect, but they were far from absolutely terrible people. Did they have their issues? Absolutely. Did John Lennon do some deplorable things in his past ? Undoubtedly, but in the Fabs’ favour, all of them went out of their way to try and change their ways, even if it meant sitting through a few uncomfortable lines in their songs like the last verse of ‘Getting Better’.
While there is a line when it comes to separating the art from the artist, Noel may have been focusing his vitriol at the wrong heroes at that time. Lennon has passed far too long ago to defend himself, and it’s not like Macca is causing any controversy today, so why go after them when ‘The Moz’ is doing everything he can to dig himself into an even deeper hole every time he opens his mouth?
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