‘He was too afraid to be weird’
Very interesting to read the Amorphous Androgynous interview. Gary Cobain's got Noel so bang to rights. Yes the songs they worked on for Noel were some of the best ones he ever done. ‘The Mexican’. I was truly shocked to hear that was even Noel. I should've known he was working with someone. Questions can be asked of whether or not a song sounding good makes up for Noel sacrificing his own musical identity in songs, but I think he really had spent what he had to give in writing the same song in all 15 subtly different styles and influences that he had.
“There’s not much colour on his two albums; it’s just the same old Noel. He has tried to send out this message that he’s pushed himself, but it’s just the same generic stuff.
[...]I believe [our experimental collaboration] is the album people wanted him to make – a liberated, exploratory Noel Gallagher, cutting loose from Oasis, enjoying his freedom; the Noel who name-drops our Monstrous Bubble albums and krautrock, and who had hits (ed: sic. Twas 1 hit) with the Chemical Brothers. He obviously loves that kind of music, but has no idea how to make it.”
He also said this of Noel's writing. “It’s odd because Noel loves the Beatles, the masters of experimentation. But Oasis thought they just needed to sing lyrics of love – it was all surface and no depth. To me, psychedelia isn’t just tasteful songs about the sun and phased guitars; it’s a radical form.”
He's got him bang to rights. Because he really did just describe ‘Who Feels Love’, the most ‘psychedelic’ song Oasis had done until Dig Out Your Soul. And to me, it really tracks with that whole album.
After doing Oasis' big guitar rock mammoth with Be Here Now, Noel wanted the fourth album to be more experimental. He had just done the track with the Chemical Brothers. He brought home that experience and also an experimental producer, and planned to put both to good use on Standing On The Shoulder of Giants. He meant to infuse more electronic ideas, bring in the trip hop through his love for Portishead, but then he went and wrote ‘I Can See A Liar’. And the significantly worse 2 AM bar-closing bloated rock-evoking ‘Put Yer Money Where Yer Mouth Is’. I wouldn't call it pub rock because that would be doing Wilko Johnson's deft and punchy guitar playing heavy disrespect.
I have many thoughts on Noel Gallagher's failure to break out of his own mould. Why did acid house and house music never really influence his work? Apparently there was a house album in the works somewhere.
For a while he was hailed as the songwriter of his generation. While this obviously clashes with the same people declaring Kurt Cobain songwriter of his generation, it also conceals the fact that the true inheritor of 60s British music; if that was the yardstick by which we are to measure songwriting in the 90s British music landscape; was Damon Albarn. It always said a lot to me that Ray Davies would go on to perform once with Damon, and Damon says he nearly recorded an album with Ray and David Bowie— both influences on Noel as well. I think it's also telling that one of the influences on Noel who nearly collaborated with him in the Oasis years was Burt Bacharach. This isn't meant to take away from anyone's songwriting prowess, but it sums up the difference between Noel and Damon as songwriters and musicians, doesn't it?
Even still. In some ways, Damon's vignettes of London life were closer to the classic songwriting of the Kinks. Noel's writing was more introspective of his own hopes and fears, as unseeming as that may be on a superficial glance.
Ray Davies did present Oasis with their first BRIT Award in 1994, and Noel would do the same for Ray at the GQ Awards years later in 2012. The one other major interaction in the press I can recall is Ray Davies advised Liam to patch up with Noel. Not really heard them talk much more about Noel's songwriting, and it's the same with Paul McCartney (and the less said of George Harrison's thoughts on Oasis' songwriting the better).
But what is there to say about Noel's songwriting? It's simple. It works. It captured the feelings of a nation (it was broad enough to), and the imagination of a generation. It instilled hope into a generation thought to be doomed and resigned to the rubbish heap of historical bad luck: post-recession, cold war scare children brought up into austerity. They were fucked before they ever had a chance. Oasis were fucked in the long queue to the dole office. Oasis were fucked before they ever had a chance.
Somehow they were defiant in the face of it. Somehow, they made it big in spite of it all. The songs and the narrative blended into one; Oasis songs now represented a fierce hope in a future they wasn't supposed to be able to exist.
It encapsulated everything, but... was it complicated? No. Of course not. And it ran its course too. When you have something you do strongly wish to say, sometimes you get to say it and that's you done. That's your magnum opus. That's okay.
Damon Albarn was the true inheritor of the 60s. He's the one who went off to Mali after Britpop. He went to Iceland. He wrote the opera. He is one of the most respected musicians of his time, even when all he can do really is strum a bit on the guitar and play the keys half decently. His musicianship is respected. He is the descendant of both the observational songwriting of the Kinks and the experimentation of the Beatles. The true inheritor of British 60s songwriting.
So Gary AA here is completely right: Noel has only one mode of writing. He had one thing to say, and he's said it. Noel himself said, “I’ve pretty much summed up everything I wanted to say in ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Star,’ ‘Live Forever’ and ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol,’ after that, I’m repeating myself, but in a different way.”
