Noel Gallagher on David Holmes and writing in the studio
Guitars Exchange (2017):
For Who Built the Moon? Gallagher has decided to team up with producer David Holmes, who has clearly pushed him out of his comfort zone. In fact he did this quite literally, because Gallagher is used to writing at home, but for this album Holmes strongly discouraged it. “At first I thought I would just pretend to come up with stuff in the studio that I’d already written,” says Gallagher. “He won’t know. How would he fucking know? Of course he knew, because it all sounded like me. He was like, “Don’t fucking bullshit me.”
Flood Magazine (2017):
So he was pushing you.
Yeah, he was pushing me. Most of the time I’d be playing guitar and what would happen was there’d be a loop or something I’d be playing and I’d try all the things I’d learnt down the years—the Oasis things, the sounds that I knew. He’d be sitting at a computer, probably sending e-mails to his wife, looking completely uninterested in anything that was going on. Then I’d move on to other things that I’d learned. And then when I’d exhausted that and I was just fuckin’ playing, giving up almost, he’d spring to life and say, “What was that? What was that you just played?” We’d have to go back on the tapes and he’d say, “That bit there. Right, this is going to be the base of the song.” And I’d be like, “Wow, fucking, so he is listening.”
Radio X (2017):
“I would have been first to go, “You know, I don’t think it sounds like me, I’m not having it. Funnily enough, all the tracks on the album sound like my record collection. And there were times when I was kicking the songs into shape, and David would say, ‘The verses are great, but the chorus, just sounds like Oasis!’
“And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I know, brilliant, isn’t it!’ And he said, ‘Yeah, but we’ve all heard that for the last 25 years, do something different.’ And there was a long process of, (a) me accepting what he was saying, (b) me thinking to myself, ‘But am I capable of anything different?’”
Rock Cellar (2017):
“There were times when I was like, ‘You know, I don’t really know what I’m doing.’ But David was the first person who ever said to me, ‘Fucking hell, you’re a great guitarist.’ That was inspirational, because my guitar has always been a tool to write songs with. But he was really excited by the sounds I was coming up with – even when I thought a lot of it was haphazard, with me just smashing away at the pedals – and so he’d stop me and go, ‘Stop! That’s the sound!’ You know, I still had to come up with the songs in the end, but it gave me a lot of confidence, both in the moment and going into the next project, whatever that will be. David taught me that I can do it. I can write in the studio.”
