The (men’s) World Cup is starting today – you might have just heard something or other about it – and Noel Gallagher has been sounding off about it. You’d expect nothing less.

The Oasis guitarist was appearing on Talk Sport when the subject of the Final Half Time show came up. Yes indeed-y, there is going to be such a thing in 2026 and it’s being curated by Chris Martin of Coldplay, who has enlisted his great mates Madonna, Shakira and BTS. And the Muppets.

When asked by the host whether he’d been asked to play in the show, Gallagher quipped: “I’m doing the half-time raffle… for a leg of lamb.”

(Older listeners may well have chuckled at this, for that was exactly the sort of glamorous half-time entertainment you could have stumbled across at a lower division ground in the 1970s, around the time Noel first started going to games.)

“No, I don’t like changes in football. I’m looking forward to these new rules about corners and time-wasting, that might be a good thing for the game, but I don’t like the razzmatazz of football; it’s been functioning perfectly for hundreds of years,” Gallagher said, before returning to the subject of the Half Time show: “They’re not really football people who are performing anyway, are they?”

He also revealed that he'd once been invited by the FA to get involved in an official England team song. “It was back in the '90s,” he remembered. “It was… Ocean Colour Scene were involved and Ian McCulloch (of Echo and the Bunnymen). I’m not sure what the tune was, (but) it got swamped by Three Lions anyway.”

(That would have been How Does It Feel To Be (On Top Of The World), the 1998 song credited to ‘England United’, a motley crew that included the aforementioned McCulloch, Ocean Colour Scene, Space and the Spice Girls. And yes, it was somewhat overshadowed by both Three Lions and Vindaloo by Fat Les.)

Anyway, to Gallagher’s doubtless delight, there will be more non-football people performing at the opening ceremonies – and yes you read that correctly: there are going to be three opening ceremonies, you lucky people.

There’s one tonight at the opening game in Mexico City, another at the first Canadian-hosted game on Friday and a further one on Saturday in Los Angeles. Among the artists involved will be Shakira (again), Burna Boy, Katy Perry, Tyla, Alanis Morissette, Future and Michael Buble.

We knew that the Gallagher brothers earned a considerable amount from last year’s big Oasis reunion tour. But it appears that it was enough to make them a new entry in this year’s Sunday Times Rich List.

Yes, apparently Liam and Noel amassed some £375 million for the 41 shows they perform between July and November 2025. We’re not sure where exactly they will be on the list – it’s not published until Sunday – but it’s apparently somewhere in the Top 350.

Amongst the hedge fund owners, football club owners and tech tycoons, there will no doubt be some familiar faces from the world of music. Last year Sir Paul McCartney was at Number 151 – he’s currently worth £1.025 billion. Go down a little further and you’d find Sir Elton John at 283, worth £475 million. Meanwhile Mick Jagger and Keith Richards shared Number 295 – they both have wealth to the tune of £440 million, and Simon Cowell was at Number 301 – he increased his wealth to £430 million last year.

And lest you think that extreme wealth in music is the preserve of the elite from the golden age of rock and pop, last year Ed Sheeran re-entered at 333. He was worth £370 million.

Overall, there are twenty fewer billionaires in the UK than four years ago, though the list’s compiler, Robert Watts, suggested there is a simple reason for that: “Many foreign billionaires who have been living in the UK have also dropped out because they have moved away. We have also seen a sharp rise in the number of British nationals now resident in Dubai, Switzerland and Monaco. As UK nationals these people remain on our Rich List - wherever they now live.”

“Over the years our research has told us a lot about our country, charting the way a generation of largely self-made entrepreneurs overtook the old money of the landed gentry.”

Anyway, to find out exactly where the Gallaghers (and others) are in the chart, pick up a copy of the Sunday Times this weekend or head over to https://www.thetimes.com/sunday-times-rich-list

We’ve had the release of the Noel Gallagher signature guitars, from Gibson and Epiphone alike. There have been the auctions, the 1960 ES-335 that Liam smashed when Oasis split in 2009, the ‘Be Here Now’ Les Paul Florentine, etc. Now Gallagher tone obsessives have the opportunity to complete the next part of the jigsaw as the Chief’s pedalboards have gone up for sale.

The ‘boards were put together by touring gear and guitar effects guru Mike Hill, one of which was featured on That Pedal Show in 2023, and are on sale from Denmark Street Guitars, in London.

There are three ‘boards in total. Each comes with a certificate of authenticity and is road-ready, shipping in its own flight case. Prices and more details are available upon enquiry. There will be some speculation as to what is on these ‘boards.

Would Gallagher to be willing to part with his SIB Echodrive, the tube-driven holy grail overdrive pedaldesigned by Rick Hamel that sells for megabucks online, if, and only if, you could ever find it?

Well, take a close look at the Instagram post from Denmark Street Guitars [below]. It would seem that the answer to this question is yes (and is probably explained by the fact that Gallagher has no doubt got some spares).

For the longest time, Gallagher never used many pedals. Speaking to That Pedal Show, he said that, in the beginning, Oasis was just the guitar, the amps and a Roland Space Echo tape delay.

But over the years, both with Oasis and High Flying Birds, Gallaghe caught the pedal bug, even if he isn’t completely sure of the science behind them.

“I never, ever used a compressor with Oasis, ever,” he said. “I didn’t know what… I still don’t know what they do…”

But nonetheless, the Keeley Compressor is on his ‘board (and remained on his touring ‘board for the Oasis reunion shows). Also, there are some pedals that Gallagher really loves. His ‘That Pedal Show’ ‘board includes some of his favourites.

“That Page [by] Kingsley boost is one of the best pedals in the history of music,” he says. “It has been on everything I have ever recorded since the day it came out.”

Again, prices are TBC, but for a Gallagher-owned pedalboard, featuring a modern classic from Kingsley Amplification that sells for over 750 bucks online, don’t expect this to be a budget purchase.

The gourmet picks continue with a Pete Cornish Soft Sustain (for live solos), but there are some familiar favourites. There is no need to spend 750 bucks for a great digital delay pedal when the Boss DD-3 is around (this and a Boss guitar tuner “on a piece of plywood” was his pedalboard for Knebworth). Elsewhere, there’s a Boss GE-7 Equalizer, a Strymon TimeLine, and a four-button pedal switcher.

You’ll notice that this particular ‘board isn’t one of those great acts of real estate management in which every square millimetre of space has been used. This is by design.

“It’s very spread out. I’ll admit it’s not very compact,” said Gallagher. “And that’s because I just don’t want to be thinking about it. I don’t want to be looking and playing and singing at the same time.”

To enquire, head over to Denmark Street Guitars or email justin@londonvintageguitars.com.

If you’re on a budget and you’ve got a gig coming up this weekend at Knebworth or whatever, then it should reassure you to know that you can pick up a piece of plywood, some pedalboard tape, a Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner and DD-3 Digital Delay for just over 100 bucks secondhand.

Noel Gallagher has broken cover to address the fact that he’ll be presented with the Songwriter Of The Year award at this month’s Brits – despite not having released a new record for nearly three years.

The Oasis guitarist was interviewed on TalkSPORT and, whilst the conversation centred on football and Manchester City’s chances of winning the Premier League in particular, he did suggest a reason why he has been given the honour, saying: “If I’m being honest right, I just think they were desperate to get somebody from Oasis up there because it’s from Manchester… that’s what I think. Our kid (Liam) was like ‘I’m not going’ so I was like ‘well I’ll have to go, I suppose.’

“I haven’t written a song for two years. I’m not sure how I’ve got away with that one but I’ll take it.”

The Brits' organisers have justified it, saying that he had “permeated the fabric of British culture for over 30 years” with songs that “continue to resonate with audiences around the world like no other.”

When asked whether he thought he deserved it, Gallagher Sr said: “Well, I think the Brits is all based on record sales, and I’m not sure there was another single songwriter that sold… I mean, we sold a million records last year. Didn’t even get off the couch and I’m not sure there’s a songwriter that can match that.”

“But you know, if anybody’s got a problem with it, meet me there,” he continued. “We’ll have it out on the red carpet. If any of those wet wipes songwriting teams, all 11 of them, want to write a song between the lot of them, want to have it out on the red carpet, I’m there.”

The interview didn’t touch on the subject fans will be ravenous to know – whether we’ll see further Oasis activity in the short to medium term – though Noel did let slip that “I’m in the studio now – I better put something out.”

The Brits takes place on Saturday 28 February, in Manchester – as Noel pointed out – at the Co-Op Live Arena.

Remember that black Les Paul that Noel Gallagher was playing during Oasis’ stadium-filling reunion shows? Of course you do, it was the mystery electric guitar that got everyone talking, what was this thing?

And then Gibson launched a limited run of 25 Murphy Lab replicas in August, available exclusively via the Gibson Garage London. That Custom Shop special, built to Gallagher’s specifications, was no cheap date. It was a high-end electric guitar priced for the collector’s market.

Well, if you had FOMO about all that then, today should offer a measure of compensation because now you have the chance to buy one as Gibson has just added the Noel Gallagher Les Paul Standard to its regular lineup.

This is pretty much spit of the original Murphy Lab model minus the ageing – that you will have to do yourself – and the aged nickel hardware (which was apparently a tough nut to crack, even for the Gibson Custom Shop).

But this does have the dual P-90 electric guitar pickups, the chrome washer on the three-way pickup selector, chrome Grover Rotomatic tuners with the ‘kidney bean’ buttons, and the black ‘top hat’ control knobs with silver inserts.

And there’s something about those chrome housings on the P-90s that make it look kind of punk, edgy, and for want of a better word, cool. Lee Bartram, Gibson’s head of commercial and Marketing EMEA, says it is here by popular demand.

“This guitar is simply too iconic and cool not to be released more widely and made available for more fans to get their hands on,” he says. “Noel’s original Gibson Custom version of this Les Paul was the first guitar he played during the biggest rock ’n’ roll reunion of the 21st century. This Gibson USA version embraces that legacy, capturing a historic moment in British and global live music.”

It is also a signature guitar that doesn’t just sell itself to the artist’s fans. You do not need to be have a bucket hat and a Stone Island parka in your wardrobe to enjoy a full-fat Les Paul Standard with no weight relief and P-90s. We’d like to run this with a fuzz pedal and throw around some Leslie West riffs, or tune it down and see how it sounds.

If you prefer a thinner Les Paul neck, you’ll find a kindred spirit in Gallagher. This has the SlimTaper profile, giving it that ‘60s LP feel.

Elsewhere, it’s as you were: ABR-1 bridge with Tune-o-matic stop-bar tailpiece, 12” rosewood fingerboard, 22 medium-jumbo frets, acrylic trapezoid inlays, the 24.75” scale length... It’s a Les Paul. You know the drill.

It's finished in gloss nitro, Ebony with cream binding, and it comes in hard-shell guitar case, with a relatively normal Gibson USA Les Paul price tag of £2,699/$2,699.

The Noel Gallagher Les Paul Standard is available now. See Gibson for more details, and if that price is still too steep, don't lose hope. It is not outwith the realms of possibility that Gallagher's Les Paul Standard is released as an Epiphone guitar, too. It has been known to happen.

• "Definitely, maybe, one of the best signature guitars of the year": Epiphone Noel Gallagher Riviera review

The guitar that Liam Gallagher smashed up the evening Oasis split up in August 2009 is going up for auction.

It’s a 1960s Gibson ES-355 in red, and its place in rock history is that of the straw that broke the camel’s back regarding Noel and his relationship with his younger bro.

As you might recall, the pair had been sniping at each other on social media and in the press for quite some time in the run-up to an appearance at the Paris Rock en Seine festival.

There was a backstage fight just before Oasis were about to go on stage. The 335 got smashed, and the next morning, via the band’s website, came the confirmation: “It’s with some sadness and great relief to tell you that I quit Oasis tonight,” Noel wrote. “People will write and say what they like, but I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer.”

The guitar is now fully repaired and is expected to fetch up to £500,000 at the Propstore Music Memorabilia auction which takes place on October 23 and 24.

It’s one of over 100 Oasis-related items that Propstore is accepting bids for, including the Takamine FP460SC acoustic that Noel used to record Wonderwall, which is expected to go for anything between £200,000 and £400,000.

Also up for grabs is a pair of John Lennon’s old specs; some tinted prescription glasses that the ex-Beatle wore during his 1973 – 75 ‘lost weekend’ period. Those are likely to go for between £150,000 and £300,000.

Mark Hochman, Propstore’s Music Specialist, said in a statement: “Propstore’s auction is a celebration of music history, with guitars that shaped the sound of a generation, handwritten lyrics that capture the first spark of legendary songs, and personal items that offer a glimpse into the lives of the world’s greatest music artists.

"From John Lennon’s unmistakable glasses to Noel Gallagher’s iconic guitars, these are not just collectables; they’re cultural touchstones that have inspired millions.”

The auction is a two-day affair. The first will be held at The Cumberland Hotel, London on October 23 and will feature in-person bidding open to the public. The following day’s auction is online only and will feature the 100+ Oasis-related items, including Noel’s guitars.

If you have a few spare thousand burning a hole in your wallet and fancy getting your hands on some rock history, the full catalogue is available to view and bid on at Propstore.

The summer of 2025 has brought pop-culture the biggest reunion tour of all time, and quite possibly one of the most collectible Les Pauls, too. After Gibson teased the release last week, today it officially unveils the Murphy Lab aged replica of the black P-90 equipped Les Paul Standard that Noel Gallagher has been playing during the Oasis comeback shows.

Sometimes the marketing bumf overcooks it. But when Gibson refers to this Custom Shop signature guitar as “the most talked-about guitar of the summer” it is no exaggeration. Even players who would gladly sit out the Oasis stadium experience couldn’t help but be intrigued by Gallagher’s mystery black Les Paul Standard.

Here was this bespoke single-cut with the humbuckers swapped out for P-90s, aged nickel pickup coverings giving it an industrial look. The three-way pickup selector switch was mounted on a nickel poker chip washer. There clearly has been some aging, with the binding taking on a darker buttercream/custard yellow tinge, the lacquer checked. What was this?

Well, the Gibson Gazette revealed all on on July 30. Gallagher’s Live ’25 Les Paul Standard was a Murphy Lab special order, Light Aged in Nashville, with a second round of aging to bring it up to Gallagher’s specifications. Lee Bartram, head of commercial, marketing & cultural influence, Gibson EMEA, spilled the beans, noting that Gallagher had fallen hard for P-90s when playing Epiphone Casinos during the touring cycle with his High Flying Birds.

“It really came from a conversation around creating a Les Paul that would accommodate P-90s at high volumes, without compromising on the sound and tone of the pickup,” said Bartram. “Aesthetically, Noel had an idea of what he wanted it to look like, and we tried out a few hardware, finish, and color options before landing where we did.”

Bartram said those aged nickel pickup covers were not easy to get right. When Gibson first started working with Gallagher, no one had any idea that they were making a custom electric guitar specifically for this then-unannounced reunion tour.

“For this guitar to be part of such a monumental musical event is a thrill, and knowing it was designed specifically for it makes it even better,” he said. “The first time people saw the band together in 16 years was with a guitar that Gibson designed and built directly with the artist. That’s pretty cool.”

Agreed. So what about this replica? The first thing to note is that it is a Gibson Garage London exclusive, limited to just 25 units. The price has not been revealed.

As in restaurants with no prices on the menu, that tells you it won’t be cheap. But for Oasis fans – for Les Paul fans – this is a super-collectible instrument.

Each instrument has had the Light Aging treatment from the Murphy Lab in Nashville. Each instrument has been hand-signed by Gallagher himself (across the back, tastefully discrete). And the specs are the same as Gallagher’s original, with a SlimTaper neck, Grover tuners with nickel kidney bean-style buttons – again, lightly aged to match the pickup housings.

The case candy isn’t so bad either – come to think of it, the guitar case with its blue velvet lining is pretty sweet. Inside, you’ll find a custom-made Bear guitar strap, plus a certificate of authenticity, and a hand-written lyric sheet from Gallagher, with each of the 25 guitars shipping with lyrics to a different Oasis song. Pretty cool.

Also, in today’s press release, Bartram hints that we might not have seen the last Gibson x Oasis release this year.

“Gibson is honoured to support Noel Gallagher in what has become one of the biggest music reunion tours in recent history,” says Bartram. “When he reached out, the challenge was to create a guitar with a striking, unique look while ensuring it produced the sound needed for the Live ’25 tour. Based on the feedback from fans so far, the team has certainly nailed it.

“To kick off what is going to be a very exciting few months for our partnership, we have this truly unique collector’s package with each guitar accompanied by handwritten lyrics from Noel representing an Oasis track, meaning no two guitars will be the same. It’s the perfect way to start our Live ’25 celebrations, with more to come.”

More to come? We like the sound of that. You can read more from Bartram at the Gibson Gazette.

As for the Gibson Custom Noel Gallagher Les Paul Standard, you better set a calendar reminder for August 21, when it will be available exclusively from the Gibson Garage London, in-person from 9am local time, or by calling +44 20 4570 5400 from 11am.

Gibson has teased a UK-exclusive release of the black custom-built 1960 Les Paul Standard that Noel Gallagher has been spotted playing during Oasis’s stadium-filling reunion shows.

Details of the release are thin on the ground. But thanks to Gibson's Instagram post, we do know this. It will be available exclusively from the Gibson Garage London on August 21st, it looks like Gallagher is signing each one of them, and they will go like hot cakes.

Is this a signature guitar? Don’t bet on it – at least it is most likely not a signature model in the strictest sense. This looks more like what Gibson did with Johnny Marr, spec’ing up a 20 replicas of his iconic Smiths-era Bigsby-equipped ’84 Les Pauls and selling them out of the Gibson Garage London to raise money for the Teenage Cancer Trust.

We would imagine these Gallagher Les Pauls would be similarly limited, and created in a similar spirit.

It is, however, a super-cool electric, especially with those aged-nickel covers on the P-90s. As it turns out, those were particularly challenging for Gibson to recreate.

When Gallagher emerged with this off-menu electric guitar, the guitar internet responded with the appropriate level of delirium and speculative frenzy, so the Gibson Gazette sat down with Lee Bartram, head of commercial, marketing and cultural influence at at Gibson EMEA, to talk about the guitar’s design.

Bartram said when they started working on the Les Paul 18 months ago he had no idea that it was going to be used for.

“Not knowing originally where that guitar was going to end up, it’s been quite emotional to see it being used during the biggest reunion tour ever,” said Bartram. “We’ve received amazing feedback on the guitar, and I think it’s safe to say it has become the talk of the town every time it is used – I’ve had so many people reach out wanting to know what it is and if we can build one for them.”

What it is is a 1960 Les Paul Standard with a SlimTaper neck, humbuckers swapped out, Custom Shop P-90s swapped in, with some Light Aged magic from the Murphy Lab applied to its Ebony paint job. Gallagher then sent it back for more.

“Everything we build for Noel starts out as Light Aging, and he will then decide after playing it if he wants to add more aging or keep it as it is, knowing it’s more straightforward to increase the aging levels than decrease them,” said Bartram. “In this case, he wanted more on the body, neck, and back, which looks great on stage.”

The tuners are grovers with kidney bean-style buttons. The pickguard is black. The control knobs are black top hats with silver inserts.

While it is hard to tell from an Instagram shot, with Gallagher hunted over a face-down guitar, marker pen in hand, it looks like these have had the Light Aged treatment. They are certainly not heavily aged as Gallagher’s stage-played model has.

But we’ll bring you more news as and when it arrives. And if you miss out? Well you could always order one yourself via Gibson's Made To Measure programme, or settle for a more budget-friendly Gallagher guitar, like his signature Epiphone Riviera.

You know a song has reached the pinnacle in rock when it makes people grimace in guitar shops; not because it's bad but because nearly everyone plays it when they pick up a guitar. Smoke On The Water, Stairway… and Wonderwall. 

Only one is a real songwriter's song; something one player and an acoustic guitar can deliver, and frequently will on high streets and in bars. It's a classic; a timeless sing-along with that elusive kind of universal appeal. But Noel Gallagher's own band didn't even like it when they first heard it.

"Everyone in the band went, 'I'm sorry but I don't f*****g think so," recalled Noel in a 2023 interview with That Pedal Show. Brother Liam was even more scathing.

"I remember Our Kid saying, and I'll never forget this, 'Why are you writing reggae songs?' And I was like, there speaks a man that has never heard reggae."

The younger Gallagher's confusion aside, at this point it was clear Noel knew what he was doing. From the watershed moment of writing Definitely Maybe's Live Forever, Oasis's songwriter had been in a seemingly endless creative purple patch.   

"Because I'd got on such a mission as a songwriter, and it was happening, I could feel it happening, from that day of Live Forever, every song that I wrote, up until I'd say '97, is now world-famous," he told TPS. "And it was just a moment in time where I was living out of a suitcase," added Noel. "I had no girlfriend, had anywhere to live; that was my thing."

The girlfriend part might be questionable when it comes to Wonderwall. Its subject has often been the subject of much conjecture. Assumed to be about the Meg Matthews, who would become Noel's first wife in 1997, Noel put the record straight on that recently.

"When I wrote it, we did the cover and there's a girl on the front who used to work in the Creation offices," he explained to Talk Sport earlier this year. "She had long blonde hair, she looked like my then-wife, Meg Matthews. Doing the interviews for the thing [later], and they say, 'Is this about your wife?', and what do you say? No? So you say yes but it's not about anyone in particular.'

"It's generic, which is why it's so popular, I guess," he added "Most of my great songs are about the universal truths of life? They're not really that autobiographical."

As Fran Healy asked on Travis's 1997 hit Writing To Reach You, 'What's a Wonderwall anyway?' The recording of the song is much more interesting – involving Noel atop an actual wall.

Oasis's second album (What's The Story) Morning Glory was recorded at Monmouth's Rockfield studios in Wales during the May and June of 1995. To mark the 25th anniversary of the album that made the band massive, Noel returned to the studio for the documentary above, and it turned up some interesting details as he dug through his memories in the studio where they were made. 

"That's the wall I sat on that day like a f*****g idiot, playing Wonderwall," says Noel at one point as he walks around Rockfield's outer compound. "I remember a load of sheep were watching me do Wonderwall. I don't know who was more freaked out – me or them."

"I remember saying to Owen [Morris, co-producer alongside Noel], I've got this song called Wonderwall – I want to record it on a wall," adds Noel.

So the song came first, it's not actually named after the unsuspecting wall on the back of the studio. But Noel was serious about the idea of field recording with stepladders and £20k of microphones. And it happened. 

"I remember being really cold and saying in the mic to Owen, 'I think this is a shit idea.'"

While the results didn't make it into the final version of Wonderwall, Noel's performance on the wonder wall did make the album; you can hear it right at the very beginning of Morning Glory's opener Hello – complete with birds singing in the background.

That was a rare moment of experimentation in sessions that were focussed and relatively fast.  In sharp contrast to the previous 14-month sessions the Welsh studios had hosted for part of the Stone Roses' Second Coming album. "I set up everything pretty quickly and Noel arrived at is was really fast," recalls resident engineer Nick Brine in the documentary. "They got used to the place pretty quick. They were buzzing to be here and everyone was in here from 10 or 11 in the morning to late at night every day, there was something going on – it was one song after another."

The residential facilities at the studio made sure the band were on-site – with the exception of trips to the local town Monmouth's pubs with Brine as the designated driver for members who weren't needed at the studio.

Brine is the key figure for details of the sessions, and kept written records from the time. He went into much more detail with Oasis fan and YouTuber James Hargreaves in the video above. Brine confirms the mic setup for the sessions with a Neumann kmi84 for the bright top end combined with the Neumann U47 FET or AKG 414 condenser mics. Liam would use the U47 for his vocals too. 

But the acoustic guitar was especially vital on Morning Glory; most of the band hadn't even heard the songs properly before going into record them and Noel's acoustic guide tracks – recorded to a click track with a guide vocal – became the foundation for everything. 

"The challenge when we went into Morning Glory was, we never demoed any of it, and I wrote them all on an acoustic guitar on the road or in hotel rooms," Noel confirmed to That Pedal Show. 

While Oasis played hard in the evenings, Noel worked hard and sessions were clearly prioritising efficiency; Brine confirms they reused the wall experiment recording for Wonderwall's guide track, while the rest of the songs were done in the studio itself.

The acoustic guitar used on the song is now in Brine's possession after it was gifted to him by Noel following Brine's own guitar getting smashed by Liam in the later Be Here Now sessions at Abbey Road. This Takamine FP-460SC cutaway (with a treo-fitted Mimesis pickup), was used on the album alongside what is believed to be an Epiphone Frontier. The Takamine still has the same strings on it that were used for tracking Wonderwall. 

Hargreaves points out that this same Takamine was likely the one Noel used for a 1996 performance of Wonderwall On The Late Late Show, as well as Oasis's MTV Unplugged and Knebworth performances from that year. But the electric guitar used on the song is the one with even greater star quality. 

Firstly, the Fender Strat used for the recording is unusual in being the first single-coil guitar Noel used in Oasis. Secondly, he bought it from Johnny Marr – who used it on a number of Smiths recordings. Its year is unconfirmed but That Pedal Show believes it's circa 1965. 

"This one I bought off him, because I was feeling a bit bad," Noel explained to TPS, deciding he had to stump up after Marr had gifted him some of his Smiths Les Pauls. "I'd never had a Strat, I'd never played anything with single coil pickups. I'm not sure I knew or was interested in the difference to it. I played this guitar on the Morning Glory sessions – this guitar is on Wonderwall, it's on Don't Look Back In Anger [the solo]."

The part in question doubles the acoustic lead melody in the chorus, with Owen Morris and Bonehead adding additional mellotron parts after Noel had stolen his thunder by playing all the guitar parts on the song.   

Over two decades later Noel dusted the Fender Strat down out of storage and wrote AKA… What A Life! from his debut solo album with the High Flying Birds. He then discovered from Marr what he'd written Smiths songs including Girlfiend In A Coma and Stop Me If You Think That You've Heard This One Before on it.

As Noel continued to revisit the song live in his solo career – taking some influence from Ryan Adams' plaintive 2003 version of the song that the Oasis songwriter is said to have admired – one question remains, why did Noel let Liam sing it on the album? Especially considering his brother didn't seem to like the song at first.

"I didn't," Noel told Frank Skinner on the latter's TV talk show in 2000. "We had a long heated debate about who was going to sing that song, and in the end his bottom lip went too far down towards his kneecaps. He looked very, very sad. So I said, 'Alright, I'm going to sing the other one, which was Don't Look Back In Anger."

Nevertheless, Noel would often sing Wonderwall on acoustic versions during Oasis  sets as the band struggled for a while to perform a full-band version they were satisfied with.  

As for how the song was written in the first place, we know from the George Martin video below that a capo Noel was gifted added inspiration on the second fret to a four-chord progression he'd had kicking around for a while. But there are different accounts on the when and where of writing it.

Noel told Brine he wrote it on the train on the way to Rockfield. A tall tale that Noel would often use. As James Hargreaves points out in his excellent video on the making of the song above (well worth watching as it confirms Noel probably tracked the bass and later outro piano on the song too), Noel has consistently said elsewhere that Wonderwall was written over time in various locations, including Brighton, Camden and Scotland. But the initial inspiration for it came after a show. 

"A fan one night after a gig earnestly put this thing into my hand and she closed it," Noel told Sirius XM. "She closed it and she said, 'That's your wishing stone, you should write a song about that.' I wrote this song Wonderwall and for a long time the title was called Wishing Stone." Luckily the obvious inspiration of George Harrison's album Wonderwall Music stepped in and a classic was born. But even its writer is still baffled by its legacy.

"My daughter is now 20 years of age and she gets people coming up to her saying, 'No way, did your dad actually write the song Wonderwall?!'" Noel reflected to SiriusXM in 2021. 

"She gets mobbed over it and she wasn't even f*****g there. It's a strange thing, we didn't perform that song for a long time because we could never get it right. Liam hated it, I'm not sure the rest of the band were too keen on it. Why that song took hold on the planet the way that it did is crazy. There's no rhythm or reason for it. It just is. It's mad when you think of it and I try not to think of it. It's just one of my songs."

• The 6 non-album Noel Gallagher Oasis songs you need to hear (that aren't on The Masterplan)

An engineer who worked on the Oasis albums Be Here Now and (What’s The Story) Morning Glory has been telling his own story; specifically, of how he ended up with the Takamine acoustic Noel Gallagher recorded Wonderwall with.

It’s a tale Nick Brine has probably been dining out on for decades (well you would, wouldn't you?) and has now been related to BBC News. It seems it all started when Liam Gallagher kicked off one time at Abbey Road when the band were attempting to record Be Here Now.

"It was the morning after a heavy night and Liam was worse for wear," recalls Brine. “Noel had said something about him in the papers and Liam kicked off. I'm in Abbey Road's famous Studio Two setting up equipment and hungover myself, then looking up I saw a guitar come flying over from the control room.

"It was Noel's Fender Jag and it was smashed to bits. I run to the control room and Liam also made a big dent in Abbey Road's mixing desk. Then I see another acoustic guitar flying over the top and in a thousand pieces on the floor - and realise that's my guitar.”

It was his 1970s Japanese Fender and it was in smithereens.

"I thought it best if I didn't say anything. Noel came in and said 'what the hell is going on?'. It kicked off. Noel saw his guitar smashed up, then points to my smashed guitar and says 'whose is that?' Liam replies 'that's your guitar too', to which Noel replied 'it ain't mine.'"

Cue an argument about who was going to buy Nick a new one. Liam offered to take the engineer up to Denmark Street where he could have his pick of any he wanted. "Noel replied to Liam 'what the hell do you know about guitars?'," recalls Nick. "He said 'I'm going to get him a guitar'. There was another kick off about who was going to buy me a new one."

Gallagher Senior also insisted Liam call Nick’s mother to apologise for breaking the guitar she had once gifted her son. "It was like: 'Hello Mrs Brine, Liam Gallagher here, I'm ringing to apologise...', he told her what he'd done and was sorry. That typified Liam, angry one minute then angelic the next, I've always enjoyed his company."

Feeling embarrassed of his younger bro, it seems Noel gave Nick the Takamine acoustic he had used at Knebworth and for the MTV Unplugged performance. "I was gobsmacked,” he said. “I said 'it's OK, it's fine', but Noel insisted I take it. It more than made up for the smashed guitar, I couldn't believe it."

He’s still got it today. Should he ever wish to part company with it, it could be expected to go for anything up to £100,000.

The Be Here Now sessions were chaotic, Brine recalls. "We had press hounding us all the time to hear the songs, get any info because in 1997 Oasis were headline news virtually every day.”

"I was in charge of locking the tapes away every night so if anyone snuck or broke in, no-one could get to the tapes. Keeping them secret was almost a military operation which was made difficult as Liam used to bring people back to the studio from the pub to hear the recordings.”

It’s been seven months since the announcement that Oasis were reforming, the ensuing bunfight for tickets and the whole controversy over ‘dynamic’ pricing. But now Noel Gallagher has finally broken his silence about that whole debacle.

It comes in a new interview he’s given to the esteemed photographer and fellow Manchester City fan, Kevin Cummins, for his book Oasis: The Masterplan. In it, the guitarist said that the sheer scale of the demand for tickets surprised him.

“I thought it’d be a big deal, but I was a bit taken aback by just how much of a big deal it was,” he said.

Cummins also asked him what his favourite Oasis song is. “Can I have more than one? ‘Supersonic’, ‘Some Might Say’, ‘Live Forever’ and ‘Rock’n’Roll Star,” Noel replied.

It marks the first public statement by Noel since the reunion was confirmed. Neither Gallagher has given an interview with any media outlet recently. This seems to be a deliberate policy to preserve the brothers’ detente, according to Liam, anyway.

“We don’t want to do interviews coz we’re scared of the media asking us intrusive questions and trying to pick holes in our relationship,” he posted on Twitter/ X last October.

Meanwhile, we’re still no closer to finding out who else will be lining up alongside Noel and Liam come July. Last month ‘sources working closely with close the band’ suggested the reformed Oasis would include Andy Bell on bass, both Gem Archer and Bonehead on guitars with stalwart session musician Joey Waronker (who’s played with REM and Beck) filling in on drums. But none of those four have been confirmed as yet.

The band start their Live ‘25 reunion tour in Cardiff Principality Stadium on Friday 4 July. By then it will be almost sixteen years since the Gallaghers were last on stage together.

Zak Starkey has been talking about how moved he felt when he played the Cavern in Liverpool recently.

The ex-Oasis drummer, who of course is the eldest son of one Ringo Starr, was there with his new group Mantra Of The Cosmos. But he also found time to play alongside fellow ex-Oasis man Chris Sharrock with the Cavern’s own Beatles tribute band, something that left him somewhat nervous.

"We set up two kits and we double drummed the Beatles show,” he explained. “It was amazing because I was shitting it.”

"I've never been nervous in my life - I've been on stage since I was 12 years old - but it's holy music. I know it, but I don't know the drum bits... But as soon as I walked on it was like being picked up and carried by the music."

Starkey has arguably been the most musically successful of all the Beatles’ offspring. He’s played all over the world, on the biggest stages, not only with Oasis, but also with The Who - indeed it was Keith Moon who gave him his first drum kit, aged 8 - as well as Johnny Marr and The Lightning Seeds amongst others. In many ways, he’s as safe a pair of hands as his old man.

And now he’s popped up in Mantra Of The Cosmos, which is something of a supergroup consisting as it does of Andy Bell, the Ride (and ex-Oasis) guitarist, Shaun Ryder and Bez. They’ve also been joined on their latest single, Domino Bones (Gets Dangerous), by Noel Gallagher, who sings the chorus vocal. The single is available exclusively through the Cavern’s own website.

Noel, who you can always depend upon to chip in with an apt soundbite, said of the group: “Mantra Of The Cosmos is like Dylan, Dali and Ginsberg on a rocket ship to the moon to have it with the Clangers.”

Starkey also praised the venue for allowing them to perform two shows in the same day, which meant they were able to cover the costs of the crew and expenses to put on the gigs as a band not signed to a major label.

He said that he feels more needs to be done to support smaller venues like the Cavern: “It’s alright spending billions on great big arenas like they have in Manchester but no one’s looking after little venues. Great big arenas are great for big, boring bands but they’re not for up and coming bands.”

Noel Gallagher has called it the “world’s best” electric guitar, but maybe his 1997 Silver Sparkle Gibson Les Paul Florentine that he sold in the ‘90s is simply too good to hold onto, because it has just been sold again at auction, with the BBC reporting that it fetched £226,000.

The auction, hosted via Propstore, saw a cornucopia of Oasis-related ephemera go under the hammer. This was an occasion for those of deep pockets to bid for frontman Liam Gallagher’s tambourine, or for one of Noel’s old golf buggies, refinished with a hotrod paint job – just the thing for a trip down to Waitrose.

But it was Noel’s Les Paul Florentine that was the star of the show. It was expected to fetch between £200,000 and £400,000. The question is why this guitar keeps changing hands? It was auctioned as recently as 2022. Back then, Propstore had estimated its value between £300,000 to £500,000.

With the vintage market overheating, and with the fever for all things Oasis after the Gallagher brothers finally buried the hatchet and announced their reunion shows, it is counterintuitive that it should fall in value.

Its provenance is unimpeachable. Made by the Gibson Custom Shop in 1997, it was used on Oasis’ third studio album, Be Here Now, and with a Silver Sparkle finish it was always going to be a touring guitar. Gallagher took it everywhere.

He also couldn’t be more effusive about its capabilities, telling Spin that it was the best guitar in the world.

“That’s the best guitar in the world,” he said. “It’s not one of the best guitars; it’s the best guitar. The thing about that guitar is it’s got that extra... you know what I mean? When you’ve got everything turned all the way up, this one gives you more. It goes to 11.”

With Gallagher enjoying a number of collaborations with Gibson and Epiphone – the latter releasing a superlative version of his Riviera – perhaps we might see a replica of this as a future signature guitar.

It would make a neat project for the Custom Shop’s Murphy Lab team to get their teeth into. Although you could see a future in which a Silver Sparkle Les Paul Florentine with Gallagher’s name on the headstock could be a top-selling Epiphone guitar.

In either scenario, the Metalheadz sticker that Gallagher applied to the original, would surely be available inside the guitar case. And would any player be brave enough to stick it onto the front of their guitar?

Gallagher did that in the ‘90s. Things were different back then. But the more things change, the more they stay the same. Oasis are back. Liam says even on a bad day Oasis still “wipe the floor” with most other bands out there today.

A classic interview with Pantera legend Dimebag Darrell is one of the highlights of the last-ever issue of Total Guitar, which goes on sale this week.

This final issue features excerpts from many other interviews from across the years with cover stars including Jimmy Page, Brian May, Noel Gallagher and Matt Bellamy. But for pure foul-mouthed entertainment, nothing can beat the conversation with a drunk Dimebag from the summer of 2004 - just a few months before the guitarist’s life was cut short.

At one point during this interview, Dime grabbed his new Washburn signature guitar and swung it at the head of TG writer Steve Allsworth. But even as the hangover from hell crept up on him, Dime remained lucid enough to discuss the magic of spontaneous creation.

“I’ve got to the point where I just don’t f*ckin’ practice,” he said. “If I feel it’s slacking, I’ll do a little work. But dude, I’ve been doing this my whole f*cking life! I don’t know all the f*ckin’ scales, but you know what? If I knew all the scales, I’d know what something was gonna sound like before I played it. And then there’d never be that experience of stepping out there and saying, ‘Let me see if I can make this solo fly! Can I get that last lick in there?’ And if you can turn a sour note into a good one just by bending it a half step, you can almost make it sound like it was meant to be!”

And at the end of that interview, the man who would be buried in a Kiss-branded coffin, with one of Eddie Van Halen’s guitars, had some sage advice for TG readers. “As far as guitar playing goes, go to the old school - Randy Rhoads, Tony Iommi, Eddie Van Halen - for the lead chops. And do what’s right for you.”

Total Guitar’s Editor Chris Bird comments: "For me, it has truly been a privilege to work with a frankly awesome team of contributors and colleagues, and to have been able to spend the last 17 years of my life creating lessons and features for you.”

But that’s not the last you will see or hear of him. Chris will go on to a new role as Lessons Editor on MusicRadar and our sister sites GuitarWorld and Guitar Player - serving up high quality tuition content for the guitar-playing community.

The Epiphone Les Paul that Noel Gallagher used to track Oasis’ 1994 debut album, Definitely Maybe, has been sold at auction for £132,000 (approximately $173,500), making it one of the most expensive cheap electric guitars of all time.

Well, maybe not cheap, but the Epiphone equivalent of the classic Gibson single-cut electric guitar was certainly affordable at the time, and a similar model would set you back some 500 bucks today on the used market.

It’s some way short of the $4.5 million that über collector Jim Irsay paid for Kurt Cobain’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” Fender Mustang – a similarly affordable ‘student guitar’ upon its release – but it is nonetheless a six-figure Epiphone Les Paul, and that is quite something. 

Maybe it’s down to Oasis reunion fever – heck, at that price, only Tickemaster could afford it. Definitely it’s down to cultural significance, and the cachet that comes with owning a guitar that was on Gallagher’s regular rotation as the Manchester band blew up and scored a home run for Alan McGee’s Creation Records.

The auction, hosted by Sotheby’s, also witnessed the sale of another Gallagher Epiphone. His hollowbodied EA-250, as pictured on the cover of the band’s debut single, Supersonic, went for £48,000 (approximately $63,077). 

This is more in line with what you might expect from an artist-owned vintage instrument dated to the early to mid ‘70s. You don’t see so many of these around.

Neither are there many electric guitars previously owned by Gallagher and Johnny Marr floating around on the market, so it was little surprise that the Oasis man’s Gibson Flying V fetched £36,000 (approximately $47,291). 

What is more surprising is that Gallagher and Marr owned it in the first place; they’re not the first guitarists we would associate with the Flying V. This 1980 example is more Michael Schenker than Shakermaker.

All three Gallagher-owned guitars smashed their estimated value. In other Oasis news, frontman Liam Gallagher has said that the band has already recorded a new album. Was he being serious? Time will tell.

In the meantime, anyone who wants a Gallagher guitar but does not have Sotheby’s money can always get themselves his Epiphone Riviera, which is a superlative signature guitar reproduction of his original.

When you think of Oasis’s songwriting approach, you would be forgiven for initially thinking that most of what you hear can be achieved with a few simple chords, and for some Oasis tracks, you will be able to do just that.

But, if you break through the top layer of the band's Noel Gallagher-penned mega hits, you’ll find that a lot more goes into their chord progression than G, C, Em7 and D. Underneath this later of anthems there is an array of interesting and unusual chords that make up some of the bands biggest songs.

In this lesson we’re going to look at four unusual chords that have appeared in Oasis tracks.

E7/G# - Don’t Look Back in Anger

One of the most debated chords of the last 30 years is the E7/G# chord Noel Gallagher plays in the pre-chorus of Don’t Look Back in Anger. 

Many guitar players have played this as a regular E7 shape and used their little finger to reach up to the G# on the low E string. However, in 2023 Noel put an end to this debate by showing exactly how he plays this chord.

This is a fairly unusual voicing, he plays the G# on the 4th fret of the low E, and the 4th fret on the G. The other strings are all played open, except for the A which is muted by the underside of the finger playing the low E string. 

Asus2/G – Champagne Supernova

This particular chord is actually one of a few unusual chords in the same progression. The track Champagne Supernova starts with a progression based around an Asus2 chord. As the progression advances, the root note of the chord walks down from A to G to F# to E while maintaining the Asus2 throughout.

This creates the impression of a bassline moving underneath the chord and at times, can sound slightly dissonant. This is an interesting technique to give a single chord a different sound over multiple bars.

Esus2 – Little By Little

While an Esus2 might not be typically considered an unusual chord, what is different about this chord featured in the song Little By Little is the chord shape. You’re playing a B power chord on the A and D strings while letting the low and high E string, and the B string ring open.

Depending on the context of the song, and the key of the song, this chord could also be viewed as a Bsus2/E.

F#m11/C# - Supersonic

The song Supersonic contains a very unusual sounding chord in the into. This is an F#m11 chord, but in this instance, the low F# note is not played, it is rooted in a C# note. This chord is arpeggiated through the intro.

The m11 is quite a complex chord voicing, when strummed it can sound like there is a lot going on, but when broken up in this manner it creates an interesting, almost suspenseful, vibe.

• “No album in history has experienced such a swift and dramatic reversal of fortune": The great Oasis Be Here Now debate

The guitar that Noel Gallagher once praised as ‘the best’ is up for sale once more. It’s one of 60 Oasis-related items that will go under the hammer at the Propstore online auction in November. 

There are handwritten lyrics of Noel's, Liam’s tambourine and several of Noel’s guitars. Even a golf buggy that the elder Gallagher once owned.

The guitar though is a beautiful is a Custom Shop Silver Sparkle Gibson Les Paul Florentine and we reckon it’s the third time it’s been sold all in all. It’s expected to fetch between £200,000 and £400,000 at the auction. 

After using it extensively on the Be Here Now album and accompanying tour, Noel sold it in the late 90s and since then it has had something of a convoluted ownership history…

In an interview with Spin magazine in 1997, Noel said "It's not one of the best guitars, it's the best guitar. The thing about that guitar is it's got that extra... you know what I mean? When you've got everything turned all the way up, this one gives you more. It goes to 11."

The handwritten lyrics include Wonderwall, which is likely to go for between £4000 and £8000 and lyrics for both Supersonic and Live Forever autographed by both Gallagher brothers that could fetch between £3000 and £6000.

And yes, there’s the golf buggy, which was originally a gift to Noel from his first wife Meg Matthews. The guitarist apparently used to cavort around his Buckinghamshire estate on it and in a nod to Beatles’ history has similar paintwork to John Lennon’s psychedelic Rolls Royce. That is likely to set you back somewhere between £5000 and £10,000.

All the items in the auction will be available to view at the Cumberland Hotel near Marble Arch in London from October 18 to 20. All proceeds from the auction will go to the Teenage Cancer Trust.

The auction’s timing couldn’t have be better timed with interest in Oasis at a peak not seen since the late 1990s. 

On the back of the incredible demand for tickets to next year’s reunion shows, several of the band’s singles re-entered the Top 75 last week and three of the top five places in the Album chart are nailed down by Definitely Maybe, (What’s The Story) Morning Glory and their greatest hits album Time Flies.

For more info, and to register your interest in the auction, head to propstore.com

Very few albums from the last three decades have had such a gargantuan weight of expectation placed upon them as Be Here Now, the third album from Oasis and the follow-up to the band’s first two era-defining long-players, Definitely Maybe and What’s The Story Morning Glory?.

Be Here Now became Britain’s fastest-selling album of 1997. It would also become unique as an album that was critically lauded on release and then rapidly derided soon after. As Dorian Lynsky put it in a piece in The Guardian in October 2016, “No album in history has experienced such a swift and dramatic reversal of fortune. Be Here Now was reframed first as a disappointment and then as a disaster.”

Almost three decades on from its release, as Oasis’s hugely anticipated reunion gathers pace, the album continues to divide fans, critics and even the band themselves.

“At that time, we thought it was fucking great and I still think it’s great,” said Liam Gallagher in the 2003 documentary Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Brit Pop. But for older brother Noel it remains a creative low point. “In the studio it was great, and on the day it came out it was great. It was only when I got on tour that I was thinking, ‘It doesn’t f****** stand up’.”

When Oasis began work on the album in 1996, they were at the peak of their powers, having played two concerts in August that year to 250,000 fans at Knebworth Park. Three months earlier, Noel Gallagher chose a working holiday on the Caribbean island of Mustique to start work on the album. In May, Noel, his partner Meg Matthews, Johnny Depp and Kate Moss, flew out to the island for a holiday at Mick Jagger’s residence. 

Owen Morris, producer of the first two Oasis albums and Be Here Now, joined them. At Noel’s request, Morris brought over his Tascam eight-track and a drum machine. Morris had expected Noel to have come up with a couple of songs.

“But then, the first night, he reeled off fifteen songs on the acoustic,” said Morris in the September 1997 issue of Q magazine. “Then we piled through them in a week, midday to seven in this chalet by the airport – that’s where the plane on D’You Know What I Mean? comes from… It’s easy with Noel because you make decisions on the hoof – chop that, stick that in, bung it down. The Mustique tape’s amazing, really cool, although it sounds shit because of the drum box.”

Bonehead also praised the demos. “They were incredible, they weren't usual Noel demos,” he recalled in a 2016 interview with the Shropshire Star. “Normally he'd send them with one or two acoustic guitars and a vocal and it was great. But he came back from Mustique and there were keyboards, bass, harmonies – they were fully fledged songs. It was really f****** exciting.”

The next step was to get into the studio. Sessions began at EMI Abbey Road Studios on 7 October 1996 and were almost immediately hampered by intense tabloid attention.“The paparazzi were breaking into the studio, looking for drugs, looking for a story,” recalled Bonehead. “I was staying in an apartment with Owen... but we had to put a disguise on before going to the shops in the morning… Poor old Liam would open his bedroom curtains and 40 f***ing cameras would be snapping away. I think he dealt with it admirably. I think he still does."

One person who was key to the recordings was Nick Brine, the engineer on Be Here Now and (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?. “The atmosphere started off great,” Brine told David Huggins on the Oasis Recording Information website. “It always was amongst the band and crew during these sessions at Abbey Road.”

But tabloid attention forced them to move. On 11 November, they relocated to the rural Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey. The sessions had a renewed energy but were reportedly compromised by heavy cocaine use. Tabloid journalists still lurked although the remote setting did provide some levity. 

“If we were ever anywhere that was remotely spooky, we'd tell Liam that the house was haunted, and particularly his bedroom,” Noel told journalist Keith Cameron in the 2016 posted interview below. “And we convinced him his bedroom was haunted. So when he'd get up in the morning and go to his breakfast, someone would go in and turn all the pictures back to front or move a lamp that was beside his bed across the other side of the room. And he'd arrive pale. ‘Have you been in my f****** room… because the f****** lamp's now in the toilet…’.  Yeah, that was amusing. That was worth it.” 

Supernatural shenanigans aside, the initial aim of the album was to pursue a stripped-back approach, but this was soon shelved for a much bigger sound. “It wasn’t like we decided one day that we should ditch the stripped-back approach and create that wall of sound,” recalled Nick Brine. “The songs just kind of grew and grew and we were experimenting with lots of amps and pedals and seeing how far we could push the layers.”

In some instances Noel overdubbed ten identical guitar parts to create sonic breadth. D’you Know What I Mean reportedly has thirty guitar parts on it. All of which could have worked but for the recreational excesses.

“It’s the sound of a bunch of guys, on coke, in the studio, not giving a f***,” said Noel in the Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Britpop documentary. “There’s no bass to it at all… And all the songs are really long, and all the lyrics are shit and for every millisecond Liam is not saying a word, there’s a f****** guitar riff in there, in a Wayne’s World stylee, you know?

Some of the most spontaneous, creative decisions were made on the Mustique demos. “We were down on the beach, and there was this toy plastic piano that belonged to one of Jagger's kids,” Noel told Q magazine in September, 1997. “The opening [to the album's title track] is played on that, slowed down. I was pressing that one key for about two hours. Anyway, I nicked it. Me being from Burnage, I can't help it. Mick can have it back if he wants.” 

The holiday also yielded the opening for Fade In-Out.  “The first part of the song is from the Mustique demo, with Johnny Depp playing slide guitar.” Noel told Q magazine. “I like it because it's the first blues song I've done, and Liam does the best singing I've ever heard from him. I pushed him to the limit on that.”  

Noel was sometimes absent from the studio when Liam laid down his vocals. “It was getting to that point where no one was allowed to be in the studio while Liam was singing,” Noel told journalist Keith Cameron. It was a strategy that worked. Liam delivered some outstanding vocal performances on Be Here Now, particularly on the track Stand By Me, the second big single. 

The song has real resonance for Nick Brine. “I just loved it from the moment I first heard it,” he recalled in a 2021 interview posted below with Oasis historian James Hargreaves. “It’s one of my favourite tracks of theirs I think… For me, one of the best vocals that Liam's done, really.”

Another Liam high point is the song Don’t Go Away. “It's a very sad song about not wanting to lose someone you're close to,” Noel told Q magazine. “The middle eight, I made up on the spot in the studio… It's a song about how you feel after a row. It's quite bleak. I did all the string arrangements and I tried to keep them as simple as possible.”

In his interview with Nick Brine, Hargreaves cites reports  that Liam was close to tears when he recorded his vocal and that he was thinking about his mother when he sang it. “I do remember him being quite emotional after it,” said Brine. “I mean, he's put absolutely everything into that.”

The sessions lasted from October 1996 to April 1997 and a further three London studios were used for recording and mixing: AIR Studios, where the 36-piece orchestra was recorded, Orinoco and Master Rock. 

Nick Brine has only positive feelings about the album. “I love the record. I think it's a great record… I had great times with Liam and all the people that he would bring back… obviously, for Noel and Owen, [it was] a lot more stressful, a lot more kind of work involved.”

There was experimentation across the album. D’You Know What I Mean? contains a slowed-down loop from NWA’s Straight Outta Compton and Magic Pie features a mellotron and psychedelic harmonies. The morse code featured in the mix of D’You Know What I Mean is reportedly inspired by Strawberry Fields Forever.

As always, Beatles influences loom large but it’s the garage rock influences of albums such as The Stooges’ Raw Power that yield an equally powerful influence here, with their top-end, high-frequency tones.

The main criticisms of Be Here Now are that it’s over-produced, over-arranged and the songs are too long. Most of the criticism centres on the mixing. “All the things you shouldn't do when you're mixing a record, we were doing it ten-fold,” Noel told Keith Cameron. The songwriter made the decision to mix the album at Air Studios with Owen Morris.

 “It was excruciatingly loud in the studio. There were two tape machines, one of which was not working at any given time.  We were both f****** high as kites… Really, we shouldn't have mixed it. It should be for someone else who had a fresh perspective on it.” 

Be Here Now was released on 21 August 1997. The songs that were singled out for most praise were My Big Mouth, I Hope, I Think, I Know, Don't Go Away and Stand By Me. In many ways, it could never have lived up to the colossal expectation although, for a while at least, the fervour convinced everyone that it could. 

Dele Fadele of Vox was one of many journalists who lauded the album, noting that it was "a veritable rock'n'roll monsoon of an album”. Q magazine, meanwhile, observed that it was “cocaine set to music”. 

Twenty years later, when the remaster was released, critics were far more blunt. “What sounded like a dog’s dinner in 1997 sounds no better on this 2016 remaster, which remains one of the most agonising listening experiences in pop music.” noted Laura Snapes in Pitchfork.

None of which would have been any great surprise to Noel Gallagher, Back in 2016, his viewpoint on the album still hadn’t shifted. 

“People are prepared to have stand-up rows with me in the street: "I f****** love that album!",” he told the NME in 2016. “And I'm like, ‘Mate, look, I wrote the f****** thing. I know how much effort I put into it. It wasn't that much’."

• The 6 Oasis non-album tracks you need to hear

The clock is now officially ticking toward what is almost certainly an Oasis reunion – with an announcement due at 8am (BST) on Tuesday 27 August. Live dates are expected with Noel and Liam Gallagher finally reuniting after 15 years to perform the band's classics to old and new fans. But away from the likes of Live Forever and Wonderwall there are a host of songs that will likely never be performed by them onstage again. And that's a shame…

The art of the b-side song may be lost in the modern age but some of the greatest bands of the '90s could be judged on the standard of their non-album tracks. And nobody could touch Oasis for that; Noel Gallagher's creative purple patch spread so wide he could have easily made their acclaimed 1998 collection The Masterplan a double album. 

The b-sides continued long after that, and the band often made some questionable choices with the songs they chose to exclude from their 2000s albums in place of arguably stronger material. For the rest of us, they're out there to be discovered – along with an interesting unreleased curio or two…

1. Let's All Make Believe – Go Let It Out b-side, 2000

This isn't the first Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants-era song we're going to highlight here, and its inclusion would have helped raise Oasis's fourth album up above the patchy lows of songs like I Can See I Liar and the widely maligned Liam Gallagher-penned Little James. Indeed, Let's All Make Believe is arguably better than anything that made the album and up there with Oasis's best work. A showcase of the darker side of Noel's songwriting sincerity. 

It was reportedly the first song he wrote for what would become Oasis's fourth album and it followed a self-imposed break from songwriting after the Be Here Now world tour that nearly broke the band. 'Let's all make believe / That we're still friends and we like each other' – its lyrics and atmosphere reflect the disharmony in a fractured Oasis that would lose two founder members before their fourth album was completed. The dark, cinematic mood showcases one of Liam's strongest vocal performances. 

It was definitely (maybe) a strange time when Noel songs like Full On and One Way Road were relegated to b-sides in place of the aforementioned questionable Standing On The Should Of Giants albums cuts. But bands can be strange entities. 

2. Lord Don't Slow Me Down – Liam Version, circa 2007

The Noel-sung version of this stomp was released to coincide with the Oasis tour film of the same name, but this is a rare instance where an alternate, unreleased studio version with Liam singing lead vocals also exists, albeit in leaked form. And we prefer the snarl he brings to it – it sounds like it was written for him by his brother. 

It makes us wonder if there are any other alternate Liam versions in the vault somewhere – like the rumoured Don't Look Back In Anger demo. We know there's an alternate Sad Song demo Liam was recorded singing Noel b-side Step Out in a studio as the clip below demonstrates… 

3. Cloudburst (Live Forever b-side, 1994) 

Early Oasis could get pretty psychedelic when they wanted to, with a guitar wall of sound to take them to the supersonic stratosphere – Columbia being an example. And like that song, Noel takes this underrated b-side into its final push with a squaling guitar solo.

This Tony McCarroll-era flipside to the Live Forever single remains a fave of old school fans, and Stone Roses admirers may also note a passing similarity to that band's song Standing Here. But of course, Noel has made no secret of taking nods from other artists in rock's great circle of life – and Standing Here's chords aren't far off Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze anyway! 

4. Going Nowhere – Stand By Me b-side, 1997 

Noel's love of Burt Bacharach is no secret and its chanelled here to wonderful effect. Understated, majestic and unsung, this song allegedly dates way back to the very early '90s (check out an early demo below and note Noel's youthful voice!) before the songwriter returned to it when the band signed to Creation Records in 1993. But Going Nowhere didn't emerge fully-formed until it became the b-side to Stand By Me from the Be Here Now album.

How the seven-minute Magic Pie made the cut on that album ahead of this is beyond us, but like Rock N' Roll Star, it finds Noel looking up at the stars before fame and fortune. Or as he said himself, "It’s about what we were going to do when we got a shitload of money off Creation."

Noel is obviously fond of the song as he began revisiting it on 2023 High Flying Birds sets and it has thankfully hung around since. 

5. Those Swollen Hand Blues (Falling Down b-side, 2009)

Much has been made about the ways the Beatles have influenced Oasis, and Noel Gallagher's songwriting in particular but we'd argue they never sounded as close to the Fab Four as this. 

The lo-fi sixties feel, Lennon-esque melodies, psychedelic lyrics and smoky mellotron… the way Oasis weave the combination is uncanny. And in a curious twist, the outro of 2005 album Don't Believe The Truth track Mucky Fingers fits perfectly with it. And yet this was included as a b-side for Falling Down, from 2008's Dig Out Your Soul album.  

6. (I Got) The Fever – Stand By Me b-side, 1997)

We all love the ridiculously layered wall of sound guitars all over Be Here Now – just admit it! And this song from that era starts that way while revealing a Liam-fronted belter with a big uplifting Grade A Noel chorus that he joins in for to remind us why so many fans want to see the brothers play live together again. 

This is a real forgotten Oasis gem from an often maligned era, where Noel admitted to being "a bit lost" but actually produced strong b-sides with Stay Young, Angel Child, Flashbax, My Sister Lover… this whole list could have gone on for a while! 

• "Everyone in the band went, 'I'm sorry but I don't f*****g think so": The story of Wonderwall

The forthcoming Definitely Maybe 30th anniversary reissue is mana for nostalgic Oasis fans. And in addition to the outtakes that will feature on the deluxe version we now have Noel Gallagher looking back on the halcyon days of the band with Manchester music luminary John Robb.

Their 30-minute interview in Manchester's Sifters Record Shop ( famously referenced in Definitely Maybe track Shakermaker) is a great chat, with Noel looking back fondly on the lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry that created the album, the attempts it took in studios to do those songs justice and comparing his brother Liam's unique singing voice to his own.

"I didn't fancy it at the beginning," Noel says on his initial reluctance to sing any lead vocals in the band alongside his brother.  "I'd like to think I was clever enough to say we should have two frontmen, but I wasn't – in hindsight it was great.

"How it would work is he would sing them all and then I'd be like, 'Maybe you're not getting that one, maybe I'd try that one'", adds Noel. Aside from Supersonic b-side Take Me Away, that only happened on one song in the Definitely Maybe era though – the album bonus track Sad Song, originally sung by Liam (though Noel claims in the interview that he can't actually remember Liam tracking them). Elsewhere, the album's songs were simply better suited to the younger Gallagher's voice. But as the band released more records and singles, Noel's songs widened their live show experience.  

"One of the great things about Oasis is after 40 minutes it would all kind of calm down and I'd sing Talk Tonight and Half The World Away," reflects Noel in the video above. "And they're no lesser songs – they're f***ing amazing songs and they communal anthems. Everybody could take a breath.

"I used to balk at playing an acoustic guitar," laughs the songwriting. "We never did Wonderwall with an acoustic guitar [live to begin with] because I said, 'I'm not playing it in a f***ing field – it's ridiculous. And in fact, not playing it is ridiculous."

As any listener will attest, Noel's voice is very different to Liam's – but the combination helps to make Oasis such a great band. 

"It's got something else," admits Noel. "If songs were drinks – Liam's is a shot of tequila and mine's half a Guinness. Mine's half a Guinness on a Tuesday. Liam's is ten shots of tequila on a f***ing Friday night.

"I can't sing Slide Away, Cigarettes And Alcohol, Rock N' Roll Star and Columbia and all that," he notes. "I mean, I could do it, but it's not the same. It's the delivery and the tone of his voice and the attitude. I don't have the same attitude as him."

The only time there was ever a debate on how would sing lead vocals would come on Oasis's second album (What's The Story) Morning Glory? "There was Wonderwall and Don't Look Back In Anger and I said, 'I'm singing one of them'", recalls Noel. "You take your pick. He hated Wonderwall [and said], 'I want to sing Don't Look Back In Anger'. But then someone from Creation [Records] came down and said [Wonderwall] is going to be a worldwide hit and he said, 'I do like it actually – I think I do like it.'"   

Noel clearly looks back on his musical chemistry with his brother fondly, noting the similarities with another band of famous siblings. "The voice is an instrument," he notes. "And it's the same with the Bee Gees – when you get two brothers singing together, it's unique. Back in the early '90s it was f***ing amazing – amazing."

As a songwriter Noel admits he knew when it was the right choice for Liam to take the lead – and uses the example of his favourite Oasis song. "The night we did Supersonic – I sing Supersonic with the same melody, the same words, the same inflections, but when he sings it it's a bit more menacing. 

"I think one of the great things about that period of Oasis is there's these uplifting tunes with almost romantic lyrics, but with a really menacing f***ing delivery. I think that's what made it special.

"It's difficult to explain," Noel summarises. "When I would sing a song it would sound good, when he would sing it it would sound great." Sad Song being the exception.

"Liam's a great rocker," explains Noel. "My strength was always a bit less of the big production – kind of more laidback… he wouldn't sing acoustic songs, he just wasn't having it. He sings at 10 – he sings at 9 or 10 all the f***ing time. And in that case of Definitely Maybe, that's what you want." 

The 30th anniversary reissue of Definitely Maybe is released on 30 August. More info at Oasisnet.com

• The 6 non-album Noel Gallagher Oasis songs you need to hear (that aren't on The Masterplan)

The words gentle and whimsical aren't usually associated with Liam Gallagher but this time capsule from Oasis's earliest era with Noel writing the songs reveals just that; a softer side to the vocalist on a track that would eventually be recorded by his brother.

Sad Song ended up as a bonus song on the vinyl version Oasis's 1994 debut Definitely Maybe but this Mauldeth Road West Demo with Liam singing dates back to 1992. It showcases a rarely heard side to Liam Gallagher and is one of the archive recordings that form part of the forthcoming 30th anniversary Deluxe Reissue of Definitely Maybe. 

Mauldeth Road West is in Chorlton Cum Hardy is Greater Manchester and is where former Oasis sound engineer / sixth member / Definitely Maybe producer Mark Coyle had a home studio. In November 1992 demos were recorded there that were never heard by a wider audience until they were used as background music to the 2016 Oasis Supersonic documentary.

A number of tracks were demoed at Coyle's studio but specific dates are unclear – these include recordings of Married With Children, D'Yer Wanna Be A Spaceman?, Hello, Rockin Chair, She's Electric and Going Nowhere that would eventually manifest in final form as b-sides and even tracks of Denfitely Maybe's 1995 follow-up, (What's The Story) Morning Glory. 

The 1992 era of the band would also see a recording of Lock All The Doors with Liam on vocals – a demo that would end up birthing two songs. My Sister Lover used some of its lyrics and would become a Be Here Now b-side to Oasis's Stand By Me single. Another song called Lock All The Doors, also using much of the same melodies and chorus of the original demo would be recorded by Noel Gallagher for his 2-15 solo album Chasing Yesterday. 

• The 6 non-album Noel Gallagher Oasis songs you need to hear (that aren't on The Masterplan)

The Oasis reunion: some people just can’t let it go. Usually that someone is Liam Gallagher. Sometimes it’s been Dave Grohl. But often it’s fans pining that the two brothers would get over themselves and do the decent thing.

But the upshot is always the same - Noel Gallagher slaps down the idea until the next time it’s mentioned.

That is what happened at the Y Not festival in Derbyshire last weekend. Noel and his High Flying Birds were headlining and at one point in proceedings a fan in the front row asks when Oasis might be reuniting.

“When are we going to see you? In 2025 or 2026? The answer is neither,” the singer told the fan - cue tongue in cheek boos from the crowd. “I’ll take the fact that you’re booing as a fucking compliment!”

Gallagher explained that: “Well, this is the last night of our tour tonight. We’ve been on tour for over a year so we’re sick of the sight of each other. So, we need to get away from it for a while. I don’t know if we’re gonna tour again, I’ve got no idea. But we will...We’ve got to make a record first. We’ve gotta write one.

“We’ve gotta write one, gotta make one,” he continued. “Do all that fucking shit. We’ve gotta go spend some money. I have no idea, I dunno but you’ll be the first to know. Right, we’re all Oasis fans, right? Buckle up.”

Then he launched in Going Nowhere, the B-side of their 1997 single Stand By Me.

So the news regarding a possible Oasis reunion is the same as ever – there’s no news. But Noel must surely reflect that this must be how his heroes Lennon and McCartney felt in the 1970s. Every time they had a new record out, every time they toured, they would have to bat away questions about a possible Beatles reunion, which was always rumoured to be just on the verge of happening.

It’s even cropped up in an interview Liam’s son Gene gave to The Times the other day. Gene - who’s now in an indie rock band called Villanelle - said: “It’s nothing to do with me… I mean, will they? I don’t know. I would love it but it’s so beyond my control.”

He also mentioned that he and his cousin - Noel’s daughter Anaïs - have joked about staging an ‘intervention’ but their respective dads were “too smart for that”.

Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller have a longstanding history as friends and collaborators, the song Jumble Queen from Weller's latest album 66 being the latest example. So Noel is the ideal guest to join host Dan Jennings on his excellent Paul Weller Fan Podcast. And it's a revealing chat for budding songwriters.

The two musicians first met in the '90s when Oasis broke through with their debut album Definitely Maybe and the songwriter remembers one piece of Modfather wisdom that has stuck with him ever since.

When asked if he worries about periods where he might struggle with songwriting, Noel said he doesn't worry about it at all, and drew on what Paul Weller told him in their first meeting. 

"When I first ever met Paul in '94… he did say something that has stuck with me for years," remembers Gallagher. "It might be the best, most practical bit of advice I've ever had, which is relevant to this question. He said, 'When it's not there, don't chase it. Just let it go and let it find you.'

"At the time in 1994, every time I went to fucking toilet I was writing a song that became famous so it didn't apply then. As I got older and that thing when you're young and powerful, it kind of dissipates and leaves you a little bit, your instinct is to try and chase it. And I always hark back to that.

"That's what I do now," Noel says of not forcing the songwriting process. "He's the same, he'll have a song that is 12 years old on his new record, I don't know whether there's one on 66, but I'm the same. There will be some kind of an idea but it didn't work [at the time] but there was something about it that you were interested in. Just park it for a bit. I've done that, and sometimes it's taken me eight years to finish off [a song] but if it's got something of value in it, and it's good enough, it will come back to you.

"I don't worry about it, and that kind of thing comes with experience," reflects Noel. "I've made a lot of records and he's made a lot of records. We've seen it all, although we're still learning I'd like to think… I'm calm with it now, and I'd imagine he is too. He's a lot calmer than he was."

Noel contributed lyrics to Jumble Queen, but reveals he's envious of his friend's abilities as a wordsmith: "His lyrics are amazing to me, I think he's one of the most lyricists ever. If I could write lyrics like that I'd give up music and be a fucking poet!"

With collaboration, Noel admits the two of them work better sending each other ideas rather than sitting in a room with their guitars. And the High Flying Birds man is acutely aware that he's working with someone who was a hero to him growing up.

"I had posters of this guy on my wall when I was a teenager at school," he admits to Jennings. "Being the jam fan thing is all passed now, he's my mate now, still for me it would be like sitting at a table across from McCartney saying, '"Let's write a song'. You quickly realise what a shitkicker you are because he's fucking amazing. It can be intimidating."

Check out the full episode above and catch up on more from the Paul Weller Fan Podcast here. 

Anyone casting their eyes over the biggest-selling US singles in the summer of 1968 would have spotted a few songs that reflected the incendiary atmosphere of the times: Steppenwolf’s Born To Be Wild (No. 10), The Stones Jumpin’ Jack Flash (No. 7) and The Rascals’ People Got to Be Free (No. 3). 

This was a time of huge cultural upheaval: inner-city riots in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington DC following the assassination of Martin Luther King on 4 April; student protests in France; the assassination of Robert F Kennedy on 6 June; the Troubles in Northern Ireland; the ongoing Tet Offensive in Vietnam. The list goes on and on.

By complete contrast, sitting in the No. 1 slot was This Guy’s in Love With You, a lush, warm, easy-listening love song, written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and performed by Herb Alpert. Despite its decidedly benign, carefree vibe, This Guy’s In Love With You is a stunning piece of song craftsmanship, created by one of the finest songwriting duos of all time. It’s a beguiling composition and a song that continues to engage and entrance six decades on from its creation.

There are conflicting versions of how Herb Alpert came to record the Bacharach and David composition. Certainly, This Guy’s In Love With You was written and published by the duo on 15 June, 1967. A version of the song with different lyrics, entitled That Guy’s In Love, was then released by UK singer Danny Williams on his self-titled 1968 album, but it failed to chart. 

In Bacharach’s 2013 memoir Anyone Who Had A Heart, Alpert said the song had already been written when he approached Bacharach for new material to record.  “There’s a question I always ask great writers that I asked Burt that day over the phone: ‘Is there a song you have tucked away in your drawer or someplace or a song that didn’t get the right recording that you find yourself whistling in the shower?’. And he sent me This Girl’s in Love with You. I called Hal David in New York and asked him if he wouldn’t mind changing the gender.”

But in an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 1968, Alpert suggested that the song was in fact tailor-made on request, written by Bacharach in the weeks following their conversation.

“We were fishing around for something different to do on our television special and I asked Burt Bacharach if he would have time to write a song for me,” Alpert told the Los Angeles Times. “A couple of weeks later he sat down at the piano and sang ‘This Guy’s in Love With You’. I flipped out. I said this would be a hit if my mother sang it!”

This second version of events ties in with Bacharach’s own recollection. But however the song came into being, one thing is for sure: once Alpert had received the song he wasted no time in making it his own.

By the late 1960s, Herb Alpert was a hugely successful trumpeter, bandleader, singer entertainer and major music industry player. He had broken into the industry in the early 60s, writing and producing pop hits for artists such as Jan and Dean. He went on to form Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, an instrumental pop band that racked up a string of hits in the '60s, such as The Lonely Bull, which reached No. 6 in 1962.

Alpert released the song on a new record label he founded with Jerry Moss, called A&M, taking its name from the first letter of their respective surnames. A&M would go on to become the world’s largest independent label and in the years that followed its roster would include artists such as Supertramp, The Sex Pistols, The Human League, The Police and Janet Jackson and Sheryl Crow. 

Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass’s 1965 album Whipped Cream & Other Delights reached No. 1 in 1965, outselling The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Frank Sinatra. By 1968, when he came to record This Guy’s in Love With You, he was a music industry heavyweight and a household name.

Alpert originally had no intention of releasing This Guy’s in Love With You as a single. He wanted the song for a filmed sequence in a 1968 CBS Television Special entitled Beat of the Brass, featuring the Tijuana Brass. The show aired on 22 April, 1968, and the film was shown at the programme’s conclusion. It featured soft focus footage of Alpert singing This Guy’s in Love With You to his wife Sharon as they walked dreamily around a forest, through fields and along a beach in Malibu. 

He was a hugely talented trumpet player but not a natural singer. However, the conversational, half-spoken nature of the top line vocal melody and its limited range meant he could deliver a vocal performance that fitted seamlessly within the context of the song. 

As requested, Hal David had rewritten the lyrics. “It was a song he was going to sing to his wife, and the lyric was not quite appropriate for what he wanted to say,” recalled Hal David in Robin Platts’ 2003 book Burt Bacharach and Hal David: What The World Needs Now.

By the time the TV special had finished airing, the CBS network was inundated with thousands of phone calls from viewers enquiring about the song. The demand prompted Alpert to re-record This Guy’s in Love With You, with a slightly different vocal performance than the recording used on the film soundtrack. He released it as a single in May and by 22 June, 1968, it had reached No. 1. 

The success of the song took Bacharach by surprise. “Herb was very hot and his band The Tijuana Brass was very hot. I was signed to A&M as an artist,” recalled Bacharach in Record Collector magazine. “There were great guys running the record company, Herb and Jerry . They asked me to do it, to write a song with Hal David, come in and write the arrangement and conduct the orchestra. I did it as a favour. If you asked me when I got in my car leaving Gold Star Studios that night and thought this was ever gonna be a hit I would have said no way. Then three or four weeks later it was No. 1. Wow!"

This was Alpert’s first No. 1, the first No. 1 for his company A&M and it was also Bacharach and David’s first No. 1 as writers. 

Lyrically, it’s a song of yearning, in which one person professes their undying love for another. “Cause I need your love / I want your love / Say you're in love / In love with this guy / If not, I'll just die / Tell me now, is it so? / Don't let me be the last to know / My hands are shakin' / Don't let my heart keep breakin.”

But it’s Bacharach’s unique jazz-infused chord structures that make it so compelling. From the strident orchestral bombast of horns and strings to delicately nuanced ‘hear-a-pin-drop’ passages of plaintive electric piano, it’s a stunning composition and arrangement.  

On one level, it’s classic lounge music, easy-listening fare best consumed with a cardigan, suede loafers and 30 square metres of shagpile. But it’s ultimately so much more. There’s an abiding melancholy within Bacharach’s structures, underpinned by a sense of hope and longing. 

Herb Alpert’s rendition of This Guy’s In Love With You remains the definitive version of the song but it was also covered by a number of other high profile artists. Nancy Sinatra was the first artist to switch the gender of the song’s protagonist back when she performed This Girl’s In Love With You on the Ed Sullivan Show on 26 May, 1968. That same year Ella Fitzgerald recorded the song in a live set in San Francisco and Dusty Springfield included it on her album Dusty… Definitely. 

Then in 1969, Dionne Warwick’s version of the song reached No. 7 in the US  charts. Sammy Davis Jr also recorded the track that same year.

Three decades on, in 1997, Faith No More performed a version of This Guy’s In Love With You during their Album of the Year tour. And in 1996. Noel Gallagher stepped out onto the stage at London’s Royal Festival Hall to sing a version of the song with Bacharach himself playing the piano. 

Gallagher is a longtime admirer of Bacharach, and they first met by chance when Gallagher was having a drink with John Lydon in a Santa Monica hotel.  

Bacharach later invited Gallagher to join him on stage at London’s Royal Festival Hall to sing a number. The song they chose was This Guy’s in Love With You,  which Gallagher called “one of my favourite songs of all time”. He reportedly said he used the song’s intro for Half A World Away. 

But when the day of the concert arrived, Gallagher was anxious. “By far, the most stressful day of my entire life,” he told Australian broadcaster ABC. “…If I can get through that day, I can get through anything.”

Gallagher’s fears were fuelled by the fact that he would be performing without a guitar. As it transpired, it is a beautifully-judged vocal performance from Gallagher, who later said it was one of the greatest moments of his life. “A lad from a council estate doesn’t normally get to do these things,” he observed.

When Bacharach died on 8 February 2023, Gallagher paid an emotional tribute to the singer-songwriter, posting on Instagram: “RIP Maestro,” he wrote. “It was a pleasure to have known you. NGX.” 

• The song Bob Dylan called the greatest ever written: “I just held two notes down… it’s shivery, icy, almost like outer space kind of sound. Glen went crazy and said ‘We have to get that, we gotta put that on the fade’” - The story of Wichita Lineman

A social media post posted by Oasis has got fans all of a flutter about – you guessed it – a possible reunion of the iconic Britpop band.

It shows a brief 14-second aerial shot of a house on one side of a river, surrounded by woods and lush countryside, whilst you can hear the muffled sounds of a band tuning up and the count-in of a drummer.

However, eagle-eyed observers would have recognised the house as Sawmills, the Cornish studio where the bulk of their 1994 debut album Definitely Maybe was recorded. 

Rather than a reunion, that strongly suggests some upcoming activity regarding a 30th-anniversary reissue of the album, which was first released in August 1994 and has gone eight times platinum in the UK.

Noel Gallagher seemed to confirm this when in an interview with Spin last year he revealed that unheard tapes of the album have been found: "I found some master tapes with some cool stuff on it that’s going to be coming out. It was in the Sony vault and was mislabelled.”

“So, when Oasis did Definitely Maybe the idea was we would do three takes of each track and then move on. I remember saying to somebody, so presumably, the master version, there’s another two versions, which weren’t chosen, right? 

"They said, 'Yeah, but the master tapes had gone missing.' It turns out they have been with Sony for the last f*****g 30 years, mislabelled. I found them and there’s some interesting stuff on there. Now, we can sell the album for the fifth time all over again."

Meanwhile his estranged brother, Liam, will take to the road next month for his own celebration on his Definitely Maybe 30 tour that includes four nights at the O2 in London. He will also headline Reading and Leeds festivals at the end of August.

Fans pining for a reunion proper are likely to have a long wait. Since the band’s split in 2009, there has been no love lost between the two Gallagher brothers who have taken to regular sniping on social media. Noel in particular has long insisted that – in the short term, at least - there is little to no chance of a rapprochement between himself and Liam.

However, speaking on Matt Morgan’s podcast last week, he did reveal that after seeing Abba Voyage an Oasis hologram show could be a possibility: “I was very impressed by it (Abba Voyage) to be honest but yeah, if anybody wants to do an Oasis one, give us a shout. I would be bang up for it.”

Liam Gallagher’s Definitely Maybe 30 tour kicks off at Sheffield Utilita Arena on Saturday 1st June

The 1999 lead single from Travis's breakthrough second album The Man Who owes a direct debt to Noel Gallagher – so much so that its writer and band frontman Fran Healy even namechecked the Oasis song he lifted its verse chords from in the lyrics. But the Scottish musician has revealed he never believed at the time that Noel would ever hear his cheeky theft.

"The first song we had for The Man Who was Writing To Reach You," Healy tells Charlatans frontman Tim Burgess on his album podcast Tim's Listening Party about the song's genesis. "But we had that before we came to London in 1996. I wrote it in '95 – the day after Christmas, Boxing Day. There's a song on our first album called The Line Is Fine, which I wrote and then 20 minutes later I wrote Writing To Reach You straight after it."

The band had attempted to record Writing to Reach You for their first album Good Feeling but it didn't come together. The song got its second chance when they began work on the follow-up record in 1998. Healy still vividly remembers the heartbreak that had inspired it three years before.  

"I'd just split up with my girlfriend, Katrina, and someone gave me this book of letters from Franz Kafka to this woman called Milena, called Letters To Milena, and it's all his letters to this woman," continues Healy. I don't think he ever even met her – the love of his life that he never met [they did actually meet twice – ed]. But they're all just one-way – there are no replies. It's just this one-way thing, and at the time I'd been writing lots of letters to Katrina because she'd just moved to St Andrews, the university and our relationship was starting to dissolve as she went on with her life and I was kind of stuck on the dole, going nowhere and feeling really crap. And then she chucked me, so I was just heartbroken. 

"So the song spoke to that thing, and reading this book at the time of this guy writing to this person, and that's all I was doing at the time – writing all these letters and never quite being able to reach the person."

It set the scene for Travis's "breakup record" but it needed an added ingredient beyond the heartache – a familiar chord progression. 

"When I wrote Writing To Reach You, that was '95, and we'd seen Oasis playing at [Scottish festival] T In The Park that year. That was a big big [moment] when that band cut through," remembers Healy. "We went to a bar afterwards and Noel Gallagher walked in looking like he was in the Velvet Underground. He had like a Ready Brek glow around him – it was like he's a rock star. So cut to six months later and I'm sitting in the coldest flat in Glasgow writing this song and I nicked his chords – the chords to Wonderwall in Writing To Reach You."

Em7 / G / Dsus4 / Dsus2 – not quite the same as Wonderwall which has an A7sus4 instead of the latter chord. But Healy even used a capo on the 2nd fret like Noel to enhance the similarities further. But it's not like Noel hasn't lifted his own fair share of song ideas.

"As we do, as he does," reasons Heale. Still, he never imagined he'd have to explain his Oasis lift. "I thought, 'I'm never going to meet Noel Gallagher in a million years because I'm on the dole, nothing's gonna happen'. But on the off chance, I should mention a little nod in case he hears it… a little doff of the cap to the originator. So I did that [with the line] 'What's a Wonderwall anyway' because I've nicked your chords, thanks Noel.

"Then we end up, a year and a half later, touring with them, and Noel came up to me after we came offstage and he went, 'Nice f*****g chords mate'. I thought he was gonna hook me."

No harm done then. But Noel was less generous regarding the Wonderwall similarities to the verses of Green Day's Boulevard Of Broken Dreams, from the California punk rock trio's 2004 album American Idiot. 

 “They consider themselves to be a kick-ass rock and roll band, that couldn’t be more kick-ass if they tried," Noel vented to Stuff in 2006. "They’re obviously a corporate punk band – and they ripped off one of my songs! 

"If you listen you'll find it is exactly the same arrangement as Wonderwall," he added. "They should at least have the decency to wait until I’m dead.  I, at least pay the people I steal from that courtesy."

Ouch. Check out the full podcast with Tim Burgess and Travis.

• Travis's Fran Healy: the 11 records that changed my life

Some of the very best songwriting is about doing special things with simple parts – Noel Gallagher's work is frequently a prime example and on Oasis's first two albums, along with their bounty of b-sides, he was in incredible form.

Noel definitely has his calling cards when it comes to chord choices and here are four we can all find some inspiration in…

EM7

This Em7 shape is perhaps the signature Oasis chord as it is the opening sound of Wonderwall. The shape uses fingers 1, 2, 3 and 4 in ascending order across the strings. Keep the fingers arched so as not to accidentally mute the 3rd string.

F#m11/C#

This chord shape forms the sound of the opening arpeggio from Supersonic. The three fretted notes are an F# min triad, 1st inversion and the two open strings add a colourful minor 7 and a 9th interval on top. 

Am Add9

Here we have the opening chord from probably the greatest Oasis b-side of them all; The Masterplan. 

It's played with two fretted notes on the middle strings and three open drone strings which give a lush, full sound. Try discovering the rest of the chord progression by shifting the 4th string note down in semitones.

Csus2/B

This chord sounds a little tense on its own, but try applying it to a progression like C, Csus2/B, Am and you’ll have the secret ‘passing chord’ ingredient that makes songs like Don’t Look Back In Anger work so well.

• "To be honest, I don't consider myself a guitarist, so I don't sit around and think about the whole thing too much": Noel Gallagher explains his songwriter mindset in our classic interview

In 2011, MusicRadar sat down with Noel Gallagher to talk about his first solo album, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds. As ever, he didn't disappoint as he explored his songwriting and gear approach with bravado and pathos – in equal measures. 

His songs and performances are filled with grace and easy charm - a deceptively casual style that never calls attention to craft. Turns out, the Noel Gallagher one encounters during an interview is very much like the Noel Gallagher on record.

Never once during our conversation – taking place just two hours before he's to appear on stage in Philadelphia with his new band High Flying Birds – does it appear as though the singer-songwriter and guitarist is on auto-script, tossing out pre-planned, well-rehearsed answers. By turns direct, fresh, surprising (even to him, sometimes) and remarkably funny, Gallagher is, as ever, the real deal.

Clearly in a good mood, he admits that he's having a great time on this, his maiden tour as a solo artist. "I'm really enjoying it," he says. "I'm looking forward to every show. I thought that I would be lost in the middle of the stage, but I'm liking it. I can see a long open road in front of me. It turns out that I've grossly underestimated myself."

So far, his solo shows have met with the same glowing enthusiasm as his new album, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, and considering that the disc is one of 2011's best releases - a 10-song, first-listen winner. Tracks like If I Had A Gun and
AKA… What A Life! already play like classics, and the best kind of classics, too: alive, open-hearted, intelligent and endlessly transfixing.

Much has been made of Noel's split from Oasis and his fractured relationship with brother Liam (who now fronts the band Beady Eye) - too much, in fact - so in the following interview, MusicRadar decided to shift the focus to the things that matter most: musicianship, songwriting, production, guitars and gear.

There's something very distinctive about your guitar playing. All you have to do is strum the opening chords to If I Had A Gun or Wonderwall, and we know it's you.

"Really? Huh… Well, that's interesting! [laughs] To be honest, I don't consider myself a guitarist, so I don't sit around and think about the whole thing too much. I only try to think about the songs, you know? I've got my own style on the guitar, sure, and I play rhythm in a certain way, and I use certain inflections. People have said that to me, and I understand it. But I don't have any magic answers - I just do what I do.

"I tend not to play a lot of major chords. I think I drop the major notes and play fifths, you know what I mean? Again, it's nothing I spend a lot of time on. I try to play like myself, and I think I do. But I don't dwell on the whole aspect of guitar technique and stuff. I'm a songwriter."

You say you don't consider yourself a guitarist, but to many people you're more than that - you're a "guitar hero."

"Well, you know what? In Oasis, I was doing a completely different thing than what I'm doing now. I was playing lead guitar. And…I do miss that. I miss being at the end of the stage and just turning up my fucking amp as loud as possible and kissin' the sky. I do miss that, I have to say.

"What I'm doing now, yeah, it's different, so I have to rein in my natural urges to go for it. I'm part of the rhythm section now, so I've got to hold things down. I can't just go off on the guitar. But I'm enjoying that, really. I've got to say, I'm a much better rhythm guitarist than a lead guitarist."

The overall sound of the new album is very lush and full. There's a lot of space between the instruments, whereas on Oasis albums the electric guitars sometimes collided a bit.

"That's because there's only one guitarist on this record. In Oasis, everybody played the fucking guitar, you know? Even the bass player and the singer played the fucking guitar - never mind me and Gem. But you know, you've got to give everybody a crack at the whip; otherwise, what's the point of being in a band?

"It was kind of nice to do it this way. I did the parts and let them breathe, and after that, I was done. Making a record with one guitarist is a vastly different beast than what I'm used to. This time it was one guitarist who also plays the bass, as opposed to three guitarists and a bassist who plays the guitar. Yeah, the songs can breath now - and they're different songs, anyway. It's been a very enjoyable experience."

When you knew you were going to do a record on your own - or records, because you have a second one coming…

"That's right" [the second record, a collaboration with Amorphous Androgynous collaboration was eventually abandoned – Editor].

Was it a bit of a relief to know that you could do what you wanted?

"Well, I've always done demos on my own, even from the early days, so that's not changed. I didn't really enter the studio with any great trepidation. I knew I could do it. No, I was really, really, really looking forward to this.

"The way that I've always worked… or the way that I've always liked to work, and I finally got to do it myself, was to take it one song at a time. I didn't think about an album as such. I had so much material, and it wasn't until I was two weeks into it that I decided I was going to make two records. It was great to do it this way.

"Producers like to record all the drums first, then they do the bass, then all the guitars, so you're constantly moving from one song to another. I fucking hate that! Can't stand it. I'd rather just do a song, finish it and go on to another. That way, you're constantly moving forward every day, and you know where you are, and you don't have to write those stupid fucking charts that they have in studios where you have to check off 'drums' and 'bass' - I hate all of that shit.

"I took it one song at a time, one day at a time. Each song would take two days, so every other day we were starting another one. That kept it moving quite nicely."

When it came to guitars and gear, did you make certain choices to differentiate this album from Oasis records?

"Hmm…[long pause] Well, it is a new sound…but only from taking things away. I didn't invent anything. I just took elements…and the excesses of Oasis, like the extra guitars and the fucking… I just took 'em away. I didn't add anything; I just left the space. The new sound is me singing all the songs and there's one less guitarist.

"As far as amps and stuff, what did I use?... I used a Hiwatt Custom 100, a Blackface Fender '64 Deluxe, an 1980s Vox AC30… I'm not sure I've used any of these on Oasis records before… I can't remember!"

Let's talk about your songwriting. With a song like If I Had A Gun, how long do you slave away at it until you go, 'OK, it's good enough to take to the studio'?

"That one pretty much came off the bat straight away. The rewriting of that was just a matter of dotting the i's and crossing the t's. I pretty much got that one first off. It was an easy one, I've got to say.

"Now, The Death Of You And Me, that one took a long time to write. There were months and months of going back to it, rewriting words and changing little one-liners as they came to me: 'Oh, fuck, that's it!' - you know? It was quite a journey for me, but because of that, it's the one I might be the proudest of. But with If I Had A Gun, it's instant when you hear it because it was instant when I wrote it."

What goes through your head, though, when one song comes quickly and the other is a struggle? Do you tend to think that one might be better for whatever reason?

"Two things can happen: with an easy one, you tend to think, 'Oh, it can't be that good - it was much too easy'. There's no way it can be good. And then on the other side of that, with the song that you have to rewrite and go over, you have to really believe in it. I know I have to reassure myself that a song is good, because it's just too easy to give up and say, 'Fuck it. I'll just write something else.'

"I really stuck it out with The Death Of You And Me. But you have to trust your instincts, your gut reactions. 'Do I like it? Yes. Is it worth the time and effort? Yes.' You have to persevere.

"If I Had A Gun…I knew it was one of the best songs I've ever written. By that yardstick alone, I knew it was good, because I've written some pretty good songs. Every time I played it for myself, I kept getting the same feeling. I thought, Yes! This is going to be a good one. I just knew it. I instantly knew the arrangement, the words, everything. It was just there, and it was special."

Is it too early to talk about the next record, the one you recorded with Amorphous Androgynous?

"Yeah, we can talk about it. I can give you some facts, but I don't want to say too much because there won't be anything to talk about when it comes out. There's 13 tracks on it, three of which are the singles from this album. But they're vastly different versions - they've been remixed and psychedelic-cized.

"There's 10 original songs on it. It's not an electronic record; it's a psychedelic rock record. Ironically, as there's not a lot of guitars on the current record, there's possibly too many on the next. There's a lot of guitars, with various guitar players doing a myriad of styles. Some of it's heavy jazz."

Would you tour with a different band for that record?

"I…think…so. The guys I'm touring with now, they might have other things to do after this is done. I don't know. That's the answer: I don't know. But it would be nice to keep things moving and fluid…fresh."

You have something of a trademark in that you're a big fan of elongated outro sounds. Be it cello, feedback, a keyboard –

"Oh, yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. I don't know why I do it. It's just one of my things, isn't it? I kind of like it. It's just ear candy."

Your Beatles influences have been talked about extensively, but there are a few nods to other bands on this record.

"Oh, a lot!"

In Soldier Boys And Jesus Freaks, there's a bit of a Kinks vibe, and in Stranded On The Wrong Beach, one definitely hears T. Rex.

"Yeah, sure. When I'm making a record, I've always been of the notion that if a song sounds like T. Rex, well, fuck it, let's make it sound more like T. Rex! Do you know what I mean?

"I know there's bands that might write something that sounds like The Smiths, and they'll go, 'Oh, it sounds like The Smiths, we've got to make it sound not like The Smiths.' And I just go, 'Fuck it - let's make it sound like The Beatles. [laughs] If I'm writing a song and I say to myself, 'Oh, hey, it sounds like The Kinks,' then I'm going to turn it into a Kinks track."

There's a choir on a couple of the new songs. Were you referencing Phil Spector and his work on All Things Must Pass?

"I was thinking more spaghetti western…"

Or perhaps The Rolling Stones and You Can't Always Get What You Want?

"Oh, I fucking hate that one! Not the song, I do like the song, but that bit in the beginning - [sings] 'I saw her today…' - I always switch that part right off. No, I don't know…I just heard a choir and I found a choir. I didn't really give these people a brief. I'd rather have them do what they feel, and then we'll take it from there.

"When I'm working with other musicians, whether they're choirs or string sections or the guys in the band, I find that the first thing they say to me is, 'What do you want?' And I'll say, 'Never mind that. I'll know what I want when you play it. You play it the way you see it.' That's how I work with people.

"The choirmaster would ask me how lavish he could get, and I told him, 'Listen to the song, and then just play it as you fucking see it.' So he'd go up and do his thing, and I'd go, 'That bit's great, don't like that bit.' That way, I can get a bit of myself in there, but he'll come up with things I'd never think of, and I'd go, 'Oh, wow! Fucking love that bit.'"

When you recorded the new album, how did you decide which guitars to use on which tracks?

"I kind of trusted my engineer, Paul Stacey, and my co-producer, Dave Sardy. Usually, I just pick my 1960's Gibson 355 – that's the basis for everything. I've got so many guitars, and people just throw things at me. It depends. If I've got a definite idea for something and I cannot be swayed, then that's the end of it.

"I've found out that the more stuff you have, the more confusing it can get. Just bring three or four guitars and three or four amps, and that's the end of it. If you need something to sound like a '60s Vox and you haven't got one, just work on it. You'll get there.

"I'm pretty lucky that Paul has got an incredible ear for guitar sounds, and so does Dave. Paul's an amazing guitarist, as well. He plays the guitar solo at the end of Stop The Clocks, the mad fucking Jeff Beck stuff.

How come he played it and not you?

"'Cause I can't play like that! [laughs] Fucking hell, I can barely play like Peter Green, let alone fucking Jeff Beck."

So the 355 is the basis of your sound right now? You have been playing a Gibson 345 on tour…

"Yeah, the guitars I bring on tour are either 355s or 345s. Those are what I play."

In a promo clip for the album, you're playing an SG.

"That's a new SG. I bought it in Japan. I used it on Record Machine, the part where we had to fill out the power chords – we were going for a Who thing, like in Won't Get Fooled Again. Someone said, 'Try an SG,' and I just happened to have one."

What about some of the other guitars you've used throughout the years? There's the Trini Lopez, the Sheraton…

"I haven't used the Trini Lopez on a track since Don't Believe The Truth, and the Sheraton I haven't used since Morning Glory, really."

How about any of your Les Pauls?

"Yeah, I used a Les Paul on the guitar solo for Record Machine, and I also played it on Stranded On The Wrong Beach."

What about your 1960s Telecasters?

"Oh, you must mean the Esquire. I played it on Dream On, The Death Of You And Me, Soldier Boys And Jesus Freaks and…Broken Arrow, as well, I think."

Acoustic-wise, you've been known to play an Epiphone EJ-200 and a Gibson J-150, but you're using a Martin on stage now, right?

"That's right. It's a D-28, and I bought it brand-new in a shop, just straight off the peg. It's fucking incredible. It's got a new Baggs pickup system in it, which is pretty amazing.

"I didn't use it on the record, though. I used another Martin – it belongs to one of the guys in the studio. I like to use other people's guitars sometimes. So there was this Martin hanging up, so I took it down, started it strumming it, miked it up, and it felt very natural. I used it on all the record. I've since tried to buy the fucking guitar, but the bastard won't sell it to me – probably 'cause he knows it's been on the record now."

Besides the Hiwatt, the Fender and the Vox, were there any other amps you used on High Flying Birds?

"I used a little amp called a Plexi. It's kind of a copy of a Marshall, a JTM45 or something. I think that was it. I must've used a Marshall on something, though. Fuck me, you can't make a record without a Marshall!"

Transferring the sound of the album to the stage, what kind of process did you go through?

"I don't get into the science of live sound, you know what I mean? There are guitarists who try desperately to re-create the sound of the record live, and I just think, What the fuck are you wasting your time for? These people don't give a shit about that. They just wanna rock! They're not going to go, [in a snobby voice] 'Oh, the tune wasn't as great as it was on the record.' They don't give a fuck.

"No, I just use my little Fender Blues Junior and my Hiwatt Custom 100. They're great. That's what I've used live for the last five or six years."

Are you still using the THD Hot Plates?

"Yes! I don't go anywhere without them. At the moment, I'm trying to get one fitted into my cat - noisy little fucker."

How about your pedalboard - is it more minimal than in past years?

"I haven't got a wah in it anymore. I've got one of those old Echodrive pedals, which is turned on all the time to give the amps a bit of a boost. I've got a few Boss digital delays and a tremolo pedal. But since I'm not playing lead, I haven't got many things with me.

"I did buy a buy a new pedal that I like a lot: it's a Strymon TimeLine delay, and it's fucking amazing. The thing's got, like, 200 presets, and some of them sound exactly like Pink Floyd. They're hard to come by, though. They made like 50 of them or something, and I think there's a six-month waiting list to get one. I've got two!" 

You don't go in for amp modeling software, right?

"God, no! No, no, no. I don't even know how to work a four-track. I don't know shit about any of that."

On a different technological note, however, you have said you've gotten into iTunes recently.

"Yes, and I've spent a fucking fortune."

Of course, with iTunes people can sequence albums any way they choose.

"Yeah. That's bullshit. My record is perfect. I don't need no spotty youth fucking with that."

But what would you say to somebody who rearranges High Flying Birds?

"Buy the album or fuck off! Somebody changes my record, I'm gonna fuck with their shit. I'll go to their house and change the numbers on their front door so they don't get any fucking mail. And then I'll steal their pets. Then I'll kidnap their fucking children - see how they like it. Little fuckers."

• The 6 non-album Noel Gallagher Oasis songs you need to hear (that aren't on The Masterplan)

Oasis celebrate 30 years of their debut single, Supersonic, with the release of a rare – and wild – live version of the single, recorded during the band’s 1994 performance at the Limelight in Belfast.

The live single was released today on all formats, including spatial audio, with the individually numbered pearl 7” featuring Take Me Away on the B-side, with Take Make Me Away, I Will Believe (Live) and Colombia (White Label Demo) on the CD release.

Oasis are, of course, no more. Frontman Liam Gallagher does his thing, and has a new album out now with John Squire of the Stone Roses fame. Brother Noel has High Flying Birds. And while they manage their post-split relationship through regular barbs in the press, there is no tangible sign of a rapprochement coming any time soon.

In 1994 it was very different. Everything was going in the right direction in a hurry. Some might argue – some might say – their 1995 sophomore LP, (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, is stronger but there is a strong argument to say they never bettered the swagger and energy of Supersonic. Noel Gallagher, for one, would back that argument up. Speaking to BBC Radio Manchester in 2023, he said that would be the Oasis song he would pick for his Desert Island Disc.

“It was written in the studio on the hoof one night,” he said. “We mixed it there and then that night; it was written recorded and mixed in about six hours and it’s just a moment of pure inspiration. And it’s the original lineup jamming it out in the studio – magic.”

This rarely heard live version brings its own magic to the track, the electric guitars a tangle of voltages, all skronky anarchy.

David Neely witnessed this madness at first hand. He was the booker and general manager of the Limelight, and recalls watching the band’s dizzying ascent in real time as their debut album, Definitely Maybe, released on 29 August to an expectant public, rocketed to number on in its first week.

“They took the stage in the Limelight, Belfast on Sunday 4th September,” said Neely. “It was a sell out 500 people at the gig and tickets only £6.75!  The Sunday of the week the debut album was released, the Limelight show was the right venue, for the right band at the right time.  

“I remember around 6.30pm (in the dark days before mobile phones) that a call came into the office from Radio One, saying the band had just went to Number 1 in the album charts. It was a show that is now claimed by thousands that they were there – simply a show that is legendary in these parts.”

Originally released as a single on 11 April 1994, 30 years and a day later Supersonic is back out, live, raw and available here.

In a new episode of comedian Matt Morgan's podcast on Patreon, Noel Gallagher has confirmed he's scrapping his planned acoustic album six songs into the process and is planning to record a 'defiant' rock record instead.

“I’ve scrapped the acoustic album finally, can’t fucking do it anymore," he admitted to Morgan. "Yeah, it got six tunes in, and I was so bored with the arrangement of it all and the kind of slow pace of it all and, actually what made me think, right fuck it, I’m not doing it"

The Oasis and High Flying Birds songwriter added that he was concerned it was becoming too much like his last studio album – and is now planning to start afresh when he returns from holiday in the Maldives.

"It started to sound like Council Skies without the string arrangements, do you know what I mean?" said Noel. "It was the same kind of vibe or mood, shall we say. I think it’s time to make a defiant rock record which is what I’m gonna start when I get back."

Two of the songs Noel previously confirmed for contention on the acoustic album – God Help Us All and Just Let It Come Down Over Me – have already been released in demo form, but he told Morgan that he's not completely ruling out releasing the others he'd worked on in the future.

"Let’s put it this way, none of them are gonna go on this new record I’m starting on Monday," said Noel. "I had the idea of instead of making an album, maybe doing a couple of EPs… and putting them out. [But] it was too down. Acoustic tunes tend to be quite down and I think Council Skies had a bit of that to it…  I was like, no that took me fucking two years to make that record in that head space and I need to make a defiant rock record and that’s what I’m gonna do. Sorry everyone, I do apologise if anyone had their hearts set on it."

But any fans expecting a return to the raucous Definitely Maybe rock of Noel's younger years in Oasis should adjust their expectations. 

"It’s not Bring It On Down," he warned. "I’m fucking 57 this year, do you know what I mean?  It’s not like, I’m not gonna be fucking writing Welcome To The Jungle, you know."

Morgan remarked that it might be more like Welcome To The Rotisserie in Waitrose.

But Noel did confirm Marshall amps would be involved, he also asserted his belief that 2023's Council Skies is one of the two 'perfect' albums he's ever made.

"I’ve got a lot of songs, as you know yourself," he told Morgan. "I’ve got a lot of songs and Council Skies, I would say… it had three different things to it: there was kind of uplifting acousticy things, there was a bit of melancholy to it and there was a bit of like, you know, rock 'n' roll pop music to it. And so that was an overall, I think it’s the best High Flying Birds album and actually it’s the first album I’ve made, bar Definitely Maybe that I would say that is perfect. 

"Every record I make tends to have some flaw to it that I think, right I’ll fix that next time, there’s something I don’t like about it," Noel added. "Well, I’m still listening to Council Skies and going, it’s fucking perfect'. There’s nothing I could take away or add to that to make it any better than what it is."

Even though he hasn't started its follow-up, he revealed the cover art has been shot [by his son Sonny in Las Vegas] and the album has already got a title, inspired by the comedy Eastbound & Down – and astute one fan over on the Live4ever Oasis fan forum may have already worked it out.

"I’ve already got the title. Something to do with Eastbound and Down that none of you have got yet," Noel teased.

"Watched eastbound and down about a month ago," posted forum user dampcottage on 4 April. "The only thing that stuck out was 'The future will look better tomorrow', [it] might have been 'brighter' rather than better – anyway it stuck in my head cause it sounds Noely as fuck so that's my guess for the title."

So we have everything but the music in place, and don't expect it to surface any time soon.  

"I don’t know," Noel admitted to Morgan. "Let me see where we end up. By the time I get to the end of this year and I finish touring after August… in my head now if I could demo it all by the end of the year or start to record it properly by the end of the year… could be, dunno… not next year cos then I’d have to go back out on tour next year and I’m not doing that… 2026 maybe?

As Coldplay proved with 2014's Ghost Stories, artists don't have to tour every album immediately after release but if any Oasis reunion theorists are thinking Noel is keeping 2025 clear for that reason, stand down – his estranged younger brother and Oasis vocalist Liam Gallager is not entertaining any talk of it anymore. 

In reply to a fan who tweeted that Noel was keeping 2025 clear for an Oasis reunion tour, Liam was clear. "Excuse me can you not be getting people's hopes up and stop it with this narrative, it's not big and it's certainly not clever." 

• For more info on Matt Morgan's podcast, head to Patreon 

Wind the clock back to the beginning of 1993, and Oasis were just a skint gang of loud-mouthed retro rock ’n’ rollers attracting crowds of between five and 10 people at various Northern dives. By the end of the following year, those loud-mouthed retro rock ’n’ rollers had unleashed the (then) fastest-selling British debut album of all time and were leading a musical revolution. And that was just the start. 

No band since the Sex Pistols has inspired so many kids to pick up the guitar and start their own bands, and it remains to be seen whether a British guitar group will ever sell over 50 million records again.

Oasis’ first long player, Definitely Maybe, is widely heralded as being one of the greatest debuts ever recorded, while the band’s third single, Live Forever (which preceded the album by just a few weeks), is regarded as one of Noel Gallagher’s finest pieces of writing; not least by the man himself. The song, which Gallagher senior had part-written before he joined his little brother Liam’s band, was key to him convincing the others that he had to be their main songwriter and bandleader. 

“I remember playing [Live Forever] to them on an acoustic one night,” Gallagher told Q magazine in 1996, “it was one of the greatest moments I’ve ever had as a songwriter. They were utterly f***ing speechless. If I hadn’t had the songs they’d probably have told me to f*** off.”

While Gallagher has openly admitted that Live Forever’s melody was influenced by both The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, the lyrics were inspired by a more contemporary source.

“It was written in the middle of grunge and all that.” Gallagher explained on the Lock The Box DVD, which accompanied Oasis’ Stop The Clocks best of album. “I remember Nirvana had a tune called I Hate Myself And I Want To Die, to which I was like, ‘I’m not having that! As much as I like [Kurt Cobain] and all that s***, I’m not having that! I can’t have people like that coming over here on smack saying that they hate themselves and they want to die… that’s f***ing rubbish!” He hurtled on. 

“I’m not saying it was written directly as a retort to that, but that was my thinking: ‘F*** that, man, kids don’t need to hear that nonsense!’ It seemed to me that he was a guy who had everything and was miserable about it and we had f*** all and I still thought that getting up in the morning was the greatest thing ever.”

Definitely Maybe was recorded across multiple studios with several different producers and engineers, while some elements of Oasis’ early demos were also incorporated into a few of the final mixes. 

As far as Live Forever goes, it’s likely that the core rhythm track was laid down at either Cornwall’s Sawmills studio or Johnny Marr’s Clear facility in Manchester, while Gallagher junior’s vocal was overdubbed by co-producer and mixing engineer Owen Morris at Loco in South Wales. 

Gallagher probably played one of his Les Pauls using a combination of a Marshall and Vox AC30, while rhythm guitarist Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs recorded his parts across Definitely Maybe using his favourite Epiphone Rivieras.

The first mix Morris attempted for Live Forever was of Oasis’ original demo version, but his attempt to cut the guitar solo in half was not received favourably by the eldest Gallagher.

“I muted Noel’s guitar solo at the halfway point!” Morris told Q magazine in 2010. “I wasn’t taking the mix seriously as I knew it was a demo and they’d re-recorded it, but it was all they had at that stage with a lead vocal before I recorded Liam’s final vocals. So Marcus [Russell, Oasis’ manager] asked me to have a look at it. 

"It was essentially the same solo that’s on the finished version Noel always plays live, but when it went high on the second half all I could think of was Slash in leather kecks with a wind machine on the Grand Canyon. I had a message from Marcus saying Noel was bemused I’d cut his solo in half and not done it again on the final mix!”

However, Gallagher did appreciate Morris’ approach when it came to toning down the number of guitar overdubs as excessive layering that had mired the group’s earlier attempts at final mixes.

“We were trying to get everything that we’d recorded into the mix somewhere and it wasn’t quite sounding right.” Gallagher explained on the Definitely Maybe DVD. “We sent it to Owen to mix and he just took all the best ones. I remember him phoning up Marcus and saying: ‘There’s one song here that’s got 17 guitar solos on it – all of ’em going at the same time!’ Marcus said to me, ‘Which one of these [solos] is the one?’ And I was like, ‘F***ing all of ’em! What you talking about, man? Put ’em all in!’"

Live Forever was the first Oasis single to break the UK’s top 10, and over the next 16 years the band would notch up a staggering seven No. 1 UK albums and a further 22 top 10 singles. Looking back, Gallagher certainly agrees that Live Forever was a turning point.

“It was the tune, as I remember, that changed everything.” He talked with pride on Lock The Box. “It set off a chain reaction [and] everything followed on from that… and that was the tune that got us the record deal really, wasn’t it? Once [Creation records owner Alan] McGee heard it he was like, ‘F***ing hell!’”

Liam Gallagher has a lot going on this year – a universally well-received collaboration with John Squire and their album / tour about to take flight, then a sold-out Definitely Maybe anniversary run performing the Oasis debut album and its b-sides. The only fly in the ointment is the absence of the band that recorded it – namely chief songwriter and guitarist Noel Gallagher.

"Noel? He ain't fucking doing it," Liam confirmed to Mojo for their new Gallagher/Squire cover feature, just in case nobody got the memo that the Definitely Maybe tour is his solo band, but with the added bonus of original Oasis member Paul 'Bonehead' Arthurs on rhythm guitar. Noel had suggested on a couple of occasions that he was open-minded to a possible musical reconciliation with his brother, but his people had to call his people.

"And I did call him," retorted Liam. "Well, my people called Noel's management team/ We put an offer on the table for an Oasis thing – because we got offered it – and he said no. It was a big tour, a lot of money. He turned it down."

But where we might expect the younger Gallagher to be incendiary about the knock-back, he's borderline conciliatory with what he says next about his brother.

"I get it, he's got a divorce going down. I'll do the Defnitely Maybe thing and have a nice time without him." That sounds like the timing just might not have been right this time.  And pretty popular second Oasis album (What's The Story) Morning Glory? will hit 30 in 2025, so maybe the rumours about that being the golden year for a reunion aren't complete nonsense.

"It's down to the universe," a zen-like Liam told Mojo. It'll happen when it happens it's not in our hands anymore."

The album Liam Gallagher and John Squire is released on 1 March via Warner Music. Preorder here and buy Mojo magazine here. 

• "I remember Our Kid saying, 'Why are you writing reggae songs?'" – The story of Wonderwall, Noel Gallagher's classic hit that Liam hated

Gibson has announced a strictly limited run of 20 Noel Gallagher-signed '78 Les Paul Customs, and they'll only be available on a first-come-first-served basis at the official open day of its swanky new flagship store in London this Saturday (24 February). All profits from the sale of the run will goto the Teenage Cancer Trust charity.

The guitars pay homage to the guitar originally gifted to Noel by no less than Johnny Marr, before being used live and in session for Oasis. You're most likely to recognise it from the video for 1994's Whatever (below).

Each of the 20 '78 Custom Les Pauls will feature a lightly-aged Ebony finish straight from the Gibson Custom Shop Murphy lab and will be hand-signed by the Oasis and High Flying Birds star.

“The Les Paul Custom that Johnny gave me in 1994 was always one of my favourite guitars and it carries a lot of history,” Gallagher said. 

“The reissues are great, they feel almost identical. I am delighted they are being sold to support the Teenage Cancer Trust.”

Jane Ashton of the Teenage Cancer Trust said, “Teenage Cancer Trust’s musical history started in 2000 with the launch of our iconic annual series of shows at the Royal Albert Hall. 

"Noel Gallagher was there for that very first performance, and as an ambassador of the charity has been relentless in his support of young people with cancer ever since"

“These guitars are steeped in their own musical history celebrating the iconic moment one British music legend gifted a priceless guitar to another, like the handing of a baton."

• Read more: “He’s like a poster from my bedroom wall that’s come to life. He’s got this black Strat with nine pickups and he’s saying, ‘Do you think it’s a bit mad?’”: Noel Gallagher on guitar shopping with Johnny Marr

• Find out more about the Teenage Cancer Trust
• For more info on the Gibson Garage, head to gibson.com

In the last 30 years, the UK has had few songwriters who can connect with audiences like Noel Gallagher and his J-150. It's clearly not lost on him, either, and with Liam heading out playing the raucous side of their old band with a Definitely Maybe tour in 2024, The Chief is leaning into his mellower side. And he's doing it ruthlessly.

"I’m back in the studio – not rock, the acoustic stuff. I’m doing it for fans really," he told friend and comedian Matt Morgan on the latter's podcast.

“I’ve had to take all the electronic equipment out of the studio… because I’ve tried to make an acoustic album three times, and every time [I’ve failed]… so it’s just acoustic instruments in the studio.”

The key word there is instruments, though. By his own admission, Noel gets "bored" listening to acoustic guitar songs so he's livening it up with some layers.

"I’ve come up with working just with acoustic instruments, so instead of a bass it’ll be a double bass," he told Morgan. "That way I can say, ‘I’ve made an acoustic album, but it’s used all acoustic instruments."

But if you want a preview of what's to come – Noel has revealed two of the songs in contention for the album are already out there, in demo form at least. 

He confirmed he's written six songs and one, God Help Us All, dates back to 2005 when he was still with Oasis. 

"But there is a demo of it when a load of EPs came out. Then there’s one that was bootlegged called Just Let It Come Down Over Me, which is quite country. I’ll do that, but the rest of it is all new stuff." 

You can hear both above and below, respectively.

Elsewhere in the chat, Noel revealed how he felt creatively restricted in Oasis – his solo song The Death Of You And Me is one he wrote when he was still in the band, but Noel claims that Liam vehemently rejected it. 

"For example, you know that song The Death Of You And Me off of my first solo album? Well I wrote that when I was still in Oasis and demoed it… and I remember Liam saying, 'What are you doing? What the fuck, who's gonna listen to that?' And I was like, 'But it's one of my favourite, best ever tunes.'"

Warming to the theme in the clip above, Noel then breaks into an impression of Liam.

"'What's that? Fucking what? Rag-time?! What's that - fucking hell, jazz band now are we? How am I supposed to list the colours of lollipops to that shit?'"

That last comment seems to be a cheeky reference to Liam's new single Just Another Rainbow with John Squire, where at one point the younger Gallagher sings a list of the colours in a rainbow. A reference Noel returns to later in the clip you can hear above courtesy of Oasis Mania on X. 

Check out the Matt Morgan podcast via Patreon. 

• The 6 non-album Noel Gallagher Oasis songs you need to hear (that aren't on The Masterplan)

It was a concept that appealed to artists and fans in equal measure: a set of songs delivered in a stripped-back format with little or no amplification and in a setting so intimate that each could see the whites of the other’s eyes. 

For the artist, it offered the chance to demonstrate that even with back-to-basics instrumentation, their songs had just as much power and emotion. For the fans, it offered an invaluable glimpse of seeing and hearing material reimagined in a far more intimate setting.

The MTV Unplugged series was an almost immediate success. Launched in 1989, it gave us landmark performances and yielded classic albums in their own right. Highlights included Neil Young performing a mesmerising rendition of Harvest Moon, accompanied by guitar tech Larry Craggs on ‘broom’; and Nirvana unveiling inspired covers, such as The Vaselines’ Jesus Don’t Want Me For A Sunbeam and David Bowie’s The Man Who Sold The World. 

But for all its triumphs, the series was not without controversy. Neil Young, for example, was allegedly so concerned by the performances of some of his musicians on the first taping of his Unplugged in December 1992, that he simply exited the nearest studio door and walked briskly down Broadway, forbidding the set from ever being broadcast. Two months later, he returned with a different line-up, and delivered an iconic set that is as haunting as it is heartfelt. 

The Nirvana session too was allegedly fraught with problems. On the day before Nirvana’s performance on 18 November, 1993 at Sony Studios in New York City, Kurt Cobain refused to play. He did eventually show up, but he was suffering from extreme anxiety and in the middle of a severe drug withdrawal. As one of the production team put it: "There was no joking, no smiles, no fun coming from him... everyone was more than a little worried about his performance." 

Despite the show's acoustic premise, Cobain insisted on running his acoustic guitar through his Fender Twin Reverb amp and effects pedals. The show’s producer Alex Coletti built a fake box in front of the tube amplifier to disguise it as a monitor wedge.

"It was Kurt's security blanket,” Coletti told Guitar World in March 1995. “He was used to hearing this guitar through his Fender. He wanted those effects." 

The performance turned out to be one of Nirvana’s best ever, due to the band’s determination to approach the show from a different angle than previous acts that had appeared, as Dave Grohl recalled: “We’d seen the other Unpluggeds and didn’t like many of them because most bands would treat them like rock shows – play their hits like it was Madison Square Garden, except with acoustic guitars.”

And then there was the infamous Oasis MTV Unplugged. By the mid-'90s the format was seen as a rite of passage for the biggest artists in the industry so it was no surprise when Oasis were announced for a show that would be recorded on 23 August 1996 at Royal Festival Hall.

By this point, the band were riding high on the success of their second album (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? It had been a colossal global success, selling four million albums on release and going on to shift 22 million copies by 2008. The album yielded classics such as Wonderwall, Don’t Look Back In Anger and Champagne Supernova.

This stellar period for the band culminated on 10 and 11 August with two massive shows at Knebworth House, playing to crowds of 125,000 each night, with 2.5 million people applying for tickets. It was a record-breaking number for an outdoor concert and remains the largest demand for a show in British history. 

The Knebworth shows were a majestic, euphoric rush for the band, who then had just twelve days to prepare for a wholly different kind of performance – the pared-down acoustic MTV Unplugged show at the 2,700 capacity Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank. 

From the outset, rehearsals were rocky. “Even before we got to the day of the show, there was a ‘concern’, a concern with Liam,” Jac Benson, the associate producer of the show recalled in a documentary about the MTV Unplugged series. It was a view echoed by fellow production manager Claire Wool. “Liam was in the paper a lot leading up to the Oasis Unplugged, he was portrayed as a bad boy.”

On the first day of rehearsals Liam Gallagher allegedly complained of a sore throat, walked off stage and left. “At some point during the song [Live Forever] Liam would point to his throat like ‘I can’t go on anymore’,” recalled one of the production crew. “Noel would start singing, Liam would walk off and the rehearsal would continue to go on” 

On the second day, Liam made it clear he didn’t want to sing too much in case it damaged his voice. He sang just three songs, leaving brother Noel to take up vocal duties once again. Liam was present for three days of the rehearsal although the production team were becoming increasingly concerned by his appearance. 

“Second day, we go back, he turns up a little later, sings a little less,” recalls one production crew member in a documentary about the classic MTV Unplugged series. “I distinctly remember he came in a natty little green shirt, cream shorts, green shoes, it was really thought out. Third day of rehearsal he shows up, he’s wearing the same clothes. He hasn’t shaved, he sings three songs and leaves”

For the briskly professional American production crew. Liam’s seeming indifference was baffling. Major bands and their labels were clamouring to get on this hugely popular format, which had the potential to send sales of albums through the roof. It also threw the whole production into question.

“We were being told he didn’t want to sing too much because he wanted to save his voice,” recalled Jac Benson. “But you get to the point where it’s like ‘What’s up with this guy? Is he going to show or not?’

Noel Gallagher was pondering exactly the same question. “I think we’d rehearsed for two weeks beforehand and Liam only turned up once or twice,” recalled Noel in the documentary. “The day of the performance, he hadn’t turned up and there were rumours that he’d been out drinking for a couple of days… and nobody knew where he was. About an hour before we were due to go on, he turned up, absolutely sh******d. We said, well look, let’s see if you can sing a couple of songs, and it was f*****g dreadful.”

Facing the prospect of a Oasis MTV Unplugged without the lead singer, the production crew had to make the decision whether to proceed or abort. But abandoning the show at this late point made no practical sense. “We had the whole crew there, everybody was standing by so the decision was ‘let’s go ahead and tape the show and then see what happens after that’,” recalled one of the production team. 

At the allotted stage time, the announcement came over the PA: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen… Oasis’. “We just walked out and he wasn’t there,” said Noel “He was just like ‘I’m not doing it’,” recalled Noel.  “Liam aint gonna be with us tonight cause he’s got a sore throat,” Noel told the audience as he picked up his acoustic and sat down on a high stool. “So you’re stuck with the ugly four.” 

One thing that impresses when watching the band’s performance twenty seven years on, is how calm and unflustered Noel Gallagher is during rehearsals and how easily and naturally he picks up the reins as lead vocalist on the live taping at the Royal Festival Hall. But given the events unfolding during the rehearsals he probably realised early on that a Liam-less version of Oasis was a very likely outcome. 

In the event, Noel and the band delivered an iconic set – a commanding and heartfelt performance, enhanced by horns and strings. Admittedly, it didn’t have the force and visual impact that Liam would have given the songs, but Noel’s delivery resonated with emotion and intent. 

“There was almost this kind of feeling that Noel was enjoying that moment too,” recalled one of the production team. “Where he had this opportunity to sing his own lyrics.”

It was a view shared by Lindsay Zoladz, in a retrospective review of the performance in June 2020.  “Noel’s voice doesn’t quite have the range of his younger brother’s,” she wrote. “It’s more plaintive, sincere and occasionally wobbly — but he was more than up to the task of fronting Oasis for the night. There was something poignant about it, listening to Noel brush up against his limitations as a vocalist but also connecting with these great songs in the manner he must have written them, sitting there unassumingly with his acoustic guitar.”

Noel himself comcurred: “I think I did a f****** great job to be quite honest with you.” 

But the set wasn’t without incident. A few songs in, Jac Benson received a message in his ear monitors. “I remember hearing someone say ‘Liam’s in the house’,” recalled Benson. “One of the camera guys pans up and there’s Liam with some champagne. He was drinking and just slow handclapping. As soon as he knew the camera was on him he sort of acknowledged the fact that ‘yes I’m up here drinking in the balcony and not performing today’.”

Liam then began heckling his brother and the rest of the band down on the stage. “I was like ‘thanks’,” recalled Noel, who at one point told Liam to shut up, “the least you could do is show a bit of support”.

The difficulties didn’t end there. At the end of the show, the producer told Noel, the band and the audience that they needed to just do the first song of the set again. “And of course then Liam comes on and he wants to sing.” recalled Noel. “After we’ve played for an hour and a half or something. We told him to f*** off. And he went home sulking.”

The performances of non-album single Whatever and b-side Listen Up were cut from the final TV release, though professionally shot footage of the songs can be viewed above and below.

Through the performance, Noel plays a Takamine FP-460SC cutaway electro-acoustic guitar, and it's likely this is the same guitar that has an interesting history for Oasis guitar fans. Noel used it during both nights and Knebworth and it was used to record Wonderwall at the Coach House studio at Rockfield Studios near Monmouth for the Morning Glory sessions. 

Later, during the recordings for follow-up album Be Here Now at Abbey Road Studios, Noel gifted it to engineer Nick Brine after Brine's own guitar got smashed during a Gallagher brothers altercation in the control room. "Someone called Liam had smashed my guitar up," was Noel's recollection in the Return To Rockfield documentary. 

Despite its problems, or possibly because of them, Oasis delivered an absolute classic of the MTV Unplugged series, and Noel’s last-minute shift to lead singer only heightens the drama. There’s a real intimacy and beauty to the performance – reinforcing the creative value of the whole Unplugged ethos. And, of course, the no-show of Liam and his subsequent heckling appearance from the balcony ultimately made for great TV. As The New York Times put it: “The entire Shakespearean rivalry of the Gallaghers, condensed into a single performance.” 

Two of Noel Gallagher's key Epiphone guitars from early Oasis history will soon go on display as part of Epiphone's 150th Anniversary celebrations.

The Epiphone Frontier and Riviera are now part of a special section of the British Music Experience in Liverpool from 27 September to 14 January 2024 , celebrating the history of Epiphone guitars. 

The Epiphone Frontier FT110 acoustic guitar was used in the record of  (What's The Story) Morning Glory? and the Epiphone Riviera with Bigsby is the guitar Noel is holding on the Definitely Maybe album cover photo shown above. 

“I wanted to start playing Epiphones because of the Beatles," reflects Noel. "I didn’t know anything about guitars then. They looked good; they felt good, I could make them sound good. I’m a songwriter, not a guitar player. You know, that’s my thing.  I’m not one of those people who can sit in a guitar shop and play lots of things. I will literally play an E chord, and if it had sounded great and felt good, I would have just said, ‘Yeah, I’ll take it'.”

The BME has more activities planned to support Epiphone's anniversary. These include the Epiphone takeover of the Gibson Brands Interactive Studio to enable visitors to play Epiphone guitars along with the Gibson App. The Star Café and Bar will feature Epiphone artist album takeovers each Sunday at midday and the anniversary will form part of the BME's Learning Programme and feature on school tours. The BME's merch store will feature Epiphone guitars available for purchase along with apparel and giftware.

“Epiphone has been at the heart of every significant musical movement for 150 years and what a fitting way to celebrate by being part of this exhibition in Liverpool” says Lee Bartram, Head of Commercial, Marketing and Cultural Influence EMEA. “The guitars on display can be heard and seen on some of the most important recordings and momentous performances from a UK artist in recent years and we would like to thank Noel Gallagher and The BME for their support in telling the story of Epiphone; we can’t wait to see what the next 150 years will bring.”

The British Music Experience is in The Cunard Building, found in the middle of the Three Graces on the Mersey in Liverpool. For more info visit britishmusicexperience.com

Johnny Marr was a recent guest on the Broken Record Podcast, and it found him digging into his past and huge body of work with other artists. But the overarching impression is that Marr's wonder at his role as a guitarist remains the same as it was when he was a teenager, and at his core he's been inspired by three key players in the last 40 years. But he's interpreted that influence in his own unique way. 

"They take all of these different elements that only to them make sense," Marr notes about musicians. "For example, in my case, I didn't really do a lot of interviews in the early Smiths days but when I was asked about guitar playing, when I had to really nail it down it was Nile Rodgers, Bert Jansch and James Williamson from The Stooges.

"At first people were like, 'Huh? Come again, Nile Rodgers influenced The Smiths?' But over time time now people know… listen to the second verse of The Boy With The Thorn In His Side, or there's a famous story about when I wrote Hand In Glove it just started out as a Chic riff. 

"The point being, that made total sense to me but you put it all through a funnel in your own mind and then it comes out and people say, 'Oh yeah that sounds like Johnny Marr.' But if I told you what I was thinking of when I came up with some of these riffs you'd say, 'What?!' 

Williamson's work with The Stooges had so much impact on Marr that when he first met fellow Mancunian Noel Gallagher, before Oasis, he was quick to turn him onto his influence too.

"When I first met Noel Gallagher he was young… I was pretty young myself – maybe 26/27. The first time he came to my house that was the first record I gave him, he wasn't aware of it."

In turn, Marr reveals it had been his old friend Billy Duffy from The Cult who had told him about The Stooges' Raw Power after remarking that a riff the teenage Marr had written sounded like the song Gimme Danger from that album. "When I heard it I thought, that sounds like the way I'm trying to play. Truth be told, I was a bit pissed that someone had already beaten me to this new song I was writing. 

"James is a massive influence on me. When I heard that [I knew], you're on the right path. You're doing the right thing."

• 5 songs guitarists need to hear by... Johnny Marr

 They say never meet your heroes but that’s a lot of nonsense. Just ask Noel Gallagher, who not only enjoyed a unlikely musical partnership with the late Burt Bacharach but struck up a friendship with Johnny Marr in a remarkable few days in May 1993 that found him shopping for vintage electric guitars with the former Smiths guitarist days before his life would change for good.

Gallagher was speaking to Gibson TV in the latest episode of its Icons YouTube series and in an interview that spanned his career there was one common thread – songwriting. His favourite players? All songwriters. “I am kind of more draw with guitar players who compose – I suppose all guitar players do – but like Neil Young,” he said. “I’m more into the writers than the players if you know what I mean.”

Among them was Johnny Marr, and Gallagher recalled a surreal week in which he met Marr’s brother at the Hacienda, gave him an Oasis demo, before Marr called a couple of days later and they ended up talking guitars and heading to a vintage guitar store in Doncaster.

Looking back, Gallagher still can’t quite believe it. Johnny Marr’s brother in a nightclub? Manchester is the sort of place where Marr could have a dozen people claiming to be his brother.

“I don’t think anything of it. There are a lot of bullshitters in Manchester, glorious blaggers,” said Gallagher. “Was he Johnny Marr’s brother? Didn’t look anything fucking like him. I’m not even sure I mentioned it to the band, then I remember a couple of days after that coming in and the phone went. ‘Hello, is that Noel?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘It’s Johnny.’ Johnny Marr.”

Did Gallagher expect Marr to call him after listening to the demo. Well, Gallagher says he did. “People said, ‘Did you think it was a wind-up?’ No. Call that arrogant? Of course he’s gonna fucking call me. My number was on the demo tape,” he said. 

The next thing they know, Marr says they should go for a pint and they’re talking guitars and Gallagher recommends a spot called Music Ground, out in Doncaster, where he had been when roadying for Inspiral Carpets.

Marr suggests they head out there, and arranges for a car to pick Gallagher up the following day.

“He picks me up in a car at India House, and I am sitting in the back, and he’s sitting in the front, and there’s a guy driving. I vividly remember he was playing Exodus by Bob Marley, the long version, and Johnny’s turning round going, ‘Get on the fucking groove!’ And I’m like, ‘I love Bob Marley,’” said Gallagher. 

Owen Morris, Marr’s guitar tech at the time, was behind the wheel. Gallagher says Morris had the loudest, “most annoying” laugh ever but clearly not that annoying; Morris would co-produce and mix Oasis’s first three studio albums.

“We go to Doncaster. We go to Music Ground. [Laughs] This one in Doncaster is mad one. It was a mad vintage guitar shop,” said Gallagher. “They’re not the same anymore. It was like an Aladdin’s Cave. We go in the front door and Johnny says, ‘Okay, right. I need to go in and eat first before I shop.’  So we go to a sandwich shop and he says to me, ‘A bit of advice. Before you go guitar shopping, don’t do it on an empty stomach.’ We went and had a sandwich and a cup of tea in a cafe and then he bought a Stratocaster with fucking nine pickups in it.”

“I still only know this guy for two days,” Gallagher continued, acknowledging that this, all things considered, was a remarkable turn of events. “He’s like a poster from my bedroom wall that’s come to life. He’s got this black Strat with nine pickups and he’s saying, ‘Do you think it’s a bit mad?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, it’s mad as fuck.’”

Gallagher and Marr rounded off the day going out for Japanese food. A few days later Oasis were signed. And Marr has remained in Gallagher’s Rolodex all these years later, with Marr guesting on Oasis’s Heathen Chemistry, and regularly an on-call player for Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, most recently playing on Pretty Boy, Open the Door, See What You Find, and the title-track from this year’s Council Skies.

You can watch Gallagher’s appearance on Gibson TV’s Icons above, and subscribe to the channel here.

In our rundown of the six essential Noel Gallagher Oasis b-sides that didn't make The Masterplan album we listed Going Nowhere as a must-hear track. It's also one Noel has only played live a couple of times in the past. Well, maybe he took notice as he dusted down the Stand By Me flipside for a special episode of Later… With Jools Holland for the BBC.

The full-band version with a string section proves a great showcase for the song that was originally recorded back in 1997 for the Be Here Now sessions, and he's brought it back for his US tour with Garbage too, but it actually dates back to the beginnings of Noel's songwriting for the band.

The original demo version from the early '90s was included on the 2016 reissue of Be Here Now and finds a youthful-sounding pre-fame Noel performing the same song. Indeed, his voice is barely recognisable to what it would become but the songwriting chops are undeniable. 

Noel and his expanded High Flying Birds lineup also performed Pretty Boy and Open The Door, See What You Find from new album Council Skies, but this moving version of Live Forever proved a standout moment from the night. 

It finds Noel reappraising the song as an older and wiser musician, and includes a new guitar solo played by Gem Archer. It's a song he admitted was a breakthrough moment for him as a writer and heralded an imperial era for Oasis. 

"We were pretty good up to the moment of when I wrote Live Forever," he told That Pedal Show in the interview below. "Then when I wrote that song, I knew enough about music to know; it's gone from being indie to classic now. It was after that, that's where the benchmark was set and nothing would ever be good enough unless it was as good as that."

You might think you're well-rehearsed but it will happen to you at some point if you ever play live; you'll totally forget how to play something onstage. The live experience is a funny thing like that – a heady brew of nerves, adrenaline, joy and equipment failure that even the pros can fall victim to sometimes. Yes, even Noel Gallagher with his most famous song.

Noel doesn't always play the Don't Look Back In Anger solo live in his performances with High Flying Birds; for acoustic renditions, guitarist Gem Archer will do it. But for full band versions he's played it countless times and nailed it. Except this time at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on 9 June…

As you'll see above in the clip posted on YouTube by user twt_07 things go south during the second half of the solo, and they never recover. Noel laughs it off, as does bassist Russ Pritchard but we're not here to laugh at the error. It's a reminder that everyone makes mistakes and it's ok. 

By his own admission, Noel doesn't consider himself a lead guitar virtuoso and chosen to delegate some of the guitar solos in High Flying Birds songs to producer and session man Paul Stacey, but his ear for melody made his Oasis solos integral parts of the songs he wrote.

"I do play a few on this new record," Noel told That Pedal Show in the episode below. "But if I'd have got a sessions guy, let's just say I was writing Live Forever tomorrow or Don't Look Back In Anger, and I got one of my mates to play it, it just wouldn't the same. There's something in the simplicity and once you know too much you can't just simplify it."

"I put everything into the melody," he added. "If I've got what I consider to be a finished song and the melody is great the tune is great, you're there. You can't mess it up after that."

Well not completely. 

• "I remember Our Kid saying, 'Why are you writing reggae songs?'" – The story of Wonderwall, Noel Gallagher's classic hit that Liam hated

It seems Noel Gallagher's (relatively) experimental era of Who Built The Moon is well and truly over after latest album Council Skies heralded his return to guitar-based songwriting. But the pandemic period he wrote it in was far more fruitful than previously thought; he says he's got enough material for another two albums and they could be very different. Who needs an Oasis reunion, eh? 

"In the lockdown I wrote about the best part of 40 songs," he told Rolling Stone. "So this album was a cross-section of all the different styles that I'd done to that point, which is what I liked about the album. Pretty Boy was a bit like the electronic thing and then there was the Ballad thing and then there was the '60s thing and hen there was like a bit of a jazz thing with Council Skies. So I pick the best things that brought me to this place so far. But there is an acoustic album, as well, which is very stripped back – which I started recording actually recently before I came away [for his current US tour with the High Flying Birds]. And then those years are very heavily guitar bass stadium rock album.

“There is an acoustic album as well, which is very, very stripped back, and which I started recording recently,” he revealed to Rolling Stone: “And then there’s, a very heavily guitar-based, stadium-rock album.”

Rolling Stone then asked the obvious question – why didn't he release that one first? 

"I don't know," replied Noel in a rare public display of uncertainty. "I've been proved right anyway in this decision because the album's [Council Skies] been received amazingly well. And better than any album I've ever had so far, so I've been proved right in that respect. But why didn't I go with that? I don't know. I guess because I didn't really know if stadium rock was going to be allowed anymore because of COVID and all that. I didn't know if there was going to be a tour or any of that s*** –  things have changed drastically.

"But the guitar album, I'm looking forward to recording," Noel added. "But it's time I did an acoustic album, because I've got a lot of songs that are quite harrowing – they've obviously written in the time of the breakup [Noel is going through a divorce from his wife Sarah MacDonald after 22 years together]. So I want to get that out and then do a euphoric guitar record."

For Oasis fans, this will be the news they've been waiting for – well apart from the obvious reunion announcement that may never come. Noel's rocky and acoustic sides showcased on two different records? It's an open goal to the hearts of his fans, surely. And Noel had further catnip to offer on the acoustic side of things.

"It'll be Dead In The Water kind of thing," Noel mused about the acoustic record – referencing the Who Built The Moon bonus song that many fans regarded as his best song in years. "I'm gonna have to think long and hard about it," Noel said, again dropping his guard to a surprising degree. "Because fans and even I will go, 'Oh a f*****g acoustic album. But really, four songs like that in a row? Come on, it'll get boring, it'll get boring for me to listen to. So I'm gonna have to think of something. It'll be an acoustic album with a twist. It'll definitely be acoustic and not have to be any electronic instruments on it. That'll be the rule."

So with this many new Noel solo songs coming, maybe an Oasis reunion really isn't on his agenda. And that's not all – we have his collaboration with Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney to look forward to. A mutual love story has formed between the three, with the Black Keys duo calling Noel the 'Chord Lord'. He seems equally enthused with what they've created together – the fruits of which should appear on the next Black Keys album.

"We did a week in the studio in London and wrote three songs,” he told Rolling Stone. “And I’ve gotta tell you, they’re fucking amazing. They're really great”

Listen to the full Rolling Stone interview below.

• The 6 non-album Noel Gallagher Oasis songs you need to hear (that aren't on The Masterplan)

If you have ever played in a covers band in the UK you will encounter Oasis classic Don't Look Back In Anger at some point; people want to hear it, they want to sing along with it and you better learn it. But there's one chord in the song's bridge that seems to throw players, and for good reason. Even the official Oasis tab and chord books' answers have been up for discussion. Scrub that; they're wrong. Step forward Chris Buck to try and put the issue to bed for good.

Cardinal Black guitarist Chris has played in function bands for years so he knows the struggle all too well, and he's honed in on it for his latest weekly Friday Fretworks YouTube show. Prompted by Noel Gallagher's recent appearance on That Pedal Show where he strummed some of Don't Look Back In Anger on his Epiphone Rivera. 

Chris says the official Oasis songbook tells you that the chord over the line 'Take that look from off your face' is a G# dim (diminished). Our own Little Black Songbook on Oasis says it's the equivalent A flat diminished. As Chris notes, diminished chords can sound discordant in isolation but are useful as 'passing' chords to add some drama to transitions between positions. Here it's placed between G and Am. Take it out and the song simply doesn't sound right. But Chris also points out that the official G# dim has never sounded totally right to his ears. And we now know why; it isn't the chord Noel plays in the song.

Noel has been seen onstage moving the G# maj shape up one fret, which is what this writer does when he has had to sing and play it. But what chord is it? We can now see very clearly from Noel's That Pedal Show. Co-presenter Mick Taylor's reaction to the chord in the clip below also makes it clear he's also been playing it 'right' too. But what is it? 

"It's an E dominant 7 with a G# in the bass," confirms Chris.  So written as E7/G#. And it sounds right – you know the saying in guitar that if it sounds right, it is right! The open strings offer the jangle that was missing from the songbooks. So the moral of the story is beware of songbooks. They don't always get it right. 

• Check out more from Chris Buck at his YouTube channel 

The guitar interview Oasis fans have been waiting for has arrived; That Pedal Show's Mick and Dan sit down with Noel Gallagher in his Lone Star studio for nearly two hours of gear and songwriting talk. No bravado – this is Noel the songwriter, and the musician who is still very much in love with his craft, his heroes and loud tube amps.

So we get to see the key guitars he wrote Oasis's biggest songs on – including those gifted by Johnny Marr. But Noel goes deeper into the realms guitarists love to wade in, revealing why he hates guitar in his monitors but also the more humble habits we've never heard about before. Small things that make him just like a lot of us; he doesn't really understand compression pedals, loves the BOSS DD-3 and can't be bothered to mess with the presets on his Strymon pedals.

"I don't even need a pedalboard, I don't know why I've got one – but I have got one," laughs Noel, who used very few in his Oasis days and now has a Hologram Microcosm alongside Strymon classics and some old favourites including a Kingsley Page boost and Keeley Compressor. But when it comes to pedals like the Microcosm and Timeline, he doesn't mess with the settings.

"One thing I love about this Strymon stuff and these big pedals; I f*****g love a preset," Noel declares. "I can't be arsed getting my own sounds. Some guy slaved over that in Utah for 16 months to get that sound. I'm not gonna take a bit of top off it – have a bit of respect for that man!

Noel really isn't into sound design on pedals that will do it for you.

"I've written the song, is that not enough? I've got to come up with my own sounds now?" he adds. He's got a point, and his solo career has seen him move from the Bigsby waggling occasional singer to the centre of the stage where his focus has had to change. But he's still keen to study what others are doing with their gear. 

"I love presets and I love nicking other people's settings," Noel adds. And we admit to taking note of the position of his always-on Keeley Compressor controls (similar to ours as it turns out). "What I think is not shown enough on these [guitar] YouTube videos like the Andertons ones and yours [TPS], you never say what the settings are on the amp… you can list every valve known to man but where's the treble? List every mic you want… but where's the presence?

This has fueled him to take advantage of opportunities around his own guitar heroes – behind their backs. "I did a thing recently at the Royal Festival Hall for Peter Blake's 90th birthday," he adds about the event where he played alongside The Who. "A couple of nights before that Mesa/Boogie amp turned up from Gibson [Noel gestures to the California Tweed combo in the studio]. The guy came in and said, "There's only two in the UK– one is for you. And I get to the festival hall and there's one of these amps. Pete Townsend has got the other one. So I said to [my tech], 'Go and get his settings.' He had to wait until his tech wasn't looking to write them down."

It wasn't an isolated incident either. Oasis once shared a bill in Paris with Neil Young, and the temptation to take a close look at another hero's rig proved understandably irresistible. 

"There's nothing you can say about him that's adequate enough to express what a punk rocker he is, and Oasis were opening up for him," begins Noel. "After his soundcheck, me and Gem [Archer, guitarist] just went, 'Can we get onstage to have a look at his guitars?' They were literally all just lying besides his amps. His guitar crew were amazing and just said, 'Oh yeah just look at the pedalboard'. It was like a junk shop of stuff. 

"But I'm forever trying to nick people's vibes. I haven't got the patience for it. Now I've accepted over the last maybe five years that, hang on a minute, f*** this – I'm a writer. I write, that's what I do. I'm not slaving away worrying about it anymore – I just get someone else to. That's why I've got another guitarist."

Noel Gallagher has a golden touch, not just with his own songwriting but often with his covers of other artists. But a lot of fans seemed divided on his orchestral version of Joy Division classic Love Will Tear Us Apart, first aired on BBC 2's Piano Room and expected to be a regular part of his current US tour setlist.

Now in an interview with US radio station 98.9 KPNW's Marco Collins, Noel has given some background on it – including the personal connection it has to his roots, and his reaction to Liam's scathing opinion of it. 

"Well anytime you go to the BBC now, you can't do anything without doing a cover," Noel explained. "They ask you to go along and perform and then they say, 'Can you do someone else's song as well?' And you're like, 'Really? I've got to do someone else's f*****g song?' 

"The reason why I did that is it's the first song I learned to play on guitar – on the top string, I learned the bassline," he continued. "I did a little demo of it at my studio and I thought, actually it's going to work. And when I told [the band] we were going to do it, they were all kind of looking at each other going, 'Really?' If you come from where I come from it's sacrilegious [to cover it]. But if I didn't think we'd done a good job, I wouldn't do it. And the more that we play it, the better it will get."

The more upbeat take on it with the tempo change was very much a conscious decision too.

"I think if you're going to do a song, don't copy it," reasoned Noel. "The way that we're doing it now feels kind of fresh to me, it feels like it's a High Flying Birds song, almost. When you see people do covers and they copy it note for note, you think, what's the point of that?"

Collins also asked Noel for his opinion on Liam's scathing twitter reaction to the performance, apologising on Noel's behalf for his 'blasphemous' take on Love Will Tear Us Apart. Though for his part, Noel claims he didn't see the original tweet. 

"Well I'm not on social media so it doesn't reach me until people say," Noel responded. "I don't know how to react to things like that anymore. Well let's put it this way, when he's doing his thing I've got better things to do with my life than listen to what he's doing. So I take it as a compliment that he's crawling the f*****g internet at whatever time in the morning, looking for that kind of thing."

So big bro is taking the high road? Well not quite. 

"He should concentrate on what's left of his f*****g hairdo and not worry about what I'm getting up to," Noel added, claws out. 

And of course, Collins then asked the obligatory question about whether he'd consider a reunion with Liam in Oasis, and Noel responded with the now obligatory "call me" response – but with a twist this time. Suggesting neither party really wants a reunion deep down. 

"I've been saying it, he's gonna have to call me," Noel said. "Or he's gonna have to get someone to call me… he doesn't want it, and he knows that neither of us are particularly interested in it. I know he doesn't want it, I'm very comfortable with what I'm doing and couldn't give a flying f*** one way or the other. But, when he keeps going on about it and I'm like, 'Well call us then, let's hear what you've got to say. You've made up all these imaginary ground rules down the years and told  kids it's happening, it's happening, now it's coming, it's definitely happening blah blah blah.'

"I dare him," added Noel, now pointing at the camera to address his brother. "I f*****g dare you to call me. I dare you to call me, and you won't call me, because if you do call me and I go, 'Actually that's a good idea, actually that might work.' Then the arse falls out of his trousers. Then you've got to be in the same room as me and then we both know how that ends up. So you call me, stop tweeting – you're bigger than that, you're better than that."

In better news for Oasis fans, Noel has been playing Oasis rarity Going Nowhere on the current US tour – with the Auburn performance above only the second time he'd performed it live ever. 

The song was one of six Noel-penned tracks we recently chose as essential Oasis non-album songs that don't feature on The Masterplan b-sides compilation. 

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds visited the BBC Radio 2’s Piano Room this week to perform a set in the company of the BBC Concert Orchestra, and covered Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart. 

Maybe it was the presence of all those strings – the very sight of violins – or the fact it was for the Auntie Beeb, but Gallagher broke from type, eschewing his usual choice of electric guitar to pick up a Fender Stratocaster, capoed at the fifth fret, for the performance. Indeed, the Strat in question looks very much like The Edge's signature Strat, albeit with the decal rubbed off the front of the headstock.

The full set is available to view on BBC iPlayer, and also featured AKA... What A Life! and Council Skies. Gallagher used a Gibson J-150 acoustic for that. But it’s the Joy Division cover that is most notable, and the reception has not been 100 per cent favourable. 

Gallagher’s former Oasis bandmate, brother and biggest critic, Liam Gallagher, took to Twitter to apologise for his estranged brother’s performance, calling it “piss poor” and “blasphemous”. 

Well, a capo at the fifth fret can be a difficult situation for anyone’s vocals, and the strings and the setting is always going to attenuate the track’s power. Let's call it controversial.

• See Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds guitars through the years

Gallagher was backed up by Gem Archer on a Rickenbacker, with Archer looking every bit the veteran mod. Both brought huge pedalboards for the performance.

Noel Gallagher has been recently been playing a Fender Jazzmaster onstage, is a Gibson and Epiphone artist with both signature electric and acoustic guitars to his name. But he is rarely is spotted in the wild with a Strat. We do know he has used a Bill Nash S-style on High Flying Birds’ sophomore album Chasing Yesterday.

Speaking to Guitar World in 2015 he said he got one to replace a ’63 Strat that got stolen.

“I had a very expensive 1963 off-white Strat stolen from me about three years ago,” he said. “It was the best Strat I’d ever played. And I thought, I’m not fucking spending that much money to replace it, so I bought a Nash copy of it, and it’s the best guitar I’ve ever owned. Ever. And the Nash Tele is astonishing. I use them both all over my new record.”

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds new album, Council Skies, is out today via Sour Mash Records. The band are on tour in the US, playing Seattle’s White River Amphitheatre tonight, with the UK leg of the tour picking up on 21 July in Buckinghamshire. See Noel Gallagher for dates and ticket details.

You can watch the full set on BBC iPlayer.

Let's just forget the will they / won't they Oasis reunion drama for a day and focus on  the impending 30th anniversary of their Definitely Maybe album in 2024. It only seemed like yesterday the 25th anniversary reissue was giving fans another excuse to cough up, but Noel Gallagher has now confirmed the 2024 reissue is going to have recordings previously thought lost to the sands of record company storage systems. 

"I found some master tapes with some cool stuff on it that’s going to be coming out," Noel revealed to Spin in a new interview. "It was in the Sony vault and was mislabeled. So, when Oasis did Definitely Maybe, the idea was we would do three takes of each track and then move on. I remember saying to somebody, so presumably, the master version, there’s another two versions, which weren’t chosen, right? They said, 'Yeah, but the master tapes had gone missing.' It turns out they have been with Sony for the last f*****g 30 years, mislabeled. I found them and there’s some interesting stuff on there. Now, we can sell the album for the fifth time all over again."

So effectively that's two other versions of the album's tracklisting in existence, allowing fans to compile their own custom version of the album when or if they do surface. But that's not the only classic Oasis album Noel is eyeing; he wants to remix their second record (What's The Story) Morning Glory. But don't hold out for the same treatment on the record many fans want him to rework – 1997's Be Here Now. Not beyond his admittedly excellent job on the 2016 'rethink' of its opening track anyway. 

"Well, I did a remix of D’You Know What I Mean? and then the idea was to remix the whole album," Noel explained. "I don’t like the sound of it and the songs are too long. After working on it for a week, I was just like, you know what? What’s the f*****g point? D’You Know What I Mean? sounds great, but let’s leave it how it is. I’d like to remix Morning Glory because I hate the f*****g sound of that record. I guess I’ll get around to it one day if all the stars align. You never know."

Right now Noel is busy readying the release of fourth solo album Council Skies and a worldwide touring in support of it. 

But there's another alternate future some would have us move towards – where artists don't need to tour or even perform songs. Unsurprisingly, Noel is not having it.

"F****g embarrassing," he says of the AI Oasis song attempts that have been doing the rounds." I just think people clearly have too much time and money on their hands if they’re f*****g around with that for a laugh. I mean, who wants to f*****g hear Ringo Starr singing She’s Electric and Freddie Mercury singing Don’t Look Back in Anger? Life’s too short for that s**t."

Nevertheless Noel clearly has concerns about AI and its impact on a record industry not always keen to work in the favour of human artists.

"AI will be the final nail in the coffin of music,"he declared. "I’m sure that the major record labels are now working on the technology to copyright it and machines will write music. Why hire a songwriter when you can own a machine to do it? Then Harry Styles can pump out Harry Styles music for the rest of his f*****g life."

• The 6 non-album Noel Gallagher Oasis songs you need to hear (that aren't on The Masterplan)

Let's put our conspiracy theorist edition bucket hats on for a minute; it wouldn't surprise us if Noel and Liam Gallagher had already hatched a plan for an Oasis reunion in 2025, after their respective solo commitments are done. And the rest of this year, and up until the announcement in 2024, will involve them having fun with the media while they build up to the announcement. Why do we say this? Noel is again fuelling the fire. Well, kind of. 

For the second time after his French interview in March where he seemed to break his thaw on the subject of a reunion, he's responded to an Oasis comeback question in an interview to tell brother / Oasis singer Liam to 'call him". This time in a UK appearance on Talk Sport.

"Well  I put it out there," responded Noel to the question of whether he was going to 'get back' with Liam. "He should call me because he's forever going on about it, and you'd have thought by now he'd have some kind of plan. If he's got a plan… he doesn't have to speak to me, I know we won't speak to me [because] he's a coward. He should get some of his people, his agent to call my people and say, 'This is what we're thinking'. Then we'll have a conversation about it. Until then he's being a little bit disingenuous with his beloved fans."

OK, there's another theory then – Noel is just being completely honest about the situation here. But does he actually want to reunite Oasis with Liam?  

"I've always said that things are best left in the past," replied Noel in a seemingly non-committal tone. "The thing with Liam is, you read these things every day; he's saying on his [Twitter] 'It's happening', so he gets people's hopes up all over the world. And then I get asked about and I have to look like I'm dropping a big foot on it." Then, again addressing his brother in the video above Noel reiterates; "Call me – call me, let's see what you've got to say."

Noel has his own thoughts as to why Liam hasn't called – if indeed this isn't all a big media charade for the brothers' amusement while things are going on behind the scenes, Axl / Slash style. "I suspect he doesn't want to do it but he just likes saying he  does want to do it. Because he's got his own thing going on – he's selling out Knebworth and all that kind of thing. What does he want to share it with me for? I'm cool with what I'm doing, he's smashing it. Why be disingenuous with people? You know it's not happening. If you've got a plan, give me a ring.

"I'm open to a phone call for a conversation. Other than that, stop playing with the kids – it's not fair on the fans. It's not fair."

 As for why Liam would want to share the stage with his brother in Oasis again, Noel answered that question himself earlier in the interview.

"There's not a day goes by when I don't hear it on the radio or get asked about it," he admits. "Young lads, who were babies when we split up, will come up to you and they're into it so much. It's changed their lives, and they got it from their older brother and all that kind of thing. And it's honestly an amazing thing. It makes me think that we did something really, really timeless and special. And actually, we did something that none of us were aware of at the time. We were just in a band and we did this thing. We were just going from one thing to the next, and since we broke up you have a lot of time to take a step back. 

"When I do my own gigs they're great but when you do those [Oasis] songs there's something else. It's like when you go and see the great like McCartney, for instance. He does his new stuff and his Wings stuff and it's great, but then when he does the stuff it's different."

For his part, Liam has now responded to Noel via Twitter's open forum – namely his brother's "coward" accusation anyway. And it's pretty fiery. 

"I don’t wish AIDS on people," Liam began in reference to Noel's infamous 1995 quote to the Observer wishing it on Blur's Damon Albarn (they've since made up and collaborated on music). "I turn up and play the MUSIC for the people of MANCHESTER who have just had a terror attack while you sit on your dingy sipping champagne and you got the audacity to call me a COWARD sit down you 🛎 end," Liam added. 

Ouch. That's pretty below the belt. Maybe they really are still at war after all. Hopefully their agents can help bridge these troubled waters. 

We already know Noel Gallagher was very excited about Robert Smith's remix of his recent single Pretty Boy because he said so, and now we can judge for ourselves.

And it's no real suprise that the Cure legend has done a marvellous job at taking the track to a lushly layered level  – even adding his own psychedelic guitar solo to take it up another notch.

It makes us wonder what a whole Smith-produced Noel album would sound like. 

"I was surprised and delighted when Noel asked me to remix this gorgeous song," says Smith. "And I had a lot of fun slowing it down and spacing it out. Cure drummer Jason Cooper gave me a great vibey drum track to play along with – and the rest phased into place under the starry sky of my distant moon."

The collaboration was as simple as Noel asking Smith via e-mail. “I asked if he’d get involved and sent him the track and he loved it,” Gallagher previously explained to Huw Stephens of BBC Radio Wales. “He did the remix. And I loved it. I’d never met him before. I’d never conversed with him. But I was always a fan of the Cure and the remix sounds exactly like the Cure. Yeah, it turns out he is a bit of a dude!’”

Gallagher was prompted to reach out when he heard parallels between his song and the Smith's work with the Cure. 

 “Pretty Boy as it was unfolding became reminiscent of the golden age of The Cure,” Gallagher said. “And it was just one of those crazy ideas that one tends to have in the middle of the night, thinking, ‘I wonder if Robert Smith [would] get involved. I wonder if I can get hold of him.’”

Now we're also wondering if Noel will repay the favour if the new Cure album ever sees the light of day this year. 

• 5 songs guitarists need to hear by… The Cure

Noel Gallagher has been looking back on legendary duet with the late Burt Bacharach, when in 1994 the then Oasis guitarist left the electric guitar at home to join Bacharach onstage at London’s Royal Festival Hall for a performance of This Guy’s In Love With You, and has revealed that he recorded an orchestral version of the smooth-pop icon’s classic track that is yet to be released.

Speaking to BBC Radio’s Jo Whiley, Gallagher says he and Bacharach kept in touch, and not long ago he was invited to track This Guy’s In Love With You in the company of an orchestra. But Gallagher, who has yet to hear the track himself, is not sure if or when it will ever be released.

“He was great and we kind of kept in touch,” said Gallagher. “I did a couple of things with him before he died. I am not too sure they’ll see the light of day. I got invited down to some place in north London where they were rerecording all of these great [songs] and he wanted me to sing This Guy’s In Love With You with some orchestra. He was supposed to turn up but he missed it; his flight was getting in late or something. And I haven’t heard the finished version of that… but what a dude, and what a songbook. Like really, really, amazing.”

The story of how Gallagher and Bacharach became acquainted is the stuff of legend. The Oasis link with Bacharach had already been established, at least spiritually. Look at the bottom lefthand corner of the cover art for Definitely Maybe and you’ll see Bacharach pictured. 

Oasis would play Bacharach at the end of their gigs, something mellow to take the heat out of the air. As Gallagher tells it, he and Bacharach first met during a chance encounter after an all-night bender with John Lydon, and drinks in the bar of a Santa Monica hotel.

“I just happened to glance over to the reception area and was like, ‘I’m sure that’s Burt Bacharach.’ As I walked up to where he was at the desk, I knew it was him, because he had a bomber jacket on with ambigram on it that said ‘B.B.’ on the back,” said Gallagher. “Like I used to do in the ‘90s, I walked up and tapped him on the shoulder and told him I was in Oasis. And he came out and sat with us. Of course, we had put his picture on the cover of Definitely Maybe.”

Bacharach came over and had a chat. He had heard Oasis. He was going to be in London in a few months for a date at the Royal Festival Hall, his first time playing in the UK since the ‘60s. Bacharach had a proposition.

“He was getting guest singers up to sing,” said Gallagher. “And I said, ‘Who’s going to sing This Guy’s In Love With You?’ And he kind of did this thing, like, ‘Hey, man, why don’t you come and sing it?’ I was like, ‘Absolutely no problem! No problem, mate. Give us yer number!’”

As Gallagher explains, This Guy’s In Love With You is one of his all-time favourite songs, even if he was labouring under the impression it was titled differently – sort of like a Purple Haze mishearing but in reverse. Either way, Gallagher thought it was trippy.

“I thought it was so psychedelic when I heard it,” he said. “I thought it it was called The Sky’s In Love With You, which I always thought was an amazing concept, and only found out afterwards that it was This Guy’s In Love With You. But he was a genius… such a complex composer/songwriter. Amazing breakup songs. Amazing love songs.”

Gallagher might have written this invite to perform with Bacharach off. What were the chances of him calling? But Bacharach did call, and arranged a meeting. Would he come down and see him at The Atheneum, a suitably upscale five-star hotel in London’s Mayfair district? 

“It’s only then that it dawned on me what I had agreed to do,” said Gallagher. “And I was like, ‘I can’t go see Burt Bachararch – what are you talking about?’ And they said, ‘Are you doing a gig with him?’ And I’m like, ‘No way I am singing with Burt Bacharach!’ Anyway, everyone is saying I’ve got to go see him, so I go down to The Atheneum, and I go to reception, and I say, ‘Oh, it’s Mr Gallagher for Mr Bacharach.’ 

“The guy calls up to his room and says, ‘There is no answer. I think he has gone out.’ I was like, ‘Brilliant. Thank god for that. Great, I’ve got out of it. ‘Tell him Noel Gallagher came to see him and he wasn’t in.’ He wrote it down and that was it. And as I turned around, I bumped straight into him. He was like, ‘Hey, man, I’m glad you could make it.’”

There was no turning back now. Gallagher was on the hook. 

“I go to his room and honestly it was like my favourite moments of my life, just me and him in this hotel room,” he continues. “And he says, ‘Do you want a drink?’ I said, ‘I’ll have 20 beers.’ He sat down with some beer, we’re just chatting away, and then it’s almost like the scene from Pulp Fiction when Vincent Vega goes into the into the into the bathroom and he’s like, ‘I’m just gonna go out there everything’s gonna be cool, right. We’re going to try and wriggle out of this gig, gonna be all right, gonna make him laugh and then we’ll just leave.’

“As I come out, he’s playing This Guy's in Love You on this huge piano, and he said – I’ll never forget it – he just said, ‘Hey man, why do you come over and join me.’ And it’s like something off some mad TV show from the ‘60s. So I go over, and I’ve got a beer in one hand and a cig in the other. Just me and him. And he’s playing, and he’s got the music up there, and I start singing and he’s like, ‘Hey man, I think this is gonna be great.’”

Despite Gallagher’s reservations, Bacharach was right. It worked out fine. When he got to the venue, Ron Tutt, drummer for Elvis, was behind the kit. The only trouble was that this was the first time he ever performed live without a guitar but he styled it out. “Absolutely,” he said, it was one of the greatest moments of his life. “A lad from a council estate doesn’t normally get to do these things.”

High Flying Birds’ new album Council Skies is out on 2 June via Sour Mash Records. The Deluxe edition will feature remixes of the tracks from the likes of David Holmes, the Pet Shop Boys, and Robert Smith of the Cure, who remixes Pretty Boy – a mix that Gallagher says sounds just like the Cure. 

You can check out Gallagher's full interview with Jo Whiley at BBC Sounds.

Noel Gallagher has been speaking about the forthcoming release of High Flying Birds’ new album, Council Skies, and promises that the deluxe CD edition will be of special interest to Cure fans with the inclusion of Robert Smith’s remix of Pretty Boy.

Pretty Boy was the second single shared by Gallagher ahead of the album’s 2 June release through Sour Mash Records, and speaking to Huw Stephens of BBC Radio Wales, Gallagher says as soon as he was writing the track he recognised the parallels to The Cure. 

And he’s right, right? There’s the nocturnal vibe, the post-punk bass guitar that recalls Seventeen Seconds-era Cure, propulsive and direct. That’s why it made perfect sense for Gallagher’s people to call Smith’s people and make a collaboration happen for disc two on a deluxe edition that finds an instrumental version of Pretty Boy sitting alongside a Pet Shop Boys remix of Think Of A Number and a David Holmes remix of I’m Not Giving Up Tonight.

“Pretty Boy as it was unfolding became reminiscent of the golden age of The Cure,” Gallagher said. “And it was just one of those crazy ideas that one tends to have in the middle of the night, thinking, ‘I wonder if Robert Smith [would] get involved. I wonder if I can get hold of him.’”

• 5 songs guitarists need to hear by… The Cure

This being Noel Gallagher, he could indeed get a hold of him. What followed was an example of the simple physics of pop-cultural arithmetic: if you give Robert Smith a track that reminds you of The Cure when you sent it, you’ll receive something that sounds just like The Cure in return.

“I asked if he’d get involved and sent him the track and he loved it,” Gallagher said. “He did the remix. And I loved it. I’d never met him before. I’d never conversed with him. But I was always a fan of the Cure and the remix sounds exactly like the Cure. Yeah, it turns out he is a bit of a dude!’”

Gallagher does not say whether or not Smith contributes any vocals on the remix but having caught The Cure’s triumphant sets at London’s O2 Arena last December, he said Smith’s voice is in fine shape.

“They were amazing,” he said. “I like the more modern stuff as well. It’s just kind of dark and moody. But his voice is just far out. He sounds as good now as he did 30 years ago. Amazing.”

You can check out the full interview with Gallagher above. Council Skies is available to preorder now, and hits record stores and streaming on 2 June. 

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