So Noel Gallagher has quit Oasis. This doesn’t bother me very much, as I quit Oasis two albums ago. I do have a copy of their second-to-latest album, Don’t Believe The Truth, but I’ve never listened to it all the way through and haven’t imported it into iTunes.
Oasis used to be so good. For the first few years of their career, their albums were fantastic, and they released so many fantastic b-sides it was like we were back to the sixties with a band releasing two albums’ worth of top-notch material every year. I would make a list but you’d want to hit me with a ladle.
But then there was that difficult third album – which actually was a reasonably fine album, albeit with some waffly guitar solos and all the self-discipline of a pampered cat, hyped to oblivion and mastered to the point of unlistenability – followed by the even more difficult fourth album, the extremely difficult fifth album, and the well-nigh impossible sixth album.
The tragedy is that Noel used up all his great songs on those early b-sides until he had nothing left in the back of the songwriting drawer. There’s nothing on their recent albums that compares with what they were throwing away ten years ago. Because he’s now down to two or three songs a year – with Oasis no longer ripping off the Beatles and the Stones, but ripping off earlier Oasis songs – and with regard to the other band member’s songs, if it ain’t by Noel it ain’t Oasis.
I met Noel Gallagher once. He was coming out of the toilets downstairs at the Fitzroy Tavern. I was very drunk so I told him how great I thought he was and shook his hand. It was damp. Hopefully because he’d washed it.