Noel Gallagher's Ghost

So.

I don’t know if you’ve heard…

... but Oasis are reforming.

It’s the talk of the town here in Manchester, as you can imagine.

For a working musician who currently pays his bills playing other people’s songs, this is tough news to swallow.

Because I’m haunted by Oasis.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that I’m asked to play something by Oasis every time I leave the house.

Recently, I was at an independently owned café by a canal where I’d been invited to play some of my own tunes, along with a mix of covers.

The audience was great—attentive, invested, appreciative.

I’d played songs by Jimmy Webb, Jim Croce, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Tom Petty, and they'd gone down well.

But I could still sense him.

The spectre of Noel Gallagher, hovering somewhere nearby.

Waiting.

Then I realized: he was there, wavering by a table in the corner.

A woman from Chorley with short hair and a Gerry Cinnamon t-shirt, who had clearly been wrestling with the urge for some time, eventually leaned forward and said:

‘Hiya love. You’re fantastic… but is there any chance you could do Wonderwall?’

Since the news, I’ve already been feeling the ripple effects.

Yesterday, in a beer garden by Lake Windermere, it only took fifteen minutes before I began to feel his eerie presence.

Then I clocked it: a middle-aged man in tracksuit bottoms and oversized trainers.

Bald.

Thick silver chain on his wrist.

It was inevitable.

‘Can you play something by Oasis, mate?’

Noel Gallagher’s ghost flickered over his shoulder.

Now, I’m no musical snob.

And, clearly, Noel Gallagher has something as a songwriter that connects powerfully with millions upon millions of people.

But sometimes I find myself struggling to understand it.

What even is a Wonderwall?

As far as I can make out, it’s a neologism.

The OED cites no recorded use before 1997 (or whenever it was).

To me, it’s always sounded like the sort of word a primary school kid might make up for a whimsical short story.

A ‘Wonderwall’ that has the power to transform itself into whatever landscape you imagine.

A ‘Wonderwall’ that magically rebuilds itself whenever it is knocked through.

A ‘Wonderwall’ that speaks to you in your dreams and offers worldly advice on how to deal with the school bully.

But, surely, it isn’t a word that any adult would use in a love song?

Surely, nobody hears the line ‘and after all: you’re my Wonderwall’ and feels anything approaching a meaningful emotion?

If so, let me test you with some others:

‘And after all: you’re my wonderfloor?’

‘And here’s the proof: you’re my super-roof?’

Now, I know I’m not the first to wonder(wall) at the mystical power of Oasis.

But here goes.

My theory is that, primarily, they sound great and write anthemic choruses, and there’s a timeless human story of struggling brothers at the heart of it all.

But also, that Noel Gallagher’s lyrics land in a special sort of Goldilocks zone for a certain type of English man.

Because they sort of sound like they could be poetry… which is potentially dangerous because, as we know, poetry is for women and homosexuals.

But what saves him, ironically, is the fact that, while his lyrics are memorable and sound sophisticated, they have no emotional depth.

And so a certain type of English man can belt them out to his heart’s content, five lagers deep, without having to question his own sexuality.

And the sounds coming from his mouth sound poetic and evocative, but they don’t engage the interpretative circuits of his brain in that tiresome way that ‘art’ does.

‘Slip inside the eye of your mind, don’t you know you might find a better place to play?

You said that you’ve never been, but all the things that you’ve seen will slowly fade away.’

It has internal rhyme, metaphor, sibilance, a sense of voice and subject.

And yet—it doesn’t feel like it means anything.

And I know that meaninglessness is often a hallmark of pop music—and that it probably all started with The Beatles.

And yes—I’ve read Roland Barthes and the Cantos of Ezra Pound and I understand that the construction of meaning is an act that takes place in the space between the writer and the written, but let me try this one on you:

‘The sink is full of fishes; she’s got dirty dishes on the brain.

It was overflowing gently, but it’s all elementary, my friend.’

Or this:

‘She’s done it with a doctor on a helicopter.

She’s sniffing in her tissue, selling the Big Issue.’

And yes, I’m aware of the work of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll and I’ve read Angela Carter and Salman Rushdie, and I’m no stranger to surrealism, imagism, or magic realism.

The difference is, I suppose, that they were all trying to make you think—to express something subconscious; to undermine the traditions of the form they were working in; to poke holes in the boundary between the ethereal and the everyday.

I’m not sure Noel Gallagher is.

And he doesn’t have to—his songs are beloved by (seemingly) everyone.

Probably because they don’t have to think about them at all.

And why should they?

And, if you’re reading this and you love Oasis, then I absolutely support that.

Because, though I often tire of seeing the ghost of Noel Gallagher around every corner, I definitely owe him more than a few favors.

Playing an Oasis song in Manchester is the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card.

Suspect the bar manager doesn’t rate you?

Play Don’t Look Back in Anger—seconds later the entire place will be singing along in sort of familial embrace.

Got a set that begins immediately after a disappointing football match?

Launch into Live Forever—that group of potentially antithetical blokes will become your best friends for the rest of the night.

So buy that ticket.

I’m off to a bar in Bolton shortly to play some cover versions.

These days, I mostly try to make them a game of ‘name the song and I’ll play it,’ just to keep things interesting.

And, if I don’t end up singing Wonderwall before the night is over, something seriously strange will have happened.

After all, I’m in Manchester and Oasis are reforming.

As Noel once said,

‘By now, you should have somehow realized what you’ve got to do.’

Keep dreaming,

Rob