Les albums favoris de Liam Gallagher (& Andy Bell)

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Liam Gallagher: We’ve all been into the Bee Gees, man, from years ago. Phil Smith, our DJ, got us into it and all that stuff. It’s mega, horizontal or whatever it is.

Andy Bell: One of the first times that I met Oasis was when they played the Hacienda on the first tour and I remember them talking about this album then.

LG: That’s right! You were going, “What the fuck’s that?”

AB: Yeah! I was like, “The Bee Gees?!” But it’s great. That’s the one with ‘Red Chair, Fade Away’ on it. 'Every Christian Lion-Hearted Man Will Show You' is the one with the monks chanting on it and most people who are into this album will tell you that that’s the tune. They were doing a lot of psychedelic pop before The Beatles were doing it and that’s the genius about it.

LG: Yeah, top band.

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LG: I like to think of this as Lennon and Elvis, you know what I mean? Lennon wouldn’t have been there without Elvis and I wouldn’t be here without The Stone Roses. Ian Brown as a frontman had the look and he was cool as fuck. He was my Elvis. The first time I saw them, that was it! I thought, “I want that!” I’d heard our kid play ‘Sally Cinnamon’ round the house and I went to see them just before the album came out and it was like, “This is it, man! This is the next fucking step!” It was like growing up a bit and you’re thinking, “This is the band that’s going to guide me to chicks and being a cool young man.” You know what I mean? This was the album that was going to carry me through. They were my guiding star.

AB: I remember buying ‘Made Of Stone’ on 7” because of the sleeve and I knew just looking at it that it would be good. I bought it, took it home, played it and I thought it was great. And I liked ‘Going Down’, the B-side, much more than the A-side and that was my moment. I went to see them in Oxford and the Ally Pally and just loved them. It has a big effect on the early days of Ride. I was massively into John Squire. Before John Squire came along I was into Johnny Marr and that was very straight but John Squire had this whole other thing going on.

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LG: Lee Mavers is a moody little fucker but you need people like him every now and again. You should be able to dance to The La’s but it’s not all about dancing; it’s about music.

AB: To me, The La’s is a dance record; this is what I like dancing to.

LG: Who says you need to dance? I’ve never danced in my fucking entire life. I don’t feel the need. I’ll jump about but I’ve never felt the need to dance. There are millions of people like me who don’t need to dance to listen to music. You never heard The La’s make an indie-dance crossover record because they believed what they believed in.

AB: It took me a while to appreciate this album, and with ‘There She Goes’ I thought that was all there was. I didn’t hear the album properly until I’d joined Oasis. I think Noel [Gallagher] was playing a compilation tape and ‘Looking Glass’ came on and I said, “What the hell is this?” and that got me into them and I’ve never looked back.

LG: Lee Mavers is a fucking dude, man. He’s set in his ways and I fucking love him.

AB: The more time goes by, the more it gets bigger. If Mavers followed this up he’d ruin everything, which is his paradox.

LG: But that’s his genius, innit? Him doing Wembley Stadium wouldn’t have worked.

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LG: That’s the best post-Beatles album. We all like it and that, but that was the best sounding fucking one. It’s got tunes that make me cry.

AB: Everything that’s on it has a warm Wall-Of-Sound feeling to it because Phil Spector produced it and it has amazing songs like ‘Wah-Wah’, ‘Isn’t It A Pity’ and ‘My Sweet Lord’. I can relate to George Harrison but I’m not going to make a triple album.

LG: But triple albums are too much. They’re stupid, aren’t they? Even double albums are too much.

AB: There are plenty of doubles that do work: Exile On Main Street, Electric Ladyland…

LG: You’ve just got to cut it off, man.

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LG: A top album, innit?

AB: It’s got 'Start!' and 'That’s Entertainment' on it. The lyrics to that are still pertinent and Arctic Monkeys are doing that kind of social observation. That’s their shit now, isn’t it?

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AB: This is my favourite Hendrix album. It’s the best sounding one, and it’s got amazing production. It’s got ‘Spanish Castle Magic’, ‘Little Wing’, ‘If 6 Was 9’ and a really good collection of tunes. This is more Hendrix... in pop mode, which isn’t what Electric Ladyland was about. and I veer more towards this.

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LG: This is a mega album. I only heard it recently and it’s very English, innit?

AB: The production on this is so in the room. This came out the year after Sgt Pepper and the title tune pootles along really nicely.

LG: It’s like an old sitcom, you know what I mean? It’s like Rising Damp and it’s very English.

AB: It’s got great lyrics and it makes me laugh and it captures something about our parents’ lives, really. That’s the great thing about Ray Davies: he was like a mirror. In the mid 60s he’d be sat at home with a cup of tea and musically celebrating the jam on his toast. And it was natural for him to do that – that was him. But when you get other people adopting that as a style then it becomes a bit silly for me.

LG: It’s like a Lowry painting and it’s top.

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AB: They wrote ‘Walk Away Renee’ which is the story of two band members trying to get a girl. She was going out with one of them and the other guy was after her. This collection has got their debut album and the full complete works. They’ve also got a song called ‘Pretty Ballerina’ which is much better than ‘Walk Away Renee’. It’s baroque pop; it’s American but with very British influences and as mystic pop music it’s fucking brilliant. The harpsichord in it is very much like ‘Lady Jane’-era Stones but more poppy.

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AB: Certainly not the greatest album ever made, as the greatest album ever made won’t contain mention of “snot” in it, but Arthur Lee was a 60s Lee Mavers. It’s the never-reached potential with him. Or rather, he did reach his potential because this album stands up but he got lost afterwards. But it all came together for this record. It’s a dark album and good music can be dark while still being uplifting. Love were on the front line.

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LG: That’s the best fucking dance crossover album ever made. This’ll take some beating, you know what I mean?

AB: How can you beat something that came together so randomly? I was signed to Creation when that was being made and Alan McGee was coming to see Ride and then he’d be going off to see the Scream the next day, and then he’d come back raving about the mix of ‘Loaded’. For me, it was like pulling teeth because it was like painstakingly turning rock & roll into Sly And The Family Stone. It wasn’t easy but it was like mental magic. We loved it but it wasn’t something that we wanted to do ourselves. It was something that was going on on that side of the room, you know?

LG: It’s a very sexy album, and I heard some the other day while walking around Harrods buying some shoes with the missus, and it’s dead good, man.

AB: Primal Scream are probably my oldest friends in the music world. They were the first people I met in London when Ride got signed and I met Bobby Gillespie and Andrew Innes and they never let me down in terms of being good guys.

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LG: It just makes you wanna slap some cunt, doesn’t it? I’m having them over The Clash - they were a proper punk band for me. I don’t think too much about it but it’s in us all, that record.

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AB: We’ve gone for this one over their other albums because it’s got ‘Scarborough Fair’ on it. That’s our all-time favourite Simon and Garfunkel tune. We could’ve gone for the Greatest Hits, really, but that’s the main reason.

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AB: For us, it’s Weller’s best album in years. We haven’t actually sat down and listened to Wake Up The Nation yet because he came out with it too quickly. This is a great record to listen to and despite it being a double, it doesn’t feel long at all.