If the British Invasion hadn’t happened before them, the entire sound of Oasis probably wouldn’t exist today. The band, which came on the scene after grunge in 1994, may have come as a cultural shock, but all of their influences were the best bands from the previous two generations, hailing from The Kinks to The Rolling Stones. The Beatles undoubtedly had the biggest effect on the group, but Noel Gallagher believed that only one of their songs might rival John Lennon’s.
However, it wasn’t as though Noel was attempting to minimize The Beatles’ impact on their success. The band’s goal from the beginning was to create music that was a love letter to the Fab Four; in fact, the cover art for their song “Live Forever” featured a picture of John Lennon’s home.
However, it was becoming obvious that Noel was starting to overreach by the time the band began to add more Beatles influences into their style, which resulted in a few tracks on Be Here Now that sounded like parodies of Beatles hits. Noel believed his brother’s voice was one of the greatest they had ever done, even though he would make things right again on the song “Go Let It Out” from Standing on the Shoulder of Giants.
At his finest, Liam Gallagher sounded like a punk version of John Lennon, and he was known to worship the ground the former Beatle walked. Liam made it clear that he was trying to mimic John Lennon’s thick voice texture, even down to adopting the distinctive nasal tone that Lennon effortlessly used, all while imitating the appearance of the wire-rimmed spectacles.
The band decided it would be ideal to write a song that matched the Fab Four’s studio style after working through the tracks on Heathen Chemistry. With a few guitars played backward and a variety of trippy effects, “Probably All In the Mind” would go on to become a popular deep cut, showing Liam trying to emulate his idols as closely as possible.
Noel believed that Liam’s vocal performance on this song exceeded that of the former Beatle, even if the majority of the record would seem deaf to the uninitiated. “His delivery is more like Lennon than his voice. I tell you what, if John Lennon sounded as good as Liam does on his f****** day he’d be a ten times better singer than he was.”
Liam reconsidered his conventional approach to singing and leaned into the gritty side of his voice after suffering from a nasty bout of laryngitis. Despite this, he would continue to appropriate Lennon’s vocal style on albums like Don’t Believe the Truth. On a few tracks with Beady Eye, Liam would replace his typical vocal snarls with a worn-in nasal coo, almost sounding like John Lennon’s long-lost brother. This was after he had fully recovered.
Despite all of Liam’s admiration for Lennon throughout the years, it was never about pulling off a cheap imitation of his idol. Whenever Oasis performed live, Liam was the one who brought the attitude, with John Lennon serving as his inspiration, even though Noel and Liam had equally powerful vocal tones at their greatest moments.