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The Fellow Brit Band Paul McCartney Said “Means Nothing To Him”
BY MELANIE DAVIS
American Songwriter
UPDATED: SEPTEMBER 4, 2024
Getting to meet and stand in line with your childhood musical idols must be one of the cooler parts of becoming a famous musician, but this perk comes with a price. Sometimes, those idols don’t feel the same about you, as was the case for a famed Britpop band and former Beatle, Paul McCartney.
The Beatles’ influence on rock ‘n’ roll is a globally undeniable phenomenon, but their legacy is perhaps most strongly felt in their native U.K., where bands like Black Sabbath, Queen, and Oasis followed in the Fab Four’s footsteps.
Unfortunately for that last band, though, they found themselves on Paul McCartney’s bad side sometime in the late 1990s.
Paul McCartney Called This British Band “Derivative”
By the time Oasis became famous, the Beatles were a long-lost relic of decades past. The surviving three members, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison, were all busy pursuing their professional and personal passions. But when the Britpop band from Manchester tried to claim they were “bigger than the Beatles” in a 1996 interview with MTV, the lads from Liverpool took note.
In a documentary detailing Oasis’ divisive rise to stardom, Harrison and McCartney offered their two cents. “The music lacks depth,” the Quiet Beatle argued, “and the singer, Liam [Gallagher], is a pain. The rest of the band don’t need him.” McCartney agreed, adding, “They’re derivative, and they think too much of themselves. They mean nothing to me” (via Express).
The ex-Beatles were certainly no strangers to controversial interviews—their own bandmate, John Lennon, had received tremendous criticism for claiming their band was “bigger than Jesus.” So, one could certainly argue that McCartney should’ve known Gallagher was stirring the pot because he could. However, that hindsight also gave McCartney a unique perspective on Gallagher’s comments that, in a way, turned out to be correct.
“The biggest mistake they made was when they said, ‘We’re going to be bigger than the Beatles,’” McCartney said in an interview with Q Magazine. “I thought, ‘So many people have said that, and it’s the kiss of death.’ Be bigger than the Beatles, but don’t say it. The minute you say it, everything you do from then on is going to be looked at in the light of that statement” (via NME).
The Former Beatle’s Opinion Has Cooled Off Since Then
In hindsight, Paul McCartney’s comment that Oasis’ claim to be bigger than the Beatles was a “kiss of death” isn’t that far from the truth. Not long after that infamous 1996 MTV interview, Oasis buckled under the weight of their immense fame in true Icarian fashion. But on the bright side, at least McCartney’s opinion of the band shifted a bit over the years.
A few years after McCartney called Oasis “derivative” and said they “mean nothing to him,” the former Beatle visited Howard Stern’s show and clarified his comments. McCartney insisted he had no qualms with Oasis prior to Liam Gallagher’s comments about being bigger than the Fab Four. “I started off saying, ‘They’re okay, hey, I wish ‘em good luck, they’re young guys, it’s difficult out there.’ But then they started to bad mouth us.”
Years after that, McCartney’s opinions had softened even more. In a 2015 Q&A with Japanese fans, McCartney gave Oasis some fatherly—if not unsolicited—advice: “Just get together and make some good music. But they have got to want to do it. I think a lot of people would like them to do that. They are pretty cool guys.”
“I don’t know if they will ever make up,” he continued. “It would be good because I think everyone likes brothers to like each other and make up. It’s a pity because they are very good together. Like many brothers, they are crazy. But it would be nice if they got together” (via Rolling Stone). In yet another pseudo-clairvoyant instance, it seems like McCartney only had to wait about ten years for his wish of an Oasis reunion to come true.
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