Noel Gallagher has seemingly had the same favourite album since he was five years old. The Oasis songwriter would share his love of the 1970s rock and roll era and tipped one album from this time as his favourite. Gallagher would cite the likes of T.Rex and Led Zeppelin as crucial to his early years of loving music, though says he didn’t come from a musical family whatsoever.
Despite the lack of musical interest from his family he did find himself influenced by the greats and was constantly listening to an artist that would fast become his favourite. Gallagher says he loves the band so much that one of their albums is still his favourite, a release he heard shortly after his fifth birthday. While the present may have been a surprise for Gallagher, given his family’s general lack of interest in music, he cited Led Zeppelin II as the album that changed all that for him.
He told Pitchfork back in 2011: “Is anybody seriously into music at five? No five-year-old can say with any fucking degree of truth that they were listening to anything. But what was big in England in 1972?
“Probably a lot of English glam rock, T. Rex or David Bowie. As a kid, I always loved flamboyant rock stars like Ziggy Stardust, Marc Bolan, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles. Just put Led Zeppelin down. Yeah I was a massive fan — I got Led Zeppelin II for my fifth birthday off my mother.”
Though Gallagher did not come from the most musically interested family he did note that his father was a country-western DJ who would occasionally play at weddings.
The Don’t Look Back in Anger singer added: “I don’t come from a musical family. I was the first musician. But my dad was a country-western DJ who would play at people’s weddings. It wasn’t earth-shattering like, ‘Fuckin’ wow! He’s fuckin’ playing Dark Side of the Moon at a wedding!’ I come from an Irish background, and all they listened to was country-western music.”
Even with Jimmy Page being the mastermind behind Led Zeppelin II, Gallagher did not let the Stairway to Heaven hitmakers off lightly. Gallagher once told Page to “get a job” instead of constantly remastering albums in his back catalogue. The pair are apparently friends and Gallagher has poked fun at the Led Zeppelin legend more than once in recent years.
He told Vogue in 2015: “Lyrically, I can look back from time to time, you can look back in a song, like The Dying of the Light, for instance, you can take on a character in a song that’s looking back, but me personally, I’m already halfway through recording my next album. I mean, as much as I love Jimmy Page — and I fuckin’ love Jimmy Page, as a guitarist and a guy, he’s a fuckin’ brilliant, brilliant man — all he ever does is fuckin’ remaster Led Zeppelin records. D’you know what I mean? Fuck me! Get a job!”
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