The Fellow Brit Band Paul McCartney Said “Means Nothing To Him”
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.
Source: Melanie Davis/americansongwriter.com
