How Noel Gallagher Blatantly Stole Pete Townshend’s Guitar Sound

Noel Gallagher owned up to blatantly stealing Pete Townshend’s guitar sound and said it wasn’t a one-off incident. In a new interview with That Pedal Show, the Oasis co-founder explained that he wasn’t interested in trying to establish his sound because songwriting was his main focus.

“I’ve written the song, is that not enough?” Gallagher argued. “I’ve got to come up with my own sounds now?” Admitting that “I love presets and I love nicking other people’s settings,” he cited the example of a guitar pedal that came with several factory settings. “I can’t be arsed getting my own sounds,” he said. “Some guy slaved over that in Utah for 16 months to get that sound. I’m not going to take a bit of top off it. Have a bit of respect for that man!”

That led him to recall a performance at London’s Royal Albert Hall in December alongside the Who. “A couple of nights before that a Mesa/Boogie amp turned up … the guy came in and said, ‘There’s only two in the U.K. – one is for you,’” he explained. “And I get to the festival hall and there’s one of these amps – Pete Townsend has got the other one. So I said to [my guitar tech], ‘Go and get his settings.’ He had to wait until his tech wasn’t looking to write them down!”

You can watch the interview below.

Gallagher revealed he did a similar thing when Oasis performed with Neil Young in France some years ago. “[I] just went, ‘Can we get onstage to have a look at his guitars?’ … His guitar crew were amazing and just said, ‘Oh, yeah – just look at the pedal board.’ It was like a junk shop of stuff.”

He added that his approach to playing guitar amounted to “forever trying to nick people’s vibes. I haven’t got the patience for it. … I’ve accepted over the last maybe five years that, hang on a minute, fuck this! I’m a writer. I write – that’s what I do. I’m not slaving away worrying about it anymore – I just get someone else to. That’s why I’ve got another guitarist.”