A meeting with Sir Paul left the Oasis front man a little bit red-facedDan Haygarth Liverpool Daily Post Editor and Regeneration Reporter
13:12, 17 Aug 2025
Beatles legend Paul McCartney(Image: Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)
Meeting your heroes isn’t easy, which Oasis’ Gallagher brothers have found in some of their encounters with The Beatles. Liam and Noel have never hidden their love for the Fab Four – even if they have found themselves in wars of words with various members of the band over the years.
Oasis’ music wore its Beatles influence proudly – whether that was using similar piano chords to John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ at the beginning of ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ or the song ‘Wonderwall’ coming from George Harrison’s track ‘Wonderwall Music’.
Though that may have led to Sir Paul describing their work as “slightly derivative” (after Noel made a claim he now regrets – that Oasis were bigger than The Beatles), it seems any bad blood between Manchester and Liverpool’s biggest bands has been put to bed.
Noel and Sir Paul have since made up, playing a duet together at Stella McCartney’s 50th birthday party in 2021. Noel’s brother has always shared his love for John Lennon, whose work inspired him to get into music when he was a teenager.
Liam’s love for John goes so far that he named one of his sons Lennon. But it was a meeting with John’s songwriting partner that left the 52-year-old frontman a little red-faced when he got the wrong end of the stick.
Noel (left) and Liam Gallagher pictured in 2008(Image: Zak Hussein/PA Wire)
Asked for a tale from his touring days for an appearance on American chat show The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in 2017, Liam spoke about a misunderstanding with Sir Paul after seeing the former Beatle play a concert in London.
Liam recalled: “Once I went to see Paul McCartney in The Round in the Royal Albert Hall in London. So I go in there and I don’t really ask people for autographs, but I thought I’d get it for my kid’s head teacher.
So I went in after the gig and I said, ‘excuse me, Mr Paul McCartney, is there any chance you could just sign this for us? And I’ll be out your hair.
“And he says ‘yeah, yeah, come over here man. Come over here, how are you anyway?’. I said ‘yeah, I’m good, just go on and sign there, good gig, and all that stuff.
“And he said ”why are you always rushing around?’. I said ‘yeah, I’m not rushing around, I don’t want to be in your face and all that, you’ve just done a gig’.
“And he goes, ‘do you like margaritas?’. And I said ‘I do, but I ate before I came out’. He went, ‘No, the bloody drink, you d**khead’. That’s my tale from the touring side of business.”
Oasis’ reunion tour is in full swing this summer. They will play their second of two nights in Dublin tonight (August 17), before moving on from the Irish capital for the North American leg of the tour.
Starting in Toronto, they will play concerts in Chicago, East Rutherford, Pasadena and Mexico City over the next month, before returning home for two more nights at London’s Wembley Stadium.
After that, the tour will move onto South Korea, Japan, Australia, Argentina, Chile and Brazil, coming to an end in Sao Paulo in November.