Pete Waterman says there’d be no Oasis without him

Pete Waterman has revealed that there would be no Oasis without him, after he supplied a young Noel Gallagher with guitar strings.

Taking part in NME’s Does Rock ‘N’ Roll Kill Braincells?! quiz, Pete Waterman, music impresario and one third of ‘80s/’90s hit factory Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW), revealed that the most surprising fan of his back catalogue was probably Noel Gallagher.

“I’ve had some absolutely unbelievable conversations with him,” Waterman said. “When he was a gas fitter in Manchester, my studio was across the road from him, so he’d nip over at lunchtime and steal my guitar strings because he couldn’t afford them.

“He always credits me with giving him his start. Without my free guitar strings, he couldn’t have carried on,” he added.

Elsewhere in the interview, Waterman spoke about working with Paul McCartney on the all-star Ferry Aid cover of The Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’, and why he’s still annoyed that Steps never got the critical acclaim he feels they deserve.

Last week, Gallagher announced his fourth album with The High Flying Birds, ‘Council Skies’.

The record is due for release on June 2, and sees Gallagher reclaiming his past and paying homage to his Mancunian roots. “It’s going back to the beginning. Daydreaming, looking up at the sky and wondering about what life could be … that’s as true to me now as it was in the early ’90s,” Gallagher explained of the upcoming album in a statement.

Gallagher recently said he would “never say never” to an Oasis reunion, with brother Liam then taking to Twitter to reveal he’d been on the phone “begging for forgiveness”.

In October last year, Gallagher said there’s “no point” in an Oasis reunion because the band still sell “as many records now” as they did when they were together.

Liam, in contrast, has been vocal about his support for an Oasis reunion. In February 2022, he said that Oasis “should never have split up”, and that he would “love” the iconic band to get back together.

In an NME Big Read cover story in 2020, Liam also said that an Oasis reunion will happen “very fucking soon”, because he believes Noel is “greedy and he loves money and he knows that it’s got to happen soon or it won’t happen”.