‘Once in a Lifetime Sessions with Noel Gallagher’ Justifies My Lifelong Oasis Obsession

I invested a lot of time into Oasis from 1996 to 2002. I bought every import single ($15 for four songs, worth every penny), made endless collages in Microsoft Paint, scoured web rings for concert and demo MP3s, and read no fewer than three band biographies detailing their rise to fame. Also, being an American–specifically a kid in suburban Tennessee–whose favorite band was most known for a string of hit singles from one blockbuster album, I took a whole lotta flack from my classmates for loving the Gallagher brothers long after the story of their Stateside success ended. Writing for Decider doesn’t give me a lot of opportunities to write about music, so when the hourlong concert/doc hybrid Once in a Lifetime Sessions with Noel Gallagher appeared on Netflix, I leapt at the chance to finally write about what was (and probably still is, deep in my soul) my favorite band of all time. Literally, I think I blurted out, “I will write anything and everything about Noel Gallagher, yes.”

The Noel Gallagher special is one of four Once in a Lifetime Sessions that dropped on Netflix; the other three focus on Moby, TLC, and Nile Rodgers. Judging by Noel’s time under this loose docuseries’ microscope, I assume those other specials are just as essential viewing for fans of those artists as this one is for lifelong Oasis fans. There’s one thought I could not escape while watching this peek inside the curmudgeonly genius’ brain: this special makes all the time and emotion I invested in this bombastic group of lads from Manchester worth it. This once in a lifetime session feels like a big pay-off to 34-year-old me, as if finally the music of Oasis has gotten its due thanks to a stripped-down doc focusing on the band’s primary songwriter and sparring partner/sometimes vocalist.

The doc splits its time in four primary modes, cutting back and forth in a manner that makes it feel fresher than just Gallagher coming out and plowing through his old hits and b-sides (“Anyway, here’s ‘Wonderwall”).

You watch Gallagher performing on stage to a small crowd, accompanied only by longtime Oasis touring keyboardist Mike Rowe (not that Mike Rowe, although I have to imagine touring with Oasis was itself a kind of dirty job). You also watch Gallagher in the studio as he cuts a live EP straight to vinyl. And there are two interview components, first the standard talking head kind, and then another wherein host Lauren Laverne plays tracks from his career for him to dive into. Admittedly there is a bit of a feeling that you just want to hear Noel play the whole song instead of a voiceover coming in once he reaches the second verse, but that annoyance subsides when you let go of the idea of this being a traditional concert.

But the fact that I want to hear the songs more than hear Gallagher speak is important. For the last few years, Gallagher’s reputation has been as rock and roll’s most endlessly quotable elder-statesman, a guitar god that rattles off opinions with the same ease he used to rattle off #1 singles. I have read numerous articles in the past year alone that amount to, “Here’s just a list of Noel Gallagher’s opinions on everything from Star Wars to Adele.” Fans that have spent a lifetime with Oasis would probably give the talking points in this Once in a Lifetime Session a C+. A lot of the anecdotes are Oasis lore at this point (his roadie gig with the Inspiral Carpets, his Las Vegas misadventure that led to writing the legendary b-side “Talk Tonight”), although there is a pretty hilarious story about how he was convinced his 2011 single “AKA… What a Life!” should have been recorded by Madonna.

What really shines through in this special, though, is the music. And that’s a big deal to me, considering that I spent so long defending Oasis’ music to naysayers who thought the riffs were stolen, the bass lines were boring, and the lyrics were garbled nonsense. I mean, my high school tormentors weren’t totally wrong, but they failed to see what I was right about. Oasis was never about originality (Noel flat-out admits that in the interview), they were about a feeling. And even after watching numerous documentaries about the band (the 2004 making-of doc about the debut album “Definitely Maybe” or the fantastic 2016 feature Oasis: Supersonic), I’ve never seen that feeling so accurately identified as it is by host Lauren Laverne when the career-defining hit “Wonderwall” is discussed.

“Do you know what I think is one of the magical things about that song as well, is that it sounds like remembering,” says Laverne. “It’s the sound of remembering, and that’s something that makes it so powerful for people because it creates that feeling in you. You feel like you’re remembering something even though you don’t know what it is.”

Noel adds, “People will never forget the way you made them feel.” And they’re both right. That’s actually something I’ve been saying since I first heard “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?” for the first time when I was in the sixth grade, that that album sounds literally timeless. As if it wasn’t recorded by a band so much as channeled, as if it had always existed and only entered our world through the mind of Noel Gallagher. Now, twenty-plus years removed from when we all heard these songs for the first time, they sound somehow better and more emotionally relevant than ever. It’s a testament to the power of Noel’s songwriting, to the power of these songs, that a snotty rock tune like “Supersonic” or a cathartic anthem like “Listen Up” or a power ballad like “Don’t Look Back in Anger” sound so whole even when they’re stripped of drums, bass, and anywhere between two and two hundred electric guitar tracks (the “Be Here Now” sessions were insane, y’all).

Most of these songs, notably, are also stripped of their original voice, as the majority of Oasis songs were sung by Noel’s younger, less… uh… thoughtful?… brother Liam. When Liam sang those songs, lyrics he didn’t write, it hammered home their vagueness (“Today was gonna be the day, but they’ll never throw it back to you”–what is “it”?!). But in Noel’s voice, the guy that wrote those vague lyrics, they suddenly seem so much more specific. Noel accesses real emotions when he sings nonsense lines like “Take me up to the top of the world/I want to see my crime,” and it validates all the real emotions I assigned those nonsense lines in my youth–emotions Liam didn’t try or even know to convey. And that’s what Noel says himself:

“You are more liable to deliver that song better because you know what it’s about. You know the person in the song, and you know what the story is, should there be a story, and you know what the feeling is. So when I’m singing now, I don’t think anyone can sing my songs as good as I can. Not because I’m a better singer than anybody else, but because I fucking know what they mean.”

Watching Once in a Lifetime Sessions with Noel Gallagher is a validating experience because it proves what I knew in my teenage heart: these songs are good, and these songs have meaning. And to be able to watch Noel, a man whose voice has somehow only gotten stronger, tear into them with a mature sincerity that comes with age… it makes me feel like all that time making homemade Oasis posters was time well spent.

Where to stream Once in a Lifetime Sessions with Noel Gallagher