A third act for LIAM GALLAGHER is a third coming for JOHN SQUIRE, The Stone Roses’ guitar genius who thought he might never play guitar again. Together, they’re the band fans of UK indie’s golden age could have wished into being. All it took was two Knebworths, some shoes and “loads of guitars”. “It’s the best bits of Oasis with the best bits of The Stone Roses,” they promise

TED KESSLER.

Tom Oldham (lighting by James Hole and Bradley Polkinghorne with post production by Milk and Metal)

The people we used to be: likely lads Liam Gallagher and John Squire return, Spring Studios, London, December 12, 2023.

Photography by TOM OLDHAM.

AS WITH MANY GREAT MUSICAL PARTNERSHIPS, IT BEGAN WITH an appreciation of each other ’s shoes.

“Footwear,” says John Squire of his new collaboration with Liam Gallagher, “brought us together.”

Af ter Squire stepped out at Gallagher ’s enor mous Knebworth shows in June 2022 to play on an encore of Oasis’s Champagne Super nova, Liam thanked the reclusive ex-Stone Roses guitarist with two pairs of box-fresh moccasins he thought Squire might like. Liam knew shoes were the route to Squire’s heart.

“Hand-made from Portugal, with tassels,” says Gallagher, with a connoisseur ’s reverence. “Bit mad-looking, but beautiful.”

The mutual interest harks back to the ver y first time the pair met. It was early 1994. Oasis were in Monnow Valley studio in Wales, on the border with England, recording debut album Definitely Maybe, while Squire was down the road in Rockfield, two years into redefining the term ‘difficult second album’ with The Stone Roses’ Second Coming. They bumped into each other in the nearby town of Monmouth. What, wondered Gallagher by way of introduction, did Squire have on his feet on the back cover of the first Stone Roses album?

“Ever y time I’ve r un into him since,” says Squire, “he’s had some question about my shoes.”

“I remember watching the video for the Roses’ Fools Gold and thinking, Squire’s got Vans on! The black slip-ons,” continues Gallagher, with great enthusiasm. “That was a big moment. Get a pair of Vans, then.”

On his way home to Macclesfield from rehearsals for the Knebworth perfor mance in 2022, Squire sent Gallagher a message in a similar vein. What shoes had Liam been wearing that after noon? “Clarks Caravans,” recalls Gallagher. “Beauties.”

That’s when Liam decided he’d gift the two pairs of moccasins to Squire. John Squire, meanwhile, had a couple of presents for Liam Gallagher too.

“He said, ‘I’ve got two songs I’ve been writing, would you like to sing on them?’” recalls Gallagher. “Of course. John’s songs are the reason I got into music in the first place.”

Gallagher had one stipulation, however. “I needed guitars back in my life. There’d been a lack of them on…”

He grasps for the title of his most recent solo album. MOJO lends a hand: C’mon You Know?

“…that’s the one. I told him I’d only do it as long as there’s loads of guitars on the songs.”

“Luckily, loads of guitars is my middle name,” chuckles Squire, with a self-deprecating shr ug. “So…”

Thereby hangs our tale.

IT BEGINS IN 1988,AT MANCHESTER’S International 2, where 16-year-old Liam Gallagher is watching The Stone Roses, recognising something of himself in a contemporar y pop group for the first time. “Most bands looked like fannies,” he recalls. “The Roses were cool as. I thought, Yeah. I’ll have a bit of that.”

Elsewhere in the audience that night, his older brother Noel was having a similar revelation. He’d first watched The Stone Roses in the same venue a year or so before, when the group were emerging from a gothic period, singer Ian Brown perfor ming in “a harlequin shirt, with a walking stick and slicked back hair, like Dracula”.

Charlie Lightening, Jill Furmanovsky, Getty (4)

The metamorphosis into the quartet who strode on stage that night in loose-fitting streetwear was stark, Brown having swapped his cane for a large silver bell which he sounded to signal the start of the show – the insouciant singer ’s only interaction with the audience: a take-it-or-leave-us attitude noted approvingly by Liam. But it was the music that rang loudest for the Gallaghers.

“The songs sounded so simple,” said the elder brother, describing the aspirational longing of I Wanna Be Adored, which opened the set. “I thought, Well, if they can do it, I can definitely do it.” Later, Noel would tell John Squire that Oasis owed their entire existence to The Stone Roses. “Without The Stone Roses, Liam wouldn’t have bothered to join Bonehead’s band,” he said, “and I wouldn’t have subsequently joined Liam’s band.” In tr uth, the Gallagher brothers had fallen under the same spell blanketing the UK’s youth between the summers of 1988 and 1990.