Noel Gallagher is best known as the primary songwriter and driving force behind the success of the band Oasis. He played lead guitar and provided vocals for the band that was frontlined by his younger brother Liam. He has been called one of the greatest songwriters of his generation.
And he has dyslexia.
Noel grew up in Manchester in the 1970s, the middle of three sons. He was in and out of school throughout his childhood, and was in trouble with the police several times. His dyslexia made school difficult, and at the time in that area there wasn’t a lot of support for children with reading difficulties.
He picked up a guitar for the first time during a period of expulsion from school, and there found his life’s passion.
“What I was bad at was spelling. Still am. Anything over six letters and that’s me gone…School didn’t really hold anything for me. I knew from a very early age what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a musician.”
He joined his younger brother’s band in the early 1990s, and promised to take them to superstardom if they allowed him to write all of their songs. His made good on his promise – they were the UK’s most successful act between 1995 and 2005. During that decade of dominance, the band released 4 albums and toured the world.
As a songwriter – whose job is to deal with words everyday – his dyslexia still impacts his daily life. In an interview for Q Magazine, he joked about it.
“Sometimes I give lyrics to Liam and the two key words of the sentence will be missing. When I gave him Don’t Look Back in Anger, he [started] singing “…don’t back in anger, not today… I’m saying: ‘It’s don’t look back in anger! And he’s saying, ‘well, that’s not what’s written ‘ere, chief!’”
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Sarah Forrest remembers the days of “Wonderwall”, long before she worked as a Reading Specialist for Morgan Learning, creators of the Easyread System. Easyread is an online course for struggling readers and poor spellers who benefit from a highly visual learning environment. Find out more at www.easyreadsystem.com
