Three Here, Now

Gibson and Epiphone's latest signature models have been chosen for their specific roles in the Oasis history book

- Words Stuart Williams

Noel Gallagher's love of the Les Paul spans all the way back to a pre-fame Oasis, where – as is the case for many aspiring rock stars – he toted an Epiphone Les Paul Standard as his main guitar.

With a record deal under his belt, you might expect that to have changed in an instant, but check out the video for Oasis’s first single, 1994’s Supersonic, and you'll see the Cherry sunburst Epiphone taking pride of place.

However, Noel, who had struck up a friendship with former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, was ‘gifted’ not one but two Les Pauls from Marr himself. The first is a Standard, which began life as a Goltop and had the honour of being owned and smashed by Pete Townshend before Marr acquired it, and the second is a Les Paul Custom. The Custom features an additional toggle switch for splitting the coils, which at first appears curious, but Noel removed the humbuckers and replaced them with P-90s, lifted from one of his Gibson Firebirds. In 2023, he told That Pedal Show: “It was only [years later] that [Marr] said, ‘Oh, that’s The Queen Is Dead guitar,’ and I was like, ‘Could you have fucking told me that earlier, before I butchered it?!”