Music memorabilia dealer Laurence Carpenter on Oasis, Blur and Johnny Marr

While there’s a strong case to be made for the “Woo-hoo”-ing intro to Blur’s ‘Song 2’, Britpop’s most visceral moment has to be when Liam sings – or, more accurately, sneers – “Is it my imaginayshuuunn” over the scabrous wall of noise being laid down by Noel at the start of ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’.

Big bro’s instrument of choice that day in Manchester’s Clear studio was the Gibson Flying V that had been lent to him by his new pal Johnny Marr. Twenty-nine years after initially being returned to Mr. Marr, it’s now one of the many iconic artist-owned guitars available to purchase from Laurence Carpenter’s Rock Solid Investments.

“Johnny Marr bought it in 1989 when he was over in New York – I’ve also got the original documentation from when he imported it into the UK,” Laurence tells us. “The story behind it being used on ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’ and another Definitely Maybe song, ‘Slide Away’, is that Johnny had formed a relationship with Noel early on, before Oasis had released an album. He was at a gig of theirs and in between each song Noel was tuning the one guitar he had at the time.

Johnny approached him after the gig and went, ‘Here, man, you have to get more guitars because the constant tuning is ruining the flow of the show.’ Noel responded by saying, ‘I’ve no money’, so Johnny decided to help him out by gifting him a guitar that had previously belonged to Pete Townshend from The Who and loaning him another group of instruments that included the Gibson Flying V.”

It being Johnny Marr’s wasn’t the only reason why Noel couldn’t wait to plug that Flying V in.

“Noel was massively inspired by T.Rex and remembered Marc Bolan playing a Gibson Flying V when they performed ‘Get It On’ on Top Of The Pops,” Laurence reveals. “If you listen to ‘Get It On’ and ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’ back-to-back, you’ll hear the similarities.”

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After retrieving it from Noel, Johnny used the Flying V himself on Electrafixion’s album Burned, to record the song ‘Lowdown’.

“I’ve got a letter from Johnny confirming the provenance of the guitar, which is great,” enthuses Laurence who used some canny detective work to locate another historic Oasis axe.

“I found a Facebook picture of a guy in an Oasis tribute band holding a Les Paul Epiphone with a comment underneath saying, ‘Thanks to Digsy for letting me use this guitar,’” he resumes.

“I was like, ‘Why’s he thanking Digsy?’ And then of course it clicked that there’s another track on Definitely Maybe called ‘Digsy’s Dinner’. So, I managed to get in contact with Digsy through the manager of his band, Smaller, and had it confirmed that he was given the guitar in June 1994 by Noel Gallagher along with a letter signed by Noel stating it was used to record Definitely Maybe. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing with Digsy, who’s a real character, I managed to acquire the guitar.”

• Laurence Carpenter is a specialist music memorabilia dealer who has tracked down hundreds of investment-grade musical artefacts from some of the most iconic artists in the world. See rocksolidinvestments.ie for their current range. More next issue!

Noel Gallagher stars in the new issue of Hot Press, out now.