From father to son. Gene Gallangher tells why he has 'music in his blood'.
He is a copy of Oasis frontman Liam and gave his first live performance at the age of 10. Today, 23, he plays a Fender Jazzmaster and has a grunge sound all his own.
by Inès Cross
4' min read
4' min read
Gene Gallagher has fond memories of his first live performance. "There was a big gig in the school canteen and I was playing drums for a band of kids who were a couple of years older than me. When it came to going on stage, I was very nervous, but it lasted a moment: afterwards I was simply happy".
It is obvious to think that Gallagher is a natural. With bushy eyebrows and a Manchester accent (he inherited it from his family, as he grew up in North London), he is a copy of his father, Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher, although his cheekbones are those of his mother, Nicole Appleton, the All Saints pop star. After learning percussion in that school cafeteria, Gallagher now plays a 1964 Fender Jazzmaster in a four-piece male band called Villanelle, of which he is also the singer. The band has been preparing to play at the Neighbourhood Festival in Manchester, and in July released its first single, Hinge. 'There's no point rushing things in this business, it's only natural that I tend to be a perfectionist,' Gallagher comments.
Given the many musical references the band members claim to have - bassist Jack Schiavo cites Nirvana, the Beatles and the Arctic Monkeys, among others - Villanelle are a melting pot of sounds. According to a critic from Resound Magazine they capture "the spirit of Seattle's grunge era". "And also of shoegaze (a subgenre of 1980s British alternative rock, ndt)," adds Financial Times critic Ludovic Hunter-Tilney. "Gene has his father's voice, but without his rough, scratchy timbre. It's only in its infancy, but I imagine Villanelle will do a bit like Inhaler - the Dublin rock band whose lead singer is Elijah Hewson, Bono's son - and evolve beyond the stereotype of 'sons of'."
'I've wanted to be in a band since I was 14,' explains Gallagher, looking brooding and vaguely elusive. He wears a black T-shirt and a pair of surf shorts. 'My friends and I grew up at a time when being in a band was not considered cool. Many people insisted that rock was dead, but today it seems they are being given a chance again'. Since forming at the beginning of last year, Villanelle have played a series of small gigs at venues around the UK and supported Definitely Maybe, the tour with which Liam Gallagher, solo, anticipated the official Oasis reunion at the beginning of July in Cardiff, Wales. 'Our group is very collaborative,' says Schiavo, whom Gallagher met somewhere in Austria over a beer. 'Gene is confident and open to new ideas. He has a clear vision of how a piece should develop, but leaves us free, so that we can explore it musically."
I tried to ask him if he ever considered any avenue other than the family business, but Gallagher insists: 'I never thought of doing anything else. For me there has always been only music'. And so we end up talking about his namesake: Gene Simmons, the frontman of Kiss. 'Yeah, maybe as an alternative I could have just been The Demon (the character played by Simmons on stage),' he jokes. Among his earliest musical memories is a Kiss concert he saw when he was eight years old with his mother. Growing up with her in New York introduced him to the 1990s grunge that now influences Villanelle's sound.
