Well, duh it's a fusion of stuff from all over the place and 'classic rock history' and all that. Like Noel Gallagher ever denied it. Or Liam, for that matter, singing the Coke song lines in "Shakermaker" whenever he did it live.
Through the fuzz of history, overwrought hoo-hah and the undeniable fact that whether or not you approved otherwise the band ended up bigger than god to the point where Blur had to save what was left of their career by desperately defining themselves against them every chance they got before turning into bad American alternative sludge, a cogent point comes through down the pike. As one writer once noted -- Dave Simpson, I believe, whose judgment I trust in these matters, not least for realizing why the Chameleons mattered, but more on that later -- write off Oasis as a bunch of Beatles ripoffs and you miss the point that songs as huge and fuck-off as, say, "Bring It On Down" or "Up in the Sky" couldn't have been written by the Fab Four. They could have tried, mind you, but even their big stuff all sounds rather tinny these days. Viva the new technologies.
Because the thing about Oasis is that they're not tired Beatles retreads (certainly nowhere near as tired as certain other Beatles retreads I could name, but I've spewed up enough on some of the more useless Elephant 6 types enough these days -- is it any wonder that there's a slice of American indiekultur which likes to worship a certain pallid Anglophilia that worships the sixties 'properly,' and when a British band comes along that implicitly argues "You can have fun too, you know," they get annoyed?). If you're going to accuse them of being anything, call 'em glam rock leading into punk. Call 'em a new Mott the Hoople even. Beatles-influenced like every last damn glam bunch from the early seventies, sure, but sure as hell not copying them as much as some would claim. Add some punk for fun and Neil Young for the guitar snarls and behold, Definitely Maybe, which I've listened to a lot more over time and have a lot more time for these days than I ever did for Revolver.
Guitars plugged straight into the boards, amps up to the mikes, Liam's voice getting sweet right at points you don't expect it to, maybe a rhythm section that's only just there more than anything else, but that's not the point here. What is the point? Well, let's consider "Columbia," for instance. To mention the Chameleons again -- another Beatles-loving bunch who were never a mere cloning either -- "Columbia" has that same perfect surge and release that "Swamp Thing" had, and Noel himself said he'd love to cover that song one day, something I still wait for with hope. Everything is overdriven and perfect, a stoned flow in its own way, and when Liam sings "The way I feel is oh so new to me," I hear classic rock radio stations dying because they'd rather play Clapton outtakes instead. And when the "yeah yeah yeahs" and "come on, come on, come ons!" emerge from the feedback at the end, it all hits, oh does it ever.
And "Cigarettes and Alcohol" revamping T. Rex, "Digsy's Dinner" redefining the art of the in-joke, etc. But it's all about "Slide Away" in the end. Love-wracked, hopeful and despairing, and when Noel's guitar wraps around Liam repeating, "Don't know, don't care, all I know is you can take me there!" then frankly all the knee-jerk insults that throw themselves in the drink along with their creators. And that includes that one old crust Harrison.