Noel Gallagher’s 1978 Gibson Les Paul Custom

This 1972 Gibson Les Paul Custom was gifted to Noel by Johnny Marr in August 1994, following the incident where Noel damaged the Les Paul that Marr had previously lent him.

Midway through their first national tour, I got a manic phone call to tell me that the night before in Newcastle the band had got into a fight onstage with some of the audience and the Les Paul I’d given Noel had got damaged.

I looked at my guitars and reasoned, ‘Well, he’s accustomed to playing a 1960s Les Paul from The Smiths and The Who, so I can’t send him something crappy.’ I grabbed my black 1970s Les Paul that I used on The Queen Is Dead and stuck it in its case with a note that said, ‘It’s a bit heavier, in weight and sound. If you get a really good swing on it, you’ll take some fucker’s head off – Love from Johnny’ and I sent it up to Newcastle.

Johnny Marr – Set the Boy Free

This guitar immediately became Noel’s main instrument, and he used it consistently until mid-1995, including during the (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? studio sessions. By that time, however, Noel had acquired several guitars of his own, so this Les Paul wasn’t the only guitar he used in the studio.

One specific track where it was used is “Morning Glory.” Noel confirmed in a 2023 interview with The Pedal Show that this guitar was used for the intro, specifically for the bend parts.

The Guitar With Johnny Marr

Johnny Marr used this exact guitar extensively on The Queen Is Dead, one of The Smiths’ most iconic albums, and it was also one of the guitars he frequently played live during that period. While it was in his possession, Marr made a few modifications to the guitar. He added a coil-tap switch and installed a Gibson TP-6 bridge on it.

The Guitar With Noel

For whatever reason, the earliest photos of Noel playing the guitar show the Les Paul Custom with its standard tailpiece instead of the TP-6. So it’s possible that Johnny Marr put the original bridge back on at some point before giving the guitar to Noel.

Interestingly, all the original black plastic components—like the pickguard, pickup covers, and toggle switch ring—were also replaced with white ones at some stage. Unfortunately, it’s unclear whether Noel made these changes himself or if this was how the guitar came to him from Marr. What we do know is that this isn’t how the guitar looked when Marr was using it around 1986/87.

What Noel definitely added himself was the “Oasis” sticker on the pickguard, which appeared sometime around September or October 1994.

This version of the guitar later served as the blueprint for a limited run that Gibson produced. The run consisted of 20 guitars, all signed by Noel Gallagher, and was exclusively available to visitors attending the official opening of the Gibson Garage on February 24, 2024. All profits from the sale of this special series were donated to the Teenage Cancer Trust charity.

The next major modification Noel made to the guitar was sometime in the late 1990s. For reasons unknown, the original pickups stopped working, and Noel decided to remove the P90 pickups from his Gibson Firebird and install them into this guitar. As for the Firebird, he replaced its pickups with a set of Seymour Duncan pickups some years before that – a change he later seemed to regret.

Years later, [Johnny] was down at my studio, and he asked, “Do you still have that Les Paul?” I instantly started to sweat because, somewhere down the line, the pickups had gotten damaged, and I had taken them out. Those P90s are from a Firebird that I had.

The Noel Gallagher Guitars & Gear Interview

I brought him these Seymour Duncans that were the loudest fookin’ things I’d ever heard. I said to him, “Make me ones just like these, only louder.” I’ve got them in my Les Paul, and they’re great. I regret having put them in my Firebird, though – I shouldn’t have fooked with the guitar, man. I was gonna get some fitted into my Riviera, but that would just be too mental.

Noel Gallagher – Guitar World – April 2000

Around this same time, Noel also swapped out the old yellow tone and volume control knobs for black “speed” knobs.

Noel continued using this guitar occasionally, both live and in the studio, and it was one of the guitars he played on Oasis’ 1999 album Standing on the Shoulder of Giants.

Then, in the early 2000s, the guitar underwent its final “makeover.” Noel decorated it with a collection of stickers, the most prominent being an arrow sticker inspired by the artwork from The Jam’s 1982 single Precious (released alongside Town Called Malice). Other additions included a USA flag sticker shaped like a heart, a colorful Adidas sticker on the pickguard, and The Strokes logo on the back.

Lastly, according to the book Marr’s Guitars, Johnny Marr played this guitar when he joined Oasis in the studio for their 2002 album, contributing to the track “Probably All in the Mind.”

I’m not sure I ever actually wrote anything on it, but I did use it on the Oasis album Standing on the Shoulder of Giants. Johnny used it during the Oasis sessions for Heathen Chemistry, definitely on “Probably All in the Mind.” I do remember him asking, though, “Are these the same pickups?”

Noel Gallagher – Marr’s Guitar