Why The Smiths are still the only band Noel Gallagher wants to reform

Posted On August 27, 2025August 27, 2025

It feels like the entire world is healing a bit, knowing that the members of Oasis are on good terms again. As much as Noel Gallagher was always at odds with his brother Liam, their reunion is proof that anything is possible as long as musicians are able to lay their guns down, but Noel couldn’t help but think of other bands that needed to reform as well.

But looking through some of the greatest reunions in history, there are always going to be a handful of letdowns when a band gets back together. There’s no telling if every member is going to be in the best physical shape, and while every one of us would be glad to see our favourite bands reunite and be as good as Led Zeppelin, there are often times when it feels like everyone is going through the motions.

Sometimes people have to get together for the paycheck, but for the fans, it’s worth it to say that they saw their favourite group live all over again. The ticket sales might be all well and good, but for Noel, he realised that getting a band back together wasn’t simply about getting the same people onstage. Every band is usually a four or five-piece jigsaw puzzle, and if one piece is missing, the entire thing completely falls apart.

I mean, The Beatles could have never reunited properly after John Lennon passed away, and even when we got those Led Zeppelin reunion shows, there was always a tinge of sadness knowing that John Bonham was gone. For an indie kid growing up in the 1980s, though, Noel always thought The Smiths had a lot more to say than what their four official albums had to offer.

The Queen is Dead deserves every piece of praise it has ever received, but the minute that the band split down the middle between Johnny Marr and Morrissey, there was always something slightly off about their solo careers. ‘The Moz’ was always going to be an acquired taste because of how often he got up on his soapbox, but the thought of having him and Marr back onstage together was the kind of musical team-up Noel always thought needed to happen again.

He realised that some of his favourites didn’t need to reform, but The Smiths certainly had some unfinished business, saying, “When you go and see Morrissey which I have done regularly, and he plays those songs, they’re great, but you always think, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if Johnny was playing the guitar?’, because nobody plays them quite like Johnny. I saw Johnny at Brixton Academy recently singing those songs, and the crowd carried it along, but imagine both of them. But I’m not sure either of them are particularly interested, which is a shame, because it would be great.”

A reunion is never an easy thing, most likely, when a band breaks up, it is for a good reason, and that has always weighed heavily on the idea of The Smiths reforming. The truth is, the members of the group have fought for too long, and their ideologies now feel way too disparate for them to ever reconcile. But, in 2019, Gallagher had a plan for this, and it involved him becoming an almighty deity to bring Marr and Morrissey, two men the Oasis man considers friends, to hug it out and be a band again.

“If I was God for a day, and you could make it happen and they’d all be happy about it happening, I would love to see The Smiths again,” Gallagher shared while also dodging the talk of his own warring band reuniting. Though he’d be proved wrong on the latter, the idea of The Smiths reforming was one built out of Gallagher’s childhood appreciation of the group. For him, there was perhaps no greater act of Mancunian greatness.

The Smiths operated on a different plane to musical acts in the 1980s, they provided a sincere poetry that connected with the sensitive side of Gallagher’s brutish demeanour. Manchester was a tough place to live at the best of times, and The Smiths offered an opportunity for him to indulge in those prosaic proclivities. It would be only right that then the group would remain the only band he ever really, truly wanted to get back together, as long as the mood was right.

Sadly, the idea of any proper Smiths reunion seemed to completely vanish when Andy Rourke passed away following a long battle with cancer. No matter how much people would love to see both Morrissey and Marr together, Joyce was as integral to the sound of the band as they both were, especially with the bassline to ‘Barbarism Begins at Home’ and how he weaved over the chord changes of ‘The Headmaster Ritual’.

There’s no real reason to believe that the band are going to be rejoining anytime soon, but it’s hard to put any definitive answer yet. Most of us thought that any reunion between Noel and Liam was practically non-existent, but if they were able to put their issues to bed and go back out on the road, who’s to say that ‘The Moz’ can’t get off his soapbox for a little while and have a chat with Marr about the future?

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