Written in Lima, heard at a Taiwan soundcheck
Noel Gallagher wrote If I Had a Gun… in Lima, played it at an Oasis soundcheck in Taiwan in April 2009, and then held it back as a lead single because it sounded too much like Oasis. A tape of that soundcheck, on the Dig Out Your Soul tour, leaked online. The song was finished in his head before High Flying Birds had a name. When the solo album came together he still thought it was the obvious first single. He passed it over for The Death of You and Me. He called If I Had a Gun… emotionally uplifting and up there with the best he had written. That did not change the running order.
The debut was tracked from February 2010 at State of the Ark in Twickenham, with engineer Paul Stacey and drummer Jeremy Stacey, then mixed by Dave Sardy at Hillside Manor in Los Angeles. Credits on this song also list Strangedays, Dean Street Studios and Abbey Road. Gallagher and Sardy produced it. Ian Cooper mastered it at Metropolis. Sour Mash released Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds on 17 October 2011 and it went to number one in the UK. The song sits mid-album: acoustic guitar, a slow build, a chorus built for a room to sing back. US radio got it on 13 September 2011. The single, with B-side I’d Pick You Every Time, came out on Boxing Day, 26 December.
The video was shot in Los Angeles and directed by Mike Bruce, with producers Blake West and Camille LaBry. Gallagher plays a priest at a wedding. A cowboy rides in, the bride, Peyton List, follows him into a pool, and they leave on the horse. On 28 November 2011 the band’s site unveiled the clip as the third part of a film called Ride the Tiger, cut together with The Death of You and Me and AKA… What a Life!, plus a glimpse of Shoot a Hole Into the Sun, the version he had recorded with Amorphous Androgynous. The end of the film parks a van outside the diner from the other video. It is one story told in the wrong single order, because the records came out in a different sequence from the plot.
Considering all three videos in the trilogy were pretty awesome, that makes Gallagher’s project the most successful video trilogy of all time, easily besting Axl Rose’s “Don’t Cry” / “November Rain” / “Estranged” triple shot.
(Entertainment Weekly, quoted on the band’s site, November 2011)
The UK singles chart only took it to number 95, with number 16 on the indie chart. Japan was the outlier: number two on the Japan Hot 100 in the week of 29 October 2011, and number 77 on that chart’s year-end list. US Alternative Airplay peaked at 25. Live, it did not need the chart. At the HMV Forum in London in November 2011, the chorus already came back like an old song. The first High Flying Birds show had been at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin on 23 October, nine Oasis songs in a twenty-song set, and this one among the new ones the room already knew. On 26 February 2012 the band played the O2 in London. Dick Carruthers filmed it. Sour Mash released International Magic Live at the O2 that October, with If I Had a Gun… in the set and a demo on the bonus CD.
He had been right that it sounded like Oasis. That was also why people sang it. The solo career started by keeping the ballad he was embarrassed to lead with, then building a short film around the wedding, the diner and the horse. If I Had a Gun… is the High Flying Birds song that still does the old job: one guitar figure, a direct chorus, a room that already knows the words.
