Don't Look Back in Anger - Writing and Recording

Writing and Recording

Noel was so excited of the potential of the song when he first wrote it that he used an acoustic set to perform a work-in-progress version, without the second verse and a few other slight lyrical differences, at an Oasis concert at the Sheffield Arena on 22 April 1995. He said before playing that he'd only written it the previous Tuesday (18 April 1995) and that he didn't even have a title for it yet.

Noel said of the song, " reminds me of a cross between "All the Young Dudes" and The Beatles might have done." Of the character "Sally" referred to in the song he commented, "I don't actually know anybody called Sally. It's just a word that fit, y'know, might as well throw a girl's name in there. It's gotta guarantee somebody a shag off a bird called Sally, hasn't it?"

Noel Gallagher (from Uncut magazine August 2007): "We were in Paris playing with The Verve, and I had the chords for that song and started writing it. We were due to play 2 days later. Our first-ever big arena gig, it's called Sheffield Arena now. At the sound check, I was strumming away on the acoustic guitar, and our kid (Liam Gallagher) said, 'What's that you're singin'?' I wasn't singing anyway, I was just making it up. And our kid said, 'Are you singing 'So Sally can wait'.' And I was like – that's genius! So I started singing, 'So Sally can wait.' I remember going back to the dressing room and writing it out. It all came really quickly after that." Noel claims that the character "Lyla", from Oasis' 2005 single is the sister of Sally. In the interview on the DVD released with the special edition of Stop the Clocks, Noel also revealed that a girl approached him and asked him if Sally was the same girl as in The Stone Roses' track "Sally Cinnamon". Noel replied that he'd never thought of that but thought it was good anyway.

Noel admits that certain lines from the song are lifted from John Lennon: "I got this tape in the United States that had apparently been burgled from the Dakota Hotel and someone had found these cassettes. Lennon was starting to record his memoirs on tape. He's going on about 'trying to start a revolution from me bed, because they said the brains I had went to my head.' I thought 'Thank you, I'll take that'!" "Revolution from me bed" most likely refers to Lennon's notorious bed-ins in 1969. The piano in the introduction of the song strongly resembles Lennon's "Imagine", as well as "Watching the Wheels". As Oasis are often criticised for borrowing parts of other artists songs for their own, Noel Gallagher commented on the intro's similarity to "Imagine" saying, "In the case of Don't Look Back in Anger – I mean, the opening piano riff's Imagine. 50% of it's put in there to wind people up, and the other 50% is saying 'look, this is how songs like Don't Look Back in Anger come about – because they're inspired by songs like Imagine'. And no matter what people might think, there will be some 13 year old kid out there who'll read an interview and think 'Imagine? I've never heard that song' and he might go and buy the album, you know what I mean?" Gallagher also admits that he was under the influence of illegal substances when he wrote the song and to this day he claims he does not know what it means.

In a 2006 radio interview, Liam Gallagher said that it was he who came up with the line "so Sally can wait" as Noel was struggling with that particular line at the time. Noel confirms this on the bonus DVD, entitled Lock the Box, released with the Stop the Clocks retrospective album. In the interview with Colin Murray, Noel admits, "I was doing it in the sound check and the so Sally bit, I wasn't singing that...and he says, 'Are you singing so Sally can wait?' and I said, 'No.' and he said, 'Well you should do.'"

On the Time Flies... 1994–2009 video for the song, Noel says that, given the number of songs the band had at the time, he was forced to play an acoustic set at their first arena show at Sheffield Arena explaining that it allowed the band to drag time having to get a stool out and setting up the stage. He had written the basis for it a couple of night previous and was playing it during the soundcheck and only feeling the words out because it was incomplete. Liam came up to Noel and said "Who's Sally?" and Noel replied "What are you talking about?". Liam said "Well that's what you're singing isn't it, 'So Sally can wait'?". Noel thought that it was so brilliant that, even though those were not the words, he decided to use them.

Noel once admitted, on the Frank Skinner show, to telling Liam that he wanted to sing "Wonderwall". On hearing "Wonderwall", Liam demanded that he should sing it. Noel reluctantly agreed on the understanding that he could sing the next song on the album ("Don't Look Back in Anger"). However, in reality, Noel only ever really wanted to sing "Don't Look Back in Anger" and used "Wonderwall" as a bargaining tool, since he knew Liam would want to sing it.

The song has a tuning of C at 445 Hz instead of the standard 440 Hz which is used on live performances. The same special tuning can be heard in the song "Some Might Say".