Model: Hofner S5 PA Color: Mahogany Year: between 1980 and 1983
Used in...
- up to 1997 (last seen in 1994)
- Noel's first electric guitar!1
- played during the first rehearsals with the band
- featured in the background in the video of Whatever
- played during various recording sessions until Be Here Now
- played by Bonehead for Up In The Sky in 1994 and 1995
- used as backup guitar during the early Oasis tours
- maybe used to record Noel's first demo tracks (1988-1989)2
Details If you look closely, in the video of Whatever you can spot an unknown guitar among the more familiar ones positioned in front of the amps. The mistery has finally been solved thanks to the recent Gibson TV interview with Noel3 (filmed in 2022 but made available in 2023): the guitar in question is a Hofner - and it was the guitar that Noel owned when he joined his brother Liam's band in 1991. So, essentially, this is the first Oasis guitar.
After some detective work, the guitar in question was identified as a Hofner Model S5, version PA, assembled in Germany in the early '80s. The S5 is a solid-body guitar with a set neck, basically a Les Paul copy.4 The PA version, announced in 1979 and produced since 1980, had a special battery-operated circuit that included an acoustic filter and a pre-amp to boost the signal by 10 dB; the special features could be activated by depressing the knobs. By the way, "PA" probably stands for "pre-amp". In Noel's own words, from the Gibson TV interview: "I had this Hofner guitar, which is in the shape of a Les Paul but it was really thin and it took a battery. And I didn’t know for years that it took a battery, it sounded a bit shit until somebody said “You know that has active pickups?” And I was like “what does that mean?” and he’s like: “There’ll be a battery somewhere, put a fu**ing battery in it“. And it fu**ing sounded like the best thing ever, it sounded like a fu**ing atomic bomb going off." The pictures below add more details about the S5 PA; the second one is an ad by Barratts of Manchester, who were the official UK distributor for Hofner guitars at the time.5 Maybe Noel did buy his S5 PA there?
In March 1991, while he was in Munich touring as a roadie for the Inspiral Carpets, Noel phoned home and he learned that his brother Liam was in a band.
Later on, one Sunday Liam invited Noel to jam with them at a rehearsal space called the Red House, in Manchester. Noel picked up his Hofner... and that's the start of the whole story.
During the first gigs with Oasis - as far as we know - Noel played different guitars: a Hohner JT60, then, later on in 1993, Bonehead's Epiphone Riviera and finally his Epiphone Les Paul.
He kept the Hofner though... because there it is, in the Whatever video, filmed in December 1994!
The Hofner was a backup guitar during the 1994 tour: a photo taken by Mick Hutson backstage (date unknown, maybe August 1994) shows a guitar case on which you can read the word "Hofner" and something else that I can't figure out.
The guitar can also be seen in some backstage photos taken by Paul Slattery in 1994.6
Between 1994 and early 1995 it was played live by Bonehead for Up In The Sky: these are among the very few occasions where he didn't play his usual Antique Sunburst Riviera. It is unknown why he used the Hofner for the job, and for that song only: maybe because of a different tuning?
Apparently, the S5 PA was used during many recording sessions until 1997:7
"Still have my first guitar, yeah. It's a brown one, a Hofner. We try to cut it on every album we record, just jam it on there so you can say 'See that guitar there, that's my first ever guitar, and it's still going strong.' I think it made it onto this record [Be Here Now], I think Bonehead plays it as rhythm guitar."
Some pictures of a similar S5 PA in mahogany can be seen below.8
It looks like the positioning of the knobs on Noel's one is different, but it probably depends on the year of production.
Interestingly, pickups and hardware are made in Germany by Schaller - which usually produces high-quality gear.
It should have been a pretty good guitar after all - apart from the bizarre electronics.
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- Chart interview, June 1997 ↩︎
- It’s totally speculation, of course. ↩︎
- Gibson TV Icons – Noel Gallagher ↩︎
- The identification of the model – and of all the subsequent details reported here – has been made possible thanks to Steve Russell’s vintage Hofner website, an incredible source of info and pictures. ↩︎
- Source: Steve Russell & guitarage.nl ↩︎
- Oasis: A Year on the Road – Paul Slattery ↩︎
- Chart interview, June 1997 ↩︎
- Source: Reverb ad, 2023 ↩︎