October 19, 2007 12:29

Travis admit stealing music from Oasis

Fran Healy explains how 'Wonderwall' led to one of their hits

Travis have admitted taking the chords from Oasis’ ‘Wonderwall’ to use in their 1999 single ‘Writing To Reach You’.

Songwriter Fran Healy explained how he found that a promising chord sequence he’d written was identical to the chords from the Oasis classic, but decided that Noel Gallagher would approve of the borrowing.

Talking to XFM, Healy said: “I remember trying to play a song by a band, I can’t remember their name, but it was a song called ’’74-‘75’ [by The Connells ]. I was trying to play the tune and it went [wrong], I quickly swapped it to E minor and I added this [sings guitar riff] and I thought ‘oh, that’s good’.

“Then I realised they were actually the chords to ‘Wonderwall’ and I was like ‘damn’! And then I thought, you know, Noel’s always talking about nicking chords from people, so I figured just using the chords was acceptable – but I doff my cap to the writer!”

For the full story check out XFM Travis documentary which is part of the radio station's series of shows celebrating its tenth birthday.

Go to [url= http://www.xfm.co.uk/home.asp?DCMP=LEC-xfm_07083001]Xfm.co.uk[/url] for more information.