Yes, he played an Elitist Casino on a couple of tracks on one of the later Oasis albums - but no-one is ever going to think of him as a Casino player. The Noel Gallagher statement is a real piece of sleight-of-hand. Two unrelated events occurring concurrently, as you indicated. And quite what this has to do with some young guys who, at that time, were making their names with Rickenbackers and Gretsches, is anyone's guess.
I guess one could argue that the Epiphone Casino had to be 'planned' in 1961, even if the plan involved ripping-off the ES-330. Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys, Paul Weller of the Jam, and Noel Gallagher of Oasis are just a few of the players who made great records with Casinos.' John Lennon and George Harrison soon bought their own and used their Casinos on stage and at Abbey Road throughout the band's career. By 1964, the Beatles were stars and when Paul McCartney went shopping for a new guitar that would feed back, he reached for a Casino.
'Maybe it's purely coincidental that at the same time that the Casino was in its planning stages at Epiphone headquarters in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the Beatles were starting out, too. I guess the sentence you're referring to is: I'm not sure if it's revisionist history or just marketing blurb.
