You Won't Believe This But Liam's Got Self-Esteem Issues"
By
Stop Crying Your Heart Out
on
November 08, 2006
Best get comfy - Noel Gallagher's of a mind to put the world, from his brother to the monkeys, to rights
A pink f**king pinstripe suit! With a white vest! F**king hell"
Noel Gallagher is rolling around with laughter on a sofa in Wheeler End Studios - the Buckinghamshire retreat where Beatles memrobilia covers the walls, Union Jacks line the toilet seats and Oasis have spent the past seven years calling a second home. "I was in our office doing something and it just jumped out at me across the room, like 'What the f**k is over there!? Only he could get away with the pink suit - colossal man, just f**king colossal!" Noel is of course, talking about his younger brother's choice of outfit on the cover of Hello! magazine this summer at Tazmin Outhwaite's wedding.
Over the course of our afternoon with him we'll hear many new things described as "colossal", the new favourite word in the Oasis leader's vocabulary. Kasabian are colossal, as is - perhaps more surprisingly, given that this is the supposed patron saint of lad-rock we're talking to - The Gossip's 'Standing In The Way Of Control'. All those times in the mid-90s, being in the biggest band on the planet, flying around the world "with a load of mates, drinking beer, taking drugs and eating KFC" were, obviously colossal. And perhaps most revealingly, text messaging, which allows him to fob people off when he's not in the mood to be sociable with a concise, "Not coming out. C U L8R", is also deemed a worthy recipient of this newest superlative.
See, 2006 was all set to be a quiet year for Oasis (and thus rock 'n' roll in general). One where Liam's sartorial adventures could well have ended up the highlight. There was the tail-end of the triumphant 'Don't Believe The Truth' tour that ended in March, but that looked like the end of the world's Oasis fix until 2007.
However, in early September, the whispers started about 'Stop The Clocks', the Best Of which Noel had previously claimed wouldn't be released until Oasis split, but which is seeing the light of day now, because of contractual obligations to the band's former record label, Sony. To cut a long story short, it would have come out anyway, so the band decided to get involved to ensure the tracks included, the artwork and, indeed, the title (taken from an as-yet-unreleased song that features the line, "stop the clocks/lock the box and leave it all behind") were to there taste, not their ex-marketing manager's.
"Every f**king person I've spoken to in the last few weeks has said, 'Why's they're no tracks from 'Be Here Now'?"' Noel groans, anticipating NME's next question as to whether the omission might be him finally admitting that, in the scheme of Oais albums, it actually wasn't very good. "No. I narrowed it down to about 30 tunes, which was too many - that's like a f**kin' prog rock record or something. 'D'You Know I Mean?' was on there for a bit, but it upset the flow on the album. And I was'nt gonna put a 'Be Here Now' track on there just for the sake of it. Perversely, i kind of like the fact that there's a whole album for people in the future, it's supposed to be a concise introduction to Oasis."
With tracklisting arguments now over 'Stop The Clocks' gives us all an excuse, once more, to immerse ourselves in the most vital, culturally significant British bands since the Sex Pistols; to remind ourselves of those still-unparalleled moments of rock 'n' roll brilliance that, as Noel puts it, "make you feel like you're 18, you've got a great new jacket on and you're going out to kiss the f**king sky". 'Rock 'N' Star', 'Live Forever', Champagne Bleedin' Bastard Super-F**king-Nova'...really, the strangest thing about an Oasis best Of being released in that there's no need to reminisce. These are songs that never went away, that are as important today as they were in the mid-90s. In short Oasis are still the band to beat and everyone, including Noel, knows it.
"If I see one more advert on the TV for an album that says, 'Best guitar album since 'definitely Maybe'... f**king hell- I'll shoot whoever writes those f**king things!" he blasts. You flick through a magazine and it's 'Razorlight, 9/10, the best guitar album since 'Definitely Maybe'!' And I'm just like, Really? Not to my ears it ain't. I mean, it's flattering that album is still considered the benchmark, and that The Libertines, Arctic Monkeys, Razorlight and all that said that was the album for them, but come on. I think a lot of these bands are... not fake, but just copying the blueprint.
You're always looking at Johnny Borrell or him out of The Kooks and going, 'I dunno if you mean it, man' When you see those bands, there's just something not quite right. It doesn't get you 110 per cent, like when the great bands - those bands come along. Do you not think Arctic Monkeys are one of those bands? "Well they're good, but their public persona is now of a bunch of grumpy old men, even though they're 19, d'you know what i mean?
I think they were a good kick up the arse, but I'm a bit worried about what's going to follow in their wake. If it's gonna be a load of c**ts with guitars up here (does air-Alex Turner guitar, adopts Sheffield twang) going, 'And me mum works down the f**king chip shop, she met a geezer...' and all that. Great pop music is not about real life, it's about how great life can be. Real life's f**king shit! But yeah, I suppose they're what Oasis were - like the elixir of life to a different generation, with different values. The MySpace generation."
Are you a MySpace user?
"My missus has got a computer, but I can't even switch it off, let alone on. Gem will sit downstairs and yak on about all this shit he's seen on YouTube, like old La's interviews or whatever. Or I'll phone him and tell him about an album I've heard, then about an hour later he's downloaded all the songs from f**kin MySpace. It's Mad." Do you think that's a good thing? "This generation of kids just rely on the technology - that's what they want. These days you can see f**king Johnny Borrell in his pants going through the bass parts, and that just strips awaythe magic for me. Everyone just wants more and more information.
All the fantasy's gone out of music, 'cos everything is too fu**ing real. Every album comes with a DVD with some c**t going, 'Yeah well, we tried the drums over there, but...' Give a shit, man! It makes people seem to human, whereas I was bought up on Marc Bolan and David Bowie, and it was like, 'Do they actually come from f**king Mars?'"
The modern world then, for Noel Gallagher, despite its seemingly unwavering love for his group, sometimes feels like it has changed, almost beyond recognition. He goes to Arctic Monkeys gigs and gets blown away by the fact that the fans know all the words to songs that aren't even released; he freaks out when hi daughter want to go on "my-f**king-pony-dot-com" and he can't show her how, and he won't be buying glowsticks and time soon.
"I saw Klaxons in Ibiza with Kasabian," he gasps "and it was like torture! Either all their instruments were broken, or they didn't have a clue what they were doing. That new rave stuff in the NME - fu**ing shocking!" And then there's politics. This remember, is a man who, at the Brit Awards in 1996 declared: "There are seven people in this room giving a little bit of hope to young people in this country - that's me, our kid, Bonehead, Guigsy, Alan White, Alan McGee and Tony Blair. And if you've got anything about you, get up there and shake Tony Blair's hand. He's the Man."
Fast forward 10 years, and Oasis are set to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at next year's Brits. This time, you suspect, their leader won't be praising the man who once made thinly veiled references to cocaine with him at Number 10 Downing Street. "I tell you what New Labour have achieved," Noel says, thinking back to those heady days. "They've destroyed politics in this country. Because I don't know anyone who, next time around is gonna f***ing vote. It means nothing. "That's a bad thing though isn't it? "Well I guess all the anarchists and Thom Yorkes of this world, who are like, 'All politicians are baaas' - they recon they've been trying to destroy politics for years. And unwittingly, the Labour Party have done it for themselves, because everybody's so disillusioned with it now.
Left and right doesn't mean anything - it's all this middle ground that's just nothing. The bank of f***in' England are in charge. Life's still shit for most people who have to get up and go to work, but that's the other thing about all this technology - everyone can afford an ipod, so they think life's f***ing great; every c**t's got a plasma screen and a computer, and a mobile phone with a video camera in it, and they think it's great because you can shop online and get all this stuff delivered to your house. Everything's affordable, so everyone thinks things are ok. There's not alot of soul to British life anymore, I don't think."
We're about to ask what he thinks of The Horrors' hairdos, but Noel Gallagher is not finished yet. "And then you think about the extreme Islamists and the neo-conservatives in the west. That's it for them now - they're at war forever and ever. And it's worse for a place like Britain, which is so multicultural, and where some people don't need much encouragement to be f***ing racist. There's always a debate on Sky News, with somebody who's for these draconian measures to lock every f***er up and there's always somebody who's against it.
And they're all shouting! You're just like, 'Fu**ing hell, man - surely it's not that f**ing bad. People don't hate each other'. it's just these extremists in our community, in Whitehall, It's fu**ing bad darts, man. He's right, of course. But thankfully, with Noel, one thing that's never far away, even when he's discussing the state of the world, is a side-splittingly funny story.
"I'll tell you what, though," he begins by way of introduction, "it makes travelling around the world a pain in the arse. I had a problem with my visa in the States recently, where i got pulled in Texas and grilled for about two and a half hours. I'm there going 'just phone anyone in England! Email them a photo! Ask them and they'll go, 'Oh that's 'im out of Oasis'. Three months later I'm at the same airport on holiday with my missus and it happens again! Some guy looks at his screen and goes 'Follow me sir' This guy calls someone else over, they're both looking at the screen and after a few minutes he says to me, '(Adopts hilariousTexan accent) Can you answer a question for me, sir?' Now I'm getting annoyed at this point, so I'm like, 'What about?' and he goes (Comedic pause) What was it like when y'all met Pete Townshend?' He's holding this massive gun, going "Cos I seen y'all played 'Won't Get Fooled Again', and I'm just thinking, 'Fu**ing hell - ain't you got work to do?'''
As preposterous as this fu**ing sounds," laughs Noel, as we return to the subject of Oasis, "Liams got self-esteem issues. Whenever he plays you a tune he's written, he is expecting you to be in total awe. So when we're just like 'Yeah it's good, let's record it', he's expecting more and he can't understand. I'm always trying to say to him, 'The core of Oasis is about three fundamental things: the songs' me and you. Without one of those things, it all just falls down. Sometimes I wish he'd just accept that."
See, it's still the same things driving Oasis. Noel's right: it is about the songs, him and Liam, but it's also about the tension between them. Noel will never understand why Liam thinks it's cool to walk offstage, Liam will never understand why his brother is the only person he knows who isn't in awe of him. Noel will never wear a pink suit or be pictured in the tabloids fighting, liam will never see what's wrong with either of those things.
This is what puts Oasis in this unheard -of position: even on the eve of a Best Of, and while receiving awards that should signify something close to the end, they still matter. And 'Sto The Clocks' is just a pit-stop, before charging headlong into the future. The next 12 years of Oasis, you'd wager, are gonna be fu**ing colossal.
Source: NME Magazine