Noel Gallagher on Oasis, Amy Winehouse, James Blunt & More

On the eve of the release of Oasis' new album, Noel Gallager dishes up his singular take on all matters from James Blond to James Blunt. And he still thinks Liam's a...

Noel Gallagher is back on drugs.

Luckily these ones, unlike the mountains of chemicals he hoovered during the ‘90s, come from a doctor. And not a dodgy rock and roll physician, an actual one.

A legally numbed Gallagher is nursing three broken ribs after a Canadian man pushed the Oasis guitarist off stage during a gig in Toronto last month.

The downside: all Oasis gigs since have been cancelled while Gallagher recovers. The upshot: camera phone footage from multiple fans have clocked up millions of You Tube hits.

“It’s quite exciting being a genuine You Tube superstar,” Gallagher says from his London home where he’s dosed up on “pretty heavy painkillers.”

“I’m a bit brain dead,” Gallagher notes of his prescription high. “Sometimes I drift off and I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

While he hasn’t watched the incident on You Tube, he’s heard that depending on what angle the footage you watch was taken you can clearly see brother Liam Gallagher initially running away from the stage invader, then trying to punch him once he’s being led away.

“He got all brave once the security guards turned up,”

Noel, Liam’s older brother notes. “That’s what he does.”

Gallagher insists he has only vague memories of his You Tube moment.

“I remember being hit really hard. I didn’t see him come on stage or get led off, I just got hit.”

The guitarist initially thought he’d been stabbed – the intruder had run from being in the rain to the backstage area then on stage – leaving puddles of water on the stage where Gallagher wound up.
After he realised no knives were involved, Gallagher ignored medics' advice and continued playing for another 40 minutes.

“I had an almighty pain in my side. I was being silly, it got to the point where I went ‘F--- it, I can’t do this’ and got taken straight to hospital.”

Gallagher can’t discuss the intruder in detail for legal reasons, but is happy to do some mild character assassination.

“He’s 47 and got three children, if you can believe that,” Gallagher says.

“He’s obviously gone through a midlife crisis. I wouldn’t get in and analyse it too deeply, that’s for a lawyer to do. I don’t know why people do things like that.”

However, don’t expect to see Oasis surrounded by men-mountains next time you see them live.

“We’re not going to become one of these American bands with more security guards than musicians on stage, we don’t go in for that Madonna sh--. We’ve got enough security guards as it is. If they’d been doing their f---ing job properly instead of playing air guitar I’d be alright.”

Broken ribs aren’t stopping Gallagher talking up Oasis’ seventh album, Dig Out Your Soul.

Or not talking it up as the case may be. He’s already labelled lead single The Shock of the Lightning the album’s only obvious hit.

There’s ragged rock tracks (Ain’t Got Nothin’) recycled psychedelia (the acid-soaked Bag It Up), some swamp blues (Get Off Your High Horse Lady), an organic Chemical Brothers-style trancefest (Falling Down) and even a track minus any guitars at all – To Be Where There’s Life. It’s as experimental and loose as Oasis get, without losing the plot.

“When we were making it I thought there didn’t seem to be that many hit singles on there, or even songs that sound like singles, but that’s a good thing,” Gallagher says.

“I wouldn’t plan to make an album like this every time, it’s happily fallen in our laps by accident. In the grand scheme of things it’s a pretty special Oasis record.”

As with the last few Oasis albums Gallagher’s songwriting dictatorship has given way to a musical democracy – each member gets to write at least one track.

Liam Gallagher’s I’m Outta Time is an album highlight. It is – who’d have thought – a ridiculously familiar (and surprisingly beautiful) Beatles throwback.

This dose of pre-Fab four one comes with a surprise addition - instead of just channelling John Lennon, they’ve actually sampled him, via a grab from a vintage interview.

“Not that you’d notice it was him,” Noel Gallagher says. “It sounds like Winston Churchill. If you’re going to put John Lennon on a f---ing track turn it up I say. It’s kind of a bit neither here nor there for me. You can’t really hear what he says.”

Noel gets his time to shine on Waiting for the Rapture, one of his vocal moments on the album.

“The reason Liam doesn’t sing the songs I sing is that he can’t sing the falsetto bits,” Noel says.

“He doesn’t have the will or the capacity to get up to those notes. I like my singing. I used to sing out of necessity a few years ago because Liam wouldn’t or couldn’t. But now when I write batches of songs I think ‘Ah, I’d like to sing that’. My voice has developed at a very late stage, which is good because it means I haven’t spent 20 years f---ing it up.”

Waiting for the Rapture is about his girlfriend Sara McDonald, not that Noel admits it. “You can’t really write a full album about your missus. She’ll start getting the wrong idea and start thinking I like her.”

There are, however, no songs about their newborn son Donovan.

“Songs for children are utterly banned,” he says. “I’m not into that sh--.”

Liam Gallagher’s 2000 song Little James remains one of Oasis’ creative lowpoints.

“Well, I can’t speak for my brother,” Gallagher says. “But for the other three of us they’re banned.”

Gallagher’s enjoying singing more than ever before; even single-handedly promoting Oasis’ best-of Stop the Clocks with a global solo tour last year.

If the eldest Gallagher has his way, Dig Out Your Soul will be the last Oasis album before they embark on the obligatory solo diversions.

“After this record I’m not sure what we do next as a band,” he says. “Since Gem (Archer, guitar) and Andy (Bell, bass) joined we’ve been leading up to this particular point, this record. If I had my way I’d like us all to do solo projects next time around. It’d be interesting for people who like Oasis to see how the four parts make up the whole.”

Dig Out Your Soul arrives as all Oasis albums have – the good old fashioned way. The only real concession to anything approaching technology is a Chemical Brothers remix of The Shock of the Lightning for the, er, clubs.

Those expecting online leaks or Radiohead style free downloads should look elsewhere.

“No one’s getting anything free from me,” Gallagher says. “If they can find it out there on the internet and steal it good luck to them. But we’re not going to put it anybody’s f---ing pocket for free, f--- that.”

Nor will you see Oasis measuring their carbon footprint, ala Radiohead, any time soon.

“Global problems are very easily solved by rockstars, aren’t they,” Gallagher mocks.

“Starving people in Africa, let’s do a gig, that’ll sort it out. There’s war on the streets of Baghdad, let’s do a gig. Global warming and carbon emissions – let’s have a concert. It’s f---ing bullsh--.

"The only way it’s going to be solved is if the world powers get together and are serious about it. I really think it’ll take an absolute global catastrophe for anyone to take it seriously, not just saving a few polar bears from dying. In the meantime Radiohead can get on their battery operated pushbikes as long as they like but they’re pissing in the wind

“You can’t blame rock stars for global warming when the Chinese, the Indian and the Americans have been pumping out sh-- into the atmosphere for the last 100 years,” Gallagher continues.

“That’s just f---ing nonsense. You can’t put a load of rockstars up on a stage and expect to wipe out global poverty. That’s ludicrous. Somebody’s doing a load of acid if they think that’s going to happen.”

Also still in place is the internal feuding between the brothers Gallagher.

Liam has gone on record saying he “can’t stand” Wonderwall, still the band’s biggest hit. “Every time I sing it I want to gag,” Liam told Q Magazine.

“See, this is one of the reasons I really f----ing dislike him, he’s full of f---ing sh--,’ Noel says.

“He tells the journalists of the world ‘I hate singing Wonderwall’. Yet we were rehearsing and I was saying ‘I can’t be ars-ed, I’m gonna drop it (Wonderwall) from the set’. He’s the one saying ‘No no, we’ve got to play it, we’ve got to play it’.

“I read these interviews with him and I don’t know who the guy is who’s in these interviews, he seems really cool, because the guy I’ve been in a band with for the last 18 years is a f----ing knobhead.

"I don’t know where this schizophrenia comes from. Then he wonders why I’ve f----ing got no time for him.”

Still, things could be worse – it could be James Blunt.

Between albums Gallagher reportedly insisted he was selling his house in Ibiza after finding out Blunt had moved there. The story isn’t exactly true, but Gallagher knows it sounds good.

“I’m sure he’s just saying he lives in Ibiza for effect, I’ve had a house there for 10 years and I didn’t see him once,” Gallagher says.

“I heard he’s got a nightclub in his house, which is strange, because he doesn’t look like he could take a stiff cocktail. But I must say it did make me quite uncomfortable knowing I was there and he was up the road somewhere being sh--t.”

NOEL ON ...

Amy Winehouse
“She’s got an undeniably great voice but there’s plenty of great singers in the world. It astonishes me, fame seems to hit those kind of people hard. They kind of pull down the shutters and become drug addicts because they can’t deal with it. But it’s what they’ve been waiting for all their lives.

This should be her time. She should be ruling the world but she’s a slave to the gear. F--- her. There’s no point wasting words on people like that. They have no respect for themselves so why should people have respect for them?”

The new James Bond theme
“We wrote a song, which will be on our next album now, that when I finished I thought ‘It sounds like a James Bond theme tune’. Not one of those ridiculous ballads, the actual theme tune. At the time they hadn’t decided who was going to sing the theme. So I sent it to Sony, the people who look after that kind of thing, and never heard anything back. And they got Alicia Keys to do it. I haven’t heard it but I’m sure it’ll be f---ing dreadful. Jack White’s bits will be amazing, because he is, but it’s an odd coupling.”

Lars Ulrich using Noel as a role model to kick cocaine
“I f---ing love that guy. All these heavy metal characters you meet, like him and (Marilyn) Manson they are, with the best will in the world, ludicrous people. I like that Enter Sandman tune and Nothing Really Matters, but I don’t own any of the records. That doesn’t dilute what I think of them as fellas. I like a few of Manson’s tunes but it’s not my bag. Hip hop’s not my bag but I don’t deny its right to exist.”

Coldplay
“I like Coldplay. I’m not in a band full of Coldplay fans, there’s only me. I don’t speak about it with the other boys. I like Coldplay and U2, everyone in Oasis f---ing hates them. I think they’re a bit insecure Coldplay and U2 sell more records than we do. I love Violet Hill. I like them, I won’t f---ing deny it. I struggle a bit with Coldplay. You play someone a song and go ‘listen man it sounds like the Beatles, it’s f---ng great’ and then the next one sounds like Annie Lennox, so it’s like ‘OK, well that one’s a bit sh--’. I like Chris Martin. I think he’s a really great songwriter. He fascinates me, he’s f---ing proper posh. I haven’t met his wife. I somehow don’t think I’d be her cup of tea. I’d like to meet her, it’s Gwyneth Paltrow for f---’s sake, but I guess she wouldn’t like my profanities. I have a habit of swearing a lot.”

Kaiser Chiefs
“There’s been a feud between us and them, but in the case of the Kaiser Chiefs the little fat singer, he started it. It’s not important what he said, and it’s a shame one has to get involved in this kind of thing but you can’t let these fat idiots get away with it.”

Bloc Party
“They’re a bunch of middle class kids trying to rebel about against mum and dad. They sit on top of an apex of sh--.”

Keane
“I feel sorry for Keane. No matter how hard they try they’ll always be squares. Even if one of them started injecting heroin into onto his (Noel uses potentially offensive euphemism for the male member) people would go ‘Yeah but your dad was a vicar, good night’.

Turning 40
“It doesn’t bother me. I’ve always felt older than I am. When I was 30 I felt 40. I feel f---ing 65 with three broken ribs. You’ll find people who rib you about their age are petrified about getting old. It doesn’t bother me. I guess because I’ve never traded on my good looks like Liam.

To me it’s not about the haircut or jawline or belly. I’m known for my songs, I can do that at any age. If I’m being honest everyone would like to be 20 years younger but you’ve got to be comfortable with it. Liam’s been dying his hair for a while. And he wears make up. Seriously. I’ve seen him in eyeliner at parties, the Clockwork orange. And he knows about his moisturizer. I think he’s trying to head off old age but it’ll catch him.”

Dig Out Your Soul (Sony BMG) out Saturday

Source: www.news.com.au