Oasis Nearly Split

Noel tells 6 Music how close they came during hard years for the band
10 October 2008 - Noel Gallagher has been telling 6 Music how Oasis nearly split up during a difficult period at the end of the 90's.

Speaking to Steve Lamacq, the guitarist revealed that the band had nearly thrown the towel in and gone under a different name.

He said: "We had a serious discussion after Bonehead and Guigsy left: 'Should we fold this now and just go under a different name?' We were seriously thinking about it.

"But your manager gets you at a moment of weakness when you're hungover and says:

'You've built this thing up after ten years and you're just going to throw it away and start again?' And we were like, 'No, we're just thinking about it.'"

Despite the temptation, he says the new blood in the band soon helped them get their priorities right:

"When Gem and Andy joined they were like: 'F*ck that, we want to be in 'Oasis'! We don't want to be in 'Sweaty Bogeys' or anything like that…!' And it was like: 'You've got a point!'"

But despite the decision to keep going, Noel says that whole period was a real low point for the band.

He said: "There were years of a real total lack of inspiration; Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants, that whole period. In my defense, Creation was collapsing around our ears, Bonehead and Guigsy were thinking about leaving, although we didn't know it at the time.

"The fact that we were all getting divorced, that we made a record anyway is quite staggering."

According to Noel, the band was in one big comedown from the hedonism and success of their early years, but didn't have the sense to stop and take stock:

"We had kind off come out of that whole thing with the 90s, I was trying to get off drugs and everyone was doing different things and everyone was becoming distant from each other. I think we put records out because we didn't know what to do.

"We really should have gone away after Knebworth and done what U2 did after the Joshua Tree. To be that you've got to be cool. We were all addicted to the attention and the mania and the egos.

"After Knebworth everyone was like: 'What are you going to do?'. Like an idiot you say: 'We're going to come back next year and do five nights!' But what we should have done was gone away and had a long holiday and analyse this.

"But it's all part of the story."

You can listen again to Steve Lamacq's interview with Noel, as well as other interviews with Liam, Gem and Andy Bell in the links below.

Hear Liam's interview
Hear Andy's interview
Hear Gem's interview
Hear Noel's interview

Source: www.bbc.co.uk