Noel Gallagher Rolls With It

While the fraternal circus that was Oasis is now behind him, Noel Gallagher has found there's still plenty of surprises on the road. "Well, the world is a vastly ever-changing place inhabited by f...wits," he says sagely down the line from Los Angeles.

"You deal with them more often than not. The world is a freaky place, I like it. If only people didn't carry guns, though."

He makes a good point. Only days previously a gunman had gone on a shooting rampage up the street from where Gallagher was staying. The aftermath was not what the singer/songwriter expected.

"F...ing hell, it was crazy. The weird thing is, about an hour later, it's like nothing's happened. People are just kind of like 'Did you hear that shooting before . . . oh yeah'. What do you mean, 'Oh yeah'. Seven people got f...ing shot in the street and some guy got his head blown off by the cops. And it was like nothing had happened. I mean, I like this country but really, what the f...?"

Gallagher is on the long and winding road touring in support of a new album, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, his debut solo LP and first release since Oasis broke up in 2009. Almost to his surprise, it seems to be going very well.

"You wouldn't expect me to say anything other than it's been great," Gallagher says. "But I thought that I would be very frustrated and uneasy and awkward and a bag of nerves and very dissatisfied with it. I have to say that I'm taking to it like a duck to water. I find it very relaxing, walking onstage. I'm more at ease with this than I was with the Oasis thing, to be honest, because I know there's not somebody on the other side of the stage actively going out there ready to f… my s… up. I'm kind of just getting on with it; do you know what I mean?"

The High Flying Birds album came several months after the release of Beady Eye's Different Gear, Still Speeding, the debut album from brother Liam and the remains of Oasis.

Typically, the split with Liam was bitter, with threats of defamation suits floating around since. In terms of competition with his vocalist brother, it seems there isn't any on Noel Gallagher's part - his own album was released simply because he'd completed it.

"I don't really get that fussed about not being in the limelight. I've got enough faith in my own ability as a songwriter to just take my time and it was put out when it was ready.

"After Oasis finished people started asking me immediately what I was going to do next and I said 'Nothing, I'm not doing anything. I'm just gonna sit around my house, smoke some cigarettes, drink tea, watch some football. I'm gonna annoy the f... out of my wife, and I'll see where that takes us."

It has taken him to a pretty good place, though you can certainly tell from listening to High Flying Birds that Gallagher was the guy who wrote the songs in Oasis - both a compliment and a criticism of the album. He writes constantly, eschewing the notion of writing projects to order.

"I've written a fair few songs in my life and I've got a fair idea when something is good," Gallagher says.

"It didn't feel as though any of the songs I'd written or was recording were not working. I never thought 'People won't get it'. I don't know, maybe I'm just an arrogant bastard."

Nor did Gallagher have a problem writing songs that weren't being sung by Liam. Many guitarist/songwriters write with their lead singer in mind, but Gallagher has always been uncomfortable with that scenario.

"No, no, no, no," he stresses. "Even when I wrote songs for Oasis I never really wrote with Liam in mind. I wrote the song; I didn't write for the singer. I was writing a song. If he couldn't sing it, I would. That was it.

"To be honest, from the day I got into the studio I never really thought about Oasis. I only ever think about it when people mention it in interviews.

"When I'm onstage singing (Oasis songs) Talk Tonight or Don't Look Back in Anger...or even when people are putting Oasis CDs in front of me to sign, I'm never sitting there going (sullenly) 'Oh, what a great band it was. Those were happy days'," he says.

"That was then, this is now. We can't go back to then. So I'm just living in the now, really."

On tour Gallagher has played the majority of his solo album, along with songs from his old band, in roughly 50/50 proportion. As time rolls on, the fans remain loyal to the man and - more importantly to him - his songs.

"Well...I don't think it's blind loyalty. I don't think people like music just because they like who you are. I mean, I love Paul McCartney, but I'm not having the Frog Chorus," Gallagher laughs.

"You'd have to ask them individually, but it seems to me, from my lofty position on stage, that they are as equally accepting of the High Flying Birds' music as they are of the older stuff.

"The show is about the songs. I have to believe that or there's no point in me being there, because I've got f...-all to say and I've got no moves. If you've not really come to listen to the music then you're having a s... night out, to be honest."

Source: au.news.yahoo.com