Noel Gallagher Mark Lawson Talks To...

'Noel Gallagher always loved the Beatles

'and the compliment was returned when George Martin, the Fab Four's producer,

'described Gallagher as the best songwriter of his generation.

'And in sales and acclaim, Oasis became the Beatles of the 1990s.

'Their album Be Here Now was the fastest-selling British album of all time.

'Noel was always in the headlines,

'beating Blur, meeting Blair.

'Oasis split up in 2009

'after violent disagreements between Noel and his brother Liam, the band's singer.

'The senior sibling has begun a solo career with an album and tour

'under the name Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds.'

In a lot of what's written or said about you now, people say post-Oasis or ex-Oasis.

Is that how you see it? Do you see it as leading towards that and away from it?

I wouldn't like to be moving away from Oasis.

It was so brilliant and so big

and meant so much to so many people

that to suddenly just say, "Well, that was then and this is now" would be a bit rude, I think.

I still play some of those songs, cos they're my songs and I wrote them.

And, er...

I enjoyed my time in Oasis

right up until 15 minutes before I walked out of the dressing room and never went back.

I thought it was great. And I still think it's great

and I think what we... what we did

from being just a load of lads on a council estate with some second-hand guitars was incredible.

And the fact that we stayed together so long was a miracle

and I think, you know, I think the records stand up and I think....

You know, I meet people on a regular basis that, you know, go on about Oasis

and it was a big part of people's lives and I'm proud of that.

And when you perform Oasis songs now as a solo performer,

I suppose they are yours because you wrote them, but are you making them yours even more?

Er...

I... Yeah.

Well, I guess, cos I'm a completely different singer than Liam is

and when I'm singing those songs,

I know what those words mean to me and I can deliver them...

..I wouldn't say better, but I can deliver them in the way that they were written.

So I know what Wonderwall is about.

Even if it's about nothing, I know what kind of nothing it's about, you know.

# I don't know how

# I said maybe

# You're gonna be the one that saves me

# And after all

# You're my wonderwall #

Would Liam discuss meanings with you?

-No.

-He just did them?

No, we didn't discuss meaning. No.

No, not once. Not "Who's this about?" or "What's it about?"

It wasn't that kind of band. You know? It wasn't art school

or, you know, "What are you trying to say here, man?" It was nothing like that.

It was, "These are the words." And it would...

He would generally, you know, just sing it, you know.

And then the arguments would start of him saying, "I'm going to sing it like this"

and I'd be like, "Yeah, but it goes like that."

And he'd say, "Well, I'm going to sing it like this" and I'd be like,

"But it goes like that. That's what it goes like."

And we'd get to a place where it was acceptable.

But he never asked what it was about.

-Do you find it easy to write songs?

-I find it easy to write the melody and the music.

That's in me. I don't know where that comes from. It's easy.

I was doing that this morning.

The words, trying to hang the words around the melody I find quite difficult.

I used to struggle with it. I used to get not down about it but I used to get frustrated about it.

And now I don't chase it any more. If it happens, it happens, if it doesn't, it doesn't.

I'm not in any particular rush to write another record.

If I didn't write another song from today onwards,

I would look back and think, "I smashed it, yeah."

But you don't read or write music.

-No, I couldn't read music.

-No.

-Or write music. I don't know anybody that does.

But how do you... So when you're writing a song, how do you put it to... What's the process?

I just play my guitar and I might be playing a set of chords for three months

and I will just be fascinated by the chords and nothing will happen,

and then one day, if I persevere with it enough,

a melody will arrive. And then...

..the lyrics will evolve, er, and then to get a band to play it...

..I come from the school of music, well, we all did in Oasis,

where you would just say, "Right, it goes like this".

I don't know... I know the chord E.

I know quite a few chords, the major chords now and the minor chords,

but when you get into suspended, augmented things and all that,

I find that... I don't know what they all are.

But, yeah, it was more the punk ethic.

It goes like this. Just play along. Copy it.

And psychologically, being a solo performer now and being on stage on your own, is it an easy adjustment?

It's easier than I thought it was going to be. I thought I'd be...

I really thought I'd be a grumpy old man about it

and I'd just be, "Ohh, I'll just play these songs

"and if they like them, they like them, and if they don't, bugger them," do you know what I mean?

But I kind of feel strangely relaxed about it cos I know I'm in control of it.

So if I mess up, I'm only letting myself down.

Whereas when you were in Oasis, if anybody messed up, you're kind of letting everybody else down.

I'm strangely... I'm enjoying it.

# Let's run away to sea

# Forever we'd be free

# Free to spend our whole lives running

# From people who would be

# The death of you and me

# Cos I can feel the storm clouds coming

When Robbie Williams went solo, he just became Robbie Williams,

whereas you've done something kind of in the middle,

you've become Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds,

-which sounds like a band that isn't.

-Yeah.

-Why did you not just become Noel Gallagher?

I didn't think it was showbiz enough.

I thought it was, you know, it's hardly Ziggy Stardust, you know.

But then Robbie Williams isn't, is it?

Well, no, it's not. No, it's not.

But I didn't see my name in lights, you know?

I was passing Shepherd's Bush Empire one night and someone was on and I was thinking, "I just don't see it."

And, er, about a few months later, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac was on the radio and I thought,

"Ah, what if I was called Noel Gallagher's something?"

And then a few weeks after that,

I was listening to Jefferson Airplane's first album

and there was a track on it called High Flying Bird, there you go.

-And it's moveable as a band. It's whoever you play with at any time.

-Yeah.

I mean, if I ever get... I don't envisage having a stable line-up, but if I ever do,

I might drop the Noel Gallagher and be the High Flying Birds. It's a cop-out. I can be one or the other.

It's still got my name on it, you know? So people know it's me.

But I see it as a fluid, changing line-up.

# Someday you might find your hero

# Some say you might lose your mind

# I'm keeping my head down now for the summer

# I'm out of my mind, let me pull the other

# I'm gonna take that tiger outside for a ride

# What a life...

This is, erm, your brother Paul writing about you as a child in Manchester in the 1970s.

-"Noel was a likeable if quietish kid, friendly to the last."

-That's nice of him, isn't it?

"But prone to bouts of moodiness, a trait he's carried on through to adulthood."

-Do you recognise that?

-NOEL LAUGHS

It's nice to know that one's likeable. Yeah, a likeable chap.

Erm, people do say I'm moody.

Yeah. I don't know where that...

You know, I... I do frown a lot.

I don't like smiling. I don't know why. I've not got a nice smile. I don't know.

I can get... I can be moody, yeah. I put it down to being a Gemini.

The account goes on. "He used to love his Action Man,

"taking it everywhere with him when he was younger, like some sort of security blanket.

"He was very military-minded between the ages of three and seven, with loads of toy soldiers and tanks."

I do have an unhealthy obsession with the Second World War, I've got to say.

And that Action Man was a bloody good friend to me in the 70s.

He had moveable eyes. He was a great guy.

-I wonder where he is. I think he ended up in rehab.

-MARK LAUGHS

And this was your mother in the same book about you.

"A bit of a daydreamer and a right storyteller."

Yes. Thanks, Mam. Yeah.

-Does that sound pretty much right?

-Absolutely, yeah. My favourite thing in the world

apart from my wife and children

and cat and all that,

my favourite pastime is starting out the window.

When I get on tour,

I can spend hours and hours just staring out the window,

just thinking of nothing. I love all that.

And a storyteller.

Yeah. Well, here we are.

Well, I mean, the example she gave was that, apparently, for three weeks

you went out to school every morning with your satchel,

came home in the evening, gave her a detailed account of your day,

-even what you'd had for dinner...

-Yeah.

-..and then she got a phone call from the school saying you hadn't been in school for three weeks.

-Yeah.

I had other things going on. I was busy.

-I was busy trying to put a militia together and take over the next...

-Invade Liverpool.

-HE LAUGHS

-Take over the next street.

Yeah. But school I found...

Once you can read and write, really, you know, do you need to learn French?

-You just didn't like school?

-I didn't really think...

I liked drawing. I liked art.

And everybody likes PE and football and all that. And, erm...

French, what's all that about? I don't need to learn French.

And, erm, I was in...

See, what happened, when I joined my secondary school,

for some reason, they put me in the top classes by accident.

So I was in there for the first...

Until there was, like, a holiday, and someone said, "Hang on a minute, he's not supposed to be in here."

And there was another Gallagher, I think it was David Gallagher, and he was with all the oiks.

I don't think he's ever recovered. Probably had a nervous breakdown.

So then when I got down, I was like, "Oh, this is my kind of people here, this mob sat at the back."

And, er, I was just too interested in other things, you know.

And it was very easy not to go to school.

Magic mushrooms. There was a lot of them knocking about. Somebody needs to pick them.

So when you were playing truant, you were just out on the streets all day, were you?

Or round at people's houses whose mams and dads were at work.

It wasn't just me, like some hobo kind of dragging a satchel round,

you know, dreaming of military manoeuvres.

You know, there used to be a few of us, do you know what I mean?

-It was... It was a social thing.

-HE LAUGHS

-Everybody did it.

And there was a few of us.

Strangely enough, we were all obsessed about music and we'd listen to records at people's houses.

But, erm, I went to a massive, like, you know, secondary school

and it was Catholic and... You know.

I felt sorry for my mam, cos she was a dinner lady,

so I'd have to, kind of, come in for dinner

and pretend everything was all right.

And then I'd leave again immediately after dinner, so I was getting well fed.

-So you just went in for meals?

-Yeah. So she'd see me, you see. And she was none the wiser.

And it became quite an art form to get in

without being seen by the teachers and then get out again.

I enjoyed that. I enjoyed that side of it. It was all good. It's all good, clean fun.

-Did she get angry with you?

-Oh, yeah, she went berserk.

Yeah, she went mental. Yeah.

Like I would with my children if you'd found out they weren't going to school,

you'd think, "What are you doing?" do you know what I mean?

I don't... I wouldn't be surprised if it was the lies

or the fact that she was conned and made a fool out of which was what angered her more than anything.

I, erm...

Yeah, that's probably it more than anything.

But I was destined never to need French or metalwork.

I'm sorry, but where we came from,

you were working on the buildings and that was it.

You're not going to be a French metalworker, are you?

And then you were thrown out of school for a quite minor crime.

On the last day, I was expelled, as I remember it.

Which I found quite petty, do you know what I mean? I'm leaving at two.

-Well, there was no point, yeah.

-What's the point?

But the teachers, they didn't really like me that much.

They didn't hate me, but I was always getting the strap,

forever in the headmaster's office getting the strap.

Anything that ever went wrong in that school

was somehow connected to me somewhere down the line.

I'm not saying I was wrongly accused of anything, it was usually connected to me somewhere.

But I was forever doing this. Yeah.

And, er, I think... I don't know, some flour got thrown at a teacher.

-A flour bomb, yeah.

-And, of course...

-Did you throw it?

I'm not sure whether I did. And I'm not just saying this cos my lawyer's not present.

I'm not sure whether I did, but I was definitely there laughing my bollocks off when it happened.

-But I just thought that was a bit petty. I didn't even get a leaving certificate.

-Mm.

-Rubbish.

And did they used to give you the talk,

"You're obviously a very bright boy, you could do something with this" or did they just ignore you?

I've got to say, I wasn't... I didn't show any promise at school in any of the art forms.

-Not even English?

-No, not at all.

I wasn't really interested in anything at school.

I was interested in music, listening to it, but I didn't, you know...

I didn't harbour any ambitions for anything. I wasn't...

I was terrible at spelling and writing and reading.

It wasn't until I left school that I really... I was a late developer, do you know what I mean?

I've never been a child prodigy. I didn't pick up the guitar till late in the day.

I didn't join a band till I was 24. I didn't have a record deal till I was 27.

They all die at 27. I was only just kind of limbering up then.

-The 27 club, yeah.

-Yeah. I was limbering up. So, erm...

Yeah, I just wasn't interested at school. I just didn't...

For some reason, I didn't connect with it at all.

The standard view in books and profiles

is that you were scarred by your childhood and that you've channelled that into song writing.

Is that how you see it?

Er, I wouldn't say I was scarred,

but everybody's childhood makes them what they are.

-And yours was pretty rough, wasn't it?

-Well, it was... The times were rough, do you know what I mean?

It was the 70s and the 80s and it was working-class Manchester and Thatcher and all that.

And we were all on the dole. My dad was on the dole at some points.

My friends were on the dole, as were their dads. It was a pretty bleak time.

And, erm... But it was no different that anybody else's.

And music was an escape for me. Not for any...

I never thought, "Well, I'm going to be a pop star one day."

They didn't come from where we come from. They came from somewhere else.

They were bused into the BBC from somewhere else. They were not from Manchester.

Music was an escape for me. It was kind of, that three minutes would take you somewhere else,

out of the drudgery of cold northern England in November.

You say it was just like anyone else, but your dad is depicted as quite a scary character.

Yeah. I wouldn't say he was a monster.

-I would just say he was a shit dad.

-And violent.

-Yeah, prone to it, yeah.

-And that, you suffered that.

-Yeah.

Yeah.

But you must be affected by that. Cos that's not normal, is it?

Well, I've never sat down on a couch with a psychiatrist until now.

And I don't know. I've never written a song about my childhood,

about any of that. And I wouldn't really...

-I wouldn't really feel comfortable doing it.

-No.

I don't mind talking about it, because I...

I'm all right with it. I dare say that most of the kids on my street,

their upbringing was quite the same, you know.

I think... I mean, you know, we weren't...

I wasn't the model son, do you know what I mean? I was out half the night.

I was sniffing glue and doing mushrooms and all sorts, do you know what I mean?

And robbing stuff and all that. It wasn't like I was, you know, Aled Jones.

-HE LAUGHS

-You know, being leathered for having a great voice.

I was... I was a tricky customer.

I was a bit lippy, you know. And, erm, I don't... You know...

I don't really look back on it and think, "Well, if only..."

It kind of gave me a drive to be... To go somewhere else, I think.

And do you think about your father, or have you put him out of your mind?

No, I don't think of it at all. I don't have any opinion on it.

I don't think bad things or good things or I don't think, "Maybe I should go and see him"

or I don't think, "Maybe I should go and wag my finger at him" and all that. It's his loss, not mine.

The News Of The World, a late newspaper, they tried to put you in contact with him, didn't they?

-They brought him to a hotel.

-Yeah, yeah. Quite a tricky evening.

Yeah. Liam overreacted and went absolutely mental

and I was of the opinion,

I was just like, just ignore them, do you know what I mean? Just ignore them. There's no point...

The party was in full swing and it was a great night

and all of a sudden, it kind of came crashing down.

I don't take anything like that seriously.

I think it's just water off a duck's back to me.

-And you don't know where he is now.

-I know exactly where he is.

He's still living in the house that my mam left him in. He's still there.

He lives about a mile and a half away from where my mam moved us to.

And all my mam's sisters, we all grew up in the same place,

everybody still sees him, it's a very... Nobody cares any more. It's a long time ago.

-But you don't see him, though?

-I don't see him, no, I live in London.

When you became a father yourself, having kids, was that difficult

because you'd never seen a good example of it, had you?

No. I'd never seen a good example of any kind of parenting until I met Sarah,

who is an incredible...

..mother to the children.

I've learnt so much from her because she had great parents.

Her mam and dad have been married for 150 years or something and they're still together.

And, erm...

So she takes that and brings it into that with our children.

Of course, I come from a dysfunctional family so, erm...

I'm good with the kids now, I love it,

but at first, with my older daughter, I was like...

I don't know.

You didn't know how to behave?

-NOEL LAUGHS

-I didn't have the tools instinctively. Fathers don't.

-Mm.

And I wasn't with her mam.

So fathers don't have those instinctive tools.

Women, mothers do.

Or should do, you know.

So, yeah, it was a bit, kind of... It was a bit tricky at the beginning.

But now it's great. I love it.

From what I've read about your mother, she did everything she could for you.

-She looked out for you.

-Yeah. She was...

She's very loyal, my mam, and she would always stand by us

and she never tried to push us to do one thing or the other.

She was just like, "Whatever you do, you have make it happen for yourself.

"No-one's going to give you anything."

I remember playing the guitar at home and, er,

she never said, "Go and get a proper job" or anything like that.

It was just, "If that's what you're happy doing, then be the best at it that you can."

And that was it. She never pushed us into any particular avenues, or you should do this or should do that,

it was just, like, you know, be happy.

She was mortified, I remember the day when I was 21 and I said that I was leaving home.

Just like, "Why?"

I said, "I met this girl, we've got a flat in town."

"OK. Why are you leaving home?" "I'm 21."

"So what? Your brother's 23."

"It's about time though, isn't it?" "No."

They get offended, Irish mams.

But you moved house in the middle of the night once, didn't you? I mean, she just moved you out.

Yeah, when she left me old fella, yeah. Middle of the night. Yeah.

It was, er... It was an undercover operation. Yeah.

I wonder what would've happened if me old fella had come back.

There would have been bedlam.

But she was very, erm...

When I think of those times, she kind of brought us up on our own, really.

And three lads, particularly one of them being Liam, very tricky.

The others one being me and our Paul,

who wasn't as much trouble as me and Liam, but he had his moments.

Yeah. I mean, she's kind of...

She did it, she gave it all up for us, do you know what I mean?

It was by total and utter chance,

I would say it's because she's got great karma,

that two of her children go on to be

two of the biggest rock stars that England ever produced and... You know?

And all that goes with it. All she got was a new garden gate.

-MARK LAUGHS

-Liam offered to buy her a castle somewhere in Alderley Edge.

And the garden gate at the council house had a squeak on it for years.

Changed it. Put a gold number five on it. That was it. Still there.

-She still lives in the same council house.

-Is that all she wanted from you?

Yeah, she's like, one of a family of 11, so she's got seven sisters.

They all live within a two-mile radius of each other.

And she's just who she is and she knows who she is and she's not really...

She doesn't buy into all what goes on down here in London, do you know what I mean?

She's from... She still lives in the same house, doing the same thing.

The same routines. She sees her sisters and her grandkids and she loves it.

-Does your... Has you mother taken sides in the disputes...

-Between me and Liam?

-..between you and Liam?

Erm, no, she doesn't, no.

Like, she furiously will not take sides.

-Furiously will not take sides.

-Which, as a parent, you can see is the proper thing to do.

Of course, of course. That's what parents are. They're neutral referees, aren't they?

I'll be the same with my two lads. I won't take sides.

-Does she ever say, in the way mothers do sometimes, "Can't you two just get along?"

-Of course!

Yeah, she was at my house at Christmas and we had this very conversation.

And it never resolves to anything, do you know what I mean?

She says, "Well, I've said this to Liam, and I've said that to you, and why can't you both just..."

blah, blah, blah. And it's, you know...

I kind of do what all northerners do. Say, "Do you want a cup of tea?"

That sorts everything out up north. Tea? Yes.

And it was a Catholic upbringing. There's a picture of you at your first Holy Communion.

Yeah, went to church for a long time, yeah.

You know, erm, every Sunday.

Until my mam stopped going. I think she'd had enough.

And then we were, like, thank God for that.

Church is a bit mad, isn't it?

But God comes up in the songs quite a lot, or has done.

But it's great imagery, gods and angels is great imagery.

And, you know, my wife is an angel.

My children are angels. Those things are not supposed to be taken literally.

But God is a fascinating concept. You know.

I don't think anyone in their right mind would believe it's a guy with a beard in a one-piece tunic,

living on a cloud, playing a harp.

But seemingly everybody has their own perception of what it is.

I don't know what my perception of it is.

I don't know whether God is within you and it's just...

..your own version of it in your soul or what.

But I do write about it, I do write about the word God a lot,

because it's great to put in a song.

# Cos you're the only

# God that I'll ever need

# I'm holding on and waiting for the moment

# To find me

There lots of theories about the position in a family and the difference it makes.

-You're the middle child.

-Yeah.

-So they're supposed to get neglected and overlooked

and then the youngest one is supposed to be spoilt.

Well, the eldest is always the eldest and the baby is always the baby,

and the one in the middle looks after themselves, so they say.

But I know quite a few middle children.

We're all the same, very self-contained.

Just do it ourselves.

Not really mithered about anything other than just getting on with it.

And was it always difficult between you and Liam from early on?

No. It was only difficult when, er...

..towards...

..from '94, '95, from when the band got famous, really.

There was always a power struggle there.

And before we got a manager and actually signed the record deal...

..all anybody had was my phone number.

So I did all the talking for the band.

And that just carried on.

And maybe the others felt a bit neglected by that.

I can understand that, but, erm...

-You know, what can I say?

-But you didn't fight as kids?

-No.

Five years is a big difference when you're... When I'm 15 and he's ten that's like,

he's just out of short trousers, do you know what I mean?

Now, the difference is nothing.

It doesn't make any difference now, but we didn't fight as children, no.

I shared a bedroom with him for years, he was too busy cadging money off me is what he was doing.

He was perennially borrowing a fiver.

Always. And never got it back.

The two common dreams of young boys are to be a professional footballer and a rock star.

-Did you have both of those?

-Yeah.

The rock star thing was only afterwards.

The footballer, growing up in Manchester...

..that's really all you want to do.

And I would love to have been a footballer,

played for City.

-Were you good?

-No. No, I was...

I was... No, I'm not an athlete.

You didn't like being tackled according to your elder brother.

Right. He also has referred to me as a military genius,

-so I wouldn't take whatever he says with any great... You know?

-Mm.

The other thing that might have happened is you could have ended up as a criminal

because you had your theft charge and probation.

Were you, erm... When that happened, did you feel shame at what had happened?

I felt bad for getting caught.

-What can I say?

-Just that it was dumb.

They were trying to punish you. Did you feel you'd done something...

Yeah, yeah. You knew what you were getting into.

If you go robbing stuff and you get caught, you know you're going to get punished.

-Just glad I didn't go to Borstal.

-It had an effect on you?

-I wasn't a great criminal.

-I was caught, I was nicked pretty early.

-Mm.

And I was like, "It's not for me."

"I haven't got the criminal gene. I'll try something a bit more artistic, I think."

I'm not great at crime.

The musical ambitions, it is said they came from seeing The Smiths on TV, but is that right?

Well, it's a gradual thing with music.

The Beatles have always been there.

Somebody asked me the other day, "When did you first listen to The Beatles?"

I said "When does anybody first listen to The Beatles? They're just always there."

Top Of The Pops was a massive influence on people from my generation.

I went from seeing T-Rex and David Bowie all the way through to the 80s,

and, you know, appearing on it,

so it's a huge deal for me, or was a huge deal for me, Top Of The Pops.

Well, you know, it's like, The Sex Pistols I was into, I was just too young for them,

but the first band that I'd seen and had a connection with was The Jam

on The Old Grey Whistle Test.

And after that it was The Smiths and New Order

and they were from Manchester and that was mind-blowing. And then, er...

But the first band that I'd seen that I thought, "I can do that" was The Stone Roses.

And I thought I could do it. And then it took off from there, really.

# Maybe

# I don't really wanna know

# How your garden grows

# I just want to fly

And in that spell where you were doing various jobs, working for your dad and his concrete company

and then other jobs, were you one of those people who thought that you would get out of it,

that you would make something of it, or that that was it?

I never had any ambitions because it just didn't happen to people like me.

There was nobody like me on TV, so how could it possibly happen?

Where I come from in Burnage, I was the only person

in the whole of that area,

seemingly, that was interested in anything other than City.

And I used to go in... When everyone else was, kind of, experimenting with cars and drinking lager,

I was going into town to see bands and stuff like that,

and they thought I was a weirdo, do you know what I mean?

And, er, a chance meeting took place one night

when I was at a Stone Roses gig

and I noticed there was a guy on the balcony with a Walkman. Remember those?

-Mm.

-Fascinating things.

And there was a red light on and he was bootlegging the gig and I went up and I asked him,

cos the Stone Roses hadn't put an album out then,

I loved them and I needed to hear those songs, kind of thing.

And I asked him for a tape.

And he was a guitarist, we got talking, he asked what other bands I liked,

-and I said this band Inspiral Carpets. Turns out he was the guitarist.

-Graham Lambert.

He was Graham Lambert, yeah. And I didn't recognise him and I'd seen them a lot.

I'd been to see them. So he said that their singer at the time was leaving

and would I audition to be the singer because I knew the songs.

And I said, "Yeah. Wow. Great."

And I didn't get it.

Obviously. I couldn't really sing till about four years ago,

and I was only 21 at the time, but they asked me to be their roadie.

And then that's where it kind of took off for me.

Then I met... Cos where I came from, nobody was in the music game.

Nobody at all. Nobody came from Burnage, no-one.

And, er, then I just met...

It's where I met Mark Coyle, on the tour bus. He produced our first album.

It's where I met...

..loads of people. And once you're round like-minded people, that's when it starts.

And then when I was sound-checking equipment, and, er...

..then I had, I wouldn't call it a dream, but I thought,

"I could easily do this. I've just got to find the right people."

And is that when you started writing songs?

No. I started writing songs maybe before that but not only...

You know, I started playing the guitar. There was a guitar in our house behind a door.

Still nobody's got to the bottom of why that guitar was there, cos nobody could play it,

unless my mam had a secret bluegrass thing. I don't know.

And I used to get grounded a lot,

for robbing and stuff and not being at school,

and I learned to play Joy Division basslines on one string and then it went to two strings, and then...

The first thing I could play was House Of The Rising Sun.

So once you can play a few chords, the next thing is to write a song.

But I didn't really start writing songs with any seriousness until I joined Oasis.

So when you were roadie for Inspiral Carpets on a US tour, you came back, it was Liam that got you into the...

Well, it wasn't in the States, it was a European tour, it was in Munich,

and I called home, the weekly phone call.

Asked my mam how everything was.

And I asked how Liam was.

Maybe the only time I've ever asked how Liam was ever in a phone call.

And she said, "Oh, he's out rehearsing."

And I was kind of, "What? Rehearsing what?"

She said, "He's in a band and he's the singer."

And I laughed. I couldn't believe it. You know?

All those years I'd spent sharing a room with him

and I'd be playing the guitar and he'd be sat staring at me going,

"Lend us a fiver. Lend us a fiver. Lend us a fiver. Lend us a fiver." I'd say, "Get out!"

Fiver! And, erm,

never dawned on either of us that, you know...

And I was like, "He's a singer in a band?"

By the time I got back to Manchester,

they were doing a gig, and I went to see them and I thought they had something.

They had a couple of songs and I thought... I thought they were good.

And I was shocked at him on stage

and I was like, "Wow! Doesn't look out of place," you know.

And, er, one thing led to another, they asked me to be their manager.

I was like, "I don't want to be a manager."

And, erm, they badgered me into going to rehearse with them for a while.

And then one Sunday, I just went, you know, and...

..joined in. And the rest is history.

Well, we have to talk about some of that history.

It was control. I mean, even from early on, it was about who would be in charge.

Well, there is, that's a great story and we all might have played that up at the beginning.

But I... Our first ever gig, there is a cassette of it going round somewhere,

it's not all my songs, it's mostly their songs and maybe two of mine.

And, erm...

But I got the bug pretty quickly. When I, when I, er, heard...

..my songs being played back to me by this band in a room...

..something happened, and then I started to write furiously.

And the next day I was like, "Try this."

And then I got on such a mission with it

that it quickly became apparent that, you know,

I was writing so many songs, I became the songwriter.

But there is the myth that I went in and said, "Before we go any further,

"I want you to know that I'll be writing all the songs."

That was a great story at the time, but not strictly true.

And everybody was quite prepared to let me do it at the time.

But it is one of the fault lines, isn't it? Because in a lot of these splits in bands,

there just is this division between the songwriter, or songwriters, and the rest,

because, for a start, they make a lot more money.

-Mm.

-And it's very hard to avoid that in bands, isn't it?

Er, I guess. You'd have to speak to the others, do you know what I mean?

Saying that, yeah, but in my... What I will say to that is

I never said to anybody else, "You are not allowed to write songs, this is my thing."

Nobody was bothered up until 1999.

Or year 2000 when Liam wrote his first song.

They'd have done me a favour if they'd wrote some B-sides.

The third album would've been a lot better.

Another of the great stories from the early days which will be in when they make the movie about Oasis

is that the 1993 gig that you played and Alan McGee, Creation Records, came to it,

-that you almost didn't play that gig.

-Yeah.

-That is true, is it?

-It is true.

The true story is we shared a rehearsal space in a club called the Boardwalk in Manchester

with an all-girl band called Sister Lover.

So one of the girls, her name was Debbie Turner,

was either an ex-girlfriend or a girlfriend of Alan McGee's

and she had a gig supporting a band that Alan McGee had just signed called 18 Wheeler,

all the way up in Glasgow.

Why we thought it was a great idea to go all the way to Glasgow...

..I've still not got to the bottom of that.

But she said, "Oh, come up and play with us."

It wasn't her gig, it was someone else's gig. So anyway, by the time we get there,

they hadn't got a license for three bands or something, they could only have two.

But we'd come all the way. Now, legend has it that we walked into the promoter's office,

or the manager's office, and closed the door behind us, and said,

"We will raise this building to the floor if you don't let us play."

Anybody who's been up into Glasgow...

You don't get away with that kind of shit up there. So there was none of that.

We kind of said, "Look, come on, man, we've come all this way."

And he said, "You can have 20 minutes as the doors open."

Luckily for us, Alan McGee turned up early.

And we played the 20 minutes.

And I remember walking off stage, the band were still playing,

we used to do a version of I Am The Walrus by The Beatles,

and it would go on for ages, and I remember walking off stage.

And I just bumped into Alan McGee and he said, "What's your band called?"

I said, "Oasis." And he said, "Have you got a record deal?"

I said, "No." He said, "Do you want one?" I said, "Yes." That was it.

# Hey you, up in the sky

# Learning to fly

# Do you know why?

# Do you think you know?

-Were you ever suspicious of record companies or management?

-No.

I was always of the fact that we should get signed to the biggest record label,

whoever they are, get the most money as possible.

I was very confident in our, in our band.

I was very confident in the songs that I was writing.

And I thought the record label and what they can give to us is really irrelevant

because once it's out there, it's out there and it'll be unstoppable.

I firmly believed that. I believed it.

Everybody else said the words but I actually believed it.

When, erm... 93 and 94 and I said we were going to be the biggest band in the world,

-people did kind of go...

-HE CHUCKLES

-"Wow." You know?

I was absolutely 100 percent positive that it was going to happen.

Was it a complication that either of you could have sung those songs?

-No, I couldn't sing then.

-Right.

-I wasn't interested.

-Mm.

I started to sing by default because Liam, you know,

was a bit erratic in his time-keeping sometimes.

I put it like that, nicely, you know.

And, er, I'd sing the odd B-side

and I gradually grew into it and gradually began to love it, you know?

And then towards the end of Oasis, round about 2005 time,

became good at it. It took me a long time but I found my voice, do you know what I mean?

It wasn't something that came naturally to me or it wasn't an obsession of mine.

I did it because...

..Liam needed a break for some reason, you know, halfway through the gig.

"Rest my voice," you know, like Pavarotti.

Although he wasn't going to the side and gargling honey and lemon,

he was having a cigar or something, smoking a pipe.

Yeah, it's kind of something that just crept up on me. I like it.

It's a great thing to learn to sing, amazing.

Another huge stage in the story was the whole Blur versus Oasis thing.

Was that manufactured by journalists and PR people or was it genuine for you?

You know, in honesty, and the truth is this, it was manufactured by the NME and...

..people in Blur's camp, who moved their single to coincide with ours.

And what really annoyed us at the time is everybody blamed it on us

because we were seen as media manipulators.

That's what annoyed me at the time.

Looking back on it now, it was brilliant.

Things like that don't happen any more. It was on News At Ten!

And it was great.

The episode...

..where the bands were slagging each other off was unnecessary because we all kind of had a...

..a certain amount of respect for each other, do you know what I mean?

I guess we were all too drunk or too high to say otherwise.

But I make no bones about it, I revelled in the fact of slagging other bands off.

It was built up by a lot of people into a class thing,

that you, Oasis, working class, versus Blur, middle class.

It was even... There were whole articles saying that whether you preferred one band to the other

revealed what class you were. Were you ever into all that? The class thing?

Class warfare?

I might have been a bit more militant when I was on the dole.

Not really. But with that whole Blur/Oasis thing, it was the media's wet dream.

You know, it was like we couldn't be any more contrasting.

There's these lot from Manchester, and there's these lot from Colchester

and they went to art school, and they were robbing shit.

It's kind of like... They've both got singles out.

We all sold a lot of records and became wealthy off the back of it. So I'm not moaning about it now.

But I met Damon recently, a couple of months ago.

And I hadn't seen him for years and years, maybe 15 years.

And we literally bumped into each other in a nightclub.

And we had a beer and we kind of had a bit of a laugh about it,

it was like, "Wasn't it... It was great, wasn't it?"

And we were bemoaning the state of music now

and how things like that don't get on the News At Ten any more.

You said in this interview that you were out of your head for quite a bit of the 90s.

Is that inevitable? It happens to so many people in the music business.

It's part of the game. It's part of the game.

I don't want to... You shouldn't...

..glorify it, because evidently people get messed up.

Do you know what I mean?

But it's part of the game, and it was part of the game that I was more than willing to get involved in.

Free drugs!

Free! You don't even have to pay for them.

-Do you regret it at all?

-No, cos I came out the other side.

But, you know, I was wise enough... to come out the other end

and once I'd done it all, it's like, this is bullshit.

I'm glad I did it but I'm glad I don't do it, you know what I mean?

One of the things which is... One of your jobs was to predict, in effect, what the hits would be,

that you have these songs and you have the album, what the single will be.

Did you generally know, did you have an instinct for that?

I lost it for a while, yeah.

I'm good at it now. I'm good at it now.

-I would...

-Wonderwall, Don't Look Back In Anger, you knew basically that those were hits?

-Yeah.

Yeah, I know enough about music,

and I've got enough records and read enough music magazines,

and I was obsessed about it enough from the age of 13, whatever it was,

to know when I wrote that song, Live Forever,

I knew that in the canon of songs,

not just mine, in anybody's, that's a great song.

And I'm big-headed enough to say it, as well, do you know what I mean? Cos it's a fact.

And Wonderwall and Don't Look Back In Anger,

and all the other number one singles, yeah.

For a while I lost interest in it, around about the time of...

Between Be Here Now and Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants, I was in a different place with it.

I'd kind of... My...

My passion for music had gone somewhat and I was in a different place, I wasn't bothered.

It was just like doing it for the sake of it, you know?

But in the early days and now, yeah.

# So Sally can wait

# She knows it's too late

# As we're walking on by

# My soul slides away

# Don't look back in anger

# I heard you say

The huge gigs, Knebworth and Maine Road, which had obvious huge associations for you

as Manchester City's ground at that time,

the sense, the power you had over that crowd and those huge crowds, were you ever frightened by that?

-No.

-Or was it just exhilaration?

I don't know. I don't get stage fright.

I get excitement which is a different thing.

I never... You read stories about people throwing up before they go onstage.

What's all that about?

No, they're there to see you.

They want you to be brilliant.

Half of them are out of their mind anyway.

They wouldn't know if you were singing out of tune or playing out of time,

even if they watched it back on a video.

No, we could play. We could do it.

Once you know you can do it, it's fine.

None of us in that band were shrinking violets.

Liam wasn't a wallflower. He thought he was the greatest thing since sliced cheese.

I thought I was the greatest thing since freeze-dried noodles in a plastic container.

And, er, yeah, we knew we were good.

And walking out on there is just like, that's it. That is it.

It doesn't get any better than that, and the stadiums and all that...

I prefer stadiums than small gigs. Stadiums are an incredible spectacle.

When I'm on a stage, I'm watching 70,000 people on a night out.

And I tell you this, it is an unbelievable thing when all that crowd are bouncing at the same time

to a song that you wrote 10, 15 years ago.

It's an amazing thing.

# You gotta roll with it

# You gotta take your time

# You gotta say what to say

# Don't let anybody get in your way

# Cos it's all too much for me to take

-Meeting Tony Blair at Number 10. Do you regret that?

-No.

1997 it was, I believe.

I'd only signed off the dole four years earlier.

And I arrived at 10 Downing Street in a Rolls Royce.

I laughed all the way there, thinking...

.."What a trip. What an absolute trip this is."

The Labour party were only too willing to reach out to the artistic community.

Well, they were using you, weren't they?

Using me for what? To get into power. Great. And to bring in the minimum wage. Well, you are welcome.

-MARK LAUGHS

-You know, and they were reaching out to the artistic community

and Alan McGee got involved with them.

And, you know, he said, "They want to meet you." And I was like, "And why not?"

Of course they do. Why wouldn't they want to meet me?

And he said there was some do going on.

And I knew I was going to cop a load of flack for it, going there.

I wasn't going there thinking I'm better than anybody else or, you know...

I'm only here because I'm me. I can't help that. You know?

I'm very interested in what you said, thinking about Oasis, because it's commonly written that

it was always going to blow at some point and the tensions were always there from the beginning.

But you suggested they weren't, that it only got seriously tricky later on.

Yeah, the mid, yeah.

But it was never going to end like REM have ended,

round a table, all amicable and say, "Yeah, we really should call it a day."

It was always going to end in a fight of some description. Everybody was aware of that.

We all wanted it to last forever. I certainly did.

But I was always aware that, when it came to it, that one of us

would eventually, you know,

say, "F you and you and you and you."

It just happened to be me. It could well have been Liam.

It's not something I... You can't live your life with regrets like that. It was a great trip.

I think maybe it was inevitable that I would walk out.

Cos I've got pretty... I've got a pretty long fuse and thick skin until the day that I haven't.

And then it's like, "No, no, no, no. I'm out of here."

-And without going blow by blow, that final, the final encounter, 2009.

-The final round.

Yeah. What was it that took you over the edge?

HE LAUGHS

Well, it was a gradual thing that had gone on for most of that tour.

It was just a lot of personal insults,

but not to my face, do you know what I mean?

And my missus was getting brought into it.

Through no fault of her own.

It just felt, "This is all really unnecessary,

"I'm going to do everybody a favour by leaving."

But the final straw was, he slung a guitar around the dressing room

and it's dangerous, do you know what I mean?

And in the end it was like, "You know what?

"Nobody's enjoying this." Do you know what I mean?

I do regret not doing the gig. We only had two gigs left,

I could've just done the gigs and gone away and cooled down a little bit.

But we're not... We're Mancunians, you know?

There is something quite special about walking out.

It was, presumably, pretty emotional to walk out, was it?

Erm...

Well, yeah, it's a big decision. I knew... I walked...

Liam was very, very wound up.

And angry.

And, er,

I was quite calm in the dressing room, which served to wind him up even more.

If you're furious with someone and someone's quite calm, that annoys you, doesn't it?

It annoys my wife a great deal.

But when I left the dressing room, I left the site and sat in the car for five minutes.

I knew that if I'd said to the driver, "Drive," that was it, the band was over.

And that was a long five minutes.

And I was with my security guard who was sat in the front.

There was a driver, I was sat in the back and he turned round and said, "What we doing, staying or going?"

And I just said, "Fuck it. Let's go." And that was it.

And I never thought about the aftermath.

I never thought about...

From that second, I'd left and that was it.

And it was just a case of, you know, erm...

..going on holiday and taking some time off and seeing what it is I wanted to do.

And that was it. I never thought about the rest of the lads.

I never thought about the people in the field waiting for us to go on. We were due on in five minutes.

I never thought about them or the crew or what it meant to people

or the legal storm that it would bring after all that.

I never thought of any of that. I've quit and that's it, I'm gone.

-Did you cry?

-No. I only cry at football matches.

Yeah, I shed a tear when we beat United in the semifinal of the FA Cup

and when my children were born, but crying, that's for girls, isn't it?

-HE LAUGHS

-Final question on Liam, you'll be relieved to know,

but do you exchange Christmas cards and texts, or is it total silence?

No, we never did. We're not that kind of family.

We seen each other on a regular basis in the band,

and, you know, when you're not in the band, you're spending time with your family.

So there's no contact?

No. No.

None of any significance.

Much to my mother's disgust, I have to say. But there you go.

We're big boys now and all that. She can't tell us what to do forever, can she?

Do you accept that that's it, probably?

No, of course it won't be the last time I'm ever going to speak to him. Of course I'm going to speak to him.

It's just I'm busy.

I'm doing my thing, he's doing his thing.

There's no need

to get involved in any of that at the moment.

Do you know what I mean?

Do you accept that nothing you do can be as big as Oasis?

Absolutely. Nothing anybody does can be as big as Oasis.

Not Coldplay, not Kasabian, not The Arctic Monkeys,

in this country, not U2, not any of them.

It's as simple as that.

It's not only me that lives up to that legacy, it's everybody else who's got to live it down.

We were the last. We were the greatest.

The end.

Finally, looking back at your career, the creation of Oasis,

you were ambitious and you were driven and you went out and you worked very hard for it.

Are you still ambitious or are you satisfied now?

In the early days, I was ambitious that we were going to become the biggest band in the world,

and for a brief point, we were the biggest band in the world.

We sold the most tickets and sold the most records, ergo, the biggest band in the world.

Done it then, and then it was just like, I just want to enjoy it now. You know?

But I've never been one, or wasn't in the early days,

for sticking it out and seeing what happens.

I was single-minded in we were going to take it to the top,

cos what could be worse, I felt, than having all this potential...

..and it just come to nothing like the Libertines or something like that, you know?

Potentially could've been one of the greats but there's drugs and booze,

and can't be arsed, just blew it, do you know what I mean?

I was, erm,

I was determined that we weren't going to blow it.

And I've got... I've had this reputation since the band split up

of being called a control freak and all that kind of thing.

And I was. And I controlled them all the way to Knebworth, to Wembley,

and all the way to the top of the charts.

So you're welcome.

-Noel Gallagher, thank you.

-Thank you very much.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

# Tonight

# I'm a rock and roll star

# Tonight

# I'm a rock and roll star

# Tonight #

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