“He’s at home eating tofu and having a face peel. That’s posh people for you.”
That was Liam Gallagher explaining why his brother Noel was a no-show last night at the London premiere of Supersonic, the tasty Oasis documentary which was being beamed live to 380 cinemas worldwide including Cineworld in Dublin’s Parnell Centre.
He was joined, though, for a post-screening Q+A by a goateed Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs and director Mat Whitecross who pointed out that it was just two-and-a-half years between Oasis coming off the dole and them headlining to 750,000 people at Knebworth.
“The first two or three years of a band’s existence are always interesting because that’s when they’re unique,” said Whitecross, explaining why the film ends with those epic 1996 gigs, which 4% of the UK population applied to be at.
“It’s half-time,” Liam joked. “They can do another one, The Decline Of Oasis, which will at least as - if not more - entertaining.”
He mightn’t have wanted to go to the pictures with Our Kid, but there’s lots of Noel in the documentary.
“The plan was, ‘We’re going to get rid of Phil Collins and Sting!’” he recalls.
Executive Produced by Noel, Liam and Asif Kapadia who enjoyed Oscar-winning success last time out with Amy, the film is jam-packed with archive footage including the legendary King Tut’s gig that lead to them being signed to Creation by Alan McGee.
“There wasn’t supposed to be any record of that night, but we put the word out on the internet and heard back from a Japanese tourist who was a massive Creation fan and had travelled up to Glasgow for the night with a video camera,” Whitecross enthused.
It cost £25 a man for Oasis to hire a Ford Transit and get to King Tut’s but, boy, was it a prudent investment.
They may have been the hottest rock ‘n’ roll band on the planet during the ‘90s – interestingly, there’s zero mention of Blur and their ‘Roll With It’/‘Country House’ chart battle – but Noel was guilty of sporting some of the worst patterned jumpers this side of the Noel of the Edmonds variety.
The Fashion Police should also have been called when Liam sprouted his Grizzly Adams facial hair.
“Noel’s got lots of buttons and Liam’s got lots of fingers,” was a member of the management company’s brilliant way of summing up the fraternal friction that ultimately did for Oasis.
From Noel smacking Liam round the head with a cricket bat (howzat!) to the younger Gallagher developing the habit of walking off stage when he thought his big brother was usurping him as frontman, the animosity was as real as the obvious love between them.
Noel’s revisionist claims that Oasis was “his” band are blown out of the water by the footage of them happily playing a Manchester new band night without him. On hearing that Inspiral Carpets had sacked Noel as their drum tech, Liam initially invited him to become their manager but following a jam session with the rest of the lads he got the lead guitar gig.
Adding plenty of wit, wisdom and maternal insight is Peggy Gallagher whose Mayo accent is as strong as when she moved over to Manchester in 1962 and “cried for six months” because she was homesick.
The documentary doesn’t shy away from talking about her abusive husband, Tommy Gallagher, who, as Noel solemnly notes, “beat the talent into me.”
There were roars last night in Cineworld when audio of Dave Fanning interviewing Noel preceded a mass singalong version of ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ in The Point circa 1996. We also get treated to a sample of Liam’s extremely dodgy Darby O'Bono accent, and reflections on how Oasis were as much an Irish band as a British one.
Other highlights include a Crimewatch-style reconstruction of the events that lead to Oasis being arrested on board an Amsterdam-bound ferry and deported back to Blighty; their Whisky A Go Go debut descending into crystal meth-fuelled farce, and Noel nonchalantly explaining how he wrote 'Supersonic' while the others were having a Chinese.
In selected cinemas on October 7 and shops/digital platforms on October 31, Supersonic is, to use current youth parlance, whopper!