Noel Gallagher in '11: "The first two Oasis albums were a complete and utter dictatorship, and they’re the best records we ever made"

'11:

After Oasis ended in a flurry of kung-fu kicks and punches, Noel Gallagher went away and quietly made the first High Flying Birds album, which is why in October we met at Backline, the famous rehearsal space near Tower Bridge in London. Halfway through the interview, someone from management came in and asked us if we wouldn’t mind stepping out for a few minutes. When our chat resumed, it’s fair to say that Noel was in a fouler. It was only afterwards that we discovered he’d just been informed that Liam was suing him for libel.

“The first two Oasis albums were a complete and utter dictatorship, and they’re the best records we ever made. Democracies are bollocks; they don’t really work. British bands generally have two people driving them, and two or three people in the passenger seats. In Oasis we tried to do something different – I wrote one half of the album, they’d write the other half. We’d try to make it concise and have a narrative but eventually you’d run into a brick wall. One song would never quite run into the next and the balance was all wrong. We got it right once on Don’t Believe The Truth but there was too much compromise and trying to keep everybody in the band happy. Oasis in its essence was me doing the writing and Liam doing the singing. As the years progressed, I wrote less and he sang less and then it became something else.”

“Oasis was responsible for everything we had – the kids’ schooling, the house you live in, your wife’s wardrobe, the whole fucking lot worked backwards from the band. I was always aware of that and tried to act in as responsible and professional a manner as possible. Well, after I’d knocked the cocaine on the head that is. I don’t think I’d have been up for any ‘Young Entrepreneur of the Year’ awards prior to that!”

“I went back into the studio about six or seven months after Oasis broke up. This is the first time anything in my life has gone according to plan – me and the missus wanted another baby, so it was, ‘Right, I’ve got to get the album done and dusted before this possible bundle of joy comes along.’ It’s ten past three on the first day of recording, I’m having a cup of tea while a drum-track’s being put down, the phone rings and it’s Sara saying: ‘Guess who’s pregnant?’ I was like, ‘Not me mam?’ No, it was more, ‘Wow, here we go again!’ I got all the recording finished in nine months and then had six months listening to it whilst changing nappies. When it came to the mixing I knew exactly how I wanted it to sound, so I didn’t feel the pressure to deliver that some other people felt on my behalf.

“That’s totally different to Oasis where I always had the big picture in mind – ‘What’s the first song we’re going to play when we come out live on stage?; that’s going to be the thing and the lights are going to look like this.’ This time round I wasn’t thinking, ‘How are we going to get a brass band on tour with us? That’s going to be fucking tricky!’”

“I enjoyed the whole Battle of Britpop thing for a while, and then it became so fucking all consuming. It’s like, ‘I’ve sold 15 million albums and no one’s asked about that. I’m still talking about this chimney sweep from Colchester.’”

“I saw the Queen over in Dublin and thought, ‘At fucking last, common sense has prevailed.’ The thing about the royals is that they’re born into it. They’ve not actually decided any of this shit. I wouldn’t say that anyone actually fucking loathes the Queen. They might bitterly oppose what she represents, but she’s quite a likable old dear – who won’t be giving me a knighthood now for calling her that!”

“Bono’s like Liam – always aggressively pursuing his muse and bigging up U2. The Edge and me, on the other hand, are the Yoda figures at the back going, ‘Alright it will be.’ If Oasis have been out of the limelight for two years I never panic ‘cause I know what’s coming next. Liam on the other hand…”

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