Okay, confession time. At the height of my punk rockerdom, I was still religiously listening to Mike Oldfield’s hippietastic Tubular Bells. I never cared much for The Smiths nor Nirvana (the Foos on the other hand...) I regard Atomic Kitten’s ‘Whole Again’ as a work of Wilson-ian pop genius. I went to an East 17 gig and un-ironically enjoyed every second of it. Nary a week passes when I don’t furiously air guitar along to Mötley Crüe’s Too Fast For Love album. And perhaps most contentiously of all, I consider Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds output to be vastly superior to Oasis.

There, I’ve finally said it... Before you dip your pen in vitriol and write a strongly worded letter to Mr. Stokes, sir, I’d ask you to feast your ears on Council Skies, Noel’s fourth solo flight of fancy, which from plaintive start (‘I’m Not Giving Up Tonight’) to stomping glam finish (‘We’re Gonna Get There In The End’) is a 10/10 affair with hooks as barbed as they come, melodies that swoop and soar… and then swoop and soar some more and his most confessional lyrics to date.

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds at St. Anne's Park. Copyright: Riley Glaister-Ryder/hotpress.com

Add in the ace remixes by David Holmes, Pet Shop Boys and Robert Smith, more of whom anon, that are to be found on the Deluxe Edition and another of those shiny Ivor Novello awards will likely be heading Noel’s way shortly.
While everything creatively is hunky dory, January’s sad news is that after twelve years of marriage, Noel and Sarah Macdonald are getting divorced.

To what extent that informs Council Skies is again something we’ll come to later after Noel has regaled us with tales of the legendary musos who’ve given him a dig out on Council Skies. No prizes for guessing that one of them is his old Mancunian mucker Johnny ‘Fucking’ Marr.

“If I didn’t invite him, he’d just turn up at the studio anyway,” Noel chuckles over a glass of sparkling water – god, how things have changed! – in a plush Dublin hotel suite. “No, it’s always a pleasure to have Johnny play on all of my albums. I say to him at the end of every session we do: ‘If you keep picking up the phone, I’m going to keep calling you.’ As I’m getting the songs together, I’ll be earmarking ‘em going, ‘Maybe I’ll get Johnny to do that…’ Luckily, he loves my stuff and the chance to hang out.

“When I’ve narrowed it down to two or three, I’ll ring him and fix a date. He never wants you to send him the tracks beforehand. Instead, he arrives, makes a cup of tea and says, ‘Right, what have you got?’ He stands and listens to it first-time with his guitar in his hand, works out the key and lets it happen. With this album, we’ve got all those great moments where Johnny’s feeling his way into it on film.”

Johnny Marr, 2018.

Which has mainly been shot by his daughter Anaïs who, in between modelling assignments, has proven to be quite the cinematographer.

“It was the first time I got to spend every day in the studio capturing what my dad does,” she reflects. “And let me tell you, he really does make it look that easy!”

Asked whether he gives Mr. Marr any direction, a shocked Noel replies: “Me, with my arms folded, telling Johnny Marr how to play guitar? I wouldn’t fucking dare! I normally go into another room while he’s doing his thing but keep the door open so I can marvel at the magic. We have this telepathic thing whereby we both know at exactly the same time when he’s nailed it, which usually is no more than a couple of takes. Johnny is the most instinctive player I’ve ever met.”

Does Noel still get starstruck being around him?

“Not now because I’ve known him for thirty years, but I do buzz off other people who’ve never met Johnny before,” Noel reflects. “An example being my engineer, Calum, who was shitting himself when I said, all casually, ‘Somebody’s coming in tomorrow to play guitar… Johnny Marr.’ He was like, ‘Oh my god, fucking hell!’ It took me ages to calm him down!

“We’ve a fucking lot in common – the music thing, the Irish thing, the Man City thing,” Noel continues. “He was born in Ardwick, I was born in Longsight, which is two bus-stops away. Johnny’s convinced that his mum and my mum know each other. They both used to go to the Carousel Club in Ardwick so they must have bopped round the dancefloor together.”

I have difficulty remembering what I had for dinner last night, but have total recall when it comes to seeing The Clash in 1979 at the London Lyceum on the Give ‘Em Enough Rope tour. Is Noel like that with The Smiths?

“My one of those – and I can see ‘em now walking on – is The Damned in 1980 at the Manchester Apollo. I’m a little hazier about The Smiths, which was in a packed Hacienda. As great as they were, I’m probably more into them now than I was then. With the first album especially, it’s like, ‘That’s derived from nothing.’ There’s no blues or other traces of musical DNA in Morrissey’s singing. His melodies are completely unique and Johnny’s guitar… some of it is Afrobeat, some of it is rockabilly. It’s unbelievable.”

When Noel sent one of the tracks Johnny features on, ‘Pretty Boy’, to Robert Smith for remix purposes, the cheeky get not only added his own guitar solo but also got his Cure bandmate Jason Cooper to supply the spacey drum track that he jams along to.

“He can be cheeky anytime he wants,” Noel deadpans. “What I didn’t know about Robert - and the reason he’s such a geezer – is that he’s a northerner. He was born in Blackpool and moved as a kid to Crawley so, yeah, he’s one of us."

The Cure at 3Arena, Dublin 1.12.2022 Copyright Colm Kelly

“After we’d finished the track, my record label – who are ‘content, content, content!’ – were at me for another angle they could work and I thought, ‘‘Pretty Boy’ does sound a bit like The Cure; maybe we can get Robert Smith to do a remix?’ I wasn’t having it that Robert Smith was an Oasis fan or fucking anything like that, so I got someone to ask him, ‘Would you be receptive to receiving an email from Noel Gallagher?’ I was expecting an ‘Er, no, you’re alright…’ but word came back that he was, and eventually I sent him the track, which he loved.

“Fuck me, if I thought it sounded a bit like The Cure when I sent it to him, it sounded completely like The Cure when it came back!” Noel laughs. “When I said to him ‘Do whatever you want’, I didn’t expect it to include a whole new solo. It took a few plays before it dawned on me, ‘That’s Robert Smith playing guitar. That’s Johnny Marr playing guitar. That’s me playing guitar!’ It’s the collaboration you didn’t know you wanted – one of The Cure, one of The Smiths and one of Oasis!”

The Cure at 3Arena, Dublin 1.12.2022 Copyright Colm Kelly

In the same way that Noel’s spent ten minutes gushing over Johnny Marr, the Gothfather spent a goodly part of his pre-Electric Picnic interview with Hot Press extolling the virtues of Philip Lynott.

“Robert’s into Lizzy? I didn’t know that. Johnny’s the same with Rory Gallagher. Yes, they’re these huge rock stars, but they’re also massive fucking fans who’ll talk to you for days about this singer and that band.

“I’d never met Robert, nor had I even seen The Cure until 2018 because every time they were on I’d arrive the day after. So, anyway, I caught ‘em at Roskilde and was blown away – the tunes are fucking undeniable. You don’t have to wear lipstick to be into them. Then I got to meet Robert and he’s a funny, funny man.”

Most of Council Skies was written and home studio demoed during the pandemic. Did Noel succumb to the dreaded lurgy?

Photo by Matt Crockett.

“I didn’t get it until it was gone – and then I got it twice!” Noel harumphs. “I was thinking, ‘I’ve great fucking antibodies coursing through my veins’, went to Glastonbury last summer where there was a wave of it, caught it and got it again just before Christmas. Felt fairly shite both times, but thankfully no complications.

“Although I fucking hated lockdown, I got to finish off all these songs that I’d half-written and write a load of new ones. The silver lining to a very dark cloud being that I actually had some fucking time off during COVID. Between the Chasing Yesterday tour, the Joshua Tree thing with U2 and then going into the Who Built The Moon? tour straight after that, I was four years out on the road. Make hay while the sun shines and all that, but I was fucking knackered.”

Given his soundtracking of everything from Killing Eve and Robbing Mussolini to This England and Kin, Noel was lucky that David Holmes had time to contribute his dancefloor monster of a remix. Have they managed to grab a sneaky pint together recently?

Photo by Matt Crockett.

“I saw him DJ-ing in some bar in Ibiza – we had a good night out, actually. The Council Skies opener, ‘I’m Not Giving Up Tonight’, dates back to one of the unreleased sessions we did four or five years ago. We’re talking about making another record together. I don’t know when that will be but David’s great. He bombards you with MP3s of amazing songs he’s dug up and says, ‘This is what we should be doing!’ I thought Weller was the biggest music nerd I know, but David beats him hands down!”

Regarding another of his gazillion-selling pals, has Noel read Bono’s Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story memoir yet – and if so, was he disappointed there was no Keith Richards-style dishing the dirt on the rest of the band?

“Bono’s too respectful for that,” he says before noting that: “He was writing that book for fucking years. I flicked through to see where I’m mentioned – pages 89, 141, 312… I’m joking! – and went with my kids to see the show he did in London. I didn’t know what to expect because they’ve banned people filming it to keep it off YouTube, but it was fucking far out, man. At one point, he’s dancing on a table whilst theatrically singing one of his songs. My eldest lad lent into me and said, ‘He’s finally lost it!’ He was doing opera and holding an imaginary conversation in an empty chair with his dead father – it was really, really great. It’s like nothing else I’ve ever seen and the songs came across brilliantly.”

Noel Gallagher with Oasis live.

Has Noel considered penning an autobiography of his own?

“I’ve been offered it a few times recently, but having been around both him and Johnny when they were writing theirs – it seemed to consume their entire fucking lives – I decided I’ve better things to be doing with five years like writing, recording and touring an album. Which isn’t to say that I won’t do it one day.”

It’s an extremely tough call but for me the Council Skies money track is ‘Dead To The World’, a mesmerising ballad that sounds like its adrift in a warm ocean. Are we to glean from its “And if you say so/ I’ll bend over backwards for love” refrain that the song’s about Sara?

“Yeah, that was written in the middle of a relationship breakdown,” he sighs.

I tell him I’m sorry to hear that and Noel adds, “Me too. It’s not uncommon for people to get to their fifties and go, well, you know…”

I do. Bono – who truly has a song for every occasion – wrote, “Every artist is a cannibal/ Every poet is a thief/ All kill for inspiration/ And then sing about the grief.” Does Noel have a Bob Dylan Blood On The Tracks in him?

Noel Gallagher solo.

“I don’t know,” he considers. “If I did, it’d be accidental. It’s like that song you’re talking about – when I hit the chords it suggested a mood and out it came. As a concept, I wouldn’t set out to write an album like Blood On Tracks but who knows?”

Another – and I’m going to use a technical term here – big fucker of a song is ‘Easy Now’, which wouldn’t have sounded out of place on (What’s The Story) Morning Glory.

“Normally when I’ve written something Oasis-y – and it’s happened a few times – I get to the chorus and think, ‘It’s just a crap version of ‘Superdonic’’ But with this one, as the layers and guitar solo were added, I was like, ‘Oh hello, that’s as good as ‘Little By Little’ This is gonna be huge! I would never persevere with something Oasis-y if I didn’t think it was going to be fucking great, which ‘Easy Now’ is.”

The whopper 24-track Deluxe Council Skies also includes an extremely Lennonesque cover of arguably John’s finest post-Beatles moment, ‘Mind Games’.

“How that came to be was that while writing Council Skies, I was also building my new studio,” Noel explains. “The day we switched it on and it worked it was like, ‘Fucking hell, this thing’s come to life. What are we going to do first?’ At that point, I get a call off Sean Lennon who goes, ‘It’s dad’s birthday tomorrow – I’m asking loads of people to do some stuff and post it on their socials.’ I was like, ‘Well, isn’t this fucking destiny calling?’ So I got the troops together and we started ‘Mind Games’ and put a little clip of it on the internet. Then we finished it off and it sounds great. A difficult song to sing but what a fucking tune. The lyrics are far out, man.”

John Lennon on rooftop in New York City. August 29, 1974. Credit: Bob Gruen / www.bobgruen.com

Noel and His High Flying Birds return to live action here on August 27 when they’re joined at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham by Primal Scream and Happy Mondays – a bill that twenty-five years ago would have resulted in fatalities.

“Hahaha, it could still!” he cackles. “Shaun might even have made it out of the jungle by then! I tell you what, they’d have to pay me a lot more than £250,000 to eat kangaroo testicles!”

Did he ever have any close encounters of the Scream Team kind? I ask because I did and I’m still recovering from it.

“Fucking loads of them! The first night I ever met Bobbie Gillespie was when Oasis had just signed to Creation and I was down in London for meetings with Alan McGee and Tim Abbott. The Primals – they were all fucking out of it, it was a real druggie fucking scene – were in the same hotel as us in Paddington. Bobby Gillespie very intimidatingly picked up an acoustic guitar and said in a rather fucking mean-spirited way (switches into hardman Glaswegian accent) ‘Play me your favourite Bob Marley B-side’. I was like, ‘Okay’, got the guitar and played him ‘This Guy’s In Love With You’ by Burt Bacharach. And we’ve been firm friends ever since!”

Noel’s already mentioned The Damned who were still a thing of chaotic punk beauty when he saw them, but was he also a fan of The Clash?

“Yeah, massive one,” he nods vigorously. “I met Joe Strummer a few times, the first occasion being in 1997 on the weekend of Lady Diana’s funeral. I’d flippantly said in an interview, ‘What are all these fucking people doing in London for this woman they didn’t know? They wouldn’t go and put flowers on their mother’s graves yet they’ve flown in from fucking wherever.’ The shit had really hit the fan over that when I bumped into Joe and he went, ‘That was a great thing you said, man!’ We used to sit around his campfire at Glastonbury. Joe Strummer was the real deal and there ain’t many of those.”

The one time I got to shoot the breeze with Bruce Springsteen, all we talked about was The Clash.

“Here’s a showbiz story for you!” Noel enthuses. “I bumped into Bruce Springsteen in fucking Ibiza a few years ago. We were out there and Jade Jagger, who we know, invites us for lunch at this restaurant. There’s about eight or nine of us at this long table with a few spare seats. I’m like, ‘Who else is coming?’ and Jade says, ‘Oh, my godfather and he’s bringing a few friends.’ This restaurant is on the beach, right, and gradually this fucking enormous yacht comes into view. She says, ‘Right, he’s here.’ I’m like, ‘Who’s your godfather?’ And she says, ‘Calvin Klein and he’s bringing Bruce Springsteen with him.’ So Bruce ends up besides me. He knew about the Stone Roses and blah blah blah. We started talking about The Clash and he said, ‘When I first heard Joe Strummer, I said to my guys, ‘He’s singing about his people, and it’s time I started singing about my people. And that’s when I started singing about the working-class American man.’”

So, there you go folks, St. Joe of Strummer was responsible for the late ‘70s/early ‘80s punkification of the E Street Band.

The last time we met, Noel was in the process of getting Irish passports for himself and the kids. Is he now proudly brandishing a harp when he goes through customs?

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds at St. Anne's Park. Copyright: Riley Glaister-Ryder/hotpress.com

“I got it, yeah! I was doing promo trips to Berlin and France where there were massive queues of English people and I just sauntered past, Irish passport in hand,” he laughs. “Post-Brexit, the country’s falling apart. Nothing fucking works. Everybody’s on strike. Trying to get anything done is a fucking bollocks since everybody left. London was full of Polish builders – fucking millions of the fuckers! – but you can’t get any now. You can’t get eggs. There’s no fucking tomatoes anywhere.

“I live in Hampshire, right, on the South Downs which is posh. It’s like the south of France, it’s beautiful. It’s very disconcerting when you’re walking round your local Waitrose, which again is a very posh supermarket, and half the fucking shelves are empty. It has been a fucking disaster. I just wish the Labour Party would put in their manifesto, ‘If you vote for us, we’re going back in.’”

The Irish people who were laughing at Britain for shooting itself in the foot now just feel sorry for us.

“On the first day of half-term I was watching this 16-mile tailback of coaches trying to get to the ferry port in Dover on Sky News. I was like, ‘Isn’t this ironic? I’d say 70% of the people on those fucking coaches voted for Brexit. And now they’re doing roadside interviews going, ‘It’s a fucking disgrace.’ And it’s like, ‘You fucking voted for it!’”

Not for the first time during a Noel Gallagher interview, I’m struck by how much money we’d make if Hot Press operated a swear jar system.

Despite not being on social media himself, managed to go viral in April courtesy of a picture of him and a mate celebrating in the Man City dressing-room with Erling Haaland who only has a pair of Calvin Kleins to spare his blushes.

Noel Gallagher, London 2020
Portrait by Matt Crockett

“Yeah, it was after the 4-1 annihilation of Arsenal,” he recalls fondly. “Somebody put it on the internet which I’m not best pleased about, but I’m sure Erling doesn’t give a fuck. He’s such a lovely lad and a fucking comedian as well. He does a great Mancunian accent!”

Any big music fans in the current City team?

“Footballers tend to be into dreadful, dreadful music,” Noel winces. “It just goes, ‘Boom! Chikichikichiki… Boom!’ followed by fucking rapping about some shit. These guys are footballing gods but don’t let them anywhere near your hi-fi.”

Noel is now really into his sweary anecdote stride but, alas, Ryan Tubridy and the Late Late Show await.

“I can’t swear on that because all my mum’s family in Mayo will be watching and reporting back to Peggy,” he concludes. “Thank god for Hot Press!”

• Council Skies is out now. Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds play the Royal Hospital Kilmainham on August 27 with Primal Scream and Happy Mondays supporting. See page 32 for the curious tale of his Gibson Flying V.

The new issue of Hot Press is out now.