Oasis in '00: "I have got caught up in some nonsense that I shouldn’t have. But I was young"

'00:

Despite fellow Oasis founder members Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs and Paul ‘Guigsy’ McGuigan jumping ship before its release, champagne corks popped again in March when Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants took them back to the summit on both sides of the Irish Sea. Liam was also celebrating the birth of his baby boy, Lennon, when he met up with the late, extremely great George Byrne...

“The baby’s cool, he’s a Caesarean baby and they’re the stress-free ones. There was none of that fuckin’ pushing and shit, they just sliced the missus open and popped him out. He’s in bed at eight o’clock and up at half-seven every morning. He sleeps right through. It’s mega, I’m doing the fuckin’ lot - champion nappy changer me, man!”

“We were recording and Bonehead finished his parts, so he went home to move house. We went ‘Fine’ and then got a call a few weeks later saying he wasn’t coming back. He didn’t speak to us, he got the manager to do it. Until then I thought everything was sweet so we asked the manager ‘Well, what’s up with him?’ The story was that he didn’t want to be in the band anymore, so we went ‘Fuck it! Leave him for a week or two to let him sort out whatever’s up with him’. We had an album to make and, don’t forget, we’d had two years off to exorcise our fucking demons and shit, to get our bollocks together. This was costing us a lot of money, recording down in France, get on with it. I mean, there’s lots of things that piss me off but I know that when I’ve got to go to work, I’ve got to go to work. We just kept going with the album. I reckoned he’d sort himself out, but when it came to doing the cover he still wasn’t having any of it so that was the end of it.

“As far as I was concerned the five of us were equal. When we went into the studio or onstage, or were just sitting down drinking, we were a gang. Me and Noel never set out this plan that it’d be just the two of us in the spotlight, so if that was their problem then that was their problem - fuck it! I was on the same wage as they were as well, Noel gets the most ‘cos he writes the songs, which is only right - he’s the one who stays up all night doing the graft while I’m down the pub giving it loads and talking bollocks. It annoyed me when some people suggested that the reason they left was because of money. I’m on the same money as Alan White and he was the last one in, so all that money thing was complete fucking bollocks. Life goes on.”

“I have been a bit of a casualty, I have got caught up in some nonsense that I shouldn’t have. But I was young. I still am young but I’m thinking a bit straighter now and I’ve learned to love music again. For four years we didn’t have a minute and were off our heads most of the time, but now I’ve had two years off to see what’s what. What do I love? I don’t love the TV, that pisses me off, had enough of that. I don’t love hanging out with celebrities, they do my fucking head in. Why am I sitting in this nice house in London with all these nice things around me? Through music, and now I wanna get that back..”

George’s legendary final question was:“When the band were in a blizzard of coke, which was your favourite nostril?”

Liam’s equally legendary answer being: “Are we talking power nostril here? The left, definitely the left. The right’s the supersub. The left starts the match, does the full ninety minutes then the right comes in for extra-time and penalties!”

Read the full 14-page Oasis feature in the current issue of Hot Press, out now: