Oasis in '03: "You get five years good grace out of the UK music press and then it’s, 'Right, you can fuck off now!'"

'03:

Ahead of two more Point Depot sellouts for Oasis in March, Noel agreed to a Mixed Grill interview where Hot Press readers asked the questions. You didn’t let us down with these some of the highlights...

Jill, Naas: “For a band that’s supposedly on its last legs, you sold the Point out pretty quick.”
Noel: “I know and the single (‘Songbird’) is number one in the mid-weeks. You get five years good grace out of the UK music press and then it’s, ‘Right, you can fuck off now!’ It was the same for The Smiths and The Jam and the Sex Pistols and all those bands who actually meant something to people. You get your five years and then they want something new, which I haven’t a problem with. I’ll keep doing it for as long as it makes me happy. We get slagged off every fucking day in the newspapers, but so what?”

Owen Turner, Dublin but currently living in France: “Keane or McCarthy?”
Noel: “Roy Keane. I have to point out that this is strictly speaking as a Republic of Ireland fan. When he plays for Manchester United, I wish nothing but broken limbs on the bastard. If you’re going to go training for the World Cup and there aren’t any footballs… Mick McCarthy calling that meeting so all the players could tell him what they thought of him was fucking stupid. I’m not going to say a bad word about Roy, though, in case I meet him out one afternoon. He’d kick your head in, wouldn’t he? Bonehead lives near him in Manchester and I’ve heard stories!”

Michael Browne, Abbeyfeale: “If you could change one thing about your career, what would it be?”
Noel: “I’d have had a year off immediately after that Knebworth gig. And then probably another six months writing what became Be Here Now. We tried to follow up (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? a bit too quickly. But other than that, fuck all really, because it’s been a pretty good laugh.”

Gary Kearns, Westport: “Did you have a good giggle when those Mafia blokes twatted Liam?”
Noel: “At the beginning when he was arrested and carted off to hospital in pain, no. But now, I think it’s stunningly fucking hilarious. In the unlikely event that they’re reading this, I’d like to say to the Italian Mafia people, ‘Thanks for saving us the job’” There was a large queue forming in England for the pleasure of kicking that cunt’s face in, and I happened to be at the front of it!”

Oasis's Liam Gallagher at the Point Depot, March 2003

David McNamara, Middleton: “You said in your last Hot Press interview that Bono had given you two books. What are they?”
Noel: “Searching For The Invisible God and What’s So Amazing About Grace?, which are both by Philip Yancey. He sent one to me and one to me girlfriend – she finished hers because she reads like a fucking madman and I got the gist of mine.”

Simon Parry, Sevenoaks: “Paint us a picture of what your old Supernova Heights house was like?”
Noel: “It was like a bad advert for drugs if you went inside it. Fucking hell, man. There was a seventeen foot fish tank with one fish in it! You find that all the relationships you have with people are based on the complete and utter bullshit you speak at 7am in the morning. ‘I wonder who built the pyramids?’ Who fucking cares?

“It wasn’t really me friends, it was the friends who became friends because they were mates of your mates, and it was like, ‘Hang on a minute, what do you do again?’ And they’d say, ‘Oh, I know such and such a person’, and I’d think, ‘What are you doing in my kitchen?’”

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