Resurrection Man

The Tower Bridge Business Complex in Bermondsey, London SE16 seems an unlikely place for a scurvy rock hack and his faithful snapper companion to be heading, but tucked in among all the industrial units is Backline, the famous rehearsal space where Noel Gallagher is preparing for his first tour at the helm of new outfit The High
Flying Birds.

Walking into reception myself and the boy Keogh are greeted by a sign bearing a bastardisation of the old Hunter S. Thompson quotation, to whit: “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. But there is a negative side.”
Ah, the good doctor always did have a way with words. Walking down the corridor to the outside terrace where Mr. Gallagher is holding court, we see evidence of the warren-like building having previously been occupied by Joan Jett, Corine Bailey Rae, Jimmy Page, Robbie Williams, the Manics, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Massive Attack, The Raconteurs, Coldplay, Duffy, Kylie, Amy Winehouse, Rod Stewart, Muse, Paul McCartney and – cue swelling of national pride – Boyzone.
I’ve met Noel on eight or nine previous occasions and, while greeted with a firm handshake and smiley “hello”, he’s not his usual super-ebullient self today.
Maybe the ten-hour stints in the studio are getting to him or he’s worried about what sort of reception his first post-Oasis album, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, is going to get.
It’s only after we’ve made good our escape from Bermondsey that we hear the breaking news – Liam Gallagher has filed a High Court action over Noel’s claims that he pulled out of a 2009 festival appearance because of a hangover. He’d been severely pissed off about it in February when the K-monster and myself met him and the rest of Beady Eye in a rather more salubrious part of London.
“I’ve never cancelled a gig out of stubbornness, only if I can’t speak,” Liam growled. “Singers do get sore throats but some people haven’t copped on. If you can’t speak, you can’t fucking sing.”
There’ since been a happy-ish ending with Noel apologising to his baby bro but it’s obvious from this and some of the potshots he aims at Liam today that all is not well with the family Gallagher.
We’ve many important matters to discuss, but first I’d like to congratulate Noel on his response to Gary Neville quoting the, “While we’re living/The Dreams we have as children fade away” line from ‘Fade Away’ when Man U won the Premiership last season on his Twitter.
“I feel violated,” he countered. “If Mr. Neville continues to use the holy scriptures of Oasis to communicate with the Cockney massive, I shall be forced to come up to Cheshire in the middle of the night, break into his house, tie him to a chair, make him listen to the Best Of Simply d(Red)ful while I pull his tash out one grey hair at a time (with my teeth), liberate those Oasis CDs and shit in his manbag. You have been warned!”
“Probably my finest work,” Noel beams. “A Sun journalist texted to tell me what he’d done, so I said, ‘Give me two minutes and I’ll destroy this cunt!’ I’m not going to let anybody yet alone a weasly Manchester United player – sorry, ex-player – take liberties with my songs.”
Talking of his songs, will we be treated to any Oasis tunes when Noel and his avian associates play the Dublin Olympia this month?
“Yes, you will. I wrote all the great, memorable Oasis songs. I arranged them and told everybody, ‘This is what you do.’ They’re my fucking creations, so why shouldn’t I still play a few of them if I want?”
When word came through on August 28, 2009 that Oasis were honest to god no more, there was shock among fans who’d witnessed an infinite number of brotherly fallings out and makings up before.
Management have politely asked us to spare Noel going through the gory details again, so here’s how those final few hours went down: in Paris for a headlining Rock En Seine festival appearance, the brothers, who’d been at each other all tour, got into a backstage argument which started with Liam throwing a plum at Noel – no, really! – and ended with kung-fu kicks and punches being exchanged and Noel smashing Liam’s treasured guitar up. Which, it’s fair to point out, had previously been aimed at his head.
Unfortunate, yes, but no worse I’d have thought than countless previous scraps they’ve had.
“In rock ‘n’ roll you’re going to get drink and drugs and all this fucking, ‘He said this’/‘She said that’ shit,” he reflects. “That stuff I can deal with, no problem. In Paris though, there was a level of physical violence that made me think, ‘I’m forty-fucking-three now. There’s no way I can be dealing with this anymore. If it comes to violence, I’m out of here.’ I went and sat in the car for five minutes and ordinarily I’d have gone back in and done the gig, but I just couldn’t. I knew there and then that it
was over.”
Liam subsequently taking a pop at him was to be expected, but what did Noel make of his old pal Andy Bell accusing him of “lying about a lot of things. He spins the press”?
“Andy’s entitled to Liam’s opinion,” he says pointedly. “Look, it’s a break-up, people are going to fucking bitch about each other.”
Alliance officially severed, did he get to sit on his backside and watch Jeremy Kyle for a year?
“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.”
Little Sonny Patrick Gallagher celebrated his first birthday on October 1, and according to his dad is “already a right little terror.” It’s in the genes! Compared to the debauchery, which accompanied the making of some of Oasis’ albums, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds sounds like a very civilised, clock in/clock off affair.
“I don’t like whirling around in chaos,” he proffers. “My brain rules my being; I’m not a person of the heart. I like having rules and timetables to follow. I’m always on time; I’m never fucking late.
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’m self-aware enough to know that without a job to go to everyday I’d start indulging in some spectacularly bad behaviour. In the unlikely event I had a few mill in the bank to fund that spectacularly bad behaviour, I’d be in the plot beside Amy Winehouse. Talking of whom…
“I don’t want to be sexist or anything, but when a guy dies it’s like, ‘That’s rock ‘n’ roll, baby.’ When a girl dies it somehow seems more tragic. What I thought at the end was, ‘It’s bad when the music can’t pull you out of it’, because music is generally a shining beacon in somebody’s life. I took a lot of drugs, but eventually worked out that I prefer music to anything else in the world. I shed a whole circle of friends to – and I’m not being melodramatic here – keep myself alive. Music is the greatest thing that can be bestowed upon you, and if it’s not enough to pull you out of the shit then how bad is it?”
I presume Noel and Amy’s paths would have crossed at some point?
“Yeah, at awards ceremonies and the like. I have to tell you this story: the last time I saw her was at half-past eight in the local supermarket trying to buy a shopping-trolley full of alcohol disguised as a shopping-trolley full of crisps and Cheesy Wotsits. She came up and did the usual: ‘Awwwwright gorgeous?’ I ‘How are you, darling?’-ed her back and she went off to pay for what looked like a month’s worth of booze. I really, really liked her; she was one of the lads and a great soul singer. What she wasn’t good at was picking friends.”
From Mick Jagger and John Squire to Chris Cornell and Johnny Marr, rock ‘n’ roll history is littered with people who’ve left the womb-like safety of their successful bands and made solo records which have died on their commercial arses. Was Noel worried about his name being added to that list?
“The thing about Mick Jagger is that he’s a songwriting partner; he’s never written a song on his own,” he ventures. “I’d love to work with somebody as shit cool as Keith Richards but I don’t need to. Another thing I’ve got to my advantage is that people already know my voice. I remember listening to John Squire’s solo album and going, ‘Fucking hell, is that what he sounds like?’ I’ve sung at gigs to 100,000 people; I’ve done it on Top Of The Pops with number one singles and Liam just shaking his tambourine, so none of this holds any fear.”
While Beady Eye gave us a running commentary on the making of Different Gear, Still Speeding, Noel
managed to con everybody into thinking he was still on his holliers.
“I didn’t make any announcement about me being in the studio because then it would’ve been, ‘What’s it going to be like? Is it going to be different from what he’s done before?’ I never felt the weight of expectation during the recording because nobody knew. By the time word got out I was already mixing. I can feel the weight of expectation now but because it’s all finished I don’t give a fuck. It never clouded my judgment in any way whatsoever; I was just making the songs the best they can be, not knowing if, when or how they’d come out. 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!’”
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds is of dual nationality having been started in the UK and then very rock ‘n’ rolling-ly finished off in LA, man.
“There was none of that West Coast hippie shit going on when I was there,” he laughs. “Well, perhaps a little! The guy mixing it, Dave Sardy, has his studio in Los Angeles so that was the main reason for getting out of London. Palm trees, sunshine… it wasn’t a hard sell!”
Did Noel get to do any celebrity hobnobbing while in the City of Angels?
“Russell Brand who’s a mate, lives there, so I saw him a lot. We had a night out with Jason Statham, and Kasabian passed through town a couple of times, which is always the guarantee of a crippling hangover. I was there on and off for three months without a band, so it was quite a solitary existence. On the plus side, I got to work at the speed I wanted to and fuck off back to England for 48 hours for the City/United semi-final without anyone whinging about it.”
Was it a relief to finally call a halt to band democracy, and enter into a dictatorship?
“Yeah, I’ve taken over and killed everybody else!” he laughs again. “I’ll put it this way to you: 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.
The one thing I’ve got going against me now is I’m not a frontman.”
We’re all very honoured that he’s chosen to pop the High Flying Birds’ live cherry in Dublin.
“I have to be totally honest and say it’s pure coincidence that the first gig’s in Dublin, but I’m pleased it’s somewhere I’ve always enjoyed playing and people don’t fucking stand there arms folded waiting to be impressed. I just ask that first time and all everybody’s gentle with me!”
Who would be his favourite strutters of the rock ‘n’ roll boards?
“Mick Jagger with the Stones. Shaun Ryder when he knew where he was – and sometimes when he didn’t! Ian Brown was good. Morrissey – I was at a Smiths gig in Manchester at the height of the Queen Is Dead tour and it was one of the fucking greatest things I’ve ever seen. If I’ve got to pick one though, John Lydon because he blew the doors open for my generation.”
I have to say the boy Lydon was the dog’s proverbials when Public Image played in Tripod recently.
“He’s better now in PiL than he is the Pistols who’ve become a bit too Carry On… I didn’t run into John this time, but I had a fucking mental night out with him and his mate Rambo in Los Angeles a few years ago and again after a gig in the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. The Johnny Rotten that comes out in front of the cameras is not him. The funny faces and the snide comments are, I think, his safety blanket. Most singers have got one. Once the veneer comes off, he’s like the best mate you’ve had and very emotional. I remember a few times he’d be saying stuff and there were tears welling up in his eyes. What I loved is that he’d only speak to Liam through me and then it was stuff like, ‘Ask your singer if he’s wearing make-up?’ Liam was fucking furious.”
The telling of this yarn is accompanied by a grin that isn’t so much shit as sewage-farm eating. Has Noel ever read John Lydon’s No Dogs, No Blacks, No
Irish autobiography and, if so, did it strike a chord with him?
“Yes, on both counts. It took you back to the ‘70s and being first generation Irish in a big city, which wasn’t always welcoming of you. I didn’t really suffer personally, but I remember my parents would only go to Irish clubs because of the ‘fucking Paddies’ thing, which followed the IRA blowing up Manchester city centre. There weren’t groups of vigilantes going round beating Irish people up, but if you had a certain name or accent you were treated with suspicion. I was very young coming back from a six-week holiday in Ireland with an uncle of mine who had the long hair and flares, and the car got ripped to pieces. They were drastic times – people were getting killed and shot and fucking kidnapped. I’m not a political animal, but the ceasefire and the coming together of the parliament or assembly or whatever has been a beautiful thing to watch.”
I’m more of a Republican than a Royalist, but as a Brit living in Ireland I was genuinely moved when I saw the Queen in the Gardens of Remembrance bowing her head to the 1916 dead.
“Yeah, I saw the Queen over there and thought, ‘At fucking last, common sense has prevailed,” he reflects. “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!”
I don’t think “likeable old dear” is what
Morrissey had in mind recently when he wrote his Hot Press polemic blaming Her Maj for all the hunger strike deaths.
“Yeah, but didn’t he also say the guy who killed 96 people in Norway was only as bad as a fucking cheeseburger?”
Something along those lines, yes. Was Noel aware that his old mucker Gay Byrne nearly ran for the
Irish presidency?
“Fuck off! The Late Late Show bloke? Seriously?
That’s mad!”
After that there was talk of Martin Sheen entering the fray.
“Do you have any proper politicians in Ireland or
is it just TV presenters and actors who get voted in?”
Given the 100% Irish blood coursing through his veins, would Noel ever consider a run at
the presidency?
“Seven years living rent-free in a big house in the park? I’d have a bit of fucking that! I’d go round the country drinking pints of Guinness like Obama did and win by a landslide!”
Described in the last issue of Hot Press by Ed Power as “the best record he’s delivered since …Morning Glory”, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds isn’t so much a re-invention as a re-chroming of the wheel. The Oasis bombast of old has been toned down a bit, but otherwise it’s Beatles-y business as usual with the only real surprise the high notes Mr. G can hit with his mightily impressive falsetto. There’s certainly no hint that the 12-tracker started life as an Amorphous Androgyous (aka Future Sound Of London)-marshaled foray into avant-dance.
“The original plan was to work with Amorphous, so I sent them the ‘If I Had A Gun’, ‘Soldier Boys & Jesus Freaks’, ‘Everybody’s On The Run’, ‘Stop The Clocks’ and ‘(I Wanna Live My Dream In My) Record Machine’ backing-tracks for them to mess around with,” he explains. “When I turned up in the studio to listen to what they’d done so far, ‘If I Had A Gun’ was 11 minutes long! I was like, ‘Why is the first verse now the second chorus?’ and the guys went, ‘Boring, boring, boring. Forget that, listen to this!’ It was fucking great, but as a first solo album would have blown people’s minds. So, I ended up making two records – the one I’ve been blathering on about today, and the Amporphous one, which has three of the High Flying Birds tracks and ten originals and will come out at some point in the New Year. I’d describe it to you like this – if the original instrumental break in ‘Soldier Boys & Jesus Freaks’ is 40 seconds long, it’s now four minutes and goes from rock to reggae to Krautrock. I only realised recently listening to the German band Neu! that that’s where Johnny Rotten got his vocal style from. There’s also a bit of Hawkwind in there who are another of his
favourite bands.”
Being a Hawkwind devotee, I imagine he was among the first to sit down and watch Lemmy
The Movie.
“What a great film! A few stylistic issues aside – I know Lemmy’s not a Nazi but… – he’s the coolest man in rock ‘n’ roll. I used to think Hawkwind were a bunch of old hippes, but no, they were every bit as counterculture and into fucking things up as
the Pistols.”
I’ve saved the profound question till last – is now the most content Noel’s been in his life?
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he nods furiously. “Fucking hell, I’ve got a beautiful wife and beautiful kids and all that and I’ve made a great record and I’ve another one coming out next year. I’ve the Oasis legacy to be proud of too, Man City playing in the Champions’ League and me mug on the front cover of Hot Press. What’s not to be happy about?”

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds is out now on Sour Mash records. The record gets a live airing in the Olympia, Dublin on October 23.