Latest Oasis, Liam & Noel Gallagher News

Taken from Noel's Tour Diary for oasisinet.com

Can't get shut of this fuckin' cold. A major-major pain in the arsehole. Still, it does mean one can legitimately drink before going onstage. Whiskey, hot water, half a lemon and a splash of honey (a Hot Toddy they call it - handsome!). Helps make it fun, at least.

Incidentally, I hate that word, 'Toddy'. It makes me feel uncomfortable, that and the word 'latte' AND the word 'bonkers'. The latter almost drives me to violence.

We're in Belgium. I have no idea why. We're supposed to be in France. I'm in a hotel in Brussels. Called the "Amigo"? How very..erm, Spanish. Added to that I have a fuckin' didgeridoo in my room!! A fuckin' didgeridoo? It's a cultural mess. It's absolutely bastard bonk..oh, fuck off!!

In a bit.

GD.

Source: www.oasisinet.com

He’s one of the most famous musicians on the planet and a lifelong Blue – at last, City Magazine managed to track down Oasis’ Noel Gallagher to dispel a few myths and create a few new ones in the first part of our exclusive, epic interview…

Eight years. Eight long years of emails, phone calls and third party messages before –finally – an interview with Noel Gallagher. If there’s been one thing I’ve wanted to do since first becoming City Mag editor back in 2001, it was to talk with Noel on behalf of our readers and return with the definitive Manchester City/Oasis interview. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that, as a huge fan of the band since the early 1990s, talking with the man who wrote such classics as Live Forever, Don’t Look Back In Anger, Masterplan and Cigarettes and Alcohol is something I’ve always wanted to do anyway.

We’re the same age, grew up a mile apart and both follow City – sadly, that’s where the similarities end. But we had enough in common to be able to speak easily and after a surreal hour on the phone, I replaced the receiver on the handset and checked the tape and listened, relieved that it was all successfully recorded. It was also comforting to discover Noel is no different from me or you and I could have been chatting to an old mate about the Blues. Laid-back, candid and frank as usual – with Noel Gallagher what you see is what you get and he’s as passionate about being a City fan today as he was 35 years ago when he first fell in love with the club.

The thing most people like about Noel, aside from his obvious talent as one of the best singer/songwriters this country has produced since the Lennon/McCartney era, is that he almost always talks sense. True, he puts things bluntly, but when you’ve been raised on a Burnage council estate in the seventies, attended a tough secondary school and had to battle your way from the dole to become the brains behind the best band this country has produced in 20 odd years, you tend not to put on airs or graces. Indeed, with more than 50,000,000 albums sold worldwide, he can pick and choose who he talks to – or doesn’t – so my opening words to Noel are to thank him for giving up his time and then mention I’d be trying to get this interview for the past few years.

“Really? I’ve never been asked before,” he says. That means all my previous requests never actually got past the first few hurdles, but it’s at least comforting to know that it wasn’t the man himself snubbing the magazine because it seems clear that had he been asked sooner, he’d have almost certainly said yes.

Now is a good time to talk. Noel was due to fly out to Las Vegas with Liam to carry Ricky Hatton’s belt into the ring prior to the fight with Paulie Malignaggi before embarking on a world tour that will eventually see the band return home with a massive concert in Heaton Park next summer.

With the excellent new album Dig Out Your Soul continuing to sell in big numbers, Oasis have proved they will be around for a long time, as will Noel and Liam’s association with Manchester City. I ask Noel where and when it all began.

“I’d got it in my head that my first game was in 1971 when we beat Newcastle 5-1 at Maine Road, but I’ve recently looked that game up and it was actually January 1975,” he says. “ I was seven at the time and the only goal I can remember from that match was Malcolm MacDonald scoring for Newcastle with a shot that struck the underside of the crossbar and went in – I remember that vividly. I always mention that game as being my first in interviews so I thought I’d better check that the game was actually played in 1971 – but the only time we beat Newcastle by that score was 1975. It’s possible I could have gone to a game before that date but that’s the first game I can recall.”

Thirty years of despair could have been avoided had Noel’s dad Tommy fallen in line with the rest of the Gallagher family and gone to Old Trafford instead of Maine Road, but Gallagher senior was nothing if not a rebel and decided to buck the trend.

“Being from Irish decent, all my dad’s side of the family – apart from dad and his three sons, me, Paul and Liam – all support Man United – there’s about 200 of them and four Blues,” laments Noel.

“I’m not sure why he decided to support City. I think, romantically enough, it was because City were our local team. We were born in Longsight and as we all know, the other lot don’t come from Manchester. We could walk from Longsight to Maine Road in about half-an-hour, too. Aged seven, you’re not sure which way you stand up, let alone which football club you support, but being at the match fascinated me. There was a bit at the end of the Kippax where the railings went from the corrugated shed bit at the top right the way down to the bottom near the pitch. It’s where all the dads used to put their kids and that’s where my dad sat me. There were loads of other kids around the same age and dad would come back for us at half-time and again at full-time – and that was it – you don’t get that anymore.

“Dad didn’t take us every week, but then we moved to Burnage which seemed to be predominately a City area. We moved from St Robert’s in Longsight to St Bernard’s in Burnage and that’s where things sort of took off.

“On a clear night, you could see the floodlights at Maine Road from my bedroom at our new house and there’d be times when City were playing in midweek and I’d be listening to the match on Picadilly Radio and I’d look over to the floodlights and think, ‘they’re playing there – it’s all happening here.’ It was the time when they’d interrupt a record between match reports with ‘It’s a goal!’ or “Oh no!’ – I used to dread the ‘Oh no!’ in case it was City that had conceded one.”

Noel and his brothers Liam and Paul soon began to trek the three miles or so to Maine Road from their home on Ashburn Avenue and when their mum Peggy separated from their dad, going to the game with their mates was the only way of guaranteeing their weekly fix of the Blues.

“I think the first time we went to the match on our own would have been when we started secondary school at Burnage,” continues Noel. “There were a few of us who used to go – I can’t remember the other lads’ names because I haven’t seen them for years – but there was about six or seven of us and it used to take us about an hour to walk to Maine Road. I’d have been in my very early teens at the time.”

Did the Gallagher brothers ever have dreams of playing for the club they followed or did Noel know from an early age his future lay elsewhere?

“Was I any good at football?” he ponders. “I guess before Claude Makelele made that role his own at Chelsea they used to call it the ‘Gallagher role’ in Burnage – but he nicked the title from me. I used to be the holding midfielder before that role had even been invented – I may have even invented it, you know.

“I was never that bothered about being a centre-forward and I used to go in goal a lot as well, but I kind of figured out I’d see more of the ball in midfield. I wasn’t big enough to play in defence or up front so I ended up somewhere in the middle. Liam was a dirty goal-hanger, of course.”

So while his own career and reputation seemed to be confirmed to Cringle Fields in Burnage, the City players lived out his dreams at Maine Road every other week. His heroes – apart from The Beatles – are a mixture of industry and artistry, with the odd surprise thrown in for good measure.

“I was fortunate enough to see the likes of Colin Bell, Dennis Tueart, Mike Summerbee, Gary Owen, Steve MacKenzie, Paul Power and Joe Corrigan and I remember us playing in the sky blue round-necked kit.

“Initially my hero was Bell, then Tueart, then Peter Barnes and we were struggling a bit after that. Then Barry Silkman comes along and he had a bag of tricks so I didn’t mind him, either. Paul Stewart, maybe – the first striker in years who’d scored 20 goals for us and we promptly flogged him. I never really got into David White – I didn’t rate him at all.

“Then it wasn’t until Georgge Kinkladze later followed by Ali Bernabia nd Shaun Wright-Phillips came along because we weren’t really blessed with a great many heroes in between.”

Because Noel finds it hard to get up for home games these days due to work and family commitments, he tends to find it easier to go to away games south of Birmingham, but there was a time when he never missed a match.

“Between 12 and 21 I used to go religiously,” he recalls. “The first season after we’d been relegated in 1983, I went to every single game, home and away. In those days, there was a great facility for football fans to travel around the country because half of us were on the dole so we’d get into Maine Road for half-price as well as get cheap train travel with Inter City specials, so following football in the early eighties wasn’t that expensive. Plus in the old Second Division – or whatever they call it now – most of the teams were up north anyway. There was nothing to do all week so it was quite easy to jib a train to Huddersfield, Bradford or Barnsley and all that caper.

“I used to know a few of the Maine Line Crew, Young Guvnors and the Under-5s. I knew all that lot and still see a few of them today. They were quite mad times, but if you look back to how football was back then to how it is today, it seems almost pre-historic.

“You see the stadiums of today and they’re all shiny and flash, but the grounds we used to go to 20 years ago were dangerous, especially night games at Leeds and places like that and wondering whether or not you’d make it home in one piece. It’s all part of growing up, I suppose.”

Considering what the future held, did Noel ever create songs for the Kippax to serenade the team?

“No,” he laughs. “I did start a song in the Kippax once when I’d had a drink, probably something like, ‘Everywhere we go…’ or similar and everyone joined in. I thought, ‘This is brilliant! So maybe the first seeds of my song-writing career were sewn at the back of the Kippax because I did get a taste for the sing-along after that.”

Whether swaying on the Kippax back in the seventies did inspire Noel or not, his own path to stardom began when he decided to teach himself how to play the guitar and he would later join Liam’s band The Rain after his experiences with another local band who maintain a cult status in the north-west.

“We started off Oasis in 1991 and before that I’d been a roadie with the Inspiral Carpets,” he says. “I think Graham Lambert was an Oldham fan, as most of the band was. Clint Boon wasn’t that bothered as I recall, but I always think of Oldham fans as virtually City fans anyway – I don’t think I’ve ever met an Oldham fan who didn’t say, ‘Well, I’m really a Blue anyway, I just live too far from the ground.’

“When I first met them I think we were in the First Division, but of course, were up and down all the time, but whenever we played Oldham, we always used to get beat by them at home – without fail.”

Considering the Lennon/McCartney hero worship, did Noel ever contemplate becoming a Liverpool fan as a kid?

“Actually,” he says, “my dad used to work in Liverpool for a time and he occasionally went to Anfield as well. I’ve got a lot of mates who are Liverpool fans and I love scousers, but I have to say Liverpool FC get on my nerves, particularly over the past 10 years.

“They’ve spent fortunes during that time, but only ever had two good players in Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard – now they’ve got three with Fernando Torres and it looks like they are going to win the league.

“I think the dislike probably all stems from the seventies and eighties when Liverpool used to come to Maine Road and, they wouldn’t just beat us 1-0 or 2-0 – it was 4-0 every time – they always hammered us at home.

“Funnily enough, I was out in Ibiza a few years ago and I met Kenny Dalglish’s son, Paul and I said ‘Your dad’s a legend, mate,’ so he told me to hang on while he got him on the phone for me. Paul called up his dad and I was on his mobile to Kenny for ages.

“I told him I used to dread his name being read out before the match and Kenny told me Liverpool used to love playing at Maine Road because the pitch was massive and it was one of the best stadiums around. The atmosphere was always great, the fans were fantastic and he said it was a shame it’s not there any more because it was a great place to go and play football.

“I told him that that was all well and good but it wasn’t any fun for City fans, especially when our own team never quite mastered playing on that pitch!”

Ironically, it would be Liverpool who relegated City just after Oasis had played their sell-out concerts at Maine Road in 1996.

At that time, the club and the band were happy to cross promote each other with each happy to declare their admiration for the other. Photo opportunities, concerts, clothing – for a time, music and football merged and with Oasis on the verge of world domination, it was a marriage of convenience for all parties.

“It was great,” says Noel. “It all really started when City were sponsored by Brother and we were just starting to get our heads in the papers. Photographers were forever asking us to wear the City shirts with Brother on and I think the first real connection with the club stemmed from there.

“We did some famous photos with Kevin Cummins wearing those shirts and by the time we did our first Japanese tour, everybody seemed to have them on. They must have thought they were Oasis shirts or something and a while later I asked Franny Lee how many City shirts they’d sold in Japan and he told me the club had been constantly sending out mail orders after being inundated with requests.

“There were hundreds of kids at the concerts and some of them would make huge banners with just the Brother logo written on – I think they must have thought it was something to do with the band, but I’m not sure what they made of the ship and red rose on the club badge on the shirt – they must’ve wondered what’s all that about.”

So was there a collective decision by Oasis to openly support City, bearing in mind the possible consequences from some of the potential record-buying public?

Says Noel: “At first it was like, well, we’re going to alienate at least one half of Manchester in one fell swoop – but then we thought, so what? They’ve got enough, plus a load of trophies and we had nothing – City fans had nowt – so we nailed our flag to the mast.”

There were numerous walks out onto the hallowed Maine Road turf by Noel and Liam and it wouldn’t be unusual to see the lads at Adams Park or Bootham Crescent as they followed the club - now in freefall – around the lower reaches of the third tier of English football. But as Noel points out, the farther off the radar City slipped, the bigger the crowds became!

“I always think of that time as the re-birth of Man City, where, for some reason, the whole City fan base seemed to regenerate itself. I thought at one point we’d go under because we were in the Third Division and if you’re aged four or five, who’s going to want to support the Blues?

“It must have been embarrassing going to school, but for whatever reason, the lower we went down the Third Division, the higher the crowds became. Whether Oasis had played a part in that, I’ve no idea. I used to go to a lot of away games that season because I lived in Buckinghamshire and City used to play in places like Wycombe, Colchester and Reading so it wasn’t a problem. It was like, ‘Oh well, I’ve never been to Bournemouth and it’s the only chance I’ll get in my entire life and City are playing there tomorrow so we might as well go.”

The arrival of one of Noel’s all-time heroes, Georgi Kinkladze,, also coincided with the club’s demise.

“We’ve always had players like Kinkladze – that one sparkling genius – the trick is getting that type of player, plus six others that will allow him to play. At United they had David Beckham, but they also had Roy Keane and that’s what we need now – somebody who can le the Brazilians do their stuff.

“I remember when Gio first came. I got a call from somebody within the club to say that we’d just signed a Georgian and I asked who it was, but he couldn’t even pronounce his name. I asked whether he was any good or not and this guy told me the club had bought him on the strength of a video of him playing for Georgia against Wales, who he’d apparently torn to shreds.

“I flew up from London to see his debut against Tottenham and sat next to Terry Venables, who was doing some commentary or something.”

Famously, Noel was quoted as saying that, after watching Kinkladze’s debut, City would either win the European Cup or end up in Division Four. Unfortunately, he was almost right,, too – though it was the worst case scenario that very nearly came to fruition!

“I watched Kinky for the first time and it was like, ‘Jesus, this is either the most frightening thing I’ve ever seen or it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen,” he laughed. “I couldn’t decide which one it was! You’d only get that at City.

“Then, a few years later we get Ali Benarbia and it was like, ‘Who is this guy?’ My brain’s a bit frazzled now, but if I had to pick anyone from the modern era that I thought was a genius it would be Ali.

“I think he turned Shaun Wright-Phillips into a world-class player – Ali and Shaun under Keegan were outrageous and they were playing a type of football you only see at five-a-side. That team we had with Berkovic, Ali, Wright-Phillips and Shaun Goater played some of the best football I’d ever seen – admittedly in a lower division – but at times we were unbelievable.”

Source: January's Official Manchester City Magazine Thanks to Bluemoon

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