We won't be hearing anything new from Oasis for a long time, five years, maybe even more.
If the English group is ready to start a stand-by cycle caused by attrition it’s impossible to think that the sharpest tongue of rock will stop.
Inside the glass windows of an office in Murrayfield, Scotland's rugby’s ground. The 42 years old looks at the grassland filling up with 55,000 fans. Noel gives a paternalistic glance at the stage where The Enemy are playing, the band he chose himself as the opening act.
Noel talks to us about his future, the group, the rock, the uselessness of political involved rock stars like Bono and Chris Martin.
Will the tour's end at Milan’s Fair in August and announce a 5-year break. Fans are scared…
“It’s just a number, I could have said ten, but Oasis aren't going to split. It’s only that at this moment I don’t imagine what we can do more. Bigger tours? More money? I need something different to keep my interest alive.”
Have you already planned a solo album?
“No, no, I just would love to enter in a band and just play the guitar without worrying about singing and writing songs”
How are things going between your brother?
“As usual. We can get Oasis working without being best friends, Jagger and Richards we certainly are not.”
They aren't even brothers
“I understand people find it fascinating, but it’s boring to me. No need to lie, telling people we get on well unless we work well it’s good”
During your absence is a new Oasis going to be born?
“For what the music business is today, I don’t believe there will be a great band like us selling so many records”
What’s different?
“It’s a matter of time: we came a long before Internet, ipods, mobile phones. If we start tomorrow we will already have a website, facebook, we should give music for free. When we started, if you would come to listen to us you had to be where we were playing. When the first album came out there were no CD burners, you just had to buy it. There were the ‘pass the word’ brigade and in this way you were in contact with the audience. Nowadays someone records a gig on video and sends it to a friend in Brazil. It seems like people like shows just via the Internet”
Why do people come to see you?
“We just go on stage and we play. I have been to numerous stadium gigs. Everyone is talking about politics and nobody plays. But people are there for the music. At a U2 show or a Coldplay one there’s always a message about indigent people or people starving. OK, but can’t we just have a nice evening? Are we obliged to feel guilty? Let’s think to auto motive stages, to second stages for acoustic sets… this doesn’t make sense.
Would you prefer to be playing in clubs, but many people would remain outside?
We are not like U2 where everything becomes a device mechanism. I’m not saying that there career depends on a spectacular stage, it's just not what we do”
How is your relation with technology?
“If I were 15 years old I would be on Facebook. But I don’t even own a computer and it takes me an hour to send an email. Let’s analyze these things with two points of view. Internet is bad because people stop interacting. Taking everything to the utmost, we will have no need to go in a shop, in a bank, to the police, we will not have any contact with humans are they our relatives you detest or not. But there is also a good side: with people connected, there can’t be another holocaust, like we see today in Iran”
Have you ever thought you passed the limit on what you were doing?
“You can’t say this until you look behind. And now I can't see that between Knebworth 1996 (250,000 ticket sold for two concerts) and the end of the be Here Now tour we were too much on drugs and we were thinking very little about the music. But I don’t regret having done it.”
You don’t regret that you quit?
“I look at Chris Martin that says he never took any drug in his life and I think he’s an idiot. Taking drugs is the most beautiful thing of being in a rock band. Until 1998 I spent about 1 million pounds, then I quit because is bad for health, for brain, for life, for people around you. But while you are using it, except for the heroin that kills people and that I never tried, you say ‘mamma mia’.”
During 90’s you were the cool Britain icons, the new labour phase. Blair invited you in Downing Street. An era finished?
“I grew up with labour at the opposition. I was listening to their discourses about school and minimum salaries and thinking they were right. Then the entered the government and wow, I knew them. We discovered they are like everyone else, it has been like getting to know that Santa Claus doesn't exist. I will never vote again, nothing is gonna change anyway”.
Thanks to Tinny at oasislive.it for the translation of the interview from Corriere Della Sera.
Tickets are still available for a number shows on Oasis' largest-ever UK Stadium tour, click here for availability of tickets.
