Noel Gallagher Is A Guest On 'Whatever Happened to Rock 'n' Roll' On BBC 4 Tonight

Tune in to BBC4 this evening at 10pm (UK Only) as Noel Gallagher is a guest on Whatever Happened to Rock 'n' Roll - Lauren Laverne hosts an all-star discussion from London's iconic 100 Club, asking if rock 'n' roll is in crisis and what it now means in the 21st century.

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Noel Gallagher On Liam, Oasis And More

It doesn’t take much to set Noel Gallagher off. We are sat in a backstage portacabin at London’s peculiarly ragbag Clapham Calling festival, and I’ve just mentioned to the former Oasis songwriter that “Chasing Yesterday,” the second solo album under his High Flying Birds banner, is the U.K.’s fastest selling of the year.

“Is that impressive? I’m not impressed by it! I’d rather be the biggest selling,” he says. “The fastest selling, what does it mean? It means that if you put my CD on a table with Muse’s and Florence’s, it would win in a race to the end of the table. I don’t know what it means. Let me tell you — I’d rather be the biggest selling.”

You’d expect nothing less from Gallagher, Manchester’s great motormouth and a man whose ambition, stretching back to Oasis’ fledgling days, was always to obliterate the competition, musically and verbally, into irrelevance. He told everyone who would listen — and especially those who wouldn’t — that Oasis, fronted by brother Liam, would be the biggest band in the world and he was right: In the hedonistic Britpop era, Oasis didn’t as much catch the zeitgeist as set fire to it, first with its fantastic 1994 debut “Definitely Maybe” and then with the 22 million-selling follow up “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory.” With his anthemic rock ‘n’ roll tunes, Gallagher mastered the trick of writing songs that ostensibly said nothing but meant everything, and his resolutely working-class Mancunian outlook of hope and camaraderie found a universal audience.

“I think we accidentally connected, somehow, through magic, with a whole generation of people all over the world,” he says.

 The memory of just how huge Oasis was remains vivid even two decades later: every raucous gig, every outlandish interview, every brotherly argument, all events in themselves. The band’s pinnacle, playing to 250,000 people over two nights at the Knebworth Park Festival in August 1996, was a high (in all senses of the word) that Gallagher, in his more fanciful moments, wishes could have been a glorious finale.

“It would have been like the greatest thing of all time. But what would I have done?” he says. “I was in no way ready to be what I am now back then, no f—-ing way. I couldn’t sing then. I could barely do backing vocals. I was a drug addict. There was no way it could happen. We would have been cast to the wind.”

He leans back and smiles mischievously: “It would have been handy if somebody had died. We could have called it a day then.”

Nobody did, and the bloated, cocaine-ravaged mess that was the third album, “Be Here Now” (“it’s awful, I can’t listen to it”), came to exemplify the era’s garish excess. By 1998 Britpop had eaten itself, leaving Oasis to carry on regardless, ever popular yet with the magic intermittent, albums patchy and the friction between Noel and Liam increasing.

When Oasis finally imploded, it was spectacular. A still unspeakable altercation with Liam in a Paris dressing room in August 2009 was one fight too far, making rock’s great sibling rivalry untenable and bringing Oasis crashing to a halt. It always seemed inevitable the hostility between the pair — Noel the talented songsmith stage left, Liam the charismatic, handsome focal point with the thrilling Lydon-via-Lennon snarl — would lead to Oasis’ downfall. Wounds are far from healed.

“I don’t know anything about what he’s up to,” he says of Liam, now of no fixed musical abode following Beady Eye’s split. “I’m not his keeper anymore. Whatever he does now is his business. I really don’t give a f—-.”

Predictably, their relationship is invariably viewed through the prism of the band — Gallagher bemoans that he “answers questions about reforming Oasis every f—king day” — but given there’s no immediate chance of that happening, I am more interested in the personal aspect: Is there no part of Gallagher that feels sad at the very public, complete breakdown of his relationship with his younger brother?

“Yeah yeah yeah, oh f—- yeah. In a way, yeah,” he says, for once seemingly unsure of what to say. “But let’s not forget — he is a c—-. He’s not a very nice lad. And that is the basis of it. It’s not like he’s the perfect gentlemen and unfortunately we haven’t been talking. It’s not like that. For that band not to be together, the band that we all love and that we started, something f—-ing serious happened. I’m not going to go into it.” He puffs out his cheeks, exasperated. “But I don’t care anymore. I’m too far gone into this now to care about what he’s up to or what he’s doing.”

That’s not to say Gallagher doesn’t occasionally think about what he has lost.

“I do miss just being a guitarist and standing on that side of the stage being at an Oasis gig with the crowd, because I was observing it going on as well. It might be nice to be in a band one day. But let me stress,” he says, leaning forward and pointing, “it won’t f—-ing begin with the letter ‘O.’ “

Gallagher can afford to be so dismissive. His unfailingly forthright tongue might suggest otherwise — “Who wants to listen to a world radio station? Who cares what some f—-ing lunatic is listening to in Korea?” is his take on Apple’s new streaming service — but at 48, he doesn’t need the hassle (or the money) that would come with an Oasis reunion. Besides, the High Flying Birds have taken off:

The eponymous debut sold 2.5 million copies, over 70,000 of which were accounted for in Japan.
 With “Chasing Yesterday,” he even provides a riposte to critics who say his music remains unnecessarily conservative. Oasis-style rock anthems are present and correct, but there are also hints of prog, saxophone and on one song, “The Right Stuff,” Gallagher even dabbles in “space jazz.” It’s a song he wouldn’t — or perhaps couldn’t — have written 20 years ago.

“Oh for sure,” he says. “If you were to put ‘The Right Stuff’ on a compilation of my songs straight after (1994’s) ‘Supersonic,’ you’d think it doesn’t sound like the same songwriter. I would never have got to write that song when I was in Oasis. We were a rock ‘n’ roll band, we were very aware of what we were and there wasn’t really any room. Imagine playing ‘The Right Stuff’ at Wembley Stadium in front of a bunch of fat skinheads? I don’t f—-ing think so.”

There is a sense that Gallagher should make such musical exploration a habit. ‘The Right Stuff’ was a result of his much-discussed, controversially abandoned project with pioneering dance producers Amorphous Androgynous — “I’ve destroyed the masters, it wasn’t good enough, that’s it” — yet the track is undoubtedly one of Gallagher’s best in years. Perhaps he’s taken note: after a rumor he inadvertently started himself during an interview on Dutch radio last month, he admits interest in collaborating with Jamie xx.

“I do actually own a couple of his singles and I would work with him,” he says. “But he most probably thinks I’m s—t, so we’ll leave it at that.”

The immediate future is Gallagher’s closing set at this weekend’s Fuji Rock Festival. The musician has played at Fuji Rock four times, including a headline slot for Oasis in 2009 when the band was just three shows and one month away from collapse: A world away from Oasis’ first trip to Japan in September 1994, the month after “Definitely Maybe” was released.

“I remember it being the first experience of the mania,” he recalls. “We were the hot s—- in England at the time, we went to Japan and there were thousands of kids outside the hotels and you couldn’t move, you couldn’t go shopping, couldn’t do anything. We were there for two weeks and we experienced this Japanese mania and by the time we got back it had caught on in England. And then for a good few years it was like that everywhere we went. But I remember the Japanese were the first to go truly mad and it was great.”

As the packed field at Clapham Common later proves, people are still going mad for it: the Oasis songs that pepper Gallagher’s show are bellowed back with life-depends-on-it commitment, often by those not even born when “Wonderwall” was inescapable and Gallagher was fulfilling his rock ‘n’ roll dream. It’s a source of great pleasure for him.

“What surprises me now is that after all these years I can do a gig and play six Oasis songs, only one of which was a single, and people know them all over the world. I don’t know another living band, apart from The Beatles and maybe the Stones, that can play a b-side unannounced in the middle of wherever and it be treated like a huge song. So that makes me feel proud. And people still love it. They still love the songs.

“Which is handy for me,” he says, “because I f—-ing wrote them all.”ng,” he says.

Source: Japan Times

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Final Chance To Get Up To 50% Off More Selected Items In Pretty Green's Summer Sale

Pretty Green's summer sale has started get up to 50% off selected items available now online here and in-store.

Also added are items from the Black Label Collection here, and the Storm collection here.

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Noel Gallagher "As Long As I’m Growing Hair, I’m Writing Songs"

Click here to read a article that appears in American Songwriter July/August 2015 “British Issue,” now available on newsstands.

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On This Day In Oasis History...

The video below is from July 22nd 2000, when Oasis played the second night at Wembley Stadium in London.



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Setlist: Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds At Latitude

Below is the setlist from Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds at the Latitude Festival in Suffolk, England.

Everybody's On The Run
Lock All The Doors
In The Heat of the Moment
Fadeaway
Riverman
The Death Of You And Me
You Know We Can't Go Back
Champagne Supernova
Dream On
Talk Tonight
Whatever
The Mexican
If I Had A Gun
Digsy's Dinner
Half The World Away
The Masterplan
AKA... What A Life!
Don't Look Back In Anger

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Gallery: Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds At Latitude

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds made their way through a victorious set to close out Sunday night at Latitude. The Gallagher brother combined solo material with Oasis classics in a set which pleased an ecstatic crowd.

Click here for a number of pictures.

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Noel Gallagher Pokes Fun At The Guardian And The Royal Family During Latitude Set

Noel Gallagher headlined the final day of Latitude festival on Sunday (July 19) with a set of solo hits and Oasis classics, describing the festival as “a fucking Guardian reader’s rally”.

"Someone told me the backstage pass is a copy of today’s Guardian," he said ahead of playing a country version of Oasis’ ‘Fade Away’, the fourth song after opening his set with ‘Everybody’s On The Run’ from the band’s self-titled 2011 debut and ‘Lock All The Doors’ and ‘In The Heat Of The Moment’ from this year’s ‘Chasing Yesterday’. His tongue-in-cheek digs at the newspaper continued throughout the set.

He dedicated Oasis’ ‘Champagne Supernova’ to “all the Guardian writers at the back strung out on some really good rosé, this is called ‘Champagne Socialist’” and introduced ‘Talk Tonight’ in a posh accent, quipping “or, as a Guardian reader might say, ‘We fucking need to talk, man’”.

Gallagher was in talkative mood throughout, introducing ‘Riverman’ by commenting on the size of his brass player’s saxophone. “Look at the size of the saxophone on this feller,” he said, adding, “Anybody else got a saxophone that big?” When an audience member replied, he continued the penis metaphor: “But you can’t have, you’re a girl”.

Later, before playing 1994 Oasis single ‘Whatever’, he engaged in more front row banter, spotting someone with an unspecified animal in the crowd and demanding “Kill it! On television, kill an animal in front of the middle classes. If you don’t I’ll kick its face in. You’re all farmers, you kill animals for a living. And rightly so, I love a bit of meat.”

Then, before ‘The Mexican’ he asked the audience: “Is it true they don’t let scousers into this festival? Are there any Mexicans here?” Addressing someone in the front row he continued, “No way, you’re fucking ginger. A ginger Mexican is rarer than a unicorn.”

When a crowd member cried out for ‘Live Forever’, Gallagher replied “A duet? Me and you? Are you on the brown acid? I’m just humouring this bloke so he buys a T-shirt. If you go to the merchandise stall and buy everything with my name on it, me and you will do ‘Live Forever’. And I mean all of it, even the shit girls' T-shirts”.

The guitarist then played ‘The Masterplan’, calling it “another B-side that became a classic. There won’t be any of them in the future.”

Other dedications during the set included Gallagher sending out ‘If I Had A Gun’ to “the coolest person at the festival – not Nicky Wire, my wife. This is for you, Dave” and Oasis B-side ‘Half The World Away’ to “the Royal Family. Not the Nazi-sympathising Windsors, the fictional northern Royle Family, danke shon.”

Concocting a set around solo singles such as ‘The Death Of You And Me’, ‘AKA… What A Life!’ and ‘Dream On’ and rarer Oasis tracks, including a rocked-up take on ‘Digsy’s Dinner’, he closed the 90-minute set with a huge singalong of ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’, letting the crowd singing the first two choruses.

Source: www.nme.com

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Liam and Noel Gallagher Invited To Compete In A Wrestling Match

After years of feuding and wielding guitars at one another, Noel and Liam Gallagher have been offered the chance to compete in a wrestling match.

TNA Wrestling are convinced a few rounds will rid them of their sibling angst - and allow them to finally reform Oasis.

A pledge has been sent to the Gallagher brothers from the American promotors to step inside the ring during their UK tour in January 2016.

(It's a ridiculous notion, but we'll let them have their promo moment).

Speaking to BANG Showbiz, TNA ring announcer-and-matchmaker Jeremy Borash said: "They need to get together in the ring and settle their differences once and for all - and then reunite Oasis.

"We've got to do it in Manchester, I think the crowd would be really up for it, I think it would be an awesome fight. Once it's all over, whatever the result, we want Oasis back touring and making music."

Jeremy has offered to train Noel, 48, and has already come up with a signature move for the guitarist.
He added: "Noel is by far the more talented of the two but when it comes to in-ring skills he's going to need my help. He's a High Flying Bird now so I want to teach him how to do a high flying splash!"

The TNA Wrestling Tour comes to the Manchester Arena on January 29 before heading to London's SSE Arena on January 30 and the Barclaycard Arena in Birmingham on January 31.

Source: www.joe.co.uk

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Spokesperson For Liam Gallagher Denies He's Working With Lee Mavers

A spokesperson for Liam Gallagher has denied recent reports linking him to a new musical project with Lee Mavers of The La's.

Tabloid reports last week (July 13) suggested that Gallagher has spent the last two months writing and recording with Mavers after the pair were brought together by former Beady Eye and La's drummer Chris Sharrock.

"Despite all the madness and excitement that surrounds Liam's personal life, he has always been very serious about his music and doesn't want to be retired or left waiting for his brother to decide he wants to bring Oasis back," a source told The Sun.

 "Liam and Lee share a lot of similar ideas about music and although Liam has had his fair share of success with his own self-penned songs, his voice and swagger combined with Lee's undoubted ear for a chorus could create something very special."

However, a spokesperson for Gallagher today (July 22) has confirmed that the reports are incorrect, saying "there isn't any truth in this."

Earlier this year it was reported that Oasis had come to a "gentleman's agreement" to reform. Noel Gallagher subsequently denied that he would be interested in the move, claiming that the rumour came from a "source close to Liam".

Liam also compared his older brother to Katie Hopkins in a separate tweet about the ongoing rumours of an Oasis reunion.

Beady Eye split in October 2014 after releasing two albums together.

Source: www.nme.com

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Setlist: Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds In Benicàssim

Below is the setlist from Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds at Benicàssim 2015 in Benicàssim, Spain.

Everybody's On The Run
Lock All The Doors
In The Heat of the Moment
Riverman
You Know We Can't Go Back
Champagne Supernova
Talk Tonight
Dream On
The Mexican
Half The World Away
Digsy's Dinner
The Masterplan
AKA... What A Life!
Don't Look Back In Anger

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Reviews: Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds At Latitude 2015

Click here, here and here for a some reviews of Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds at Latitude 2015.

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Noel Gallagher On Oasis, Raheem Sterling, X Factor, Simon Cowell, Marijuana, Despicable Me II And More

Click here to read and watch an interview with Noel Gallagher who chats to Joe Dermody about Simon Cowell, Raheem Sterling and the lobby for an Oasis reunion, as well as revealing how marijuana ended his GAA career

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On This Day In Oasis History...

Below is a video from July 19th 2002, when Oasis played at the Bern Gurten Festival in Switzerland.

Listen Again: Noel Gallagher On Desert Island Discs

Click here to listen to Noel Gallagher being interviewed by Kirsty Young for Desert Island Discs, the show was broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

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Noel Gallagher On His Wife Sara, Oasis, Liam, Tony Blair And More

Smitten rocker Noel Gallagher has revealed how he fell in love with wife Sara MacDonald at first sight.

On an edition of Desert Island Discs aired today, the Oasis star chooses Be My Baby by The Ronettes – the song for the ­couple’s first dance at their ­wedding in 2011.

He tells the Radio 4 show’s host Kirsty Young that his wife is “everything to me” and reveals she keeps him in check with straight-talking.

He said: “She calls a spade a spade as well. When I am ­working on music or writing songs and I do demos, she’s the last person I play them to because I can play her a song and go ,‘I think this is going to be an amazing tune’ and she’ll listen to it and go, ‘Hmm, it’s all right’.

“You know, I never believed in love at first sight or that soulmate thing until I met her.”

The couple, who have two young sons – Noel also has a daughter from his first marriage – have been together since meeting at a nightclub in Ibiza in 2000.

And Sara, who comes from ­Edinburgh, was watching Noel headline at T in the Park last week with his band High Flying Birds.

On the show – where guests choose the music they would take to a desert island – Noel also talks about his ­turbulent relationship with his estranged brother Liam, the singer with Oasis, whose hits included Wonderwall and Live Forever.

He describes how having a family member in the band became an Achilles heel because “you know how to push each other’s buttons” and reveals they never put an arm round each other’s shoulders.
He said: “Oh, no. We were never that kind of family. No, no, no. There’s no arms round each other saying, ‘You’re great – no, you’re great.’

“The way it worked was when we’re not slagging each other off, that’s when we’re telling each other that we loved each other. That’s it.”

Noel also revealed he has no regrets about meeting Tony Blair in Downing Street at the height of Cool Britannia.

Oasis were one of the biggest bands in the world when he attended the party following Blair’s landslide general election victory in 1997.

They gave celebrity backing to the PM and New Labour but the singer and songwriter says he couldn’t believe he and Scots record boss Alan McGee – who famously signed the band after seeing them play at King Tut’s in Glasgow – were even there.

He added: “I’d moved to London in 1994, three years earlier, with a holdall, an acoustic guitar, nothing.

“Three years later, I drove to No10 Downing Street in a Rolls- Royce, drinking ­champagne. We laughed all the way up there, me and Alan McGee.

“He’d worked at British Rail most of his life and we were laughing, going, ‘How did we get here? This is amazing.’

“Afterwards, you find out that, yes, they did want that ­photograph. So, you know, we helped usher in Labour. You’re welcome, all of you. They were great days.”

Noel, 48, also reveals his love of the era. He said: “What people are refusing to accept is the 90s were brilliant. If you think back now to that time of fashion and ­politics, Thatcherism being ­ushered out, New Labour being ushered in, and Oasis, Blur, Pulp and all those bands being in the top five all the time.”

The star’s song choices include Pretty Vacant by the Sex Pistols and With or Without You by U2.
He also reveals that only now Oasis are finished can he give his verdict on the band.

He said: “On our day, we were great. It’s reaffirmed every night I go on stage and play a couple of Oasis tunes and people are there who weren’t even born [when they were written] and they’re crying.
“All over the world, people still are in massive love with that band and none more so than me.”

Source: www.dailyrecord.co.uk

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Gallagher Brothers' Relationship 'Was Achilles Heel For Oasis'

Cast away on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Noel Gallagher is to reveal the secret of his relationship with his brother, Liam, and to mount a sturdy defence of the 1990s, the era of BritPop and New Labour.

He will also comment on his use of drugs and on his status as a songwriter, explaining ruefully: “Put it this way, I am not as revered by the press as Thom Yorke or Damon Albarn. That is just a fact.”
Assessing the impact of Oasis, the band he set up with his brother, he says: “On our day we were great. People are there now at my concerts that weren’t even born then and they are crying at Oasis songs. All all over the world people are still in massively in love with that band – and none more so than me.”

On the subject of the rows with Liam that eventually caused the breakup of the band, Gallagher, 48, explains: “The way it worked was, when were not slagging each other off, that’s when were telling each other that we loved each other. That’s it. Clearly there was a point where he was the greatest singer in the world and it was great. It just so happens that the two of us we like to call a spade a spade. But it was very sarcastic mud-slinging.”

Gallagher tells presenter Kirsty Young that the pair had got on well as children in Burnage, Manchester. “He was an irritant though, because we shared a bedroom. When you are 10 and your brother is five it is a lifetime away and so I never hung out with any of his friends, but, yeah, we got on.” In the band, their sibling status was a mixed blessing, he adds. “You can gain some strength from being in a band with your brother when everyone else is a stranger, but as time goes on it becomes your achilles heel because you know how to push each other’s buttons.”

Gallagher, who has played solo and with his band High Flying Birds since 2009, confesses that in 1998 he realised the last three Oasis albums had all been created “on drugs”. “Not all of Oasis were on drugs though. Just effectively me and Liam,” he says. A move out to the country was followed by “a moment of clarity” when he found a stranger in his kitchen the morning after a party and decided to give up drugs.

“I have good willpower. It was one of the greatest things I have ever done,” he says, explaining he met his second wife, Sarah MacDonald, shortly after this.

Choosing the music of many of his heroes, such as David Bowie and the Smiths, to take to the desert island, Gallagher says he still regards the Beatles as “the greatest thing in music that ever was”.
Contrasting his heyday in the 1990s with the “gloomy, dark, fractured times” of the 70s and 80s, before the arrival of the “modern man”, Gallagher tells Young that people “have to admit” the Britpop era was great.

“What people are refusing to accept is that the 90s were brilliant. Think about that time, with Thatcher being ushered out and New Labour coming in. And Oasis, Blur and Pulp all those bands in the top five all the time. They were great days.”

He selects Jack Kerouac’s On the Road as his Desert Island Book, explaining it is the only book he has ever read..

Source: www.theguardian.com

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Get Up To 50% Off More Selected Items In Pretty Green's Summer Sale

Pretty Green's summer sale has started get up to 50% off selected items available now online here and in-store.

Also added are items from the Black Label Collection here, and the Storm collection here.

Check out the current collection and offers from Pretty Green here.

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds Land In Suffolk

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds will play at the Latitude Festival in Suffolk, England later today (July 19th).

If you are going to the show, and you are able to scan your ticket or send in pictures email them to us @ scyhodotcom@gmail.com.

You can also tweet us pictures and updates @scyhodotcom or via our Facebook page here.

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Noel Gallagher Is On Desert Island Discs Today

Noel Gallagher is interviewed by Kirsty Young for Desert Island Discs, the show is broadcast at 11:15 (UK Time) today on BBC Radio 4.

Click here for the details.

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