Below are a number of quotes from Noel Gallagher's interview with the Independent in Ireland.
On the album Council Skies: “The whole thing was written in lock-down and it was a very reflective time – not just for me, for everybody,” he says. “Artists were probably the people who navigated that the best, because you can articulate it in some way. Although none of the songs are about lockdown, because what the f**k can you write about?” he laughs. “There’s nothing happening.”
“But because there was nothing to look forward to , I was reflecting on how... obviously, I had a lot of personal stuff going on and it was a time to sit and reflect and think: ‘How did we get here?’
On Easy Now: “It is one of my best songs, a great song. Fans are going to freak out when I play it live,” he says of the song with Lennon-esque lines like “Soon your future will appear/There’s nothing left for you to fear” and “I’ll wait for you I swear/Your destination comes without a fare. When I’m writing – and I write songs that sound, for want of a better word ‘Oasisy’ – I usually get as far as the chorus and go ‘it’s just a shit version of ‘Supersonic’, I can’t be arsed’, and I’ll just bin it off.
He added: "But with that particular song I got to the chorus and I was like: ‘Oh, hello – this is as good as ‘Little by Little’. This has got the same shape as ‘The Masterplan’. ‘Easy Now’ is a song about strangers passing and you never know their name. Roger Waters had the same theme for Dark Side of the Moon. My mate, a guitar engineer played on it. I said to him: ‘Make it sound like ‘Comfortably Numb’ by Pink Floyd.’”
Memories of his summer breaks in Ireland “Where my mum is from – out in the west – is very, very rural. Great when you’re a small child and you’re around animals and when they’re cutting turf. It was all farms and fishing. They were great times. When I go down to Mayo it’s still the same, it’s still the country. My mum comes from a big family, seven sisters, and in the six weeks of school holidays everyone used to go back to my gran’s house, which she wasn’t too pleased about, and they all had at least three kids each.
“So there was always a load of kids at her house. There was never less than eight kids of our age. It was just like a big holiday camp, really. It was great. You’d be in the pub most nights – not drinking, because everyone went to the pub. You’d be sat playing pool, eating crisps, and drinking red lemonade.”
Did he use his time with Springsteen to look for songwriting advice? “I don’t really know enough about his music, really, to get into it with him. Bono, on the other hand – he sends me demos all the time and vice versa. I sent him a few things when I was writing this album. He was the first person to say: ‘You’re on the way. You’re going there. And you should go there.’ I knew what he meant by that. He was saying to me: ‘Say it. What I’ve learned from meeting people like Springsteen and McCartney is they’re just normal guys like you who don’t really know what they’re doing. But they’re challenging something or other.
He added “Honestly, bar John Lennon and Bob Dylan and Bob Marley, I think I’ve met everyone else. They’re all just chipping away, tripping to write a f**king tune. The great thing about Get Back [the eight-hour 2021 documentary by Peter Jackson on the making of The Beatles’ 1970 album Let It Be] when it came out was: all these people who’ve never written a song and don’t know what it’s like could see. They think you sit down and go, ‘OK, I’m now going to write ‘Hey Jude’. And of course it’s not like that. It’s good to see Paul McCartney just hammering away at an idea of ‘Get Back’. He knows he’s got it but he doesn’t know what it is.”
On playing with Paul McCartney at his daughters Stella's birthday: “We played a few Beatles’ songs together. It was f**king far-out. It was a lovely summer night. The moon was a perfect crescent. He said to me: ‘Noelo’ – he calls me Noelo – ‘look at the moon. Look at the shape of the moon. Do you know that’s where the French got the term croissant from?’ I was thinking that’s not true. I said: ‘Is it?’ He said: ‘I don’t know. It’s a Macca truth.’”
How does he feel about the former Labour leader Tony Blair now? Does he think he is a war criminal? : “No,” he says, without hesitation. “I do not. I wish he’d stand again. I’d vote for him. He was the only one that ever spoke any sense to me. Not me personally, but politically. Everything now has gone back to the extremes. He seemed to dance on the fine line of uniting everyone politically and therefore united the country. I know it was a difficult time when it was the 1990s and the internet had just been invented and the economy went through the roof. But still, it was some dance that he did.
He added “Even during the pandemic he was the only one who spoke any sense about the vaccination when he said: ‘If it’s young people are spreading, let’s vaccinate them first. Don’t lock them all up if they’re at a party. Vaccinate them all.’ So, I don’t think he’s a war criminal. You know as well as I do that Britain is always going to stand with America through thick and thin. If America says jump, Britain says: ‘How high?’”