Oasis leader Noel Gallagher digs deep to chat about the band’s latest album.
It may have been a long time coming, but Noel Gallagher is a new man these days. At 41, the Oasis leader is older, wiser, and altogether calmer – a far cry from the hard-partying hedonist who frequently got into fistfights with his vocalist kid brother, Liam, both onstage and off. Now a mature father of two, the guitarist has not only come a long way from the band’s Britpop-defining 1994 debut, Definitely Maybe, but is now prone to penning deep, reflective processionals like those featured on Dig Out Your Soul, the latest set from Oasis, which instantly topped charts around the world upon its recent release.
After a few surreal wake-up calls of late – including the horrific experience at Toronto’s recent V-Fest where a crazed audience member angrily attacked him onstage for no apparent reason – Gallagher has revamped his life philosophy. “I don’t have an ‘all are welcome’ kind of policy,” he notes soberly. “My own thing now is that I know what’s best for me. Other people can tell me what’s best for them, but to me it’s all live and let live. But I don’t let people into my life, and I don’t try to walk into their lives. As long as I know who I am and stay true to my self, then everything’s cool with me.”
Gallagher may have changed, but get him talking, and that old sardonic snarkiness starts to resurface. Oasis diehards wouldn’t have it any other way.
The Wave: On the new album’s bonus-disc track, “Lord, Don’t Slow Me Down,” you sing “I’ve got a habit that the cat won’t lick.” What bad habits do you still have?
Noel Gallagher: Smoking and drinking, I still do that. But apart from that, not many.
TW: You look remarkably slim and healthy for your age. Did you change your diet, start working out?
NG: About three years ago, I suffered real bad back problems. I went to see a guy in London, and he sent me to a sports therapist, who said, “If you don’t start doing some exercise, in about five years you’re gonna be f***ed.” I’ve always shied away from exercise, pretty much because of the clothes, the gear you have to wear when you do it. But I got so addicted to it, I kept it going. I went and actually did boxing – I put the gloves on. So we did a bit of that, and just getting on these fairly complicated machines that strengthened my back. But I got so into it, I was doing it three days a week. I think the key is, if you exercise, you can eat whatever you want, so I haven’t changed my diet in any way.
TW: When you were boxing, did you go a round or two with anyone?
NG: No, it wasn’t real boxing. It was just gentle sparring. And I’ve got to say, I wasn’t very good at it. The thought of it is better than the actual doing it. I’d get my face smashed in if I was in the ring – I don’t have the killer instincts.
TW: Are you still recovering from the incident in Toronto where you were tackled on stage?
NG: No, no, no, it’s all fixed, it’s all gone – and it’s been two months now, really. He broke three ribs and bruised another five. Why? I dunno. He’s been up in front of a judge in Canada and the case was adjourned, so nobody’s heard his explanation yet. But he hasn’t got an explanation – he’s just an idiot. There is no logical explanation for why people do things like that.
TW: You’ve often said that you’ve learned a whole new way of walking through urban environments, where you stare straight down at the sidewalk and never make eye contact with potential nutcakes like that.
NG: I live right in the middle of the West End in London. It’s surprising how much privacy you get when you’re just surrounded by millions of people. I don’t get noticed at all. So I guess being in the eye of the hurricane, that’s where the calm is.
If I was to be the famous rock star down at the end of a leafy street in the suburbs, you’d get more hassles because everybody would know where you lived. But I live right off a main high street, and nobody bats an eyelid at me.
TW: I thought you’d moved to rural Buckinghamshire.
NG: I’ve got a place there, too, but I moved because I kinda missed the heartbeat of the city. There are only so many months of the year you can spend in solitude. I like to hear police sirens; I like to hear the choppers overhead. I like to hear traffic, because it gives me a sense that I’m part of something. But I’m lucky enough to have two places, so when I get pissed off at the city, I can go live in the country for a while. But I’m always drawn back to the city, because that’s where it’s at. I like to be surrounded by people.
TW: Dig Out Your Soul touches on death, religion, and the question of the hereafter. Those are some heavy issues.
NG: A lot of people have said that. I’m not a morose person that would think about mortality a great deal. But for my own part, I find writing about God and religion interesting.... I’m not really a believer in any sense, but I’m curious about the imagery of it all. And I’m fascinated by people who are so into religion in a big way. You live in America and I live in England, but you know the religion I’m talking about.
TW: Well, it’s only the fundamentalists who demand that you believe just as they do.
NG: You just hit the nail on the head. You can worship whatever you want, but you can’t then say that I’m not allowed to worship nothing. It’s like, “You just be cool and be happy with who you are, and I’ll be cool and be happy who I am, and the world will be a better place.” That’s my ideal for living. If you believe it and it makes your day-to-day existence better, if you can insert that kind of thing into your life and it works for you, then brilliant. Personally, I don’t need to believe that I will find redemption or that there will be a God who will judge me at the end of all of that. I believe that you get one shot at this, and it’s on Earth, so I’m not waiting for a second chance when I walk into the light. When they finally put me in the ground, that’s it. It’s over for me, done. I will rest in peace.
TW: So when you say “Dig out your soul,” do you believe you actually have one to dig out?
NG: Liam’s always bangin’ on about soul and blah, blah, blah, but I’m confused as to what it means. To me, it’s music. I listen to Motown and think, “Well, that’s got soul,” but I don’t know what that fu**ing means. The line comes from one of Gem’s [Archer, band guitarist] songs, and it’s actually when you’re at a party and someone’s putting on a record, it’s like, “Can you put a soul record on? Dig out your soul!” Like in a DJ type of sense.
TW: The new album has that hip-shaking, vintage-soul groove all the way through.
NG: That wasn’t the plan going into the studio. We’ve got more British rock ’n’ roll songs in the bag that we intended to record, but our producer, Dave Sardy, heard two or three songs that had that groove and said, “I need some more songs like this – do you have any?” And I said, “Well, not really, but I’ll write some!” And it was the first time we ever let him direct the whole piece. I wrote the bulk of my songs in the studio, and we’ve hit on the novel idea that every other band’s been doing for the last 15 years: “Hey, let’s let the producer produce it!”
TW: Returning to what we were initially discussing, it’s not so bad to actually slow down a little, right? You’ve got kids now – you need to stick around.
NG: Oh, yeah, totally. It’s not cool to be into drugs when you’ve got children, no matter which way you look at it. You have a responsibility to see them grow up, and then you have a responsibility for them to see you as a role model, I guess, in that this is how one lives one’s life. I mean, I don’t want my kids to grow up and think I was never there, physically or mentally. I want them to see me as… as just plain old dad.
Oasis plays Oakland’s Oracle Arena on Dec. 3. Tickets available from www.oraclearena.com.
Source: www.thewavemag.com
