Oasis Interviews Archive

A shitload of interviews from all the various members of Oasis and selected associates from the start of their career right up to the present day. These transcripts have been taken from various websites, forums and newsgroups over the years. Credit goes to those people who took the time to put these words online.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Noel Gallagher - Associated Australian Press - 27th October 2005

Oasis supremo Noel Gallagher has lavished glowing praise on Australian guitar-rock outfit Jet, calling their music a turn-on.

The British pop star, known for hurling abuse at pop contemporaries such as Robbie Williams or Bloc Party, says he's a convert to the Melbourne rockers, who recently supported Oasis for a series of gigs in the United States.

"When I first saw Jet it was too rock for me, but they're four of the coolest guys I ever met," Gallagher told AAP backstage in Paris, halfway through a world tour.

"You can't argue with Are You Gonna Be My Girl. I never listened to any of their singles and stuff but I'm a fan now."

Gallagher, who has made boasting an art form, still believes Oasis is the best band in the world, but in a display of eyebrow-raising generosity, the 38-year-old star is happy to oil the Jet engine.

"They played me some of their new record which is incredible. It's nothing like the one out last year. It's really, really great. They turn me on, really."

Oasis's sixth album, Don't Believe the Truth, was released in May and is widely heralded as a return to form more than a decade since arm-waving pop anthems like Wonderwall and Don't Look Back in Anger rocked up the charts and helped launch Britpop.

Gallagher and his brother Liam's drug and alcohol-fuelled antics have been making salacious tabloid fodder ever since, but while bands like The Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses never recovered from the Britpop hangover, Oasis are still selling albums and packing out stadiums around the world.

That, of course, is no surprise to the ever-confident Gallagher.

"We were listening back to this (album) thinking it's great and absolutely totally convinced everyone's going to get it and everyone did. So I'm pleased the fans like it and the people who've stood by us for years".

As a pop veteran, Gallagher has little time for the new generation of skinny-trouser and tie-clad guitar-driven bands such as Franz Ferdinand and Kaiser Chiefs, dismissing them as "indie s***".

"Within that realm of indie s***, Franz Ferdinand is about as good as it gets. Take Me Out is a tune that wins hands down but, really, it's f****** indie rubbish," Gallagher said.

"We were at the NME awards last year and we were the only ones not sat there with shirts and ties on. Everyone else was there in school uniforms, it was like being at a school disco."

Few things, though, rub a Gallagher up the wrong way quite as much as Robbie Williams.

The tabloids' favourite pop feud reared its head again after Williams hinted a track on his new album was a sexually explicit expose of his ex-girlfriend, All Saints star Nicole Appleton, now 33-year-old Liam's fiancee and mother of his youngest child, Gene.

"I feel sorry for Robbie Williams because nobody once ever mentions his music," laughs Gallagher cheekily.

"I wouldn't walk a mile in his shoes because he seems to be a very lonely and unhappy, very confused young man. He doesn't know whether he's straight or gay. He's forever going on about wanting a girlfriend and seems to be a lonely, sad man."

Gallagher still knows how to throw a verbal punch but after years of pop superstardom, fatherhood and eyeing 40, he admits he increasingly enjoys what he calls an ordinary life in his west London home.

"It's a bit weird going to the supermarket (sometimes) you kind of freak people out when you've got four bags of shopping," he says.

"But you've got to have a real life because if you don't, you end up like Elton John or George Michael.

"Can you imagine George Michael buying toothpaste and a toothbrush and a newspaper or some lemons?

"Ordinary people are determined to make you feel bad, though. You'll be in the queue at the supermarket with a pint of milk, some bread and a newspaper and someone will say, 'what you doing here?'

"I turn around and say, f*** off, I'm doing my f***ing shopping like you are."

The star says he's horrified by the prospect of becoming a rock dinosaur in the mould of the Rolling Stones, although the band has no intention of hanging up their guitar straps just yet.

"As long as (Liam) looks good we'll be around for a bit. So when he hits 40, that's when we'll start having problems," he laughs.

"Luckily we're blessed with great hair, I don't dye mine, nor does Liam, so we're still hanging in there."

Gallagher's days of heavy drug abuse, hell raising and general rock 'n' roll mayhem may be easing off as he takes his foot off the pedal, but there's no doubt what still gets one of Britain's most colourful pop icons revved up.

"You can't beat walking out into a football stadium and have 20,000 people simultaneously fall in love with you."

Australian fans will have a chance to lose their hearts to Oasis when the band tours later this month. Gallagher promises no repeats of their disastrous 1998 visit, which culminated in Liam being charged for headbutting a fan in Brisbane.

"I can't remember it really, I was just too f***ing out of it at the time," Gallagher says of the incident.

"We'd gone off the rails completely, it was great being in the band but I wouldn't have liked to have been in the audience. We had a great time but I'm sure all the people who paid all that money didn't.

"We were f***ing appalling, we were shocking, which is why the next time (in 2002) was so fantastic because we made a conscious effort to really turn it on.

"We're really looking forward to going back this time."

Oasis kick off their Australian tour on November 26 at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre, before concerts in Sydney and Melbourne.

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