Noel Gallagher & Bonehead - Oasisinet Webchat - 16th December 1995

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The following are edited transcripts from Oasis' first on-line chat.Before their gig at the KOME Holiday Festival in San Jose, California, Noel and Bonehead sat down to answer some questions from their on-line fans.

"Backstage" -- Noel and Bonehead. "Host" -- KOME Host

Backstage: Noel's here. Get the questions rolling...

Host: Question from Moz: Are you off your tree? If not, why not?
Backstage: The night is still young..

Host: Question from Lemonhead: Are ya comin' to Montreal?? Oh, and do you like lemonade???
Backstage: Don't know about Montreal. Yes, I like lemonade.

Host: Question from Wotan CCC: What are your thoughts on the American music scene?
Backstage: Not much.

Host: Question from digsy: What are the names of the "3 numbers ones and the number two" you recently wrote?
Backstage: Can't remember, sorry.

Host: Looks like Bonehead is going to join us!
Backstage: Any questions for the rest of the band? They are here...

Host: Question from Chrisap: Do you guys ever make lots of new friends when you go on tour.. And do you stay friends with this person as long as you can??
Backstage: Yes we do.

Host: Question from digsy: Hey bonehead... do you remember flying a kite in Michigan before a show on the last American tour?
Backstage: Yes. With them two girls. They here?
modbird: yes....how ya doing Bonehead!
Backstage: Everyone's fine. More questions!!

Host: Question from modbird: Liam....why don't you wear your glasses anymore?
Backstage: He lost them.

Host: Question from Fifi: When are they playing in Dublin?
Backstage: March. Two nights at the Point Depot. Sold out. Backstage: Sorry.

Host: Question from Psyclone: Who are some of your favorite bands? lemonade: this is waaay too cool! :)
Backstage: Radiohead, Cast, Paul Weller, Primal Scream, Verve, Stone Roses, Black Grape, etc.. Psyclone: mine is Smashing Pumpkins, but you guys are up there!

Host: Question from Carolem: What does Noel think of Jeff Buckley?
Backstage: Weird.

Host: Question from Modish: When can we expect a full tour of the US?
Backstage: Tour in April. Backstage: Dates on-line soon

Host: Question from modbird: what do you think of new northern bands like northern uproar or heavy stereo?
Backstage: Northern, okay... Stereo, the best!

Host: Question from Fifi: Are they coming to Belfast, then?
Backstage: No plans for Belfast yet.

Host: Question from Moz: Noel, were you bummed when you lost the singer spot in the Carpets to Tom? Do you think they'd still be signed if you were the singer?
Backstage: Can't remember that far back. Backstage: No on the second question.

Host: Question from me: Do you guys have a web site? What's the URL?
Backstage: Yes!! http://www.oasisinet.com/ Backstage: or e-mail ginger@cts.com

Host: Question from lemonade: What would you define your sound as?
Backstage: Loud!

Host: Question from me: What songs do you plan on playing tonight?
Backstage: Live Forever, Morning Glory, Wonderwall, Roll With It, Supersonic, Don't Look Back In Anger, Champagne Supernova

Superchuf: Do you like Blur - truthful answer
Backstage: NO!

Host: Question from digsy: What's the story on the rumoured Maine Road and/or Wembley stadium gigs?
Backstage: No plans set. Keep a look out!

Host: Question from modbird: How do you make the best of touring America...seeing as it's obviously a VERY different environment than England?
Backstage: Watch more TV. Like the chat shows.

Host: Question from digsy: What other Beatle songs are you considering covering?
Backstage: Helter Skelter.

Host: Last question is from lemonade (and a good one ): What are your fav shoes???
Backstage: Patrick Cox loafers. lemonade: very cool,...adidas gazelles here!

Host: Noel and everyone else .. Thanks for stopping by ... Look forward to hearing you!
Backstage: See you later. Thanks for everyone showing up.

Noel & Liam Gallagher - Alternative Press - December 1995

Ticket To Pride

Will Oasis' second album of "meaningless" anthems turn them into the new Beatles? And is such a thing even desirable in the 1990's? Yes and Yes, answer the Gallagher Brothers. (If they don't kill each other first.)

"Why are you in the country?" inquired the 20-something female customs clerk at London's Heathrow Airport.

"To interview Oasis," replied the American reporter. "Heard of 'em?"

"I'm afraid not," she apologized. "I must really be out of touch."

She's not the only one. The 30-something limo driver who transported me to the Columbia Hotel (where Oasis have been banned for, uh, creative redecorating) was blissfully unaware of the Fab Five's existence. Oddly enough, the 20-something woman at customs who questioned me upon departing from London also drew a blank at the mention of England's biggest band. Some might say Oasis are poised to become the new Beatles, but it seems they still have work to do.

While their recognition factor may not yet match JohnPaulGeorgeRingo's, Oasis are gradually infiltrating the Great British collective consciousness. In early September brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher graced the cover of the proudly superficial teen rag Smash Hits, wherein we learn such fun facts as Noel's height (5'7"), taste in women ("busty blondes"), Liam's real name (William), and hygiene habits ("He never changes his underwear"). And there are the Gallaghers and bassist Paul "Guigs" McGuigan looking sharp in print ads promoting Manchester City Football Club gear. There've been quarterly appearances on the TV program Top of The Pops. Mid-August saw the media in a frenzy over the chart battle between Blur's "Country House" and Oasis' "Roll With It," in which Blur barely edged out Oasis for Number One. Pundits caned it a flashback to similar competitions between the Beatles and Rolling Stones in the '60s. An August NME cover famously pitted photos of Blur's Damon Albarn and Liam and billed the showdown as "The British Heavyweight Championship." That same week Madonna also released a single but nobody really noticed. Most bizarre, though, was the sight of supermodels sashaying to "Roll With it" on goofy TV show The Big Breakfast. Go Kate, go Naomi!

Entering the luxurious Landmark Hotel, where the interviews will take place, it's apparent just how huge Oasis have become. Everywhere you look, poshness, tastefulness, and rich folk. Mineral water starts at two pounds (that's about $3.25, Yanks). A pianist and violinist politely play elegant music. If only Oasis' working-class pals in Manchester could see this, they'd have strokes. Rock and roll? Bollocks, mate. Oasis have entered the pop stratosphere. Last year Definitely Maybe became the fastest-selling debut album ever in the U.K., shifting 150,000 in the first three days of its release, on the way to a total of 800,000 in England. (A remarkable feat in a nation of 50 million.) Similar or larger amounts of the LP were bought by Japanese, American, and European fans. Many knowledgeable types expect the follow-up, (What's The Story) Morning Glory, to surpass these totals.

All very well, but sales figures aren't everything. Mere numbers cannot convey the hysteria that grips Oasis' fans at live shows. At this year's Glastonbury Festival Oasis brought 110,000 fans to eargasm, as they enjoined the crowd to sing along to "Live Forever," a song destined to be played at countless weddings and funerals (dig the irony).

Whenever a group gets as popular as Oasis, some people, music critics especially, are going to be skeptical about their merits. And rightfully so. Even as I'm transported by irresistible tracks like "Slide Away" and "Champagne Supernova," a naggling doubt stirs at the back of my mind that I, someone who usually wants musicians to at least attempt something new or plunder from unobvious sources, shouldn't be thrilling to such familiar chord sequences and song structures. And then "Up in The Sky" will come on and I'll feel like I can long jump continents. Quite a dilemma, you'll agree.

Oasis are the opposite of an acquired taste. You either love or hate their songs from listen one. It just so happens that an extraordinary number of people fall into the former category (including Metallica's Lars Ulrich!). Which means that in America Oasis appeal to more than just the hardcore Anglophiles who religiously read the British music press; they're also penetrating the dense crania of kids who think MTV is "cool" and folks who buy their CDs at mall chainstores.
That Oasis' British record company, Creation, can afford to put up Noel and Liam at this ritzy joint speaks volumes about the group's clout. Significantly, Noel is holed up on the second floor while Liam is ensconced on the sixth. The bros don't do interviews together anymore to save on hospital bills.

The first interview occurs in Noel's absurdly lavish suite, which includes a built-in bar. Be assured that the guitarist-songwriter does not neglect this luxury. The elder Gallagher brother (28) wears an expensive purple shirt that looks like a refugee from Elton John's closet. Noel flashes easy, scrunched-featured smiles and radiates the wit and confidence of John Lennon (one of his heroes) and Muhammad Ali.

On the road and at home Noel prefers to keep to himself, leaving Liam, Guigs, guitarist Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs, and new drummer Alan White with the important task of laying waste to brain cells, members of Blur, drinking establishments; you know, proper rock and roll behavior. Noel apparently did his share of carousing as guitar tech for Inspiral Carpets in the early '9Os. Which isn't to say he's not occasionally up for the fringe benefits that inevitably come with being in the biggest band in England.

But since he took over the controls of Oasis in 1992, Noel's become a songwriting machine of singular prolificness. His work ethic puts the Puritans to shame. Guigs says that "Noel writes five to eights songs a week, every week. His output and quality are unbelievable. It's scary. He's the best songwriter to come out of Britain in the last ten years."

Noel wouldn't argue with that, except to amend it to the last 20 years or so. How does he respond to critics not so enamored with his work? "People say that all I'm doing is a pastiche of '60's music," he offers. "I'm not gonna change. If you don't like it, fair enough. Somebody must fookin' like it. We're the biggest band in the country."

He's very confident that Oasis are the best band in England, maybe the world. "Best band in the world? Oh, yeah," Noel admits, as if it were never in doubt. "To me, I'm the best songwriter in the world. I'm at least up there with Neil Young . And U2. And Paul Weller. These are the people I respect. Everyone else can go sit in a country house (a dig at the Blur single of the same name.
Three weeks later Noel directed more venom towards Blur, wishing that two members would "catch AIDS and die")"

If anyone else had flaunted such dodgy taste to my ears, I would walk away in disgust. But Noel has an undeniable charm that excuses such wrong-headed opinions. Can Noel pinpoint what makes Oasis the best band in the world? "I wouldn't like to. It's a belief in what we're doing. And honesty, in that we're influenced by our record collections. We don't claim to have invented anything new. We don't claim to be avant- garde. We just play rock and roll music. And rock and roll will never die, as someone said," he says, smiling.

Noel can't remember much of Oasis' first American tour but the gold disc on his wall tells him that they must've done something right. "I think we're by far the most accessible English band since the Sex Pistols [what is he drinking?]. I think the American public will always find something magical about five English boys with funny haircuts and funny accents playing rock and roll music. As long as the music's good. And our music's good, we've got funny haircuts and funny accents, it's all there, ain't it?"

Oasis have taken heat for their static stage demeanor. The band's just not exhibitionistic, huh? "Definitely not. The songs speak for themselves. They don't need for us to go run up and down the stage like Guns N' Roses. We know our strengths and weaknesses. We're not showmen, we're musicians."

As noted earlier, Noel writes an amazing number of songs. "I can't sit still for a minute. There was about a week in Italy when I didn't bring a guitar. And I ended up buying one there. I just can't keep away from the fucking thing. I lost my freedom as soon as I learned to write songs. I'm tied to that guitar now forever. I'm never gonna get a holiday ever in my entire life because I'm gonna have that monkey on my back."

While Noel slaves away at his trademark anthems, the rest of Oasis generally get up to their usual mischief. "They're not sitting up till seven in the morning trying to find the middle eight that joins the verse and the chorus. That's fuckin' hard work, I don't care what anyone says."

The Gallaghers grew up in a depressed area of Manchester (Liam still lives there with his mother). Noel describes his lyrics as "very Mancunian, very Northern." What distinguishes Mancunian lyrics? "Sly wit. There's always a twist. I'm a very sarcastic person, very subtle. I have a very dry sense of humor, as all Mancunians do. We have a certain outlook on life. Very 'Aw, fookin' shit, man, get on with it!' That's why my lyrics aren't that angst-ridden. They're all sort of 'You've gotta roll with it, you've gotta say what you're saying, don't let anybody get in your way."'

Which of his songs mean the most to him and why?

"'Live Forever,' because of what it means to other people more than what it means to me. 'Slide Away' because it's about a relationship from about two or three years ago with a real person. I've forgotten what her name is anyway," he jokes. "'Wonderwall' on Morning Glory is about my girlfriend who I'm going out with today. 'Don't Look Back in Anger' because of the sentiments and the way it came out sounding.

"People will always read the wrong meanings into it. I'll be told by someone in the States next year the meaning of the song 'Hello,' which to me hasn't got no meaning. It's just words strung together. And I'll go, 'You've got a point there.' So people will tell me the meanings. I don't sit down and think about meaning. I try not to anyway."

Isn't it odd that someone in Noel's position would write lyrics that don't necessarily mean anything? Most of his songwriting idols (Lennon, Pete Townshend, Ray Davies, Mick Jagger, etc.) surely intended their songs to mean something. "All I can say is that they said everything I wanted to say. But they haven't played everything I want to play. I just want the lyrics to sound nice. As long as people can make some meaning out of 'em it doesn't really matter what I think about 'em. At the same time, they're not just throw-away. Takes a long time to write them.

"I always hate albums where you know exactly what the songs are about because before the album comes out the person who wrote the songs goes, [affects perfect sullen American accent] 'This was when I was going through a really bad phase on drugs, man.' you listen to the music and think, 'That was about when he was going through a really bad phase on drugs, man.' How interesting is that? When I listen to 'I Am The Walrus' [a Beatles song Oasis have covered] I think, 'What the hell was going through his mind when he wrote that?' Makes it challenging to the listener. It's about entertainment and opening your mind."

When asked to rate himself as a songwriter against his favorites, Noel replies, "If I was in the Beatles I'd be a good George Harrison. I've only done two albums so I'd say I'm as good as any of them after their second albums."

Speaking of Oasis' second album, Morning Glory is a more diverse, more melancholy, and better-produced work than Definitely Maybe, the expected result of having much more money to record. They could bring in string sections, acquire Mellotrons, Hammond organs. And they went through some rough times in the interim. (The last North American tour brought Oasis to the brink of splitting more than once.)

Morning Glory is also a trainspotter's delight. Savvy listeners will detect homages all over the place. They're all intentional, Noel confesses, and credit is given, so call off your lawyers. "Nothing is original anymore. There are like 30-odd chords or something. It's all been done before. Ask Keith Richards, he'll tell ya. You've gotta take the little bits out of the ones you want. As long as the chief parts you put together make something new, which I believe it does, then I think that's all right. What the fuck were the Beatles doing if not ripping off the Shirelles when they started?

"I'm always gonna write a certain sounding type of song. I write songs that go verse-chorus-verse-chorus-middle eight-guitar solo-chorus-chorus, finish in about four minutes. This is the sign of a great song: I write a song before I go to bed. I won't have any Iyrics, just a melody. If I can remember it first thing in the morning, then I know it's good. I've done it with 'Live Forever,' 'Slide Away,' 'Don't Look Back In Anger' and nearly every song on Definitely Maybe. When I woke up I remembered the songs chord for chord, I knew the vowels and syllables I was gonna use."

In the future Noel wants "to mess with new instruments. Because of the success of Definitely Maybe we can try things backwards or upside-down, try to fuck up a few instruments and make 'em sound weirder. But it's still gonna be quite disciplined pop music, structured classically. Maybe we could get different people in."

Noel's not into virtuosity for its own sake? "Nah. Who wants to be Jimmy Page?"

A lot of people. That's the problem. "Yeah. John Squire [Stone Roses guitarist] does. I'd rather be George Harrison and write 'Something' than be Jimmy Page and go fucking 'diddle-uh-diddle-uh-biddle-uh-buh.' That's too much like hard work, innit?"

Does he think he'll ever get tired of pumping out anthemic rock songs? "I don't know what it is I do or how to do it. It just comes to me. I seem to write these anthems. It might change. As I get older it'll probably change. I'll become like Van Morrison and become a right miserable old fucker," he laughs.

Rumors abound that Oasis will break up after this world tour. "It was said we were gonna break up after three albums," Noel clarifies. "I said that after the third album maybe we were gonna take quite a bit of time off because we put out records every three months. There's an album every year. Maybe people would want a rest. We can sit back and reflect on what we've done and see where we go from there. Of course I'm not gonna take any time off at all 'cause I'm fuckin' starting to write an album as soon as we get off tour. Just maybe step back from the media machine for a while."

Back down to the second-floor lobby to question Liam, five years Noel's junior. Damned pianist is still tinkling away. Liam, unshaved, glares at me. Seems he wants to do one of two things: sock my jaw or knee me in the groin. Seems something's eating Liam; something's making a full-fledged banquet of his soul. During the interview, he can't stop swiveling his head, so his voice fades in and out.

Liam's features are made for enduring love affairs with cameras. Even as we speak, thousands of girls (and boys, too) are staring at his visage and thinking impure thoughts. Don't under estimate the importance of Liam's face. If he looked like, say, Gene's bassist, Oasis probably wouldn't be this mega.

Noel has said that he has the ability to get things off his head by writing them down and that Liam finds his release by getting off his head. Still true? "Aye, totally. Still gettin' off me head. I've no desire to be a songwriter yet. Too busy being the singer and just making sense of it all. But when I get a bit of time off, I'll sit down and write a song."

You think one day you'll develop into a songwriter? "Yeah, but just for me, not for Oasis. Noel writes Oasis' music and I sing it. And that's that."

Is it strange to sing Noel's words? "No," he says quickly.

Even if you're angry at him? "No. If I'm angry at him I just sing more angrier."

Ever find that sometimes you just can't bring yourself to sing his Iyrics?
[Quickly again] "No."
Never?
"No."
Amazing.
"Uh-huh. It's just right, innit? I've gotta sing it. I'm the singer."

Have you ever tried to put your own interpretation on any songs? "No. I don't change the melody or anything. Maybe I'll pronounce a word a little differently. Like 'My imagin-ay-shee-un' [from "Cigarettes and Alcohol"], that was mine. Snarl, y'know?"

Liam is perhaps the least mobile singer in music today. "I refuse to dance. And I can't dance anyway. I'm not in a band for that. It's about music and that's it. I'm not an entertainer. But I do entertain people, see what I mean? You don't go to an Oasis gig because the singer's jumping around or because the guitarist does a great fucking windmill. You've seen one of our gigs you've seen 'em all. But if you're into the music, you'll know that we played better the night before or we can play better.

"When I'm onstage I just feel like gettin' on with the job. Tunnel vision, straight down the line. I gotta serious job, y'know what I mean? Onstage I can't feel that mic. It feels too real. I never touched the mic in my life. I like to sing with me hands behind me back. I can project my voice."
Have you and Noel always been so combative and competitive?"Yeah, kind of. More so in the band. We're both on a musical quest now. It's gotta be done right. And sometimes I think it's gotta be done this way and sometimes he thinks it's gotta be done another way. So therefore we get in arguments."

What's an example of an argument you've had? "'Rock 'N' Roll Star.' I'll say that this song should go fast and should end like 'My Generation,' drummer going mad and that. The whole song should go faster. [Noel] said, 'No no no, it sounds naff.' Fuck that. The drummer can do it if he's a top drummer. It should go off its tits."

Along with millions of others, Liam likes his voice just as it is, a compelling blend of John Lennon's tunefulness and John Lydon's sneer. "I'm not gonna take singing lessons. I'm not singing from there [points to chest]. I'm singing from there [points to neck]. There's no time for that breathing in and out tackle. It just falls out straight down the line. And that's what gives you the snarl. Give me singing lessons and it'd make me sound like everyone else. I don't want that."
Liam's got a reputation for being short- tempered. Why so angry, lad? "Everyday life. The past. The future." Your present seems really good. "Yeah. Some of it's good, some of it's bad. I see the bad sides of it all. I see things that normal people wouldn't see. It's not all great being in a rock and roll band. It's not what I thought it would be."

What's not living up to your expectations? "The whole thing. Once you dreamed the dream and it's come true then that's it, innit? The whole thing was dreaming about what it would be like and how you probably couldn't have it. So that'd be the beauty of it. Wantin' it. This is fuckin' bobbins, y'know what I mean? The only reason I'm still in it is 'cause of the music and the band. The whole lifestyle is a load of bullocks.

"I've got no time. I've got all this fuckin' money but no time for it. I don't even got no time to buy a place of me own or get a flat. We play loads of gigs. Come home and I'm back where I was me whole life, where I was trying to get out of."

In one interview Liam said that he didn't expect to reach age 40. "I just don't think I will. I live too fast and I'm mad for it. Some nights I'm on the verge of blackout. When I get to 25 or 30 the heart attacks be kicking in."

You don't care about the long run? "No. I've got no more ambitions. I had one dream and it's done and I'm livin' it now. When I'm bored with that then it's over. But maybe I'm naive and young and I'll learn. That's what people keep on telling me. But maybe I'm not."

You don't seem to like doing interviews much. "Said it all last year. We're the most important band since the ' Pistols. We're the best band in the world today. And that's it."

Well, if enough important people keep saying that Oasis are the best band the world (I heard it often enough in my brief visit to London), most of us will probably start believing it. Know this: No band on the planet wants that fabled Beatlesque world domination more than Oasis. No band is working harder for it. And if Noel Gallagher keeps writing b-sides that, in Guigs' memorable words, "piss all over most groups' best songs," then get ready for Oasis lunch boxes and the inevitable cartoon series.

Noel Gallagher - NME - 30th September 1995

"Morning Story"

Noel and NME journalist Andy Richardson sit down and talk through each track of "(What's The Story) Morning Glory?"

Hello - This opening track was premiered at Glastonbury and borrows the riff from Gary Glitter's 'It's Good To Be Back'.
"It's one of the three songs on the album that's not about anything. I spend as much time on the lyrics as I do on the music. I'd like our kid to spend more time on them but he spends no time at all. Obviously, everyone is going on about the Gary Glitter thing, but I just had that in for a laugh "

Roll With It
"It's about f-- all. I like the sentiments of that song. It's just a simple rock 'n' roll tune. And it sold alright."

Wonderwall - This track is a strong contender for release as Oasis' next single.
"People ask me why we had 'Roll with it' instead of 'Wonderwall' as the single. It seems to be everybody's favourite. It's about my girlfriend, Meg Matthews. She had a company which folded and she was feeling a bit sorry for herself. The sentiment is that there was no point in her feeling down, she has to sort my life out for me because I'm in bits had the time. We have an ordinary relationship. I met her at Christmas so I've always been a pop star since I've known her. Right now we've got the best part of a month off so, while I'm rehearsing, she's at work. When we get home we just sit down and have a couple of drinks."

Don't Look Back In Anger
"It's about not being upset about the things you might have said or done yesterday, which is quite appropriate at the moment It's about looking forward rather than looking back. I hate people who look back on the past or talk about what might have been."

Hey Now!
"This is about being in a group. It's a massive step forward for us. Some people aren't going to like it because they're just going to want more songs like 'Cigarettes And Alcohol' or 'Supersonic'. The band has changed a lot there's a deferent vibe. We released Tony (McCarroll, drummer) because he wasn't that good. We had some of the best drum tutors in the country and they just said he wasn't very good. There's still me and our kid and Bonehead and Guigsy and of course Marcus (Russell, Oasis' manager). But I believe in fate. It had to happen for us from the first sessions of 'Definitely Maybe'."

Some Might Say
"That was the gin 'n' tonic getting the better of me. I had a guy in Swiss Cottage who came up to me when the single was Number One. He said, 'That song really meant a lot to me' because he's a Christian. And I asked if he'd heard the group at all and he hadn't. So I told him we had this song called 'Cigarettes And Alcohol' and being a Christian he wouldn't really dig that. He seemed like a really down-to-earth bloke. And he's telling me a song means a lot to him as a Christian and I'm having a conversation with him when I'm drugged up to the eyeballs. It's a laugh, man."

Cast No Shadow
"It was inspired by Richard (Ashcroft) from The Verve. I sussed Richard wasn't very happy for a while so l wrote it for him and about three weeks later he quit. It's about songwriters in general who are desperately trying to say something. I'd like to be able to write really meaningful lyrics but I always end up talking about drugs or sex. People tend to ask my advice about a lot of things. I'm good at giving it but I'm shit at taking it. But people like Richard and Paul (Weller) will look after me they'll make sure I'm conscious in a chair or that I can get home."

She's Electric
"It was the first song we wrote for the album. Someone asked me if it was about Blur, but it's not. It's like a Small Faces song or something by The Kinks."

Morning Glory
"It's a cynical song about drugs."

Champagne Supernova
"Some of the lyrics were written when I was out of it. There's the words: 'Someday you will find me/ Caught beneath a landslide/ ln a Champagne Supernova in the sky'. That's probably as psychedelic as I'll ever get. It means different things when I'm in different moods. When I'm in a bad mood being caught beneath a landslide is like being suffocated. The song is a bit of an epic. It's about when you're young and you see people in groups and you think about what they did for you and they did nothing. As a kid, you always believed the Sex Pistols were going to conquer the world and kill everybody in the process. Bands like The Clash just petered out. Punk rock was supposed to be the revolution but what did it do? F all. The Manchester thing was going to be the greatest movement on earth but it was f all. When we started we decided we weren't going to do anything for anybody, we Jut thought we'd leave a bunch of great songs. But some of the words are about nothing. One is about Bracket The Butler who used to be on Camberwick Green, or Chipley or Trumpton or something. He used to take about 20 minutes to go down the hall. And then I couldn't think of anything that rhymed with 'hall' apart from 'cannonball'. so I wrote 'Slowly walking down the hall/ Faster than a cannonball' and people were like, 'Wow, f , man'. There's also the line 'Where were you while we were getting high?' because that's what we always say to each other. But the number of people who've started clubs called Champagne Supernova is f ing unbelievable. And the album isn't even released yet."

Noel Gallagher - The Guardian - 17th September 1995

Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis like to have a bit of a bitch.

It used just to be about each other. They still like to do that, but they have bigger targets, like their record company and Blur. On the eve of the release oftheir much-anticipated second album, the band talk to Life about drugs, success and Jaffa Cakes

'Arrogant. Big-mouthed. Self-centred. Rude. Crude. Sexist. And sickeningly talented.' Speak of the devil. Noel Gallagher, soft-spoken, hard-headed uberfuhrer of Britain's foremost rock'n'roll band, Oasis, is slyly itemising what some see as his group's better points when his little brother Liam comes bowling into the bar, all mouth and trousers and slump-shouldered swagger. Everyone looks up. Liam, like all great lead singers, has a discernible notice-me aura `` a baleful, chaotic, surly hurly-burliness that makes you stare at him; but not straight in the eye. He is very beautiful, despite his Play-Doh hairdo (short, but long before the ears). He shoots Noel an unreadable look and sits down at a separate table.

It's three o'clock in the morning. Four hours ago, in a tent on a wind-battered beach in Irvine, Strathclyde, Oasis were drawing a 6,000-strong gig to a triumphant close. Now, the bar of their hotel a few miles away is doing brisk, convivial business. As well as the band entourage `` Noel and his contingent living large around one small table `` there's a well-laced stag party whose groom-to-be has just finished eating a cigarette. `For 1967,' he explains.

Noel is holding court. There are six music journalists here `` representatives from Smash Hits, NME and Melody Maker `` and there's nothing Mr Gallagher likes more than muso-chat. A genial, talkative 28-year-old, with terrible teeth, terrifying eyebrows and eyes that squidge into curved slits when he smiles, he is getting cheerfully worked up over Mojo magazine's `100 Greatest Albums Ever Made'.

`The Beach Boys at Number One? The fucking Beach Boys! Fucking hippy California surf beach bollocks,' reasons Noel, a man whose musical allegiances become clearer when he tells you that he can't end a day without uttering the words `The' and `Beatles'.

A joshing, train-spottery discussion follows until suddenly, at the other end of the room, Liam lurches savagely to his feet. He growls something incomprehensible, hurls a half-full beer bottle at the ceiling, and stalks out. As an exit, it makes Cantona's Crystal Palace two-footer eem underplayed. He silences the room. But Noel doesn't even turn his head, doesn't skip a beat. `And Stevie Wonder's only at Number 20,' he continues, as his fellow revellers goggle and gawp at the still-swinging foyer door.

When Oasis smashed their way into the nation's pop consciousness in April of last year with their cocksure debut single, Supersonic, much was made of Liam and Noel's brotherly unlove. The media portrayed them as constantly a-bicker; interviews would regularly end with the pair in hand-to-hand combat. Their differences? Noel thought Liam had some growing up to do; Liam viewed Noel as an overbearing know-all. The brothers' splutter and spleen kept the rest of the band `` rhythm guitarist Paul `Bonehead' Arthurs; bassist Paul `Guigsy' McGuigan; with Tony McCarroll on drums, now replaced by Alan White `` well back in the shadows, where they have stolidly remained.

After a platinum LP, Definitely Maybe, which sold three million worldwide, and seven Top 40 hits (including five Top 10s and one Number One, Some Might Say), the duo are keeping their fights private. The stereophonic media view of Oasis has gradually faded into one man yapping: Liam has been sidelined. Though the tabloids scream about who he supposedly spends his leisure hours with (Paula Yates; Helena Christensen), Liam doesn't get to talk about work these days. That's left to Noel. And the on-record squabblings are no longer in-house; instead, Oasis gripe about Blur.

Oasis versus Blur. Blur versus Oasis. You would have to have been living with your head in a bucket of custard for six months to have avoided such a Great Pop Tiff. Who do you support? Oasis: northern, no-nonsense rock blusterers with instant tunes and rent-a-lad demeanour? Or Blur: pouting southern art-ponces of crafted, crafty pop? The crucial colours-mast-nail interface occurred in the week beginning 7 August, with the simultaneous release of the singles Roll With It (Oasis) and Country House (Blur). After a week of breathless pan-media speculation, the 13 August chart revealed a fop-pop victory: Blur at Number One, Oasis Number Two. Country House sold 280,000 in its first week, rising to 400,000 in the second; Roll With It shifted 250,000 in its first week and about 350,000 overall.

Privately, Blur's people admit it was they who altered the release date of Country House to coincide with the Oasis single, though publicly they intimated exactly the opposite. But there was no way that the two bands' LPs would come out at the same time `` far too much money at stake. So Blur's fourth album, The Great Escape, is already in the shops and universally lauded. Will the Oasis offering (What's The Story) Morning Glory do as well when it arrives in just over a week's time? Definitely Maybe earned them a Brit (for Best Newcomers) and a Mercury Prize nomination.

Noel calls Morning Glory `Definitely Maybe's big brother' `` as he would. If you press him further, he reveals that it sounds like `half of it is sat in a hammock smoking a massive spliff and the other half is walking round the streets of England with a petrol bomb in its hand'.

More precisely, it's another supremely assured, rapid-fire, tune-packed rock album for boys, recorded in 15 days (Roll With It was laid down in one take). So far, Oasis songs are of two types: the elbows-out, balls-out R&B anthem of Friday-night urban masculinity (Rock N Roll Star, Cigarettes And Alcohol; Hello and Roll With It on the new album), and the slower, sleepily wistful, not-quite-love-song (Slide Away and now Don't Look Back In Anger). This time around, though, Noel's Beatles obsession has made things a touch more psychedelic: strings and swirls, songs occasionally extending into twiddly fuzz-guitar workouts.

Once again, his big tunes nestle immediately in the sing-along section of your memory; and his words are as vague, as hit and miss, as ever (`roll with it', `feel no shame'; erm, `caught beneath the landslide in a champagne supernova in the sky'). Oasis lyrics revolve around an unspecified `me' and `you', though `you' occasionally has a girl's name. They're slack, occasionally ridiculous, often rabble-rousing, and sometimes `` as in Don't Look Back In Anger `` they can be gorgeous.

This last is the stand-out track on the LP, not least because of the vocals. It's Noel, not Liam, who's flexing his tonsils. The songwriter likes to warble a bit at gigs during his acoustic set, but Don't Look Back comes with full band backing, and when Oasis play it live Liam walks off stage.
`Yeah, well, that's his fault,' claims Noel, post performance, pre hotel, in a chilly little Portakabin set up outside the gig marquee. Noel pulls on a Benson and Hedges, hacks like Steptoe the Elder, and continues.

`I'd written these two songs for the LP, right?' he drawls in his Mancunian whine. `One was Don't Look Back In Anger, and one was called Wonderwall. I wanted to sing Wonderwall because the guitars are acoustic, but our kid insisted that he wanted to sing it. So I said, all right, but I'm gonna do Don't Look Back In Anger then, and I have to play that with the band, and it's going to be a single at Christmas, and you won't be singing on it. . . I think,' grins Noel, a little nastily, `he thought I was bluffing.' Poor muddle-headed Liam. At a time when attention is being focused more and more on Noel, not only is the baby of the family missing out on interviews, he's also talked himself out of vocal glory. Don't you feel sorry for him? `No, I do not,' sniffs his elder brother. `He made his choice, simple as that. I'm 28, he's 23. I don't want to argue with him no more. I don't feel sorry for anyone. No. Why should I? It's not as though he's got a bad life, is it?' Liam's life would surely have been very different if it hadn't begun five years after Noel's, in a small house in Burnage, south Manchester. The two shared a room: the root of all their problems, according to Noel. He can get on perfectly well with his older brother Paul (an unemployed labourer, easily recognisable at Oasis gigs from his Gallagher hedgerow eyebrows and his habit of wearing a Manchester City FC top with the club sponsor, `Brother', emblazoned across it), but, he says, he will never forgive Liam for invading his space `` ie, for being born `` and also `'cos he wasn't a bird. At least then I could have gone out with his mates'.

By the time Noel and Liam were in their teens, their room was jammed with musical equipment: stereo, guitars, amps, microphones, bits of four-track recording machines `` all Noel's. The posters `` of the Jam, the Smiths, the Beatles, the Who `` were his too. What did Liam have? Noel looks at me blankly.

`Nothing,' he says, eventually. `Himself. And that was enough. Oh, and a Bananarama poster.' Mrs Margaret `Peggy' Gallagher, now a `hardcore gardener' according to her middle son, then worked in the local McVitie's factory, pulling all the defective biscuits off the conveyor belt. `That's what you used to get fed,' remembers Noel, unfondly. `Come home from school and you'd have two ham sandwiches, a tiny little bottle of milk and about 60 Penguins and 70 Jaffa Cakes. Made you dead popular at school, though: `Here comes Gallagher The Biscuit.'' Mr Gallagher (`What's his name? Twat. No, Thomas') was, and still is, a Country & Western DJ who plays local Irish social clubs and weddings. Liam, reckons Noel, has his dad's temperament: `a short fuse, a bad temper'. Noel resembles open, happy-go-lucky Peggy `` though he doesn't sound too easygoing when he tells you that he hasn't seen his dad for 10 years, `and it's not a big deal, but I don't want to, either'.

Still, it was his dad's guitar that Noel Thomas David Gallagher first plucked at the age of eight. A tiddler as a child (both he and Liam are slight now, a pocket-sized 5ft 7in), little Noel couldn't see over the top of the instrument, so he played it flat, on his knee, like a slide guitar. Left-handed, he taught himself to strum right-handedly. Then `someone showed me The House Of The Rising Sun and I never looked back.' He wrote his first song at 13. It was called Badge and it was about people wearing badges. `The best line,' recalls the man now heralded as a living, in-one Lennon-and-McCartney, `was: `And on your badge it says, Wear A Badge.' Heheh.' Soon after, two other incidents occurred which were to radically alter the course of his young life. He went to see his first gig `` the Damned at Manchester Apollo: `it blew me head off' `` and he lost his virginity. The latter sounds like quite an event.

`We were at the girl's house `` she was bunking off school. And as we were upstairs, having it, we heard this almighty commotion and there's this knocking on the front door,' Noel recalls. `So we thought, sod that, and carried on. When we finished, we looked out of the window and there was an ambulance. It turns out the dustman had had a heart attack and dropped down dead on the front doorstep! He'd been knocking to try and get us to call a doctor. . .' In eerie synchronicity, there's a banging at the Portakabin door. It's Robbo, the tour manager, wanting Noel to sign autographs for the marrow-chilled fans waiting outside. Noel's good about things like that, possibly because Oasis is his first band. He writes his name quickly and easily on the proffered photographs.

Noel and Liam attract different types of appreciators. `He gets all these sex-starved young girls with big breasts, right. I get the psychopaths.' One thinks she has written every Oasis song before Noel did, in her dreams. And after Supersonic, which includes the memorable couplet `I know a girl named Elsa/She's into Alka Seltzer', it seems to Noel as though every Elsa in the land has claimed the right to his innermosts. `I'd just like to clear that one up. Elsa was a dog, right. A rottweiler.' Noel finds lyric-writing tricky at best. Usually he just sings nonsense until he arrives at the first line and takes it from there. He steals phrases from all over. For instance, `Stand up by the fireplace/Take that look from off your face', from Don't Look Back, is what his mum used to say to him as a kid, when she lined up the three boys for their annual Christmas photo to send to their granny in Ireland.

She must be very proud of you and Liam.

`She is. She's funny, though. When she sees you on the telly all she's arsed about is, do you think you could bloody smile? And, do you have to always go on about drugs?' It could be argued that it was drugs that brought the band together (`Mind you, if we hadn't been tripping all the time maybe we'd have had that music conversation 10 years earlier,' comments Noel, dryly). He, Bonehead, Guigsy and Tony all met in the local park at Urwood Road, where a gang of about 40 kids would play football and gobble down the abundant magic mushrooms. Parklife indeed.
They would come back after a night's clubbing, nick a fleet of milk-floats from the local dairy and take them for a drive across the golf course: `We were out of it. We'd think we were Robin Hood. You know, `Forsooth, you brigand, I shall take your truncheon for the people of Nottingham. . .' OK Sarge, I think we've got a live one here.' It wasn't long before Noel was on first-name terms with the local constabulary. He advanced from shoplifting to swiping car stereos to burglary. So he turned his light fingers to more legitimate ways of making a living: bakery, sign-painting, fish-tank-making. Then, at 20, he wangled his way into a roadying job for bowlheaded Mancunian then-contenders the Inspiral Carpets. Noel was a guitar technician for five years, touring the world, showing it the crack of his bottom, learning about the business.
What did you learn? `I learnt that you don't make money unless you're as big as U2. I learnt that you'll get ripped off unless you're very careful. And I learnt that all record company people are twats, bar none.' In 1992, he returned to find his kid brother Liam had set up Oasis. Noel said he'd join, but only if they all did exactly as he said, `'cos if you do, we'll be on Top Of The Pops in a matter of months. And we were. . . `All I ever wanted to do was make a record. Here's what you do: you pick up your guitar, you rip a few people's tunes off, you swap them round a bit, get your brother in the band, punch his head in every now and again and it sells. I'm a lucky bastard. I'm probably the single most lucky man in the world `` apart from our Liam.' The band hierarchy remains unaltered from its original despottery. When Creation Records supremo Alan McGhee offered Oasis a deal on the strength of one performance (in Glasgow's King Tut's on Noel's 26th birthday, 29 May 1993: the band had bullied, blagged and bundled their way on to the bill), it was Noel who got them a manager.

Noel writes all the songs, Noel owns all the equipment, Noel makes all the decisions as to how the record sounds, what the artwork looks like, who does what, when, how and in which pair of trousers. Though Noel says that if anyone left, Oasis would no longer exist, this is not Liam's band, nor is it any of the others'. Nothing gets done here without Noel's say-so.
Doesn't that irritate the other members? `They throw their toys out their prams sometimes, yeah.' And wouldn't you? It must be unbelievably frustrating, especially when your boss is such a hard task master. Especially when he's just your mate `` or even worse, your elder brother. Especially when he's always right.

`The thing is, it's been two years now, and I'm still on a roll. And you have to keep busy when it's like that, because one day you're not going to be able to write anything,' Noel points out. `But while it's happening, then these records are coming out whether anybody likes it or not.' In those two years, Noel has met and made friends with the posters on his wall `` Paul Weller, Johnny Marr, even Paul McCartney. He's not met and made enemies with the New Seekers (they sued him for nicking `I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing' in Shakermaker) and Neil Innes from the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (over Whatever). He's split up with his long-term girlfriend Louise Jones, moving to London with just his guitar: `People say I'll never find a girl like that again, but I'd rather be lonely and live like this.' Also in those two years, Oasis have toured Britain four times, plus Japan, the United States, Canada and Europe, been deported from Sweden and Holland and banned from two hotel chains `` giving hope, in the process, to a generation of unreconstructed, unironic lads who'd always had a suspicion that they were just the butt of Blur's joke. Two years ago, Noel Gallagher only wanted to release a record. Now he'd like to play Maine Road, and he's the star attraction on the Warchild charity record Help, released earlier this month to raise funds for Bosnian children.

The only bleak moments in their careers have been their failure to win the Mercury Music Prize this week and not beating Blur to the chart top slot. `Look, they knew that if they put their single out the same day as us they'd go in at Number One. We're only concerned about being the best in our own eyes and we are and we always will be.' And can you remain friendly with them? `The guitarist I've got a lot of time for. The drummer I've never met `` I hear he's a nice guy. The bass player and the singer `` I hope the pair of them catch Aids and die beacuse I fucking hate them two.' Oasis are at a strange and crucial point in their career. Morning Glory will establish their superstardom in this country and could well break the unbreakable America. But will the group shatter first? Noel's ruthless work ethic and unrelenting restlessness `` `I'm bored all the time. And boredom's my greatest fear' `` plus the band's runaway success and capacious capacity for recreational delights `` `I'm on a line of coke every 40 minutes,' confesses their leader easily `` must eventually take their toll. As Oasis become more and more famous, more and more people want a piece of them. As a band they are slightly less reliable than previously (most of their UK tour has been cancelled because Guigsy is suffering from nervous exhaustion); slightly more paranoid. Noel has already started to make rumblings about their record company: `A bunch of indie kids, man. They're too narrow-minded. . . they are not in the big league,' he huffs. `It's not their job to be chaotic, that's my job.' Still, Gallagher is clearly happier than he's ever been: `To be acknowledged as a songwriter has definitely made me more content,' he beams. `I know I will leave my mark. Even if I never write another song I've written enough now.' And he remains ludicrously jovial about his future prospects: `I've been a punter, a roadie, a pop star. Next? Junkie and ex-pop star, I'd say.' Even then it should be all right for Noel. He's even got a ready-made fairy mod-godfather in Paul Weller, with whom he duetted for the Help LP.

`He told me: `When you get to the point where you have lost it and you think you are never going to get it back, then I will be there for you. Because I've been there and I know what it's like and I came out of it and I'll make sure you do too.' I was really touched. 'Cos he's right, I will lose it.' So while Noel is floundering, what will happen to his band? How will volatile, thwarted Liam keep his jut-chinned head above water? Noel has not come this far for his feet to get chilly: `Yeah, I stare at hotel walls and worry,' he grins, wolfishly, self-assuredly, unworriedly. `I stare at them and wonder: `Where did it all go right?''.

(What's The Story) Morning Glory is released on 2 October

Noel Gallagher - Q - July 1995

No Maybes. Just Definitely. Thanks to their swaggering brilliant live show, Oasis are Britain's hottest group. Guitarist and songwriter Noel Gallagher -- punter, ex-roadie, rock star! -- talks about the live experience.

Oasis have been keeping up a Dylanesque, seemingly endless, touring schedule for well over a year now. From their first appearances in the dank venues of the provinces in Spring '93, through months of ever-bigger sell-outs, culminating in a triumphant Sheffield Arena show, it seems Oasis have always been on a UK tour. Yet they've still managed extensive invasions of Europe and America.

Now they're giving it a rest, holed up in a residential studio, the location of which they're keen to hide after tabloid snooping in the wake of their becoming a "proper group" with Some Might Say's in-with-a-bullet stint at Number 1. They're recording the second album, working title Morning Glory, in through-the-night chunks. They're also breaking in new drummer Alan White (brother of Steve, long-serving larruper of the Ludwigs for Paul Weller), after a Paris bust-up with Tony McCarroll.

Unsurprisingly then, guitarist and songwriter Noel Gallagher is his confident Mancunian self. The sessions for the record, he says, have been alarmingly productive. In three nights, they've 4 recorded three new songs: one a "typical up and at 'em rock'n'roll tune", another he likens to Gary Glitter ("beyond glam'') and one that's like Portishead or Tortoisehead, as the band have rechristened the Bristol trip-hoppers.

Gallagher seems relaxed about his group's remarkably smooth and swift passage to the world of success ("But it is a phenomenon, yeah") as he settles in to talk about life on the road, both with Oasis and in his previous incarnation as a roadie for Inspiral Carpets.

In just over a year, you've gone from playing the Splash Club in King's Cross in front of 300 people to Sheffield Arena and 12,000 adoring souls. A bit dizzying?
Um. Well, no, because you've got to remember there was all the stuff in between. But I suppose if we'd have gone from the Splash Club and then released a single and then played to 12,000 people a month later, we'd have been shitting it a bit. But I mean we did have a lot of hit records along the way and a fucking enormous album, so it was just a progression. It did make me feel a bit dizzy. About midway through the third song at Sheffield, I thought, What the fucking hell am I doing here? I started getting pretty emotional and all.

When we were doing the album tour, the day we played in Sheffield, at the Octagon, the promoter took us over to see the Arena with the idea of maybe playing it. We walked into this massive room, and we said, Are we playing the little room or something? He said, No, this is it. It was like, You'll never sell this out, mate! And he said he'd sell it out in two weeks, and he did.

Is it a don't-look-down situation?
Yeah. (Laughs) As long as we're not back at the Splash Club in front of 300 people next year, then we'll be all right.

Unlike almost every other band, you've never had to suffer the three-men-and-a- dog syndrome. People have always kicked down doors to see you.
Well, that's not quite true. There was the famous gig at the Duchess of York in Leeds where no-one turned up at all. Not even one person. So we've actually played to less than three men and a dog, and there's not many bands who can say that. But it was great. We did an encore and everything.

What was the first live music you saw?
Probably down the youth club or something, I would imagine. You know, when the local football team wins the local newspaper's fucking challenge cup or something, and they've got a band on at the on at the do. Probably something like that. The first time I saw a real band was The Damned at Manchester, l Apollo in 1980. All I can remember was how fucking loud it was, how high the stage was and these weird people who were there. I was only 13 at the time. I wasn't down the front, I've never been able to get to the front of a gig in my life. Too much going and all that. I'm a lazy cunt.

I used to go out every single night to gigs. I still do actually, if there's a gig on when I'm sitting round London. Any gig will do me. I just love going to see bands.

Even the rotten ones?
Oh yeah. I can't just sit in a pub because I get bored after two minutes I'd rather pay two or three quid to see a band I've never heard before than just go and sit in a pub and have to make conversation with someone. I'm not great at making conversation. I just sit there and go, Hmmm.

Classic gigs you've attended?
The Smiths at the Free Trade Hall in about 1984 that was a top gig. I was a big fan and I had the records, but I didn't know much about them really. When we got there, the whole place was covered in flowers, and I thought, Fucking hell, that's pretty weird. Plus it was the first gig I'd been to where there was loads of girls and straight away I thought, I like this band. I said to all my mates, you've got to see this band The Smiths - even if you think they're shit, there's loads of fanny.

I have to say Paul Weller at Glastonbury was really good. That was the best time I've ever seen him play. I've seen him at smaller gigs and he's not really managed to keep my interest over the two and a half hours. But at Glastonbury, he played an hour, and it was a lot more dynamic.

One of the best gigs I've seen was the anti-Sellafield gig at the G-Mex with U2, Kraftwerk and Public Enemy. I'd never seen U2 before, but that night convinced me that they were probably the greatest band in the world. People slag them off, but if all these so-called cool and credible indie bands had the chance to play seven nights in a row at Wembley, then they fucking would. Bono might be a bit of a knob, but I can name 3) knobs in those bands alone. They slag them off because they're big, but surely you start a band off to be big. If you're going to slag U2 off for being big, then shouldn't everybody hate The Beatles? Bono lost the plot a bit when he though he was The Pope, though.

You roadied for Inspiral Carpets for four years. Do you look back on those days fondly?
It's funny, yesterday we were in the studio and everybody was really busy and someone said, oh, can you move your amp out of this room into a corridor, and I said I'd do it. Everyone started laughing and saying, oh the roadie in you isn't left yet. But I picked my amp up and I couldn't even lift the cunt off the floor. It was like, I used to do this for a living? But looking back on my roadie days, I think there was more pressure on me then at a gig than there is now because it used to be down to me to fix everything if it went wrong. Now if anything goes wrong, it's me looking at someone else going, Come on! I saw a lot of the world during that time. I went to America countless times; Japan, Europe, and South America. Even Russia. I was bored by the lifestyle before I even started this.

It's always down to the roadie to stash the drugs when you cross borders. Were you skillful at that?
Here's a secret. The band never knew this, right, but we used to stash the drugs on them. We're going across borders and someone official would. Come on to check the bus, then afterwards one of the band would say, Where did you hide the drugs? We'd just put our hands underneath his pillow and say, Just there. I think that's why we got the sack in the end. But most of my roadie mates from that time are working for us now. So they're stashing drugs under your pillow now. Yeah. Probably sticking them in my bunk.

Have you suffered at all from the cold, rubbery, fingers of Her Majesty's Customs?
Me and my partner in crime, Mark Coyle, who was The Inspirals' monitor engineer, got nicked in Manchester Airport. We got a later flight back from Amsterdam and unbeknown to us, some of the people who got the first plane had been nicked because they had some draw. So they went through the list of all the people in the party and found out there was two left. Next day we're waltzing into the airport, stoned as a pair of runts and they said, Can you just come over here, please? We didn't have anything, but they strip-searched us and all that shit, which was pretty horrible. Not quite finger- up-the-arse, just a quick look.

What do you remember about the very first Oasis gig?
At the Boardwalk in Manchester, October 19, 1991. I can remember the date, I'm a sad bastard. We've been going for years, us. I can remember we asked loads of our mates to come who didn't want to pay when they got there, so there was a big scene at the door with people saying, I'm not fucking paying three quid to see you lot. Of course, these are all the people now who say they supported us in the beginning. There was about 20 people there and we did four songs - Columbia, a song called Take Me that Liam and Bonehead had wrote that I still wish to this day they would record and they won't, an acoustic song that was imaginatively titled Acoustic Song, and a cover of a house tune that I can't remember the name of and went on for about 20 minutes. That was it.

The story about your early Glasgow gig where you first threatened to burn down the club if the promoter didn't let you play, and then Alan McGee of Creation Records jumped onstage offering you a record deal -- a smidgen of fabrication perchance?
He didn't actually jump up on the stage because he'd have got a fucking boot in the face. If anyone jumps on one of our stages, that's how it goes. He was waiting by the side of the stage and he grabbed us as we came off. He didn't jump on the stage and we didn't threaten to burn the club down. We just pointed out to the owner of the club that if he didn't let us play there were 15 of us and three of them. So he did a quick mathematical assumption that it was probably in his best interests to let us play.

Your tours haven't been without incident. You nearly caused a riot at a Newcastle show last year.
Usually, if there 's going to be any trouble, you can sort of see it coming. The previous tour there'd been minor scuffles in the audience or there'd be people throwing things onstage or getting onstage and it would all go off. But this was the first night of the second tour, in Newcastle, and the atmosphere was really good and we thought maybe all that shit was over. By the fourth song, in the guitar break of Bring It on Down. I looked up and there was this guy stood right in front of me and he fucking smacked me right in the eye. I just took me guitar off and belted him across the head with it, and then he got dragged into crowd. Me and our kid, like a pair of idiots, jumped straight in and it all went off, fucking proper. Later in the dressing room, I noticed I was covered in blood. He nearly took my eye out with a sovereign ring he was wearing. Afterwards we had to drive the van up this alley round the back of the place, and so we all lay on the floor and the crowd waiting for us bricked the van and smashed it to bits.

There was also a hairy scene in Glasgow Barrowlands when Liam walked off the stage in the middle of the gig.
That was scary. We'd been up all night, like you tend to do, and midway through the third song, his voice was going. To be honest, he couldn't be arsed singing because he was a knackered. He walked off and I finished the song and grabbed him and he said, Fuck it, I'm getting off. So I said, Listen man, if there's one fucking gig in the whole of the world you've got to do once you've started, it's Barrowlands. There's 200 screaming Jocks out there who'll fucking kill us. So I went back out and did an hour with an acoustic guitar. There were reports in the paper saying that people were booing and walking out, but they weren't. Apparently, there was some bloke at the gig tripping and he thought that the band had split up, and so he set himself on fire with lighter fluid. There was all sorts of shit going on that night. It was going off outside the gig afterwards and the riot police turned up. It was mad.

Are mid-gig scuffles between Liam and yourself common?
(Defiant) Yeah, sort of. He just starts to ask me questions during the gig. Like in Sheffield, the floor was split into two by this barrier, all these people squashed towards the front, and a big gap, and then all these people behind the barrier at the back. So in the middle of a song, he's going, How come there's a big empty space there? It's like, What the fuck are asking me for? I'm in the middle of this song in front of 12,000 people, you dick. Why don't you just get on with it? You should be doing your gig, you fucker.

You've spent much of your time recently pummelling the American live circuit.
Yeah. It's going as well as we expected. The album's in the Top 50 and we've done two nation-wide tours of 30, 40 gigs, all sold out. We played the David Letterman show, and the label told us it was the biggest chat show in the world. We'd never fucking heard of it. But we're on the way to pretty big things out there. I hate the Midwest though, I can't stand it. We sell a lot of records there and the people come to the gigs, but they don't seem to understand the band, they do all this moshing stuff to Live Forever and stuff. We're one of the only bands who plays with a barrier because - especially after what happened at Newcastle -we don't want people getting onstage. But there they expect to be able to get up there and run around like idiots and they slag us off for that. But it's like, y'know, they stay down there and we stay up there. The day that I put my guitar down and start legging it over the top of the crowd's heads, then they've got the right to come on the stage.

Who threatens to leave the band more on tour, you or Liam?
Liam's leaving the band at this very minute. Liam's always leaving the band. It's raining today so he's leaving the band 'cos it's raining. (Imitating mithering brother) Why's it raining? Fucking hell! That's it! I've had enough of this this, I'm going! I'm sitting there saying, (cheerfully) See you then, bye. He threatened to leave in Minneapolis because I wouldn't go the pub with him.

I left the band in California, and I did actually leave the band for two weeks. It was our second American tour and everything was going great and you know, we're on the verge of becoming the new U2 out there, it's shaping up that way. But we had three gigs in a row where nobody bothered going to bed, everybody just sat up taking drugs all night, and the gigs were shit. We did one gig in LA where we were just all over the place, and I said to them, We can either be the new U2 out here or this is our Sex Pistols tour. If you want to be The Sex Pistols, that's fine, but I'm calling it quits here. Everyone was going, Shut up, ya dick! I nicked the tour float, about $8,000, and went on a road trip for two weeks. I ended up going to San Francisco, Las Vegas, down to Texas, I had a right old time. Your show is pretty straightforward, no fancy backdrops or effects.

Do you plan to elaborate the stage set now you're enjoying a flush of success?
I suppose we'll have to now that we've got to the stage where we're as big as we are. It's something I don't really think about because I'm standing with my back to the stage facing the audience, I couldn't give a fuck about it really. I ain't going to see it anyway. I dunno, we could try some onstage ritual slaughtering of animals and stuff. Naked dancing or something.

Your supposed rivals Blur have upped the ante by announcing a stadium show in East London.
Yeah, but we've had a Number 1 record, haven't we? Our Liam and Damon don't get on at all, they tend to really wind each other up. But I like Damon, he's alright. The thing with those sort of shows is we get off on the vibe of the audience more than anything, and with an outdoor gig, if it pisses it down, it's the longest, most disgusting gig. I can't see us playing a football stadium. Unless it's in America, because I think I'd quite enjoy watching a load of Americans getting pneumonia or struck by lightning.

Do you plan to shake a leg more onstage as a band or will you remain as strictly static as you've always been?
This new drummer of ours really gets into it and when we've been rehearsing, we've found ourselves actually nodding our heads a bit. If I get a better class of drugs before I go onstage, I might fucking play guitar standing on my head.

Noel Gallagher - NME - 24th June 1995

I See it as Three Albums and That's It


That, apparently, is NOEL GALLAGHER's verdict on the lifespan of Oasis, Number One pop group and headline Glastonbury act. In an exclusive pre-Glasters interview, Ted Kessler hears about Noel's wish to give up writing lyrics, leaving the band and his run in with Gilbert O'Sullivan's wife.

The rest of the band have nipped out for a spin in the company car. Down the shops, maybe. Could be on course for a brew a little later in a public house near Newport. Maybe they'll catch a film, if they've got time, or go browsing for fresh literature in the town's comprehensive WH Smith. Whatever, they've got the motor and Noel hasn't.

They've got wheels and he's got the phone. The bastards... "Yeah, bastards," he mutters into the receiver. "Total f--ing bastards, all of them. Some bright c-- thought it would be a good idea if they rented us a car while we make our album 'cos we're stuck in the middle of Wales with f-- all to do. Yeah, like, cheers but that was the f--ing point! We're here to make an album not ponce about in Newport looking in shop windows all day.

"And you should see the state of the f--ing car, man! I tell you, that car has arrived at this studio from every angle possible apart from by road! Over fields, through barn doors, the lot. I dunno.
Bastards..."

Noel Gallagher's actually in a very good mood considering everyone's dumped him. He's recently gorged himself on the triumph of Oasis' Number One single, 'Some Might Say', and bathed gloriously in the fulsome praise meted out to his group by their fanbase at a massive gig in Sheffield and also at a smaller more select affair in Southend. But he hasn't got any time to hang around backslapping, pal. No, too many songs to write, too many gigs to play, too many things to do before he can indulge himself that much.

Except he can't get working because those bastards have taken the company car for a spin. So he'll just do this interview and then he'll nip down to the studio and see if he can whack some more stuff down. If new drummer Alan White has bailed out of the shopping/drinking/crashing expedition then he could even lay down a drum track for another song. Hmmm... plenty to do, plenty to do.

But first the NME. Good. There's loads of stuff he wants to share with the outside world: stuff about the new album 'Morning Glory' and Oasis' impending starring role at Glastonbury, stuff about his friends (Weller, Black Grape) and rivals (Bowie, Bon Jovi), stuff about the politics of being the most important man in Oasis, stuff about Camden, and stuff about Morrissey, Tricky and Gilbert O'Sullivan, of course. And he hasn't had a proper rant since he stumbled up to bed a good 12 hours ago.
So what are you waiting for, man.

Why don't you start with that much rumoured bust-up in he studio a few weeks ago...
"I did walk out of the studio, yes. We'd put six tracks down, I was working 18 hours a day at the time in the studio and I came back one night and half of f ing Monmouth were in my f ing room. I'm well up for a bit of partying but all these people were there and I was 'who are you and what are you doing in my studio?'.

"They said that Liam and Bonehead had invited them. So I went back down to the studio and all these people were running around playing with the guitars. I don't mind but they cost thousands of pounds each so I told them to get out!

"I found the others and I said 'We're here to make a record not National Lampoon's Animal House. I'm off to Jersey for a couple of weeks, go and sort yourselves out'.

They freaked but I had to remind them that we were working."

You've done that before, though. Don't they ever think sat you might not come back?
"No, right, there, see, that's it. They know I'll come back. One day I will go and I won't come back, though. I don't see this Thing going on forever, even though tons of people do. I don't see it going past... I see it as three albums and that's it. That's it.

"I don't think I can do any more with Oasis after that. I think a band like us will have run our course after that. There's by so many anthems you can write, you can't write that many really. You've got to step up and change or step back a bit and change. I don't know for sure but I'd say the next one will be last one. I hope not, but that's the plan. I've no idea what I'd do then. Sell shoes probably."

If John Major was to award you an MBE - like Wilson did The Beatles - when you do split up, would you accept?
"Yeah, I would because you could probably flog it. I'd accept but I'd rather he offered me a place in the f ing cabinet. Minister For Rock! They've got a Minister For Sport but who gives a f-- about sport, all that bollocks, running around in shorts and that! F-- that nonsense! I could be the Minister For Rock. Just see myself in The House of Lords falling asleep and dribbling.

"One thing that is good about sport and that's football. And the best thing about football is that United lost the championship because I f ing hate them. We were here watching them lose it and it was a monumental occasion. When I was down in Jersey I stayed at Graham Le Saux's and had my photo taken with the championship medal. F--ing great! It's going to be a postcard to all my Man United mates."

How's the album coming along?
"It's going sky-rocketing upwards. Well, no, but it is going better than I expected. It's going really well. We've done ten songs, written two since we've been here and I think we've actually got more stuff than we need for the album. But it's going well.

"We had (Alan) McGee on the phone about it the other day and he wouldn't get off the bloody thing. He was f--ing wetting himself about it, thought it was bloody amazing. And you know us, we're not exactly short on self-belief but it is much better than the last one. Everyone who's heard it says that as well, and I don't think it's just arse licking I wouldn't want to knock the last one, it's still Top 20, still f--ing selling, but the new one's better."

How does it differ from the last one?
"I think the sound of 'Definitely Maybe' was a bit one-dimensional, everything was the same tone and wack it up to ten and off we go. There are a few songs on the new one that could've gone on 'Definitely Maybe' but overall I think there's a lot more variety in the songs and a lot more going on generally."

Do you do much singing?
"I do sing several, er, numbers. And I sound pretty good, too."

How does Liam take it?
"On the chin. No, but I like to sing. I like to sing a few songs on every record we make. There's one that I sing which is the first I've ever done with a full band. It started out as an acoustic number but I made them play it as a proper band song. Well, bribed them, actually, but..."

Why don't you take a little holiday? Why the rush to play more gigs and record all the time?
"Ha! Thing is, I've always thought that, as a fan myself, you get all these bands who get a bit of success and then they go and have a year off! Why?! There's all these bands who go, 'Oh, we're having a year off to get our heads together, to find some f ing perspective or something', and then they come back and they find that music's moved on so much that the place that they left has vanished and gone forever.

"So my plan was always that once we got to some place we'd just keep at it while we were on a roll. I mean, I'm only 28, I can take a year out when I'm 38. Plus, we get bored after a week or so. What are we going to do? Lie on a beach, watch f--ing telly? I don't think so. We either put out loads of records and do loads of gigs or we couldn't do it at all. Who wants to be a myth? It's either put up or shut up with our band."

How's the new drummer?
"Oh, f--ing hell! Brilliant, man. He does it all in one f--ing take, do you know I mean? Alan White, he's alright - as he's now known. When we got rid of Tony (McCarroll) we didn't have a replacement drummer and everyone was going, 'You idiot, what are you going to do about the album?' because it was just before we were meant to start recording. And I was the only one who'd heard the songs because we don't do demos or any of that shit and I knew, well, I like Tony as a geezer but he wouldn't have been able to drum the new songs. People can say, 'Oh you didn't give him the chance', and I didn't, but, well, call me a c if you want,"

You were reported as saying once that it was you five or nothing, though.
"No, no, no, no, our press officer said that. I never said that. 'Oasis exist as a unit.' Do they f-- , man! Everyone's dispensable! Too f--ing right, might even fire meself one of these days. "

Are you looking forward to another messy Glastonbury?
"Too f--ing right, but shame about The Black Crowes. You can't get much worse than Black Crowes as a support, can you? Apart from f--ing Suede or someone like that, but The Black Crowes are pretty bad enough. Still, eh, what an act to follow! Ooooh, the pressure's on boys! Personally, I'll be trying to catch some of these new bands I haven't seen yet. I'll be stood by the NME stage with me arms folded, scratching me chin, going 'mmmmmmm...'

"I'd like to see Elastica, never seen them, and I've seen Gene once, they were... sort of alright. I'd like to meet some bands, too, but they're always scared of us. You put your hand out to shake their hand and they look at it as if it's got one of those joke electric buzzers. It's like, 'Pleased to meet you, got to go and mow my lawn now, mate.'

"But I am looking forward to seeing Roger Daltrey And Friends, the cheesy c--! Apparently, Gilbert O'Sullivan is playing. He is! I've just been down in Jersey for a week and I was walking around the town centre and this young girl comes up to me and asks for my autograph and she says, 'I'll see you at Glastonbury'. And she's only a kid, so I say, 'Are you going?' And she says, 'My dad's playing. Yeah, my dad, f--ing Gilbert O'Sullivan!' l

"I was, like, 'That old c--?' And her mum grabbed me arm and said, 'Easy, that's me husband!'

Maybe he's one of Daltrey's friends, poor sod."

Would you blow Glastonbury out for Bon Jovi if he said come and co-headline with me for three nights? "
He did, actually. We turned him down. Turned loads down, actually. Turned down Bon Jovi, turned down The Rolling Stones at Wembley, turned down the David Bowie world tour. The only thing we're committed to is the REM show.

"We could've done them, too, I think everyone expected us to do The Stones shows, and I personally wanted to but it would've held up the album too much. But the Bon Jovi show, well, nah, it's not worth the humiliation. I like him as a bloke, but his group... and as for Bowie, well, 20 years ago maybe but not now. He's just an old git."

That's what some say about your mate Paul Weller, though.
"But he's a good old git. People think he's some deep god, but he's a moany old bastard. He's like Victor Meldrew with a suntan. He's a nice bloke, I love him like the day is long and he's so honest. Too honest maybe. But I was shitting myself when I played with him on The White Room, bricking it. Still, must've been as bad for him as it was for me. It was probably an honour for him to play one of my songs for a start, let alone do it on TV.

"The weird thing is that because we've got so many young fans, they were coming up to me asking who that old bloke playing with us on piano was! We're going, 'That, right, that's f--ing Paul Weller!' They're going 'What does he do?' Then you realize these kids are II, 12 and they've never heard The Jam. So you put them on your knee and go, 'Let's go back to 1976, there you go!' "

Have you heard the Black Grape stuff?
"F--ing great! Bonkers! Have you heard that song? I hadn't heard it before Top of The Pops the other night, but I was sat there with my hand over my mouth. I couldn't believe it! It's such a great record because the music's so f--ing out there. I thought he must have been singing live because of the vocals and that, but he wasn't. What a performance! Them and Pulp, I mean Pulp were brilliant. That 'Common People' should've been a Number One any week. The lyrics are hilarious, I think he's a top guy."

What have you been writing about?
"Same old shit, really. I want to give up, actually. I hate writing Lyrics. Hate it, hate it. Don't like it at all. It's a problem. When we came up to the studio I had all these songs written and they were all arranged, they all had melodies but I just found myself repeating myself over the things I wrote on 'Definitely Maybe'. It's becoming a pain in the f--ing arse, so, if there's anybody out there who's got some lyrics they don't want, give them to me. Feel free."

You sounded a little miserable on the B-side of 'Some Might Say', 'Talk Tonight'.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm a miserable twat sometimes. See, all the stuff on 'Definitely Maybe' was written when we didn't have a record deal and I wasn't writing with anything in mind, I was just writing. But now when I write sometimes I think of what all the people in brackets are going to read into it. I know I shouldn't but I can't help it. Now we're a business thing we're not as happy-go-lucky as we used to be."

Do you feel under pressure?
"Yes, I do. But it's only internal pressure because of the standards that I set, it's nobody else that puts me under pressure. I don't give a f-- if anybody likes it, I don't care if it gets slagged off. That's not why I'm in it. Any journalist can pick holes in the new record if they like but the thing is that it won't come out of the studio if I'm not happy with it. You lot could love it, McGee, our kid, anyone, but I have to like it, too. Otherwise you'll never hear it. Once it's in the shops you can rest assured that I'm happy, you can slag it off then because that's what people do, innit?"

What are you listening to at the moment?
"'Stanley Road', obviously. 'Common People' by Pulp. Black Grape. 'Staying Out For The Summer' by Dodgy. I'd like to hear the Tricky album because I met him the other night and he was trying to get work off us. He was going (adopts heavy West Country accent) 'we should work together us because we've both got the same enemies!' I was going, 'F--ng speak for yourself, I haven't any enemies, everybody loves me, mate!' It was at the Massive Attack show and he was saying we should be doing some stuff together, I said, 'Sure, if you've got the stuff, I've got the razor blade and mirror.' But he meant music, unfortunately. I'd love to hear this Bjork song called 'Definitely Maybe'."

You mean 'Possibly Maybe'.
"So we can't sue her? Oh bollocks. I haven't been listening to that much contemporary music for ages and ages. Too busy making me own."

Where are you living?
"Camden, but not through choice. I'd rather not be there but we had to get out of Johnny Marr's house because he sold it, the f---ng bastard. How dare he sell it, where am I going to go? So I'm in Camden, even though I don't really want to be there. But it was me birthday the other day and I was walking up the street and I bump into f--ing Morrissey! And I'm thinking, 'I've slagged him off in the past and he's going to fill me in here!' He's about six foot, f--ing enormous and I'm only a skinny c-- drug addict and he's going to kung-fu kick me in the chest! I thought he was going to batter me!

"So we walk past each other and sort of go '...Alright, Alright. And we stopped and had a bit of a chat. And it was alright until he went, 'Do you live around here?' So I tell him where and then he notices I've got this huge bag of booze and he goes, 'Are you having a party?' And I go 'Yeah, it's my birthday' and I was thinking to myself, 'Oh God, I can feel myself inviting him to my party, oh no!' And you know what it's like when you can feel yourself inviting someone along somewhere when you know you shouldn't? It would've freaked me mates out if he'd turned up.

"But I could feel the words coming out anyway, I'm thinking don't do it, don't do it but I'm saying, 'Why don't you come along?!?' And he goes, 'Well, what time should I be there', so I go home and start thinking I'm going to have to call the f ing thing off. Nothing for it. Next thing this card appears through the letterbox from Morrissey saying, 'Sorry, I can't make it, but give us a ring if you want to go shoplifting'.

"He was alright considering I'd proper slated him. I would've nutted him if it had been the other way. Maybe. Yeah, nice bloke. Sarcastic little c-- but I can dig that...

"On I go now, please? I'm dying to play some guitar, man, dying. Yeah, loads to do now those bastards have pissed off in the car. Loads. So, can I go please?"

Seems like a fair request from the little guy with the big eyebrows, so we bid him farewell and good luck with his 'Morning Glory'.

Noel & Liam Gallagher - Rolling Stone - 18th May 1995

Oasis cross the Atlantic with a hot record, two battling brothers and attitude to spare. Oasis' reputation as rock'n'roll bad boys with a penchant for drink, drugs and destruction was Brit-pop legend even before the overnight success of Definitely Maybe.

Oasis begin every show they play with a baldfaced declaration: "Tonight, I'm a rock & roll star." Tonight, in front of a capacity audience at New Jersey's legendary Stone Pony, in Asbury Park, they aren't exactly getting star treatment. Before the band starts playing, a sodden cry rises up from the back of the sold-out room: "F*** Great Britain! England sucks! USA!" Then after just a single song, Oasis are rudely interrupted by a beer can.

The wobbly aluminum missile lands squarely on guitarist Noel Gallagher's chest with a thud, drizzling his Les Paul with sticky suds. "Wankers, wankers, wankers," declares frontman Liam Gallagher, Noel's brother. "Where are ya? Let's see your f***ing face."

Liam's the one with the miracle eyebrows and the icy, static demeanor, but right now the 22-year-old is ready to jump out and get better acquainted. Only the wooden barricades at the foot of the stage keep him from attacking. "We don't play to gorillas," adds Noel. He's not in the mood for this kind of thing, nor is the rest of the band, which includes second guitarist Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs, bassist Paul McGuigan and drummer Tony McCarroll. Tonight the members of Oasis are restless, jet lagged and, it's safe to assume, drunk. The complimentary Budweiser must be tame stuff compared with Oasis' customary libations of liquor and strong lager, but they appear to be compensating by putting the emphasis on quantity over quality.

If Noel Gallagher were following his gut instincts, he would probably march right off the stage, never to return and with no offer of a refund, either. In the past, Oasis have abandoned shows when faced with this kind of behavior. Perhaps they know there are plenty of people here tonight who actually want to see them. Oasis' brand of aggressive, snappy Anglo pop is starting to catch on in America, largely because of the burgeoning hit "Live Forever." This dreamy midtempo rock anthem seems predestined for top-volume sing-alongs by both big unified crowds and solo car-radio listeners.

So, Oasis soldier on. For Liam Gallagher, soldiering on consists of the following activities: brandishing the five points of his star-shaped tambourine like a weapon; pointing to his chest as if to say, "Come and get me, ya tossers"; shaking his fist repeatedly at various body surfers; and delivering entire verses with one hand held up to his face in a permanent two-fingered salute, the British version of flipping the bird. A portion of the audience responds with the traditional American middle finger.

While Liam rages and postures, his 27-year-old older brother just seethes. "You don't deserve us," Noel says with a snarl. His exit lines this evening, delivered in one quick breath of absolute nonchalance, are "Thank you. F*** you." There is no encore.

Oasis' reputation as rock & roll bad boys with a penchant for drink, drugs and destruction of property, not to mention the occasional brotherly punch-up, entered the realm of Brit-pop legend almost instantaneously. Before the band released Definitely Maybe, its debut album, it had been forcibly removed from both a Dutch ferryboat (after a quick tour of Holland) and the hallowed ground of Stonehenge. On the occasion of Oasis' first New Musical Express cover story, the band trashed a hotel bar, leaving behind a room littered with broken bottles and a swimming pool full of furniture. "Those plate-glass windows are just saying, 'Throw a chair through me!' '' Noel exclaimed in the middle of that particular frenzy. Perhaps there's also something about Oasis that just says, "Toss a can at me!"

All that, however, was nearly a year ago. Now, Noel Gallagher calmly sits in an empty corner of the lounge at New York's swank Hotel Macklowe. It's noon on the dot, the first drink of the day is in hand, and Noel is downplaying his band's high-jinks-ridden past, although he's not refuting anything, either. "Everything that's ever written in the press is 90 percent facts and 10 percent exaggeration," he says. "It's easier for them to write that you had red socks on or you take drugs."

Still, Oasis willingly play along with the media myth-making. "It's interesting for the kids to read," Noel says. "As long as you realize there's great songs. Our attitude and 'rock & rollness' doesn't sell records - it might initially, but it won't keep it going. It's like the Rolling Stones were seen to be very rock & roll when they started - they were always getting arrested. But the reason why they were a great band is not because Mick and Keith got nicked, it's because they wrote 'Jumpin' Jack Flash.' It's the music that lasts."

But to give both the Rolling Stones and Oasis their due, attitude is part of what makes a band great. Talent and execution will only take you so far, vision and chemistry somewhat further, but rock & rollness makes a difference, not as something that exists apart from the music but as the very thing that gives the music life - unfettered snottiness and swollen-hearted bigness, an untamable spirit that bursts and dreams and spits in the face of drudgery. More than a few of Noel Gallagher's lyrics dwell on fantasy, escape and endless possibilities: "I'd like to be somebody else"; "tonight I'm a rock & roll star"; "we'll find a way of chasing the sun"; and, of course, "you and I are gonna live forever."

"I think it's good being a bit dangerous," Liam Gallagher says. "There's a few more kids going out going, 'F*** it, I can have what I want out of life,' and that means literally anything."
Like his brother, Liam drinks Jack Daniels and Coke ("It's medicine"), and he's parked at the same table. It's several hours later that same afternoon, however, as the brothers Gallagher don't do interviews together. They used to, but too often in the course of disagreeing with each other orally they would end up writhing on the floor, fists flying, while the interviewer continued to take notes. Now the boys try to stay out of each other's way - so much so that over the next two days, they barely say a word to each other.

Flare-ups do occur. Chuck Cleaver of Ass Ponys witnessed one when his band played with Oasis in Memphis, Tenn. "They were signing a poster for a fan," Cleaver recounts, "and Liam signed it, 'From the star of the stage.' So then his brother wrote, 'From the owner of the star of the stage.' " Next thing Cleaver knew, he was taking cover: "Liam got ticked and tossed a chair at [Noel]; he was yelling, 'Wanker!' and 'Cheeky bastard!'"

Liam gets all the sex-symbol pop-star attention in the band and little credit as a musician; Noel is hailed as the artist and visionary. But both brothers swear it's really not a big deal. "It's just me and me brother having arguments in a band," Liam says. "If we weren't in a band, we'd be havin' it in the house. If we had a greengrocers, Gallagher's Greengrocers, we'd argue over which way we set out the apples or the f***in' pears."

For Noel Gallagher, it can all be traced back to the Beatles. He was 13 when his father, a country & western DJ by vocation, bought him his first guitar. "Ticket to Ride" was the first song Noel figured out - "Still don't know the words," he jests. From that point on there was nothing else in his life. Certainly not school. "As soon as I learned to read and write," says Noel, "I didn't even bother turning up half the time. I can't even spell, but who needs to spell? There was just nothing there for the musician in me."

For more than 10 years, however, Noel's musical gifts were presented only to himself. He would sit around the house writing songs or run around Manchester, England, getting into trouble like sniffing glue or committing petty crimes. "He always wrote good songs, but he didn't have a band," Liam Gallagher says. Liam had a similarly restless youth: He played some football (which is to say, soccer) and cut school a lot, too. Around 1985 their parents got divorced, and the boys have not had any real contact with their father since. "He's a dick," Liam says. "The last time I seen him was in a dole queue when I was signing on, and he was [in line] before me."

Unlike Noel, Liam never had any interest in making music. That changed in 1989 when Manchester, led by the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays, became Madchester, the U.K.'s hottest musical city, with a scene that was just as crazy, prolific and important in that country as Seattle was here a few years later. Both brothers were out at the Hacienda, the rock, dance and ecstasy-driven hub of the scene, every night. Then Noel took his first step toward rock & roll, though it wasn't much of one: He became a roadie for the Inspiral Carpets and lived the touring life for several years.

In Noel's absence, Liam found himself re-enacting the oldest rock & roll story there is. As Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs puts it, "We had f*** all else to do." Bonehead is the name Arthurs answers to, a tag acquired as a well-shorn Irish Catholic among hippie mophead children in the '70s. "It was either get in a band," he says, "or get drunk every night." Or both.

The only problem was the band wasn't any good. When Noel got back from an American tour, he thought Oasis were crap, too. But he was stunned to discover that his pain-in-the-ass brother had an exhilarating little set of vocal chords. He agreed to join the band as lead guitarist and songwriter, basically telling them, Noel recalls, "I can only do this one way: with me in complete control of it."

Though Oasis appear to be your basic overnight success story, they actually spent a good two years woodshedding - until everything about the band was on a par with Noel's long-developed songwriting chops. Then came the overnight success. The story supposedly goes something like this: The gang motored up to a Glasgow, Scotland, club, where they forced their way onto a bill with a couple of the lesser-known bands signed to British superindie Creation Records - by threatening to torch the venue. In the middle of their now-standard cover of "I Am the Walrus," Creation's peripatetic Scottish founder Alan McGee bum-rushed the stage midsong and insisted on signing them.

The truth is only slightly less fairy tale. Noel sets the record straight a bit: "[McGee] didn't jump onstage. We didn't threaten to burn the place down. He pulled me as soon as we came offstage and asked if we wanted a record deal, and we said, 'Who with?' and he said, 'Creation,' so we said yes. It was agreed that we were going to sign that night, but we didn't sign until two or three months later."

The resulting album, 1994's "Definitely Maybe," became the fastest-selling debut record in U.K. history. After joining America in celebrating grunge during Nirvana's 1992 heyday, the British rock & roll audience has once again embraced acts with distinctly British-bred sounds and styles. Compared with their contemporaries like the pure-pop miniaturists in Blur or the grand art rockers in Suede, Oasis are rock & roll classicists. They're imaginative postmodernist chefs, boiling up a caldron that includes traces of the Small Faces, Mott the Hoople, Badfinger, the Clash, T. Rex and the Jam, as well as the Beatles and the Stones. It's all seasoned with more recent strains of punk, Madchester groove and Noel Gallagher's own personally skewed vision. There's deliberate mischief involved, too. "Shakermaker" quotes the New Seekers' "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" (a k a "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke"), "Cigarettes and Alcohol" liberally borrows its guitar riff from "Bang a Gong," and "Fadeaway" (one of the band's better non-album tracks) recasts Wham!'s "Freedom" as a punk-rock anthem.

But the band that Oasis really conjure is the Who. "Pete Townshend's the only guy that I can relate to," Noel says, "because he wrote all the songs and all the words and sang backing vocals, and he gave 'em to somebody else to sing 'em, and that's exactly what I do. And we particularly don't get on with our lead singers."

Onstage, the Who were over-the-top rock & roll entertainers, whereas Oasis' live persona is beyond lackadaisical. Liam stands in front of his mike stand, usually with his hands behind his back, and that's about it. The rest of the band is even less animated, and this visual effect is completely at odds with the uplifting punch of the band's white-hot wall of noise.

The funny thing is that Liam Gallagher is everything a hyped-up frontman should be - as long as he's not actually performing. Offstage he's loose, mischievous and downright jumpy, dancing around to songs in his head. He's endlessly enthusiastic - just a kid really, constantly moving and always saying things like "I'm mad for it" and (since he saw The Mask) "Smokin'!"

When Liam gets back to Manchester, he's finally going to move out of his mum's house; whenever the press writes about the drugs or the fighting, she always gives the boys a good talking to. It's enough to keep a rock star down-to-earth, although he's not having any of that. "It keeps me down- to-earth being me," Liam says. "Being Liam Gallagher keeps me down-to-earth."

So far, anyway. Oasis could be the first British band in ages to have a real impact on the former colonies. (Bush doesn't count because no one has heard of them in England.) "Live Forever" is all over MTV, the album is climbing Billboard's Top 200, and rumors of a Lollapalooza slot are buzzing. Let's paraphrase a couplet from Noel Gallagher's own songbook ("Supersonic") and apply it to Oasis' current situation: You can have it all, but how much do you want it?

"Yeah, yeah, I know, it keeps getting thrown back at me," Noel says resignedly. "Wish I'd never f***in' written it. But we want it - if it's there for us, and we can take it, we'll take it, and if it's there for us, and we have to work at it a bit, then we'll work at it. But we're not going to come here and sell our souls just for the sake of having a hit record in America. Financially, yeah, I want to be big in America, because that means I'll never have to work again. But it's not that important to me to be a big star. It's more important for me to be big in England, because that's where I live, that's where I come from."

Either way, Noel doesn't expect to spend the rest of his life in Oasis. "There's other things I want to do," he says. "I'll probably run out of ideas, and I wouldn't just carry on forever, go through the motions for the next 10 years. I'd rather be special than become just another band who carried on. Time will tell. I'll probably be sussed out in 15, 20 years, saying the same thing."
Hope I die before I get old or words to that effect?

"No," Noel Gallagher says. "I wanna live forever. Absolutely. Yeah."