The singer of Britain’s self-proclaimed last great rock’n’roll band has made an album with the guitarist who inspired him in the first place. And the results are… well, as Liam Gallagher himself says, “It’s all the classics, man.”
“Everyone has heard it before,” says Gallagher, who suggested to John Squire of the Stone Roses that they make an album together after Squire did a guest spot at Gallagher’s vast solo shows at Knebworth in 2022. “It’s [influenced by] the Beatles, the Stones, the Faces, the Pistols… Nothing has changed.”
Even if you haven’t spent the past 30 years lurching down the street in an oversized parka, there is much to lose yourself in on the Manchester duo’s charming album. Squire wrote a Stonesy ballad called Mother Nature’s Song after buying an earthing mat, a device designed to recreate the connection you would have with the ground if you were to walk around barefoot.
It is Gallagher’s favourite track on the album, suggesting a tilt towards the natural world for a man who once berated Radiohead for writing “a song about a f***ing tree” (in reference to their 2011 album, King of Limbs). “When you’re younger you don’t give a f*** about nature, do you?” reasons the singer, 51. “Go for a walk? F*** off mate. I’ll walk to the pub, stagger home, and that is it. But you get older and think: how lucky we are to be in this wonderful world. I’ve got a dog and now I’m always in the woods, wandering about like little… what are they called?”
Hobbits? “No, not f***ing hobbits. Little Red Riding Hood,” corrects Gallagher, who says he spends an inordinate amount of time on Hampstead Heath, near his house in Highgate in north London. “But I don’t listen to Mother Nature’s Song and go, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got to hug a tree.’ ”
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The roots of the album go back to Gallagher’s teenage years. He was 15 when he got into music via an unusual route: being bashed on the head with a hammer. Before a boy from a rival school delivered the life-changing blow, he viewed the average music fan with suspicion.
“I always thought the guy walking around the streets with a guitar was a bit of a f***ing creep, to be honest,” says Gallagher, who grew up in the southern Manchester suburb of Burnage, the youngest of three sons to Irish immigrant parents Peggy and Thomas. “We’d be out playing football and there was always one geezer in a leather jacket, some mad hairdo and skintight jeans, and I’d be going, ‘Who the f*** is that weirdo?’ Then I saw the Roses and it all changed.”
Soon after recovering from the hammer attack in 1988, “around the time I was being kicked out of school”, Gallagher bought a ticket to see the Stones Roses in Manchester. “Had a couple of beers, had a couple of spliffs, went down the front and thought, you know what? They’re up there playing music and they’re dressed like us: jeans, trainers, little jackets. You don’t have to look like the guy from the Cure. It was my epiphany. The following morning I didn’t remember a f***ing thing about the gig, but I thought: that’s what I want to do with my life.”
“Funnily enough, I had a similar epiphany seeing the Clash,” says Squire, who at 61 is a decade older than Gallagher.
“That’s when I realised where I wanted to be.” From these moments grew the two great Manchester bands of modern times. Fuelled by Squire’s Hendrix-like virtuosity, singer Ian Brown’s simian charisma, the songwriting classicism of the Byrds and the Beatles and the hedonism of acid house, the Stone Roses forged on in the face of total indifference for five years before their 1989 debut album came out and changed everything. Then protracted legal battles, management issues and the pressure of following up such a perfect album caused the Roses to flounder for another five years before returning with the uneven The Second Coming in 1994. In the meantime Oasis slipped in and became the biggest band in the world.
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“I was following the Roses about but then they went on the missing list,” Gallagher says. “So we formed Oasis to fill in the gap. At the time every band in Manchester was doing the baggy thing, so we leant towards the Roses’ more classic sound, got bang into the Beatles, added a bit of angry young man shit and it took off. If the Roses hadn’t taken so long to do The Second Coming, there would be no Oasis.”
Fame meant Gallagher went straight from his mother’s house in Burnage to living with Patsy Kensit in Primrose Hill. Was that a shock?
“Not at all, man. I fitted in marvellous,” Gallagher claims of his arrival into high society. “I got to Primrose Hill and went, ‘Move over, Sebastian.’ I could hang out with the poshos no problem.”
The only aspect of fame he didn’t like — and still doesn’t — is the celebrity scene. “No way. I find them all revolting. ‘Do you want to come down to this?’ ‘Not if you’re going.’ I like hanging around the house, going down the pub every now and then, although these days, a couple of drinks and I’m done in.” His sons Lennon, 24, and Gene, 22, are “not exactly massive Oasis fans because it’s their dad. And on top of that, they’re into obscure shit.”
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Squire leads a relatively quiet life with his wife, Sophie, and their three children in the Cheshire countryside (he also has three grown-up children from a previous relationship). He spends a lot of time painting and it was actually an accident at home that got him writing songs again. He was playing basketball with his son in 2021 when he fell and broke his wrist, and an initial prognosis suggested he might never regain the full use of his hand.
“I looked at this withered thing and thought: what will I do if I can’t play guitar, or paint, ever again? It was frightening. I became obsessive about physio and I’m pretty sure I ended up a better player after the accident as a result. So when the suggestion of making an album with Liam in mind came along, it felt like I had been given an opportunity. Now I feel more enthusiastic than I have done in a long time.”
Squire adds, in a low monotone accompanying his usual hangdog expression, which can break out into a wicked grin when you least expect it, “I’m aware of not sounding very enthusiastic.”
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There is also the question of the future — or not — of the Stone Roses and Oasis. When the Roses fell apart in 1996, Squire formed a band called the Seahorses and made two solo albums before concentrating on his career as a painter, while Ian Brown overcame his vocal limitations to have a successful solo career and, during the lockdown, become highly active on social media as an obsessive antivaxer. There came a surprise reunion in 2012 before they called it quits again in 2017. It doesn’t seem likely to happen a third time.
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“We did two new songs in 2016, but the spark wasn’t there,” Squire says of the reunion. “People change, relationships change. Being in a band is like a marriage and a lot of marriages fail. When it works it is because you are in the right place at the right time, with the right people at the right stage in their lives. It can’t remain that way for ever.”
Oasis, meanwhile, came to a dramatic end in Paris in 2009 when Liam hurled a plum, and then rather more dangerously swung a guitar, at his brother’s head. When I spoke to Noel Gallagher last year he said that he would be prepared to consider a reunion if Liam called — and Liam hadn’t called.
“He knows I’m not going to call him,” Liam says when I put this to him. “He’s the one who split the band up, so he’ll be doing the calling, and if there is no calling we won’t be getting back together. To be fair, though, I can see it happening. Now things have changed in his personal life [Noel split from his wife, Sara, in 2023] I can see him looking back, not looking back in anger, and going, ‘Do you know what? I was really mean to my little brother. Now it is time for me to send him a box of chocolates.’ ”
Are you saying, I ask, that if Noel should turn up with a box of Milk Tray, the greatest band of the Nineties will be back among us?
“Oh, without a doubt. I love my brother, I love my family, and all that Oasis shit, there was no need for it, you know what I mean? Maybe someone can get a bit tetchy on tour. Maybe someone drinks a bit too much. But we didn’t have to split up over it. I don’t hold grudges, man, and if Oasis got back together it would be great because I would only have to sing 15 songs and he could do the rest. I could do that standing on me head.”
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A lot of Liam’s past anger at Noel, it seems, comes from where the Oasis split left him as a person. “That was my band and that was all I knew. I lived and breathed it, so once it was gone I was like, who the f*** am I, really? Everyone knows me as that guy from Oasis. If that’s not there any more I’m just a hollow f***ing wandering dude from the Nineties. But you move on. Life is just one big conveyor belt, innit?”
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Now the conveyor belt has dropped Gallagher off right next to his teenage hero. “I’m a fan but I don’t want John thinking I’m some kind of crazy stalker,” Gallagher says. “If we made this record when I was 20 I would have probably licked him to death, so it has come at the right time because now that I’m 51, and Oasis have had their fame, I’ve calmed down a bit.”
The duo are touring together in March — and Gallagher is looking forward to London gigs. “We’re playing the Forum, round the corner from my house, so when John starts off on [a solo] I’ll be nipping off to have a shave, a bath, a change of clothes, a little drink, and I’ll come back and he’ll still
be there, making love to his guitar.” And there are already plans for a second album. “I’ve always got on with him,” Squire says of his fellow figurehead of Mancunian swagger.
“John’s a dude, man,” Gallagher concludes. “With Oasis, Noel did the writing, I came in to do the singing, and I was happy. When that ended I had to find ways of, you know, ‘expressing myself’ and it did me head in. John came along and we’re very different, but we must have the same vibe because these songs could have come from my brain. Do you know what I mean?” We surely do.
Liam Gallagher John Squire is out on Parlophone on March 1
Liam Gallagher on …
His sons, Lennon and Gene
They’re not exactly massive Oasis fans because it’s their dad, isn’t it? And on top of that they’re into obscure shit. In their world, when you get as popular as Oasis, everyone thinks you’re a bit of a dickhead.
Manchester City’s winning streak
It is great, like we’ve won the Lottery, but you’ve got to be careful. We’re buying the right players, we have the best manager in the world, and it is heaven being a Man City fan right now, but we know it will come to an end and besides, it’s not all about money. United have got loads of money.
Oasis being nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame alongside Mariah Carey
As much as I love Mariah Carey and all that, I want to say: do me a favour and f*** off. It’s like putting me in the rap hall of fame, and I don’t want to be part of anything that mentally disturbed. Besides, I’ve done more for rock’n’roll than half of them clowns on that board, so it’s all a load of bollocks.
The Beatles and the Stones
I class the Beatles as wizards, while the Stones are the rock’n’rollers hands down. The Kinks, the Who, the Small Faces … they’re all in there as well. And Brian Jones wore these mad little off-white suede moccasins, so he’s the boy.
What’s your favourite song by Oasis and the Stone Roses? Let us know in the comments below
