Two years on from the split of Oasis, Noel Gallagher announced today that he will release two solo albums, and also revealed his version of the fractious events that ended his era-defining band.
Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, will be released on October 17 on his own label, Sour Mash Records, with an as-yet untitled second album released in the summer of 2012. He said that his first solo release may sound familiar to his followers. “People who are fans of what I do will hear echoes of Oasis in there, but it’s not very Guitar Hero. It’s not stadium rock’. The latter release, meanwhile, will be more musically ambitious, he said. “It’s far-out man. It has got 18 tracks on it… with vaudeville, space jazz, krautrock, some soul, some funk. And that’s just the first song.”
Announcing his new solo career at a press conference in Notting Hill, London, the singer and songwriter also spoke frankly about his acrimonious relationship with his brother and former band-mate Liam. Of Oasis’s ferocious break-up in 2009, he explained: “Our [Liam and his] own relationship was never as bad as people made out. But it started to unravel when he began his clothing range [Pretty Green] and he demanded we had to advertise it in the Oasis tour programme. It didn’t turn rough until around the V Festival gig [in which the band cancelled their headline slot at the last minute], which was because he had a hangover. He claimed he had laryngitis, but he had a hangover.”
Their final furious row backstage moments before they were due on-stage for a concert in Paris began following a run of bad press, he said. “In his own head he thinks I’m some sort of puppet-master who controls the media in England. He was quite violent [backstage] but at that point there hadn’t been any physical violence – more WWF wrestling stuff. He thought he was Randy Savage or something… On the way out of the room he threw a plum across the dressing room and it smashed against the wall. For whatever reason he came back from his dressing room with a guitar and started wielding it like an axe. It was a really unnecessary violent act - he was swinging this guitar around and he nearly took my face of with it. The guitar ended up on the floor and I put it out of its misery. So I walked out.”
Gallagher said he was disappointed that the band broke up. “I regret that because we only had two gigs left on the tour – and if I had gone back in and done the gigs and we’d all have gone away and we could’ve gone and then discussed it, we may never have split up… I hadn’t had enough of Oasis, I had had enough of Liam.” But he also added, “Liam doesn’t like me… there’s no point in being in a band if people are going to be violent. What’s the point? I did everybody a favour when I left. I haven’t spoken to him since.”
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A new band will support Gallagher as he takes his solo material on tour this autumn, playing small theatres around the world, beginning the week after High Flying Birds is released. The concerts will kick off in Dublin, with a bigger tour likely next year. The musician said he had been working on new material since the night of the 2009 Brit Awards but that Oasis songs will also feature at his performances: “I don’t think I’d be allowed out of the venue if I didn’t play Oasis tracks. They’re my songs, I wrote them all by myself, I’m proud of them. Them songs are like drugs to me.”
Gallagher did, however, have some reservations about his new role as a frontman on stage. “I was comfortable in that band [Oasis]. I had perfected that role, that guy who stood on the right and played lead guitar… It took me 18 years to get that right! I never really saw myself as a frontman. I can see it being a major pain in the arse.” Of his former frontman, who has since formed the band Beady Eye, he added: “He’s better off without me because he’s in charge now. Whether I am better off without him remains to be seen.”
The track-listing for Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds will be:
Everybody’s On the Run
Dream On
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If I Had a Gun…
The Death of You and Me
(I Wanna Live in a Dream in My) Record Machine
AKA…What a Life!
Soldier Boys and Jesus Freaks
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AKA…Broken Arrow
(Stranded on) the Wrong Beach
Stop the Clocks