Oasis met a Beatle the other night. Ringo Starr, father of the pop-and-rock band's new drummer, Zak Starkey, happened to be in London and showed up to pay his respects.

"He wished us all 'peace and love, man.' He's a proper old hippie," recalls guitarist Noel Gallagher, 38, who has never attempted to hide his band's long-running obsession with the Fab Four. "There's just a little crackle in the air when one of The Beatles are in the room. Everybody resisted the urge for autographs and we were very cool about it."

hey could have easily not been cool. Gallagher and his brother, Liam, have never been known for their respectful comments toward their forebears - or each other, for that matter. One of the band's best-known quotes during its commercial peak in the '90s came in response to John Lennon's infamous "bigger than Jesus" line: "Lennon was right. And we are bigger than Jesus. We will be as big as The Beatles, if not bigger."

"That was Liam who said -- all that," Noel Gallagher says. "Liam just talks out of his -- constantly."

Oasis, which recently released its first album since 2002 and performs Wednesday at Madison Square Garden, has toned down its public snottiness since the Gallagher brothers imploded on a regular basis in the '90s. Yes, they sold millions of records and put out some of the best power-pop hits of the '90s: "Wonderwall," "Supersonic," "Live Forever." But Noel and Liam, now 33, also became known for abusing airplane attendants, fighting with photographers and each other, drinking and drugs.

Today's line on the brothers is "maturity." Liam has three children, and Noel has one, 5-year-old Anais, with Meg Mathews. They divorced in 2001 after a stormy four-year marriage. "I wasn't that bad to start with, to be honest," he says. "I was just more stubborn with the drinking and the drug- taking than most people. And, of course, when you do that you tend to run your mouth off. I don't drink and don't take drugs anymore and I don't run my mouth off. Apart from that, I'm the same person, really."

Noel, who once demanded to write every song on every Oasis record, says he was happy to relinquish control for "Don't Believe the Truth," for which he wrote only five of the 11 songs - including some of the best, the Velvet Underground-aping "Mucky Fingers" and the confessional "The Importance of Being Idle."

"I generally have been required to write 30 songs every time we put an album out, and use virtually all those songs for B-sides around the world," he says. "This year I wrote 30 and they used five. If my math is working out great, I actually don't have to work for over six years. So I'm -- laughing, basically."

Gallagher praises his bandmates' songs - particularly Liam's "The Meaning of Soul" and "Guess God Thinks I'm Abel" - but mostly for making his life easier. "I am the laziest man in show business," he says. "Once I made my statement with [Oasis' 1994 debut] 'Definitely Maybe,' they were like, 'We need another one,' and I was like, 'Why? I'm already a -- genius. I don't have to write another song.' They were like, 'Unfortunately, you do.' I'll do anything to get out of work. Believe you me."

Thanks for the article

They asked Ringo to drum on "A bell will ring"...but he didn't in the end
However this is is favourite track on the album...no strange, cos it's a "Revolver outtake" ;D