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New material poured out, with every member but Starkey contributing: Archer’s pounding ’60s sendup “A Bell Will Ring”; the Lennon-voiced Liam’s flower-power folk-poppers “Love Like A Bomb” and “Guess God Thinks I’m Able”; Bell’s jangly, Liam-sneered anthems “Turn Up The Sun” and “Keep The Dream Alive”; And Noel’s most sonically adventurous cuts to date, including the keyboard-slamming “Mucky Fingers,” the Chad-and-Jeremy-breezy “Part Of The Queue,” the vaudeville-campy “The Importance Of Being Idle” (all sung by Noel), and the chiming march “Lyla,” the disc’s first single. Truth closes with another curiosity—“Let There Be Love,” the first Liam/Noel duet since their classic early B-side “Aquiesce.” “That was Dave’s idea,” Noel swears. “He said ‘You should sing the middle part—it’ll sound great, it’ll be like The Righteous Brothers!’ And I said ‘It’ll be more like the self-righteous brothers.’ But it works.”

And the swirling paisley-print hues coloring most of the sitar-toned guitarwork? “Dave’s got a lot to do with that, as well,” Noel says. “But maybe the songs lend themselves to that. But Dave was right on the ball—he knew exactly the sound he wanted, and it was kinda the same thing we’d been after for f---in’ years. We were like ‘Where’ve you been?’ Plus, we know the guys from Jet, and they spoke very highly of him.”

Has Oasis risen to a new Sgt. Pepper plateau? Noel only knows what inspired him. “Lyla”: “If Sally from our “Don’t Look Back In Anger” was Sally Cinnamon from the Stone Roses song, then Lyla is her second cousin.” “Queue” and “Mucky Fingers”: “I look around London sometimes and think ‘These people are f---ing idiots!’ People with their f---in’ phones with their f---in’ cameras in ’em, going ‘Can I just get a quick picture?’ It’s like, ‘This is a quick picture—the fact that you’ve said it has already taken too much time outta my life.’ If people take pictures of me when I’m walking down the street, I don’t care. And I don’t care if they take pictures of my daughter [Anais, five, already singing lead in grade-school plays]—she’s gonna have to deal with that sooner or later. But I will not stop and pose for anybody. And I will f---ing drop-kick that camera phone, field-goal it from wherever I am, straight up the street.”

Ditto for Oasis concerts, Noel growls. “Now, instead of lighters in the air, it’s those mobile phones and they’re videoing you. Or text-messaging. And if I catch anybody at my f---ing shows texting, I’ll stop the song and say ‘What the f--- are you doing? Who exactly are you texting? Have a bit of respect, man—switch your phone off, just put it away and listen to the song.’”

Noel catches himself before he really starts ranting, stopping to laugh at his own perpetually irascible nature. Some things, he cedes, just don’t change. Except possibly Liam, who’s often made tabloid headlines for bare-knuckled dustups (many onstage with his brother), but who’s also been eerily absent from the news lately. “You just wait until we get out on the road—it’ll all be different,” cautions Noel, who’s booked a series of tiny London club dates a la Coldplay to debut Truth. “Liam’s a dirty rock ’n’ roller—he keeps the flame alive for all of us.”

Noel has had plenty of time for deep self-analysis. Particularly in 2004, when Oasis celebrated its 10-year anniversary with a series of arena dates and a repackaged edition of Definitely Maybe. “And I still don’t know what it all means,” he reckons. “But I do know that after a decade, people are still talking about Oasis, so it must mean something.” And besides, he chuckles, back in ’97 he was invited to 10 Downing Street to meet one of his biggest fans—English Prime Minister Tony Blair. “And in 1993, just four years previously, I’d arrived in London on a train in the middle of the night, with one acoustic guitar, two pairs of jeans, one pair of shoes, a pen and a notepad, and I was gonna come and make my fortune. And a few years later, I’m driving to Downing Street in a f---ing Rolls-Royce. On drugs. And I kinda got off on that shit—I was like ‘This is amazing! I’ve gone from the bottom right to the top, where the leader of the country wants to shake my hand and say, ‘Thanks.’ So I just said, ‘Hey—it’s a pleasure. Any time.’”

It’s a lesson of celebrity not lost on Chris Martin, who had enough respect for Noel to genuflect at the Oasis altar in plain sight of a sold-out house. Many Coldplay peers see it the same reverent way. Killers leader Brandon Flowers loves retelling the tale of the first time he saw Oasis, ripping the roof off the Hard Rock nightclub in his native Las Vegas on their Heathen Chemistry tour. He was so awestruck he decided to form his own combo the very next day. And Soundtrack Of Our Lives frontman Ebbott Lundberg enjoys reminiscing about all the nights spent on the road with Oasis as the Gallaghers’ pet opening act. “The one thing people don’t understand about them is that they’re really funny guys, funny and incredibly intelligent,” attests the Swede, who shamelessly turned another Noel catchphrase—“The wheels of boredom just keep spinning and spinning”—into a new Soundtrack song. Getting all these nods from the next musical generation? Hey, concludes an unusually humble Gallagher—he’ll take props wherever he can get ’em.

“And I know we’ve done some pretty good records and played a lot of great shows,” the Oasis co-founder admits when pressed. “So finally, after 10 years, I’m beginning to realize what we meant to people. And I think the thing is to not really take it for granted anymore. Because it would be dead easy to just sit down next time and go ‘Oh well, f--- it—we’ll write an album, put some tickets up for sale, they’ll all sell out, we’ll go ’round the world and Woo-hoo! Aren’t we f---ing great?’ We don’t ever wanna take that for granted. D’ya know wot I mean?”

yeah, top post for a top band

good stuff

I enjoyed this article.
Neat 2 hear the inside story when Chris M. gave Noel a surprise visit at the show. How cool was that ?
Disagree with writer's statement that it has not been kool to like Oasis for some time (those are fighting words on my end !) LOL !
And how cool that Anais is singing lead in her school plays ? awe..
Mr Webmaster - love the "TUTS" line you chose under your name, as part of your sig or whatever.. that was cranked at my place today ! LOve it ! peace..