Noel ready to roll
By Iain Shedden
June 10, 2005
From:
NOEL Gallagher is in a buoyant mood. He has just learned that his group's sixth album, Don't Believe the Truth, has become their first top 20 album in the US in its first week of release.


Nice ... Oasis are happy to share the glory with Coldplay and the White Stripes.

For all of his notoriously deadpan humour and Manchester bravado, there's a hint of genuinely boyish excitement in the 38-year-old Oasis mastermind's voice.

"I haven't got any answers as to why it's happening now," he says of the American response to Don't Believe the Truth, which was also released in Australia this week. "After all these years, it's amazing."

Oasis announced yesterday they would tour Australia for the third time, starting in November, and we may see more of Gallagher's new mood.

He has every right to be pleased with himself. A band written off more times than most, not least because of the volatile natures of guitarist Noel and his younger brother Liam, Oasis is fast developing a sheen of invincibility after 10 years as Britain's most notorious musical export.

The bad-boy image of old is tempered now by maturity. "You get a perspective on what it all means after 12 years," says Noel Gallagher.

Getting a clear picture of Oasis from the inside could not have been easy for a band whose career has been as much on the front pages of the tabloids as it has been in the charts and in large auditoriums.

It would have been enough to give any working-class brothers landed with fame and fortune - not to mention drugs - swelled heads. These days, however, big brother is a more rational being.

"I think you have to take it with a massive pinch of salt when the press starts telling you you're the greatest thing since Lennon and McCartney," he says.

"And you have to take it equally with a pinch of salt when they're telling you that what you do is no more than following what's popular. As long as you know who you are and respect people around you, that's all that matters."

He describes the band's journey from English indie support band to global giant as "12 long arduous years", but adds that "I've enjoyed all of it". That last comment is a bit of a stretch, particularly from an Australian perspective. The band's first trip here in 1998 was a disaster, especially in PR terms, capped by Liam Gallagher's arrest for hitting a tourist trying to take his picture.

Oasis made amends three years ago when they came back and did a series of small theatre shows as well as the Livid festival, a tour that went off without a hitch.

"We're looking forward to it this time," Noel Gallagher says. "We really enjoyed it last time and it made up for the farce of that time in '98."

Farce has followed "our kid" Liam around from the start, when the first Oasis album, 1994's Definitely Maybe, took Britpop by the scruff of the neck and then the follow-up, (What's the Story) Morning Glory, put them in the big league.

"I've never really understood why Liam would want to chase a cameraman down the street and give them a more poignant picture," figures Noel. "He still gets on my tits, and vice versa."

The past week has been a busy one in the music industry, with new releases from high-flyers such as Oasis, Coldplay and the White Stripes, among others.

Where once Noel Gallagher would have been shouting, with plenty of swearing, that Oasis were better than anybody else, today he is almost philosophical about their place in rock's hierarchy. He doesn't gauge the band's success by what others are doing.

"That's kind of like going to an awards ceremony and thinking that you should have won," he says. "Music is not a contest. That's something generated by the press, especially the British press, which turns everything into a contest because it sells papers.

"I've listened to the Coldplay album and I quite like it, and I'm interested in what the White Stripes are doing, but it never colours my musical judgment. I never say we should sound more like that or more like this.

"But, you know, me and [Coldplay singer] Chris Martin could sit in a room and he could say to me Yellow is a better song than Live Forever, and I say Live Forever is better. Great songs are in the ear of the beholder."

He groans, exasperated, at the fickleness of pop. "Like Phil Collins," he ponders. "Why did he sell so many records in the '80s when he was so ... I mean, f---in' 'ell."

The new album is instantly recognisable Oasis, even if only five of the songs come from Noel. The best of these, such as The Importance of Being Idle and the familiarly anthemic Let There be Love, sit comfortably with Liam's Guess God Thinks I'm Abel, guitarist Gem Archer's A Bell Will Ring and bassist Andy Bell's Keep the Dream Alive.

It's a little surprising to see Noel, who likes to be in control, loosening his grip on the reins, but he prickles at the suggestion that he's sitting back.

"It's my group and that's just in my nature," he says. "I'm a nosy little bastard and I want to know what's going on. Just like when I went to 10 Downing St [at Tony Blair's invitation]. I just had to know what went on behind that f---ing door, for my own peace of mind. It's like that in the studio, too."

For all that critics have chided Noel for merely ripping off his favourite songs from the Beatles catalogue, there's never any doubt about the Oasis delivery.

"I think, maybe along with the White Stripes and U2 - and I'm not putting us in a musical bracket with them - there's something that is instantly recognisable about what we do.

"I'm quite proud of that. People can say what they f---ing want. But bands struggle to find their own identities and often they will never get there. We're in the enviable position where we've never had to follow fashion or trends."

The only personnel change for the upcoming Australian visit will be drummer Zak Starkey, who replaced long-term drummer Alan White last year. Starkey, the son of Ringo Starr, played here with the Who last year.

"Zak is pretty much as part of the band as you can be," Noel says. "He's a great drummer and a great lad, and the album absolutely benefits from him being there ... just little touches he does add another dynamic to the whole."

The world tour behind Don't Believe the Truth will take the band well into next year "just to pay for the album", Noel reasons.

In the meantime he hopes to find time to write more Oasis material and perhaps get around to that solo record that is often mentioned but never realised.

"Eventually I'll do a solo record," he says. "It's never been pencilled in for any particular time. By the time we've done an Oasis album there isn't much time for anything else."

Oasis's Australian tour begins in Brisbane on November 26 and travels to Melbourne and Sydney. More dates are expected.