Noel Gallagher on Loving ‘Seinfeld,’ Hating Most Everything Else
“Not great, not bad, just a fucking ‘nother day,” Noel Gallagher says with a bored sigh. It’s afternoon in London, and the famously sour-tongued songwriter is calling while on a break from tour rehearsals for Chasing Yesterday, the second album by Noel Gallagher‘s High Flying Birds, the solo project he began after Oasis‘ 2009 split. Gallagher produced the LP himself, calling in session players to create a lush psychedelic vibe unlike anything he’s ever done. “I’m loving the solitary aspect of being in the studio on my own,” he says. “I spent 20 years in a band making records by committee. I’m fucked if I’m going to do that now. I think Oasis was at its best when I was solely in charge, anyway.”
How are rehearsals going? Are you excited to tour this album?
Of course. It’s the yin to the album’s yang, isn’t it? Who would want to be Brian Wilson, sitting in a studio in a nappy, eating a fucking carrot with your little fat feet in a sandpit, not going on tour? Fuck that.
Are you feeling good about the album?
Oh, yeah. There’s no way you would be even getting to hear it if I didn’t fucking like it. The last record was produced by a professional producer, and it sounded expensive. This one was produced by me, so it’s more rough around the edges. It’s got more character. And there’s a bit more guitar action on this one, where the last one was very choral and symphonic. Apart from that, they’re fucking identical.
Your new song “Riverman” has a Pink Floyd-style saxophone solo, which is pretty unexpected. What would you have said back when Oasis were getting started if someone had suggested adding a sax part to, say, “Live Forever”?
[Laughs] Well, that conversation wouldn’t have lasted very long, and it would’ve ended with somebody being shown the exit door. But that was 20 years ago. You can’t stay playing a Les Paul through a Marshall stack forever.
What’s your lifestyle like now compared to those days?
If I can give you an analogy — back in the early days of Oasis, my lifestyle was like a wild fire-breathing dragon. My lifestyle now is like a faithful sheepdog. When you’re 24 in the biggest band in the world, I’m sure you can work out all the nonsense that entails. When you’re a 47-year-old solo artist, it’s different. You become a fucking pussy, is what happens. But if you still behave at 47 the way you were behaving at 24, you’d be a bit of a dick, wouldn’t you?
Do you live full-time in London these days?
Yeah, I live right in the heart of the city. I did spend a bit of time in the late Nineties out in the country, and it’s got its benefits. But I was born in the city, in Manchester, so I’m very, very used to noise and traffic and police cars and junkies and fucking beggars and prostitutes and all that kind of thing. And that’s just for breakfast.