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Post by mancraider on Feb 12, 2022 16:19:43 GMT -5
saturday february 12 2022
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW Liam Gallagher: My wild days are over — I’m nearly 50 The motormouth is facing a big birthday — but he can’t stop baiting his brother Noel and stoking hopes of an Oasis reunion Our kid grows up: Liam is riding high with his third album Our kid grows up: Liam is riding high with his third album GREG WILLIAMS Dan Cairns Saturday February 12 2022, 6.00pm, The Sunday Times 20 To avoid filling this article with the asterisks The Sunday Times uses to denote swear words, it will help if you assume that every fifth or sixth word from Liam Gallagher’s mouth during the hour I spent with him began with an F. Only the American singer Kelis has come close for potty-mouthed prolixity in my two decades of interviewing music stars.
In other respects, though, Gallagher has mellowed. At a restaurant near his home in Highgate, north London, the former (and, definitely maybe, future) Oasis frontman sips a cappuccino with no sugar. He may just be back from a sun break he describes as such a heavy “seven-day bender” that he needs another holiday, but the days of dedicated, 24/7 hedonism are over. The star once synonymous with chaos and carnage reaches his half-century in September — and readily admits that he can’t hack it any more.
“That voice [in my head], which used to be very distant, saying, ‘Go to bed. You’re not going out tonight,’ is now very loud. Years ago it would have been like,” he says, cupping his ear: “‘You what? I beg your f***ing pardon?’ These days it’s, ‘Chill out. You’ve had your share.’ And I’m listening to that voice a lot more . . . I don’t want to feel shit any more. Or break any more hearts. I’m nearly 50, I want to have good times, not shit times. I’d love to get off my tits all the time, but I can’t handle it. And bills have to be paid.”
He is, he says, increasingly aware of the destruction his past behaviour left in its wake. Two marriages — to the actress and singer Patsy Kensit in 1997, to All Saints’ Nicole Appleton in 2008 — and two divorces; infidelities; four children, one of whom Gallagher met for the first time when she was 19; hefty alimony payments; his continuing feud with elder brother Noel. Things had to change. “I’ve been humbled, I’ve lost a few things, marriage break-ups and all that. You’ve just got to look in the mirror and remember that. There’s things I’m not proud of, I’ve messed up and done some stupid stuff.”
Gallagher’s success as a solo artist may not have silenced the clamour for an Oasis reunion, but it’s clearly given the singer a confidence boost. He is scathing about the Downing Street parties, in a very Liam way. “You can imagine Putin sitting there thinking, ‘Call that a party? Abba and a cheeseboard?’ We’re a laughing stock.”
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His first two solo albums, As You Were (2017) and Why Me? Why Not (2019), both topped charts, and his third, C’mon You Know, is out in May. Seven days after its release he will play the first of two sold-out, 80,000-capacity shows at Knebworth Park in Hertfordshire — the setting for Oasis’s crowning moment in 1996. There are further stadium dates in Manchester, Glasgow and Belfast.
The choice of Knebworth might have been designed to goad Noel. Does Gallagher think his success bothers his brother? “Look, it’s got to, hasn’t it? I’m sure deep down he’s happy, he’s not all bad. But there’s going to be a bit of ‘the f***er’s out and about again’. If he was doing Knebworth I’d be livid. I don’t care how much money you’ve got, how many houses you’ve got, how many celebrity mates, when you get home you’d be sitting there thinking ‘f***er’. But the geezer’s got many faces, so he can hide behind one of them.”
When Noel walked out on Oasis in 2009, after a fateful argument with his brother shortly before they were due on stage in France, Gallagher was distraught. “I thought we’d be the Stones, doing it until the day we died. We might have had a break, gone off and done our own thing, and then got back on it. For it to implode like that was disastrous. I went off the rails a bit when it happened, because it was the thing that glued my life together.”
Gallagher took the remaining members of the band with him and formed Beady Eye, a band that never quite clicked with fans. He remembers that period vividly, he says — staring into the abyss and struggling not to be sucked into it.
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“Beady Eye wasn’t happening, Noel’s thing [Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds] was taking off, my marriage was breaking up, I had a kid in New York. I thought, ‘I’m in the shit here.’ I had to knuckle down, get my head together, sort my private life out. I thought, ‘I’m either going to end up sitting in the pub all day, not a pot to piss in and having ruined lots of people’s lives, or I can sort out my napper [Manc for head].’”
He says he hasn’t seen Noel in years. “He just seems like a different person. It’s like he’s been abducted.” The last time was when they bumped into each other while watching their beloved Manchester City. “He was there with his crew, I was with mine. We’d been drinking and he hadn’t because he was on a health kick. I remember coughing and he shrank back.” He imitates Noel cowering and whimpering. “I thought, ‘What the f***, man?’
Noel and Liam on stage in Italy in 2008, a year before Oasis broke upNoel and Liam on stage in Italy in 2008, a year before Oasis broke up Noel and Liam on stage in Italy in 2008, a year before Oasis broke up VITTORIO ZUNINO CELOTTO/GETTY IMAGES “But you know I love him. We split up nearly 13 years ago. It’s ridiculous. We can go on about whose fault it is, but he’s his own man. If he really wanted to get in contact, for my mum’s sake, he could do it, but he obviously doesn’t want to. There are only so many olive branches you can offer.”
I’m not sure you would describe Gallagher’s regular pops at Noel on Twitter as olive branches, but who knows what may have gone on behind the scenes. Gallagher says their mother, Peggy, 75, whom he speaks to every day, is “sad about it, but she knows it is what it is. We just don’t get on. I still feel that he threw me under this bus, and he thinks I did. He doesn’t want to know because he doesn’t want to have to deal with the emotions. It would be nice to go out for a beer and all that, but there you go.”
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Liam, Noel — who is five years Liam’s senior — and the eldest brother, Paul, grew up in a semi in Burnage that Peggy escaped to after leaving their “violent, alcoholic” father, who regularly beat Noel and Paul. As a teenager Gallagher was a streetwise scally who barely gave music a thought, until a head injury changed everything. “Paul was into music, Noel was too, I was just the little f***er playing out in the street and being a little shit.”
Then, one day when he was in his mid-teens, “We were having a smoke by the bike shed, I was speaking to one of my mates’ sisters, and the next minute about 15 lads from another school come running down the hill, all hooded up. This lad runs over with a hammer and whacks me on the head. I woke up in the hospital, blood everywhere.”
Overnight, Gallagher says, his priorities changed; music ambushed him, the performer gene kicked in. “All of a sudden everything clicked. It was like the Bisto kid where you see the smell.”
On C’mon You Know Gallagher has again worked with the songwriters and producers Andrew Wyatt and Greg Kurstin. He co-wrote the album’s first single, Everything’s Electric — which he performed at last Tuesday’s Brit awards ceremony — with Kurstin and Dave Grohl, ex-Nirvana, who also drums on the track. Other collaborators include Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Nick Zinner and Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend.
Although the album isn’t short of songs that will please Oasis diehards, it is a lot more experimental than its predecessors. Alongside predictable echoes of the Beatles and the Stones there are psychedelic wig-outs, a children’s choir, traces of T. Rex, Hendrix, Arthur Brown and Mark E Smith, even outbreaks of dub, ska and florid chamber pop.
“It’s a bit peculiar in places,” Gallagher concedes, “which is good: 80 per cent madness and 20 per cent classic. If you’re going to start doing stuff like that on your third album, it helps if there’s a bit of Covid about. Because if it doesn’t take off, and people go, ‘I’m not sure about this, it’s a bit weird,’ we can blame it on the virus and go back to the classic stuff.”
Gallagher’s Twitter digs at Noel have lessened of late and, with two notable anniversaries — Definitely Maybe’s 30th in 2024, and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? reaching the same milestone a year later — coming down the tracks, there is fresh speculation that he and Noel will bury the hatchet to celebrate one or other of them. There are rumoured to be offers in the hundreds of millions of pounds for a reunion tour.
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“I’d love Oasis to get back together,” Gallagher says. “If it happens, it happens. But I’m quite happy doing this.” So that’s a “maybe”, then? Mr Motormouth is suddenly and uncharacteristically gnomic. “We should never have split up, but we did, and this is where we’re at.” Quite where that “this” is remains to be seen. For now, though, Liam Gallagher gets to reconquer Knebworth on his own.
Everything’s Electric is out now. C’mon You Know is released on May 27
The 4 best bad boy documentaries to watch now Iggy PopIggy Pop Iggy Pop PAUL NATKIN/GETTY IMAGES 1. Gimme Danger — Iggy and the Stooges (Amazon Before Iggy Pop was David Bowie’s Berlin bestie, the Stooges were the wildest act in North America. Jim Jarmusch dredges through the filth and squalor to find out where it all went right.
Lil PeepLil Peep Lil Peep 2. Legends Never Die (iPlayer) Tupac and Biggie are hip-hop’s headline casualties, but here three young rappers’ doomed paths are explored. Why did Lil Peep, XXXTentacion and Juice Wrld all die before they turned 22?
Liam Gallagher in SupersonicLiam Gallagher in Supersonic Liam Gallagher in Supersonic ALAMY 3. Oasis: Supersonic (Netflix) Where were you when they were getting high? The unexpurgated story of the Gallaghers’ meteoric rise, from domestic abuse to drug abuse, from Burnage council house to country house photoshoots.
Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield of MetallicaLars Ulrich and James Hetfield of Metallica Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield of Metallica GARY JAMIESON 4. Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (Netflix) Setting the therapy industry back years, the metal monsters realise issues need working through — on camera. Rehab, arguments and resentment surface as the band teeter on the verge of splitting. David Hutcheon
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Comments(27) Comments are subject to our community guidelines, which can be viewed here. Andy Pickering
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Recommended onthetreadmill 3H AGO
It is a shame when talented musicians die young, and limited loudmouths go on for decades.
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Recommend (10) Gideon Allen 2H AGO
He isn't capable of 'singing' as I understand the definition. He places his nose on the microphone and produces a horrendous noise.
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Recommend (5) Slowcoach 1H AGO
I cringe when I see either of them interviewed but I think they are both very talented and Oasis made some fantastic music.
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Recommend (2) Mr B 2H AGO
Inspiring, gives hope to the less talented in the world and shows everyone is capable!
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Recommend (1) RomeoFox 1H AGO
Brilliant. I wish I could see the silver lining in every cloud as you do. 🤣
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Recommend (1) Norbert 7M AGO
I daresay (with some presumption, but I speak from experience) that if Liam was the youngest kid of the three and the one who didn’t get beaten, then there’s the crux of the sibling issue.
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Recommend Downward Dog 18M AGO
IMO.Hasn't made a decent record since Oasis split, he sounds like a parody of himself with that ridiculous nasel tone
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Recommend James Pargeter 26M AGO
Liam I know exactly how you feel!
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Recommend Dean Barrass 4M AGO
All aspects of Liam seen on TV and on radio are wrong and can be extremely irritating. However, I saw him on a recent tour and unbelievably when he comes on stage. It all works and makes sense.
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Recommend Michael Davies 1H AGO
Why is the best band that ever came out of Manchester/Liverpool not featured more? James!
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Recommend andanotherthing 1H AGO
You mean Freddie and the Dreamers?
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Recommend Clive59 25M AGO
As Noel said, Liam is angry all the time, "like a man with a fork in a world full of soup".
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Recommend CHIC HARDEN 14M AGO
That’s a brothers prerogative.
Both Gallagher boys are excellent musicians if uneasy bedfellows.
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