Yea i typed it out from scans from the Stoptheclock.org forum... I got a leg cramp in the middle of it, I hope everyone appreciates it
Mojo August 2008
By Lawrence Watson
It's May 29, 2008. In other words its Noel Gallagher's 41st birthday a date he shares with G.K. Chesterton, John F. Kennedy, Can's Irmin Schmidt and Franci Rossi of Status Quo. Daughter Anais has brought him the new Portishead album and MOJO knowing his penchant for 60s psych, has rustled up a copy of The Beau Brummels Bradley's Barn. Ensconsed in his managers's London, office, yards from a traffic incident that made headlines days before Gallagher halted a car, its handbrake off as it rolled down the road towards a bust junction), He;s fighting-weight and with a seventh oasis studio album, Dig Out Your Soul, Slated to succed a late September single (the Noel-written, Liam-sung The Shock of Lightening), he;s already straining at the leash. "It could have been out by now" Noel grumbles "but we decided to keep June, July and August free to support England in the European Championships, and of course look what fucking happened" Next week he heads to Liverpool to consult with oasis' latest (is fourth) drummer. Unable to commit to the bands touring schedule- Which begins in Canada in August-Zak Starkey is now out of the picture. F0rmer Icicle Works, World Party, La's and (more controversially as we shall see) Robbie Williams trapsman Chris Sharrock is the beneficary. Meanwhile, Gallagher's getting to grips with the shifting realties of releasing an album in 2008. "There's five different versions of the fucker!" He boggles "There's a cheap digital one, theres a digital one thats slightly more expensive, there's a physical on in the shops, then there a deluxe one , then there's a super deluxe one which has everything on it. What happened to the days when you just went and said , Can I buy the new oasis album please? And a guy went to a rack and put it in a bag and he went (turns up his nose) 'It's not all that'" Luckily, something never change. And one of those is the ability of Noel Gallagher to talk the hind hinds legs off a Queen Anne chair. So without further ado...
Take us through the Phases of this record...
Well, we had 66 songs for the last album and we had shit loads left over. I remember saying out of those 66, 11 were good and seven were really great. So I was counting on them being the core of the next record, but it didn't quite turn out like that.
What Happened? Well, we ended up sitting around for a year and and by the time it came round to recording those seven songs, they sounded like B-sides to me. I thought we should do something new. the completely by chance, dead quickly, I wrote three songs over the space of a week, and cos Paul Weller was in our studio, I demoed them in Gem's bedroom.
This was when? This was last summer. We had to finished the tunes before Gem's kids got home from school at 10 to five. So these demos were really rushed and they were pretty sparse. There were no backing vocals, no acoustic guitars... Of course, when we played them to Dave Sardy, he was going "its fucking Genius! I love the bare-bones quality!" And I was looking at Gem going, "I'd have put trumpets on it, but your kids were knocking at the door..."
Describe those songs to me. If they're like any of my previous songs, they're like Columbia, in the sense that they're kind of trancey and groovy. I don't like to use that word, but the rhythms are quite strong, and I suggested to the others that if they had any songs like that lying around they should bring them in. Liam obviously fucking freaked out cos he always hates new directions.
You recorded a lot of it in Abbey Road, but I thought you were banned from there....
Well, we got booted out of there during the sessions for Be Here Now cos we were blasting out Beatles records at four in the morning. We were sitting in the dark playing all the albums in order in the main room through the PA speakers, and we were all doing loads of drugs. there were a couple of spotlights on. We were going (whispers)...Lennon done it there! Thats where he fucking done it" The next day, they were like, "You can carry this on in...another country"
But they had you back....
Well, as fate decreed, U2 were booking in there with Rick Rubin. I was like "U2? U2 have to have a fucking six-hour meeting whether to get tea or coffee in the rehearal room! They are not coming in here any time in the next five years." The guy from Abbey Road was like "I've got it block-booked fr the exact time you want it" We actually went down to Abbey Road with a bag of money and said "We can pay for the studio now!"
So did the idea to keep it simple go out of window in the end?
Yea, there's too many multi-instrumentalist in this band to do anything minimal. Anyways, I don't like concepts following around records,that's the Brian Eno curse. I think lots of bands fall down on that- they get the concept first. Travis, for instance...poor lads. Those kinda of bands always end up with fucking Brian Eno pulling out a deck of cards, saying,"Play it like its orange....
So if it's not a stripped back album, what are the song like? The three initial tracks I did at Gem's were in a dropped tuning, all in the same key. One of them sounds like The Stooges Doing Fools Gold. One of them sounds like Strawberry Fields on really fucking cheap bad acid. Another one started off sounding like a strummy, A-minor, very plaintive love song, but when we were doing it at Gem's I was like, Fuck it and it ended up like The Doors' Peace Frog, with this heavy two-note riff. The other four -which I wrote one weekend Sarah went up to Scotland to take the little lad up to see the grandparents-Were also in the vein of real deep-sounding fucking rocks songs. When I was out in LA, i bumped into one of the guys from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and he said "How's the record?" And I said "I'll tell you how good it is-there's not one fucking single on it." Liam throws in the obligatory fucking lighter-in-the-air, John Lennon moment, called I'm Outta Time, but it kinda needed that to break it up. Tellingly, every girl thats heard it has just gone (pulls face, laughter).
On a Radio 1 show last year, you played Aphrodite's Child and a Pretty Things songs...
Yeah, Baron Saturday. [Kasabian's] Serge [Pizzorno] played me that song one night and the minutes I heard it I was like "Fucking hell, I'm writing a song like that fucking tomorrow." I went home, got the guitar and that was it. I can't tell you what the title is.
Go on, be a devil...
Oh all right. Its called Bag it Up, and its the opening track on the album. But I was fucking devastated when I came home with the finished thing. I stuck it on and the missus goes "Bag It Up? Its that a song by Geri Halliwell?" I'm straight on the internet and sure enough. I was like "You've ruined my entire fucking year."
One more track title and I'll stop pestering you...
There's a song of Liam's called Solider On, Which is a kind of lost and found story. We'd started gathering together tunes that had a certain feeling to them. I was doing the Electric Proms with The Coral, who'd recorded their album at my studio, and it turns out they'd come acros a hard drive in the Pro Tools that said New Oasis Stuff, and they'd a sneaky listen... So [Coral singer] James Skelly, a bit sheepish, asks me "Are you gonna do that tune Soldier On?" now I don't remember it, gen Doesn't remember it, Liam certainly doesn't remember it, but the other lads in The Coral are going " You've gotta record this tune, its fucking boss!" So I ransack this hard drive, can't find a track called Soldier On. So we get to Abbey Road and we're chatting away and Andy Bell goes "Soldier on? Brilliant! I've got a CD of it my bag." Turns out he recorded it with Liam, but Liam still doesn't remember it . "Well" says Andy "you were pretty fuckin pissed" So we stick it on. Like all Liam's songs its got one verse and one chorus just repeated, but its ended up being the last track on the album. It reminds me of a guy walking through sand carrying a big fucking block on his back, and it just goes on for ages. It goes quite dubby at the end, and I play melodica on it, in the reverb chamber that The Beatles used!
Welcome aboard new drummer Chris Sharrock!
Noel G: I have to admit I offered him the gig once before, after Whitey left and Zak was umming and aahing about the gig. Then Zak cam in, one thing led to another and I never called Chris back! So I made sure this time I fucking called him. Liam thought we should have got some 16-year old in. I was like, "You're ludicrous! I'm fucking 40. I'm not playing in a band with some fucking kid who's gonna be marauding through the first class lounge, throwing heroin everywhere. He's never had free crisps before and he's going mental!' No, I said "We need to get some who's our fucking age , who's been on big tours, but Liam's still not happy about Chris Sharrock, because he;s Robbie Williams' drummer. I went home and I thought about it and it was just too much temptation to piss Robbie Williams and Liam off in one phone call"
I apologize if there are missing words, I leave out words thats what I do
PS. if anyone want to use it on a site please credit my blog.
Nov 4, 2024 5:04:30 GMT -5