The Interior Life of Noel Gallagher: A Speculative History

Esquire UK cover story

Radiohead? When do people listen to them? Is it when they go out, or is it when they come in? Because I’m struggling to think.

I tell you what I think about Liam and this is just an opinion. He would fucking aggressively disagree. He was rightly put up there as this fucking huge rock star but he didn’t write a note, not a word. From my perspective I don’t know how comfortable I’d feel about the mania surrounding us, and you knowing in your fucking soul that you were responsible for really wearing the clothes.

Morning Glory was slated when it came out. And then when it became the biggest thing ever – and I’ve been told this by two editors – they thought, “We’re not going to be caught out next time.” And they lauded Be Here Now, which was clearly a shit fucking album, full of fat fucking rock stars, and then they got caught out again. And they never forgave us. They were just like, “Wankers. We can’t fucking get on it.”

I’ll tell you what’s wrong. Fame’s wasted on these cunts today. Bar Kanye. You watch him on the MTV Awards and you think, “You can fucking stay, you’re alright.”

i genuinely love the excess of BHN.
its just so one dimensional in its love for widescreen imax sonic overload.
the fact that its main creator is now in denial about its coked up brilliance makes me think it could be the best oasis album ever.

i'll rep for My Big Mouth. nowt else. i wonder if somebody could do a decent remix of the whole thing and take all the screeee off it.

id gone off oasis by the time bhn came out and entirely for superficial, non-musical reasons (i was a teenager, oasis were ubiquitous, and weren't cool). despite this i listened to the album because if it was as good as the previous two i would've said f being cool and listened to it. it's awful. d'you know what i mean as lead single, urgh

mark e otm

kevin shields remix, add more screeee

due to my own personal emo connection i have not heard BHN in a very long time.
so, i have just listened to it on my upgraded hi-fi.
its even better/madder than i remembered.
the excess is insane, and the floorstanders reveal so much more.
there is not a second of sonic space in the mix.
i think i love it even more now.
could this be the last massive budget album ever ?

it is their singular achievement and their legacy. I enjoy it from time to time

Morning Glory was slated when it came out.

this isn't true iirc. nor is it true that be here now was praised.

nor is it true that be here now was praised.

i seem to recall that the album was given massively positive reviews.
the love was immense.
mojo/Q were all over BHN.
now i wish i had kept my magazine archive.

Be Here Now - 9/10 Vox, Aug 1997. Dele Fadele wrote it.

That's exactly right. In the UK music press, Morning Glory was reckoned to be a disappointing follow-up to Definitely Maybe. Everyone felt it was a load of toss-offs and that Champagne Supernova and the title track were the only decent bits. I remember Hello was thought to be a particularly rotten opener, with its Gary Glitter lift. Q, which was arguably the journal of record, gave it a two-/maybe three-star review and then ended up honouring it st their awards after it had gone up like a rocket. Noel came and accepted the Best Album award "on behalf of a crap album with crap lyrics" or words v much to that effect.
No-one wanted to be similarly wrong-footed by By Here Now, and everyone knew it would be instantly massive, so it was near enough five-star reviews across the board, almost to a suspicious extent, as if editors were all making their pitch for ongoing interview access. The critical consensus quickly fell away when everyone heard it, but the first word from the music press was wall-to-wall raves. No-one wanted to prick the bubble. And also, it sounded big, so it could briefly be confused for good, whether it was or not. I don't usually post, but I read the music press avidly in those days, and that is what happened.

NME gave whats the story 6/10
NME gave Be Here Now 9/10

What's The Story is a 6/10 record all the way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL6aDrzs3Fs

now I have the phrase "shite bucket challenge" in my head

thank you wump.

def true that MG was dissed (a proper kicking from Stubbs in MM, NME were sniffy, 3/5 by Dave Cavannagh who said he struggled to get work the year after the review because of it! etc etc) and yeah BHN was worshipped. 5/5 in Q, MOJO etc. there's a brilliant bit about the BHN review hype it in 'The Last Party' that quotes someone (i forget who) in one of the top papers (Independent maybe) that compared it to 'Revolver'.

First real negative piece post-BHN I remember was a Reaper diss of Morning Glory in Uncut (which just started I think, not sure if the Reaper was Stubbs but it makes sense)

ha would love to read that.

have to say "Thom Yorke should give us a shout when he's written a song as good as Mony Mony" made me laugh.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/nov/06/noel-gallagher-everybodys-out-to-please-the-guardian

http://i.imgur.com/aWILv25.png

Guessing Alan Mcgee also says this to his best mate Edward Ball when he expresses any opinions?

All that money other people have earned for him and he still can't buy a hat that fits him,

http://nme.assets.ipccdn.co.uk/images/gallery/AlanMcGee03BTOX180511.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/GCCjcbc.jpg?1

im afraid luke wins this one

http://noel-gallagher.esquire.co.uk/

“This is my hobby!”

“You mean, music?”

“No! This: doing interviews. I fucking love it. I could do this all day long. It’s sick.”

“Why do you love it so much?”

“Because I get to be a gobshite, and I get to do that thing: to be the last of a dying breed.”

his appearance on motd2 was next-level grim. saying 'the brodge' over and over again followed with a little beady-eyed smirk, everyone in the studio force-roaring with laughter like he'd just burped gold. like he's the CEO's spoilt child, humour him or else. awful small-minded unfunny man, gives off the vibe that he truly believes he could forge a new career as a stand-up comedian if only he could be bothered. baffling how he's got this reputation as a scathing wit - hasn't said anything truly witty in years and even then that 'man soup fork' line is only 5/10 on the smarts scale

― NI, Wednesday, March 4, 2015 7:23 AM (8 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

very obviously the most otm post in the weirdly long second phase of this thread

ilmos's repetitive fascination with shit they "don't like" is an occasional head-scratcher but hey

I think about 4 threads got bumped because a man said something boring about radiohead. Are they even still going?!

(maybe some of this was on fb)

sorry for posting things

nah it's cool actually I like to read it as kinda bringing the thread back full circle to nakchivan's first 5 or so posts, with ilx in the gallagher role

this thread leads two things from a post by fizzles where he sees noel in the supermarket, it isn't entirely arbitrary that it is about him because his public image does fit with that anecdote of velleity and the hell of being famous, as someone entirely incurious, neither stupid nor clever, who is lost between uncomplicated enjoyment of his fame and a more self-reflexive understanding of it

that match of the day two post is good......he obviously doesn't need the money, maybe he was promoting album/band/tour etc, maybe not, the demeanour of the studio golems suggested a lot of excited preparation between his people and their people, 'it would be great to get him on'....yet he looked like he had wandered in off the street

if i remember correctly he had a sort of langorous posture and when he wasn't being invited to provide content, his gaze wandered into dead space, he knew enough about football for it not to seem gratuitous but evidently wasn't interested in it

'match of the day two guest apperarance' a phrase to conjure with anyway

'a new career as a stand-up comedian if only he could be bothered'......the velleity is the thing, if enough other people could be bothered to make him do it, if he was guaranteed a large enough fee upfront rather than sale proceeds he could probably be conjured into doing a three or four date tour, all it would involve would be convincing him there was no risk to his reputation or profitability and it wouldn't involve any work

I remember it well (uh, thread inception, not motd appearance); I also remember one time my friend playing me some of writer and activist russell brand's podcast, and there was this bit, apparently a regular feature, where brand would ring up his mate noel and chat to him for like 10 minutes. It was similar to what you describe, he sounded completely disengaged, dull as fuck, like he'd been interrupted doing fuck-all and was waiting to get back to it. It was such a weird momentum-killer, like whatever you think of brand the idea that his force of personality isn't enough to keep a blokey radio show going without having to bring in a stilted conversation with a bored singer is... odd.

ANYWAY I really liked the 1st iteration of this thread although the conceit prob wasn't gonna be infinitely sustainable I do still click on it in the hope that at least someone will post something funny so it's always disappointing to see that it's just become Shit My Dadrock Says, esp given we already have several threads for that

if only you were allowed to post on it yourself

more posts probably not the solution tbh

Not really the thread for it, but I periodically see Noel wandering about, in fact to the extent that he's started to recognise me (not in any head-nodding sort of way, but in a sort of glance of suspicious recognition - it must be hell being famous in some ways). Whenever I see him, he's just mooching about, wandering the streets with the comportment of a man who has absolutely nothing to do, never with anyone, never exuding any purpose, looking down side streets with equal uninterest, extensively studying shelves in the supermarket with a sort of desultory indifference, that sort of thing, a portrait of velleity, of volition in its lowest form.

― GamalielRatsey, Saturday, September 4, 2010 11:02 AM

the supermarket part especially, which has no practical purpose because he doesn't need to buy his own food, nor is it an obvious destination for wandering like a latterday walter benjamin

suggests a return to the first memory of radical arbitrariness, the time when the child has to choose between two chocolate bars whose name and colour alone separate them, whose name and colour are arbitrary

then the horror of being recognised, someone who has no autonomous reasons for doing anything confronted by someone whom he expects to do something, but doesn't know whether that is to just glower/snigger/'mate can i...'/

maybe he even apprehends the sense that random people only intrude upon the privacy of famous people in order to provide an anecdote, and the line between it being this or this is itself arbitrary, they will condense it to a clarity of thought and feeling that he must envy

none of them are going to post to twitter that they met noel gallagher the other day, though they weren't sure what they thought about this

Wistfulness all is wistfulness

his appearance on motd2 was next-level grim.

Is this watchable somewhere? Can only find motd*3* and he's okay?

athough anti-Brexit, Noel did say: “I like the fact that it sounds like a cereal; a bowl of Brexit!”

50 innit

Noel stared at the candles on the cake, their flames dancing like ruddy nonces in the early summer breeze. "I'll blow them out in a minute," he thought to himself, "and then eat a slice of cake."

"How many years were 50?" he wondered, watching his kids dancing around the garden. "A lot of years anyway, too bloody many," he said, laughing to himself. As he finished he heard the words echoing, over and over. He found himself stood in a large banquet hall, facing the Queen herself.

"Arise Sir Noel Gallagher," some posh nonce said, and Noel heard the shite sound of trumpets. "Never liked trumpets. Leave it to the American lads. Sir Noel though. I could get used to that. Maybe one of them collars like Shakespeare had. What was it? A riff? A raff?"

"Doesn't matter," he thought, swilling a large tankard of meade and lighting a cigarette. "Doesn't fucking matter."

*bless u*

went on liam gallagher's twitter hoping to find some ugly picture of noel and "potato is an old cunt LG x" but instead got this earnest garbage

Happy 50th rkid stay young LG x

— Liam Gallagher (@liamgallagher) May 29, 2017

much preferred this savage kidney-punch from feb 24

NUFF SAID LG x pic.twitter.com/63lzP4yy45

— Liam Gallagher (@liamgallagher) February 24, 2017

ppl who sign their tweets

william shatner used to always sign his tweets "MBB" for "my best, bill" but stopped doing so in recent years in his mid/late 80s.

maybe liam will catch on some day

real heads know it's the little kiss at the end that's the major headfuck here