Noel Gallagher - The Biography. Lucian Randall
go and do something for myself.’
Nothing more permanent had been mooted and still in promotional mode Oasis continued playing into 2009. They returned to the UK from a South American leg where they had found a new generation of fans who had taken the band to their hearts and injected new life into their tour. Back home they began the festival season, kicking off on 4 June at Manchester’s Heaton Park for a set of homecoming gigs. These proved not to be in the league of the Maine Road gigs in Manchester of the 1990s. On the first night there were a string of technical problems, starting with a generator failure during the very first song, ‘Rock’n’Roll Star’. To grumbles from the fans Oasis were forced off the stage until eventually they declared the gig to be free. ‘The curfew’s 11, but we’ll play until they kick us off,’ said Gallagher. ‘Keep your ticket and you’ll get your money back.’ It wasn’t clear how this offer would work in practice, particularly as the band recovered their poise and turned in an impressive 23-song set ending, as ever, with ‘I am the Walrus’. Later on in the night Gallagher said, ‘Kind of regret offering your money back now. Apply for it back if you wanna be a cunt, we do our best for you.’ Those fans who did apply got it via a cheque issued by the ‘Bank of Burnage’. There was no shortage of interest in Oasis with three gigs at Heaton Park in total, the third having been added when the dates sold out.
Following festival gigs around Europe, they played Wembley Stadium over three nights – the third also having been added due to demand – from 9 –11 July. This hardly signified a band on its last legs and there was still little outward sign of a looming bust-up. Or at least not more of one than usual. While there were exasperated quotes attributed to Gallagher about his brother, it was also said that he had no plans to do anything but go on holiday after the tour finished. Business as usual.
On 22 August they played the Staffordshire portion of the V Festival but the twin gig in the south the following night was cancelled. Noel Gallagher had written on his blog that he wasn’t feeling well, but it was his brother’s laryngitis which was cited as the reason for the cancellation of what would have been the final UK gig of the tour. They didn’t know it at the time but that was the end of Oasis in their home country. They’d gone without a whimper, much less a bang. There were only three more dates left in total, with festivals in France, Germany and Italy and then Gallagher and the rest of the band could take that much needed holiday. They would have finished promoting the seventh Oasis album around the world and Gallagher could have taken all the time he needed to decide what he wanted to do next.
The first of those last few dates was 28 August and the band were due to headline the first day of the Rock en Seine festival. As it was, they got only as far as the backstage area of the site just west of Paris before an argument broke out between the brothers which ended up in a reported face-off in the dressing room. Gallagher later said he remembered being quite calm, even as he stalked out of the building to seek the quiet of the car which was anyway waiting for him outside. His driver and bodyguard sat up front but nobody spoke. Gallagher considered his next move for a full five minutes, knowing that he was due on stage at exactly that moment. He later said he was well aware that if he told his driver to go that it would be the end of the band. It wouldn’t be the first time he had departed Oasis, but this would be different. This would be final. Eventually the silence was broke by the security man asking what they were doing. Gallagher answered, the car pulled away and Oasis finished. As he later recounted the story, he said the Mancunian factor couldn’t be dismissed in all of this. This was the way that problems were resolved for lads from the Gallaghers’ home town. And there was Noel’s perennial enjoyment in making the big gesture. ‘There is something pretty special about walking out,’ he said with a laugh.
Screens outside relayed the news to fans who initially took the deadpan style to be a joke – ‘As a result of an altercation within the band, the Oasis gig has been cancelled.’ That other stalwart English group of evergreens, Madness, played their second set of the day in place of Oasis.
The band’s website soon carried the news. ‘It’s with some sadness and great relief to tell you that I quit Oasis tonight,’ Gallagher was reported as saying. ‘People will write and say what they like, but I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer.’ The news was reported with some uncertainty – even seasoned Gallagher-watchers thought that this could be just another brotherly disagreement. It was left to Noel Gallagher himself to end speculation with a statement that seemed to make it clear that his disagreement with the band went deeper than his youngest sibling. This seemed to be particularly serious.
‘The details are not important and of too great a number to list,’ wrote Gallagher. ‘But I feel you have the right to know the level of verbal and violent intimidation towards me, my family and friends and comrades has become intolerable. The lack of support and understanding from my management and band mates has left me with no other option than to get me cape and seek pastures new … I would like to thank all the Oasis fans, all over the world. The last 18 years have been truly, truly amazing. A dream come true. I take with me glorious memories. Now if you excuse me, I have a family and football team to indulge. I’ll see you somewhere down the road.’
‘It’s obviously the worst fall-out that they’ve ever had and they’ve had some pretty bad ones,” said Alan McGee, who had first signed the band to his Creation label. ‘But they love each other – they’ll come back together … Whether you’re an electrician or a rock’n’roll star, you can only do and be who you want to be. He is the same as everybody else – he didn’t want to do it any more and he stopped. People don’t do anything now that they don’t want to do.’
Gallagher would be candid in the press about the regrets he had in splitting from Oasis, which were perhaps surprising to hear given the deep rift which had opened up. But while there were clearly still many sore points, as Noel talked about his new life he seemed to be very well disposed to his former bandmates. He had socialised with drummer Chris Sharrock and wished all of them the best. In his contact with the press he made it very clear that he was going to draw a line under his previous incarnation and that everyone concerned should feel they could move on. He might not have wanted things to have ended in the way they did, but he was being realistic about it.
‘What we did from being a load of working class kids on a council estate with some second-hand guitars was incredible. The fact that we stayed together so long was a miracle,’ he said. While he could be roused to temper quickly, he could also remain cool in the most challenging of circumstances. An astute judgement of what worked both in his music and in the business side of things was a key part of what had kept him at the top for so long. Even when Creation was dissolved following the departure of Alan McGee, Gallagher was level-headed in his responses to the press. ‘When you go to bed it’s a crisis,’ he said of McGee’s news. ‘When you wake up it’s just another problem.’ He was able to create the same emotional distance as he talked about the band he had led for more than 18 years.
‘I think people had stopped listening,’ he said of Oasis, adding, ‘that’s just the way it is when you go for so long. Does anybody care about a new Rolling Stones album these days?’ As he saw it, fans of old bands would go and see their heroes play with more enthusiasm than they would check out their new releases. This was a new fact of life in the internet age – artists whose days signed to a record label were long behind them could keep on going with a decent cyber presence and even an album by an act like the Stones was no more than a taster for the inevitable world tour.
Yet Gallagher’s blunt summary of Oasis’s recent output was reached with the fact of the break-up. While the band was still going he had never thought of them as being in a similar position, despite lukewarm reviews of some of the later Oasis albums. He had then often just shrugged off criticism which had little real effect while the band was still selling its albums in large numbers and he had just kept going. But now Gallagher had the perspective of distance from the old band to reassess what it meant to him.
In 2012 Gallagher talked to the BBC’s Mark Lawson for an extended BBC Four interview which touched on the break-up. ‘It was never going to end like REM have ended,’ he said. Those other elder statesmen of rock had gone from indie status to stadium legends without ever blowing their credibility. They announced