Noel Gallagher - The Biography. Lucian Randall
and more information. All the fantasy’s gone out of music, ’cos everything is too fucking real. Every album comes with a DVD with some cunt going, “Yeah, well, we tried the drums over there but…” Give a shit, man! It makes people seem too human, whereas I was bought up on Marc Bolan and David Bowie and it was like, Do they actually come from fucking Mars?’
Meanwhile, Amorphous Androgynous remixes of High Flying Birds’ tracks appeared on Gallagher’s singles over 2012, including a version of ‘Everyone’s on the Run’ which clocked in at over 15 minutes and dripped with strings and soaring backing vocals. It was disco, dancey and sounded like it was meant to be taken not entirely seriously. This was someone who was having fun and enjoying not needing to make a big guitar statement. But there was no sign of the album that had been discussed between the two and as Gallagher enjoyed his solo success the prospect of it ever arriving seemed increasingly unlikely.
Gallagher explained that the mixes for the album weren’t right and he didn’t have the time he wanted to dedicate to making it right. But it was also true that the second album was very different to …High Flying Birds. He hadn’t said that he’d wanted to see whether rock or electronica would work best, but if he had asked that question, the answer seemed unequivocal. And he simply seemed to be having enough fun getting out with his new outfit. There didn’t seem to be any reason to hurry with a new album, though the very fact that he had kicked off solo life by working on two albums simultaneously was interesting in itself. At the height of Oasis mania in the 1990s, he’d often been depicted in the press as a party animal who had simply got lucky with a revivalist rock band. But his work rate now, in his 40s, belied that caricature. Underneath the Oasis rock’n’roll stereotype seemed to lurk a driven and imaginative creative force.
The High Flying Birds tour became markedly bigger into 2012. They would go on to play summer dates into September, including festivals and arenas, which made Noel Gallagher one of the biggest solo artists in the UK. He had adapted to what could have been a daunting change. ‘Oasis was a big cruise liner and now I’m like a Sunseeker speedboat,’ he said.
At T In The Park in Scotland on 7 July, the soap opera headlines which might once have tracked Oasis were all about the reunion of the Stone Roses but the High Flying Birds preceded them with a set that nevertheless commanded total attention. As a live proposition, Gallagher always had a look about him that spoke less of the rock star aura than it did of an expression of concentration on his playing that might be mistaken for mild exasperation. Yet the audience notably sang along to all the new songs as much as the classics from the old band. He concluded with ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ and, as had become customary, left the choruses to the fans. They were still singing them after the band had left, a whole field of people holding the band’s presence for just a few more minutes, many of them too young even to have seen the last line-up of Oasis perform the song live.
The doubts and the critics were silenced in 2012. The Scottish performance came midway through a tremendous year which had begun in great style with a Brit nomination for his new album and the NME Godlike Genius award – the recognition of lifetime achievement which had previously gone to Primal Scream and Gallagher’s own friends and influences Ian Brown and Paul Weller. Things had panned out to a perfect balance for Gallagher, succeeding on his own terms and yet playing gigs of a size manageable enough for him to give b-sides an airing which would have been lost in the stadium years of Oasis. But Gallagher had always been good at remembering what it was like to want to hear the less obvious numbers in a band’s catalogue as a fan himself – ‘I used to go and see the Smiths and they’d always play those fucking brilliant b-sides and I’d always think, Fucking hell, “This Charming Man” is great but “Rubber Ring”? That’s the shit!’
On stage for the first time with his new band at the Olympia in Dublin in late 2011, Noel Gallagher had emphatically realised the potential inherent in …High Flying Birds. He’d craftily become an accomplished front man over 18 years almost without anyone noticing, but then from his earliest years he had always been good at learning as long as it hadn’t involved going to school. From the days when he first realised how much music moved him, he had soaked up influences and carefully watched how the industry worked. It had seemed unlikely that Oasis would ever survive past their first or second album, but Gallagher’s upbringing and first steps into the Manchester music scene made him uniquely placed to take the industry and make it his own.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.