Some journalists will tell you that they require face to face access to musicians to get anything out of them worth writing about. While this is undoubtedly true in certain cases, especially if the interviewee has a reputation as being 'difficult', it simply doesn't hold water in my experience and probably tells you more about the interviewer and their need to inject autobiographical detail into story (or at the very least, their desire to meet to pretend that someone famous is their friend for the afternoon). Most journalists like to get up close to their prey and feel that they can only be satisfied that they are being told the truth after their mark has been stared intently up and down as if by Larry David trying to ascertain if he's being lied to or not. In fact there are just as many interviewees who are better value on email than they are in person. The truth of the matter is that many auto-didacts, pot heads, shrinking violets and socially awkward people who have trouble collecting their thoughts in person actually express themselves much better during a lengthy email exchange.
And then you get quote machines, the raconteurs and born storytellers like Noel Gallagher who would probably be as at home giving a one on one interview down the pub as they would be holding a press conference by smoke signal or semaphore.
When I interviewed Noel Gallagher recently for a feature on his High Flying Birds project, it was exactly as instructive and as much of a good laugh as I presumed it would be. And by the time our allotted thirty minutes had warped into 70 minutes and I could hear a press dude in the background hissing "five minutes!" and "stop!" hysterically at him, he'd generously given me enough material for another feature.
Anyway, here's Noel's 13 favourite albums, and cheers to him for being a stand-up dude, despite the grief we've given him in the past.
The Sex Pistols - Never Mind The BollocksOf all the people who were a direct influence on Oasis, the line goes back to the Sex Pistols, whether that’s Joy Division/New Order, The Smiths, The Stone Roses or Factory Records, and if they hadn’t played those two gigs in Manchester who knows what would have happened? And on that album you’ve got Lydon or Johnny Rotten with that voice going on about the Royal Family and boredom and the rest while you’ve got Steve Jones just hammering it out like a pub rocker or like someone who’s into Slade or The Small Faces rather than punk rock, and between those two things you’ve got it. Every time I listen to it I think that if it came out tomorrow it would fit right in, it wouldn’t feel dated. Way back at the start of Oasis we did a radio session for Mark Radcliffe and during ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ Liam out of nowhere sang ‘Sunshi-i-ine’, you know, with about ten extra syllables and when it went out on the radio I remember thinking, ‘Fuck me, that sounds great.’ And when we came to record I was like, ‘Sing it like you did on Radcliffe again, like Lydon.’ It was his idea, I just pushed him toward it.
When I left school, The Wall was
the pothead’s album.
Dark Side Of The Moon and
Wish You Were Here I maybe overplayed but
The Wall I could never get tired of. That track ‘Nobody Home’ just brings back so many memories for me. After leaving school, I just used to go round my mates house, skin up, and we’d listen to this. Happy, carefree days. I met Dave Gilmour once at an industry thing and I think I pissed him off. I said to him, 'Dave, I think
The Wall is your best album but my wife won’t have it, she prefers listening to
Meddle.' And he said, 'Well, clearly your wife has impeccable taste where you have little. I suggest you listen to her.' I was like, 'What the fuck are you talking about? She hasn’t got a clue! Get out of it…'
The Stone Roses - The Stone RosesPeople forget how revolutionary they were at the time. I remember seeing them in town when they were a 'goth' band. They weren’t really but they had that goth on guitar [Andy Couzens]. People think of them now about the way they look and everything but they were the last people in Manchester to start dressing like that. Everybody else in Manchester already looked like that. But really, when this album came out after all the trouble they had it was just perfect. When you got to hear the full version of 'I Am The Resurrection', it was just perfect. Ian had the image and he was a great frontman, Reni and Mani were like the tightest rhythm section ever. And John was a great guitarist yeah, but he was also in charge of this amazing sleeve art and this look that was really important to them and was different to anything else that was going on as well.
The La's - The La'sPeople say Lee Mavers is mad or a tortured artist but he isn’t. He’s just lazy. Well, either that or he doesn’t want to tarnish the reputation of what he knows he’s already achieved. I’ve got two CDs worth of unreleased stuff which would knock you out. It should have been released as an album but it won’t see the light of day. But you see them when they reform and they’re still playing the same set as they were in 1986. You feel like saying to them, 'For fuck’s sake…' When I see him I say, 'Hey Lee, when are you going to release your second album?' And he goes, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll do it when I’ve finished the first one…' He’s still trying to nail his first set of songs right after 27 years. So I’ve come to the conclusion he’s either shit-scared of ruining his legacy or he’s just a lazy cunt. All that said though, this is a wonderful album and I do get a great kick out of playing this to people round the world – Americans in particular – to people who have never heard of them. They’re always, 'Wha… What the fuck?' Even though it’s a standard form of guitar rhythm and blues, it’s totally unique. Nobody has done it as good as him since. His lyrics are great, his voice is amazing and the whole vibe of The La's is amazing. Bands from Liverpool used to be really busy but there came a point after the 1980s where unless it was something happening in Liverpool, they just didn’t give a fuck. Liverpool is an island. It bears no relation to what’s going on musically anywhere else at all. I’ve got one scouser in my band and three on my crew and they don’t give a fuck. They don’t care what’s going on in London, they’re still going on about the dockers’ strike. They’re still annoyed that The Beatles left to go to London! [puts on old school scouse accent] 'I’m not havin’ it la, they went shite when they left Liverpool. You ask anyone. They did nothin’. After they left The Cavern, they were nothin’.' And now Liverpool bands get to a certain stage and then they back off because that means you have to move to London and they don’t want to. Liverpool has also suffered for not having a great record label or TV station like Factory or Granada. In more modern times they’ve been in the shadow of Manchester because of that. But that is also their strength. There is no other band of musicians in the world I would sooner play with than a band of scousers. They’ve all got it. And they’re all stoned from breakfast to bedtime. People in Liverpool got Oasis before anyone else did. We played all our early gigs with The Real People. Most people thought we were a Liverpool band.
Some people would say that The Smiths never really recorded one great album and that they were more of a singles band and I kind of see what they mean. I do really like
Meat Is Murder, which is a weirdly psychedelic record with really long tracks. They really did the legwork with that album. But I remember before
The Queen Is Dead came out it was an event… they were about to release their first album as a big band. I remember hearing the first single, ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’, and they had moved on. And then I got it and… the cover was awful… just a piece of shit. But then I played it and it starts with that sample: 'Oh take me back to dear old Blighty…' And it was, 'Fucking hell…' Just astonishing. One of the best openings to an album ever. And that’s before you get to ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’. They could have had the photograph outside of Salford Lads Club as the front cover but then Morrissey is wearing a really daft jacket. It’s brown with black love hearts on it. Very strange. I remember seeing them on that tour when they came to the G-Mex. They came on stage to 'The Queen Is Dead' and Morrissey was carrying a placard that said, 'Two pale ales please'. He had a white blazer on and shades and, fuck me, he looked like Elvis.
The Beatles - RevolverWhen I did ‘Setting Sun’ with The Chemical Brothers it was based loosely on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. Do you remember when it went to number one, what song we knocked off the top? ‘Breakfast At Tiffany’s’ by Deep Blue Something. We were like Sir Galahad. 'And she said, 'What about Breakfast At Tiffany's' and I said, ‘I remember the movie.'' And we came in, 'Off with your head you piece of shit.'
Revolver was when the sitars really started to come in with The Beatles, and all the backwards stuff on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. It’s their first drug album. The drums sound great on it and it’s a masterclass of how to make guitar pop. That’s just it. They took what the Beatles had been, they did
Revolver and then the next week they’re making ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. They’re a completely different band. It’s a cliché to talk about it now because it’s so well-known but this is a mindblowing album. I went to see the premiere of the George Harrison film the other night [Martin Scorsese documentary
Living In The Material World] and on the red carpet outside this journalist asked me this question: 'Would you say that The Beatles have been an influence on your music?' I was that amazed I had to take my shades off. I said, 'Is that a serious question?' And he was only young and in all innocence he said, 'Yes. Why?' I was like, 'Are you having me on?' And he was like, 'No.' Now ignoring the fact that it’s
me, if you’re in a band and you’re playing guitar, you have been influenced by The Beatles. That really is all you need to know. The psychedelic stuff they did after this was mindblowing and the Fab Four mop top stuff before this was equally as good but on this record it all came together.
The Kinks - The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation SocietyThe Kinks, like The Who, are one of those quintessentially great English singles bands but I’ve listened to this album so many times and I just fucking love it. It’s obviously such a big influence on Damon Albarn’s writing. You know the song ‘Big Sky’? 'Big sky, too big to cry.' You can almost hear someone shouting 'Parklife!' at the end of it, do you know what I mean? On the opening track you’ve got the lyrics mentioning all the strawberry jam, Fu Manchu, Mrs Mop and all this quintessentially English stuff, and when I started getting older so I was listening to records not just feeling them it suddenly hit me, 'These lyrics are fucking outrageous. How do you get all that stuff in there and make it work?' The album is incredible. I’ve got an old album of interviews with Ray Davies and he was saying that he thought it was important that we keep all of this traditional stuff like afternoon tea, cricket and cucumber sandwiches alive because American culture was taking over the world but he couldn’t imagine it taking over England. But then you realise… oh shit… it did. What a cunt. What a cunt. It took ages to come out because of legal shit, got delayed for three years and then no one bought it. I presented him with an award a few years ago and I thought, now’s my chance to get to know more about the writing of such a great album. So I was like, 'So
Village Green, tell me about this great album…' And he’s grumpy at the best of times and just went: [snaps] 'Oh, I don’t know.' I was like, 'Ok, good to get that one sorted out finally. Nice to meet you.'
The Who - Best Of The WhoNow, some people give you shit for picking a best of over a studio album but The Who are totally one of those bands. I do not dig any of their albums. The only album that isn’t a hits collection that I can sit through from start to finish is
Live At Leeds. On their studio albums there is always some half-arsed concept hung on a few good tunes. But,
The Ultimate Collection is… fucking hell. If you’re of a certain age and you play guitar based music, they’re up there with the Beatles to me. You just have to look at the singles, ‘My Generation’, ‘The Kids Are Alright’ all the way through to ‘Pinball Wizard’ and even ‘You Better You Bet’ is fucking good. The thing about best-ofs is right from the time when I was a teenager right up until the point I actually earned some proper money, all I could afford was best-ofs. I’m not interested in David Bowie’s albums, do you know what I mean? Give me
ChangesOneBowie and
ChangesTwoBowie. When you can only afford to buy one album a fortnight or whatever it’s too much of a gamble to buy an actual album. Give me a best of. It’s the best… of… that person!
The Rolling Stones - Let It BleedDelia Smith baked the cake for the front cover of this album. I guess I could have got Yotam Ottolenghi to make me a meringue for the front cover of
The High Flying Birds or got Heston Blumenthal to make me some barbed wire ice cream for it. I could have gone for
Their Satanic Majesties Request, it’s got ‘2,000 Light Years From Home’ and ‘She’s A Rainbow’ on it. And again for years I just had the
Rolled Gold best of but this was the first album I heard by them when I really thought, 'Oh yeah… this is what it’s about… they’re not just ‘Satisfaction’ and ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’.' ‘Gimme Shelter’ and ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’, that’s more like it.
The Soundtrack Of Our Lives - Behind The MusicI’ve got to say that this band were a massive influence on late-period Oasis. It was the one album I bought from a review because it said it was a bit like The Beatles, a bit like The Stones, a bit like The Who, really 60s-influenced and all the rest. I put it on the car stereo when I was driving to an Oasis gig and right from the start it was like, 'Wow.' It just blew me away, the lyrics, the playing. And then when we got to see them live and the singer was this giant fat dude. We ended up going on tour with them for two years. I watched them every single night and I thought they were incredible and they became really, really good friends and I still think that this album is a modern masterpiece.
Various Artists - The Hacienda ClassicsWhen Oasis first started, very early on we used to cover ‘Feel The Groove’ by Cartouche. There’s a tape of that live gig knocking about somewhere. I was the dance music head in the group. I was into indie music like everyone else, New Order, The Smiths and then one night in 1987 someone took me to the Hacienda because I’d been reading about this music and I just stood there, drinking Colt 45, thinking 'Well, this is shit…' But then someone else took me the week after and said, 'Have one of these.' And put a little pill in my hand. And within an hour I thought that this music was the greatest thing that I’d ever heard in my entire fucking life. It was a life changing experience. The thing about the Hacienda was it was a superclub before superclubs existed. Acid house only lasted two years and that was it at its best. If you go to a club now you might as well be listening to the same song all night. Back then they played everything, hip hop, electro, acid house, techno and it was all mashed up. It was on your doorstep and full of people who were skint. It was only two quid to get in, they sold Rizla behind the bar so you could skin up and acid and Es were just entering the cultural stream. They were the best years of my life and probably every other day since I’ve thought, 'I wonder what those tunes were called?' Then I heard this album was coming out, I put it on at home and I was instantly transported back into that nightclub. And I thank the people who put this album out. It reminds me of great days when I was young and enjoying life to the full.
I saw an advert for this album when it came out and I had to buy it. I just thought, 'With a title like that, it’s either going to be the greatest thing ever or the worst thing ever.' And from the second I put it on and heard 'Barabajagal (Love Is Hot)' by Donovan that blew me away. The second the album finished I got on the phone, and I was like, 'Find me these guys. I need to go and work with them.' Then I found out more about them and I went onto their website and they’ve got podcasts and everything. You should see them DJing. They are unbelievable. They will blow your mind. They’re modern day geniuses… even though one of them never says a word and the other one never stops talking.
U2 - The Joshua TreeI just love the songs on this. I’m not into the whole religious aspect of the band but I’ve been a fan since I saw them on Top Of The Pops doing ‘Fire’. The reason that I picked this over
Achtung Baby - which is one of my favourite U2 albums from my favourite period of U2 – is that it’s just a massive album for me. When I get time to have a quiet moment on my own, I could sit and play all the songs off this on an acoustic guitar for ages. They’re just great. You don’t like it? I don’t give a fuck! Everyone that I’ve ever known – EVER KNOWN – apart from my wife – hates them. Me and my wife love them. It wasn’t the reason we got married… But everyone else I have ever met from my earliest memory in Manchester to right now talking to you has gone, 'They are fucking shit. They are what’s wrong with music.' For me it’s about the songwriting. If I could write a song like ‘Running To Stand Still’ and ‘Nobody’s Home’ by Pink Floyd then I could die happy with never writing another song again.
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