Noel Gallagher Reckons Parents Bringing Their Kids To Festivals Is "Wrong As Fuck"

Ask Noel Gallagher the simplest of questions and you'll get comedy gold by way of response. Exhibit a): What have you been up to over the last couple of days? Gallagher exhales loudly and then repeats the question back ("What have I been up to?") to create some thinking time and then replies, "Kind of mooching around London, being brilliant. Just, you know, making people's day when they bump into me." When asked how he thinks this experience would be for them, he offers, "I've often wondered what it must be like to bump into me and I can only say from the fucking joyous looks on people's faces - I'd love to bump into me on a day out. People seem so pleased!" So does he allow selfies? "No," he replies without skipping a beat. "Mmm-mmm, I refuse. I don't like doing pictures. I mean, you know, in a moment of weakness I might do the odd selfie. It depends: if it's a good-looking girl I'll do a selfie, if it's a bald fella with glasses and spots - no fuckin' chance. No chance. Females are more likely than males, let's put it that way. I know it's slightly sexist, but fuck it! You know, what can I say?"

"If it's a good-looking girl I'll do a selfie, if it's a bald fella with glasses and spots - no fuckin' chance."

Lately, Gallagher admits he's "had quite a bit o' time off and decided to put that time to good use" and so is "nearly halfway through" writing his next Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds record. However, Gallagher anticipates a follow-up to last year's acclaimed Chasing Yesterday may not be released until "the back end of 2017, if we're lucky" now that he's heading off on tour. "People always say to me, 'Oh, do you bring your family on tour?' I'm like, 'What, are you fuckin' kidding?'" So we won't see young Sonny and Donovan Gallagher rocking the latest ear defenders sidestage at Bluesfest then? "No, no, no, no, no, no, NO, no, no, no, no, no," he stresses. "Parents bringing their kids to festivals is fucking wrong. It's wrong as fuck." We personally don't understand why the parents wouldn't wanna maximise their child-free time at a music festival, but Gallagher interjects, "Well, I don't understand this: why bring them to a rock festival and then put on fuckin' headphones [so] they can't hear any of the music!? They're just watchin' a load of fuckin' old fellas on stage, like, mimin' - what the fuck!?"

While we're discussing his kids, how does Gallagher make sure they're getting a proper musical education (aside from putting all of his own records on high rotation, of course)? "Ah, my wife has got pretty good musical taste," he acknowledges. "The young fella, Sonny, has been steered down an urban path. He is as hip hop and as gangsta as five-years-olds come. He knows all the words to all the new-fangled hip hop shite. Um, the other fella, Donovan, is a bit more eclectic; he's a U2 fan. He loves U2 and I don't mean loves them, he has a U2 Top Ten... And my eldest, my daughter [Anaïs], she's now into The Stone Roses and The Beatles and all that, so my work there is done." We're curious to know whether Gallagher has ever had to go to a parent-teacher interview. "Yes." No way! "Oh, yeah." How does that go down? "I don't know," Gallagher claims. "I don't take any fuckin' notice of what they're sayin'; they talk to me and it goes in one ear and out the other, and then I kinda come back into the room when they say, 'So do you have any questions?' And I always just say to them, 'I've got one question for ya: can I go now?'"

Now that Gallagher and Blur's Damon Albarn have shared a stage to help celebrate The Clash bassist Paul Simonon's 60th birthday, we have an idea: could Gallagher please become a new Gorillaz character and feature on the animated band's next album? He laughs. We tell him we can imagine a 'Gallagher' character bonding with Murdoc Niccals. "Is Murdoc, Damon? Is that right? I don't know any of the characters by name. If I'm closing my eyes and looking at them right now - yeah, they all look kind of the same. Um, I think that would be a great idea." Maybe Gallagher could ask his people to get in touch with Albarn's people, then? "I can get in touch with him personally." There's a pause while this scribe contains excitement levels and then Gallagher has a light-bulb moment, "AAaah! I could actually say to him, 'Don't even do a cartoon character, I'll just appear. In 3D. Every night. Dressed as a gorilla!'" Now that would actually surpass our wildest imaginings. "Absolutely," Gallagher agrees. "Well, you never know - watch this space."

"I kinda come back into the room when they say, 'So do you have any questions?' And I always just say to them, 'I've got one question for ya: can I go now?'"

Just before our chat, there was much speculation on the internet about Gallagher penning a song with Paul Weller for an upcoming album by The Monkees (scheduled for a June release to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the band's television series and debut single, Last Train To Clarksville). So what's all this about then? "Errrr, yeah, they asked me to write a song and as luck would have it, I happened to have half a song lying around that I'd been writing with Paul Weller over the last couple of months," Gallagher reveals. "And we sent it to them and they like it and we've now gotta go and finish it off. But we didn't expect them to go and tell, fucking, the whole world that it was happening because now we have to finish it off." To be fair, though, the world does need to hear this collab. "Well I hope so; I hope the second half of it is as good as the first half," Gallagher ponders. "But me and Paul are very busy dudes. We're all-conquering, ageing mods and, you know, it's fucking hard to find the time sometimes." Weller's barnet is almost as good as Gallagher's, but The Modfather's gone grey, which lets him down a bit. "Well, come on, man. Give the fella a chance he is a hundred and three, you know. He's got a magnificent 'do and so he should 'ave." 

Many try to mimic Gallagher's 'do, so we can't help but wonder what it's like for him to look out into the crowd and spot lookalikes. "Yeah, it's weird when it's girls," he observes. But, really, Gallagher reckons, "I don't think of things like that." "When I look into the crowd and I see people staring at me, all I'm thinking is, 'I wonder if that fucker's bought a T-shirt? How do I make 'im buy a T-shirt?'" When asked whether it's ace to clock fans wearing merch they've obviously owned and treasured for many years ‘cause it serves as proof that they’ve been fans for ages, Gallagher doesn't miss a beat: "It doesn't matter what kind of merch it is, as long as money's changed hands for it. That's all that matters." That's fair enough; given that musicians tend to profit more from merch items than CD sales these days. "Oh, I have no idea," Gallagher admits. "It just pays for the rider in the fuckin' dressing room as far as I'm concerned. I don't actually see any of it."  

Gallagher once told Time Magazine, "Oasis were the last great, traditional rock'n'roll band." This interviewer is just as dissatisfied with the current crop of so-called rockstars, however Bad Habits by The Last Shadow Puppets is a cracking track. Gallagher cracks up. So does he rate that song? He laughs again. "Oh, fuckin 'ell! Um, I think no comment is the best thing I can say about that." 

When asked how he thinks Oasis would've coped had Twitter been around in their heyday, Gallagher responds, "Ah, I think we would've got in a lotta fuckin' trouble. When I was in my 20s, I would've offended a lot of people — I mean, I did it a lot of the time anyway, but imagine fuckin' being in contact with the rest of the world! Oh my god. I'm glad it came in when I was in my 40s and I was old enough to go, 'You know what? This shit is not for me'... Celebrities havin' a Twitter feud is quite undignified really, innit?" 

He famously gives zero fucks, and we're interested to find out whether Gallagher was born this way. "I think I was born with it," he confirms. "It's not something you can practice. I mean, you've either got it or you haven't; it's like dandruff, you know wha' I mean?" Gallagher's really on a roll now: "I mean, I don't believe in god and all that, but sometimes I look to the skies and think, 'What did I do to deserve this absolutely magnificent hairdo, impeccable taste in shoes, rapier-like wit, amazing songs, fuckin' amazin' sense of humour?' I must have done somethin' right, eh?"