'If I Was To Lose The Hair I’d 'Ave To Retire'

Seated in an office inside his London record label at 8.40pm (”There’s no one here but me and a cleaner”), Noel Gallagher is smart as a whip as expected.

There’s a track on the new Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds album – the outfit’s second, Chasing Yesterday – called The Right Stuff. When told New Kids On The Block have a similarly titled track, You Got It (The Right Stuff), Gallagher jests, “One day I will get ‘round to covering a New Kids On The Block song, you know, them bein’ one of my major influences.” On the abbreviated tandem band name that was attached to NKOTB’s collaboration with Backstreet Boys (NKOTBSB – New Kids On The Back Street Boys?), Gallagher contributes, “Right. So they shoulda called themselves Bunch Of Cunts and had done with it. I’da definitely bought a t-shirt, for sure [laughs].”

To promote this latest record, Gallagher features in a fair few video interviews some of which incorporate fan-submitted questions. When asked whether he suspects that sometimes interviewers claim fans wrote them if they’re worried certain questions may incite him, Gallagher muses, “Um, I think that, I don’t know, I don’t tend to over-think things like that. I go fuckin‘ mad when I’m doing interviews – as you’re probably aware [by] the way this interview’s going. I’m completely in the moment. I don’t really care about what people are asking me, that’s their fuckin’ job. I don’t give a shit, to be honest.”  

"No, I don’t have a robe. I’m not Elton John."

And as for the set-up where fans are required to stand up, identify themselves and read out the question, Gallagher opines, “Oh, that’s embarrassin’, yeah. That’s embarrassin’. I do feel bad for them when they’re readin’ out a question which I fuckin’ hate, like, ‘What’s your favourite song you’ve written?’ I hate that question. Or, ‘If you could be in a supergroup, if you could be in a band with anybody, who would it be?’ And I just think, ‘Oh, fuck off. Please!’”    

There was a particular case whereby a fan stood up and asked Gallagher whether a song called ‘It Makes Me Wanna Cry’ was on Chasing Yesterday and he baulked at the incorrect title. “What a shit title for a song!” he recoils afresh. And it has to be said that Gallagher’s song titles are always really well thought out. “Exactly! And this is one of my fuckin’ fans! Fuck me.” Must’ve been a little disappointing. “It was very disappointing,” he confirms.   
 

Johnny Marr features on the second Chasing Yesterday single, entitled Ballad Of The Mighty I, and Gallagher marvels, “I’ve known Johnny for 21 years, I was twenny [counts out in a muffled fashion], one, two, three, 24! ‘Cause annoyingly he’s still only fuckin’ two years older than I am. I met him in Manchester through his brother, who I didn’t know. His brother just happened to be a stranger to me, and we used to go to this nightclub called The Haçienda, and I used to see this guy and we were on noddin’ terms. I had no fuckin’ idea who he was other than he looked cool and we were on noddin’ terms. And I happened to bump into him in the town centre one day, and I’d been to the record shop, and he asked me what I’d bought, and I’d bought an album by a band called The The. There was an album called Dusk and, at that point in The The, Johnny Marr was briefly in [the band]. And [Marr’s brother] said, ‘Oh my brother plays on that album,’ and I said, ‘Who’s your brother?’ And he said, ‘Johnny Marr,’ and I was like, ‘Fuckin’ ‘ell!’ And we walked through the town, and he was asking what I did, and I said I was in a band and he said, ‘Have you got a demo? I’ll give it to our kid.’ And I gave it to ‘im and about two hours later Johnny called me at home and asked me did I wanna go for a drink. Just like that. Just like that.”

Gallagher mishears when asked whether Marr was wearing cool threads back then, replying, “I always wear cool clothes. Always. I’m always impeccably dressed.” Surely there are some photos that prove otherwise. “Really? Really?  Well I fuckin’ dare you to try and find them,” he challenges. Ok, photographic evidence probably doesn’t exist. “Of course it doesn’t exist. And even if it does exist I stand by everything I wore. Even when I’m hungover.” So does Gallagher own any tracksuit pants? “Plastic pants?” he enquires before the penny drops, he laughs and then insists, “No, I don’t do leisurewear.” Do pyjamas fall into this category? “Well I do own pairs of pyjamas, but I don’t go to the shops in them if that’s what you mean.” Touché. How about a robe à la Hugh Hefner? “No, I don’t have a robe. I’m not Elton John.” Smoking jacket? “No, I don’t have a smokin’ jacket. No. I do have a little night cap though, like…”

Wee Willie Winkie? “Wee Willie Winkie, yeah. And I carry a little candle around in the middle of the night when I’ve gotta go up and go to the toilet.” Has it got a pom-pom on the end if it, the Wee Willie Winkie cap? “Course it has. Whaddaya think I am, a fuckin’ animal?” And does Gallagher check on his children while he’s up and about carrying his “little candle”? “I do indeed. Give them a little pep talk in their sleep.”

The music video to accompany Gallagher’s Ballad Of The Mighty I is a corker, even if he doesn’t usually like them. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Listen, listen, listen. Let’s not underplay this: I fuckin’ hate videos. It’s proper hate…  I like other people’s videos,” he clarifies. “I just fuckin’ hate my videos: I hate bein’ in them, I hate fuckin’ havin’ to have conversations about them, meetings about them – I like everybody that’s workin’ on them because they’re doin’ their best, you know. When I’m forced to watch one of my videos, when I have to sign off on it, it might ruin my fuckin’ entire day.”

"They shoulda called themselves Bunch Of Cunts and had done with it."

At the tail end of the aforementioned music video, a pair of trainers dangles from overhead powerlines. Is this a sign of drug activity in the area as legend has it? Gallagher laughs, “Seriously, is that what that means? Really? It was in quite a dodgy part of town. Is that some mad, underworld shit? I did not know that. Mind you, I’ve never been a heroin user.” Was the abandoned footwear already in place or was it part of the set dressing? “I’m assumin’ they were there already, ha ha. I’m sure no one’s gone to the fuckin’ trouble of gettin’ a ladder, climbin’ up there and throwing a pair of Converse on and goin’, ‘Fuckin’ hell, it’ll be an amazing drug reference!’ Surely not. I’m gonna ask my friend when I go out with him tonight. He was a recovering heroin addict so I’m gonna ask ‘im if that indeed is true. That’s the first time I’ve ever ‘eard of it so maybe it is true.”

Unless it’s a dodgy Aussie thing, that is. “Maybe it is,” Gallagher assents. “Well, there is plenty of those dodgy Aussie things all over the place, isn’t there?” On what he thinks of Aussie rules football, Gallagher declares, “It’s fucking mental. Guys playin’ it in their underwear? [Pauses] No.” But there is Women's Australian Football, you know. “Well now, Aussie Rules football for girls, now that I could watch. What? Girls playing football in their underwear? That sounds like I could kinda watch that, yeah. Guys playin’ football in their underwear? [Coughs] Not for me.” Does it annoy Gallagher that we call Australian rules “football” and their football “soccer”? “There’s only one football, okay, which is what we fuckin’ play. What you play and what you call it is between yourselves. Americans call what they play football and they call what we play soccer. That’s fine, we all have our cultural differences, but be under no fuckin’ illusions: there’s only one game of football and it’s played in Europe, okay?”
 

Gallagher does the faux irate thing hilariously well and even objects to the shape of ball used to play Aussie rules, insisting that football should always be played “with a round ball, hence the name ball. ‘B’, ‘A’, double ‘L’, ball”. “The ball is round. It’s not shaped like a fuckin’ egg,” he continues. When a case is presented that the oval ball, together with the fact that you can’t anticipate which direction it’s gonna bounce off to, adds an extra element of skill, Gallagher cracks up: “Right, okay, that extra element of utter fuckin’ randomness – there’s no skill involved in it! If you kick a rugby ball up in the fuckin’ air, who knows where it’s gonna land?” What if it lands near overhead powerlines with some trainers dangling over them? “Well at least you could then probably score some drugs and not fuckin’ bother watchin’ the football anymore,” he laughs.

Lock All The Doors, another track on Chasing Yesterday, took Gallagher 23 years to finish. When it comes to keeping track of his unfinished musical ideas, Gallagher considers, “Um, luckily for me I kinda remember all the bits, all the important bits, that are needed – I don’t forget them. I don’t know why – I don’t ever write anything down or I don’t have an extensive library of notes or anything like that, or [there’s never] loads of rootin’ around through demo cassettes or anything like that – I just remember them. And I never quite let go of that [Lock All The Doors] chorus, I just never gave up on it, and eventually the verses presented themselves and fuckin’ good for me, eh?”

There’s also been a change to the way Gallagher approaches lyric writing. “I don’t write lyrics down anymore,” he reveals. “When I go into the studio, I go in without lyrics and when I step up to the microphone to sing it’ll all be in my brain and, yeah! There you go.”

"I don’t really care about what people are asking me, that’s their fuckin’ job. I don’t give a shit, to be honest."

Sax features on some Chasing Yesterday tracks. So, if Gallagher told his young self that he’d go on to record an album featuring said brass instrument, what does he imagine the young geezer would’ve said? “Ah, my younger self would’ve probably looked at me now and gone, ‘Ok, I trust you, big man. You fuckin’ look cool. I put my faith in you.’ And I would say to ‘im ,’Good. Because you fuckin’ got me to where I am, so the saxophone’s partly your fault, ya little shit.’” Surely the “little shit” would also be impressed by the luscious head of hair “big man” still boasts. “Well, it’s not only him, darlin’,” Gallagher laughingly offers. “It’s the one thing that will keep me going. I mean, if I was to lose the hair I’d ‘ave to retire.”

He acknowledges that “happy accidents happen all the time in the studio” and then Gallagher provides an example from this current album: “The song Riverman, the first track in its entirety, is a happy accident. I had this song – it wasn’t called Riverman, it was the same song but it was like a country and western song [laughs], if you can believe that. I had a eureka moment when I was in the studio listening to a song by another guy called Brian Protheroe, a song called Pinball, which was a hit in 1974, which Morrissey played me one night when I was out with ‘im in fuckin’ Los Angeles. And I was playing this song by Brian Protheroe to two friends in the studio and I thought, ‘Fuck! If I do this song, this hillbilly song, in that style, it might be a fuckin’ smash hit!’ And I went home and lo and behold it worked! And there you go. Happy accident!”

After thanking Gallagher for incorporating a word that’s associated with gold rush-era Australia, he cheekily responds, “Well, I aim to please, sheila.”