"Titanic!" [part 2]

by Paul Lester

March 2000

'Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants' sounds as though it was actually recorded on downers - it's heavy in both senses of the word. Even the lighter tracks - "Go Let Out", "Who Feels Love?" - seem listless and dispirited in comparison with previous hi-energy Oasis anthems. In fact, the whole mood - music and lyrics - of "I Can See A Liar" and "Put Yer Money Where Yer Mouth Is' is bitter and vengeful...
I know what you're saying, but it's really because I'm generally not an angry person. I suppose it comes across in "Sunday Morning Call" and to "Where Did It All Go Wrong?" - they're the most factually correct on the record, because they're about certain real people who I know, but who, obviously, remain nameless. People who used to always turn up on my f***ing doorstep, but at ungodly hours of the morning - and these are proper, well-off, rich, famous people, quite young. And they'd be running you through their drug and booze hell, and they ultimately think that to sort all this out they just write a cheque made payable to The Priory clinic, and six weeks later everyone's going to come up smelling of roses. 'Course, six weeks later they'll be back in your kitchen going, 'I can t handle it any more.' And you'll be going, 'At least you're not washing car windscreens for a living on f***ing Baker Street. Get a grip of yourself, man.'
It's like, if you don't want to do it no more, then don't do it. But for f***'s sake don t spend 20 grand trying to kick the habit that you can just kick by looking in the mirror and saying to yourself, 'Where did all this go wrong, man?' That's basically what them songs are about.'
They're not about you, then?
I suppose they're subconsciously directed at myself in some ways.
The pressures of your lifestyle, fame and stuff?
"Roll It Over", the last track, is a bit like that. It's just about the inane people you tend to meet when you're out, who talk to you like they've known you for 15 years, whereas they've known you for 10 minutes, they've just heard a couple of your records on the radio. it's like, 'F*** off!'
Does it not concern you that those songs are going to mean less to people than a song like "Rock'n'Roll Star" - about escaping a provincial town to make something of yourself - whereas these sorts of crises will only connect with the few in your positions.
Yeah, but I still think that when you get to around - what am I now? 32? - when you get to sort of 30 to 35, anyway, it's a time in your life when you do start questioning. I think a lot of people in their mid-thirties do that. I know I certainly did after my 30th birthday - it was like, 'it's about time I was getting married and having kids; it's about time 1 was leaving something behind, not just being the old scally rock star that lives in the big house at the top, you know, the token rake with a pint of Guinness.' I got to a point where I went, 'F*** it, I've had my time as a young mad-for-it man. It's time to move on.'
So you've exorcised all the madness?
Yeah, I think so. I like being back at work. Before, I would create something to justify staying up for three days doing drugs; now it's like I create something purely because I like being creative. Whereas before we'd make records to go on the road and have a good time - so you could justify blowing 25 grand a month on drugs and lavish parties: 'It's all right because I'm a pop star! And I'll buy a stupid f***ing outfit, because I'm a rock star!' Now it's like you're creating something because that's what you do; you're a creative person.
Is a night like the one that produced "Talk Tonight" (from the "Some Might Say" CD single), where you had to he coaxed off a hotel window ledge in Las Vegas, unlikely to happen again?
If I ever got like that again, if I ever got that bad, where I disappeared for a couple of weeks and nobody could find me�I was a young man then; I was 26 or 27. And it was all exploding, all over the world, in our faces, and we probably didn't know how to deal with it. All right, I knew how to deal with it, but I didn't know how to deal with the rest of the band, who didn't know how to deal with it. Whereas now I've made enough money to just go, 'Do you know what? I'm just going to knock it on the head for a while.'
If we get on the next tour and there's all the madness going on again, it would be good to get back and say, 'I don't have to record another album if I don't want to.' I could gladly take two years off and watch the young 'un grow up. So, no, probably nights like that wouldn't happen again.
The new album isn't just "down", it's also quite dark. Is there more of a Smiths or Joy Division element to your music than has been noted? Sometimes your comical songs overshadow your serious ones.
'Well, you won t ever see any more f***ing 'She's Electric's, let's put it that way. Or any more "Digsy's Dinner"'s, because you do that when you're young, don't ya? "Go Let It Out" is probably the last of that kind of...it's just a funky rock'n'roll pop song and I'd like to, without sounding like Radiohead, do something a bit more, not overtly dark and make people feel miserable, but just sort of tell it like it is. But life is good; it's not as bad as Thom Yorke would have you believe.
Was the phrase "Pre-Millennium Tension" knocking around in your head when you Wore writing this record?>
Oh, no, no. It's like, my life is pretty f***ing damn good at the moment. There are things that piss me off, but not in the sense that I would contemplate ending it all, sticking my head in a f***ing oven or anything.
Have you ever felt that way?
No, never. No. I mean, at some points I've thought that. I've probably thought I would f***ing kick the bucket, only through health reasons. But I would never...f*** that. I'm too much of a coward to take my own life.
There's the romantic myth of the Manchester musician, "a weight on their shoulders". Ian Curtis springs to mind.
Yeah. I can understand that, because I had a pretty shit upbringing, but I wouldn't ever write about that; that's private. I've got over it and I don t need to write about it as a course of therapy. I got over that a long, long time ago. Now I tend to write about things that get on my tits. Like, getting old gets on my tits, but it's something that's got to be embraced. I don't know, we'll see in the future...
You once said that your first three LPs were a set and after that you were going to draw a line and move on to Phase 2. Is 'Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants' the start of Phase 2?
Yeah, totally. It's a third of the way where I'd like to be when my contract's up with Creation or Sony or whoever the f***ing hell we're signed to these days [soon after this interview, Oasis and Creation parted company, and the band set up their own Big Brother imprint. This is album four. Five and six will take us to another level; then, after that, well, I don t know where we're going to go after that. We'll either be shifting record labels or there'll he a big re-fit; there might even be different people in the band, or there might be no one in the band. I can see the next two albums being a sort of...I'd like to do it in threes.
But I don't ever see us making a radical f***ing sweep to the left, or underground music, or anything like that. Because I always think that bands that do that have run out of ideas. It's like a subconscious thing where they say to themselves, 'F*** it, we've got no ideas left, so let's make an experimental record, and when it doesn't sell, we'll just say we were doing it for art's sake.' Whereas we tend to go in - well, I do anyway both feet first and at least f***ing try and shake the world, d'you know what I mean? I'm not trying to shake the art world. I would never want a South Bank Show special just because it's arty and it's cool.
I don't make art-punk records like Primal Scream, or art-pop records like Blur. I just make rock'n'roll records and hopefully they sell 50 million. When you hear bands who make these records and then people accuse them of being under-achievers, they say, 'Oh, yeah, but I still hope it sells 50 million albums.' You read that and you go, 'But it doesn't stand a chance of selling a million, let alone 50 million; at least mine stand a f***ing chance., it's difficult to make cool commercial music. Most big commercial records are naff. Nicky Wire [of the Manics] seems to think that because he sells a load of records, that's automatically good. If that's the case, then Phil Collins is the f***ing don of all dons, isn't he? Just because you sell loads of records doesn't actually make it good.'
John Lennon was cool and commercial. He also had a (fairly) coherent philosophy and a quite specific political agenda. What do you and your songs stand for?
Well, for the first two albums, it was about...they were a lot of drinking songs, for your mates to raise a glass to in the venue. They were all very difficult to listen to and if you sat down and tried to analyse what they were about, there wouldn't be no point because none of them mean anything. But now I suppose it's marrying the feeling of a drinking song with, behind it, something - when you actually read the words - that's a little bit deeper, point a few things out so that people go, 'Well, I never knew that.
Would you rather have the South Bank special or the 10 million sales? To define the times or be merely popular?
It would be nice to have both, wouldn't it? In an ideal world. I'd rather be like The Velvet Underground, who didn't sell anything, ever. I'm sure Lou Reed's pretty proud of what he's done, as he should be, because he's done some f***ing good stuff. When you meet these people, the likes of Mercury Rev, and you go, 'F***ing great album,' they always go, 'F***ing wish it would sell a few more.' That's always their opening line. To make great records and to sell 50 million would be brilliant.
Do you think there's just the one band that's done both?
Absolutely.
Doesn't that crush you when people suggest that no matter how big Oasis get they'll never have the cultural impact of The Beatles?
No, because it's true. We'll never even have the cultural impact of The Sex Pistols. Even though they only made one album. They changed fashion. A lot of writers like yourself were inspired, you know? When you affect things like music number one, politics number two, and art number three, and then journalism and writers like Irvine Welsh, and film directors, that takes some doing. And to say they only done one f***ing album is incredible. I'm aware of all that.
But there's nobody to inspire in this country any more, because everyone's too busy taking E's and playing video games or whatever. So you've just got to try and change your own world, inspire yourself and your family and your kids and all your friends. And hopefully other people will get on with it and form bands and do something a bit special.
Will history prove that you had more a of a long-term affect than fellow Manchester bands The Smiths and The Stone Roses?
In Britain I would say, 'No.' But 'round the world I would say probably, 'Yeah.' Because if right now, today, you asked some kids about British music, ours would be the first name they came up with. And outside of England I dare say no one's heard of The Stone Roses or The Smiths, or The Jam, and the people in tem bands would probably tell you that as well. We've never affected culture or clothes, really, but we certainly gave the nineties a kick up the arse.
Do you think that if it hadn't been you it would have been another band, or did it have to be you?
I don't know. Because the bands that were around when we were starting was�if you look at The Verve, they probably inspired us at the beginning - not musically, but because they seemed to be of the same age group and they came from the same part of England that we came from. And then they disappeared for a while and we went on and then in turn we sort of kick started them again, and then they went on to greater things with 'Bitter Sweet Symphony' and 'The Drugs Don't Work'. So probably in that way we inspired a few musicians.
But if it wasn't us�I can't remember any band that was around at that time who I think would have gone on to have the impact that we had, to be honest with you.
Do you feel guilty about Nineties retro-activity? Staying with Manchester, that was a city synonymous with electronic invention. Then, after The Smiths, who ironically, even though Morrissey was quite experimental in terms of his sexuality, signalled a return to Byrds/Beatles-type songwriting - that rock solid/solid rock approach became the "new" Manc sound.
Yeah, well, The Stone Roses were pretty retro, weren't they, until 'Fools Gold'? But that's just what I was into. I was into dance music when I was living in Manchester, and I was out every night The Hacienda and various other places, but to me it was always�after clubs we would go to people's houses and they would put on the same stuff they'd been listening to in the nightclub, and it would be like, 'F***ing give it a rest! F***ing drugs are wearing off now, man, can you put some Neil Young on?' Everyone would be going, 'Who's Neil Young?' and you'd go, 'You know what, I think I'll get off.'
When you write songs at an early age, you're just copying your record collection. My record collection never contained Kraftwerk as probably Bernard Sumner's did, and Joy Division's did. So "Slide Away" and "Rock'n'Roll Star" - that was a lot of T Rex and Neil Young, do you know what I mean? "Live Forever" was sort of vaguely Beatlesesque in it's melody, I suppose. So that's just the way it is.
Neil Young fans listen to his records, and like to trace a journey in his life and his career, all the ups and downs. Do you think the same will be true when you get to your seventh album? That you'll be able to plot a graph of emotional highs and lows.
Yeah. I can see it now: 'Definitely Maybe' was the young, eager, wanting to get out there and f***ing blow the world away album. The second one was stopping in the lay-by where you catch your breath before you head off down the, er, superstardom highway. And the third one was just f***ing fat and drunk [laughs]. And this one is clean, healthy, focused.
This is the first album where there's certain songs that actually put into words what I was feeling at the time of writing. Whereas the others were just, we were writing them more for other people really.
On one level, the first album was quite rock-literate - a rock album about rock albums, full of references and stuff (Noel, quite taken with this idea, smiles). Is 'Standing On The Shoulder of Giants' more directly emotional?
Yeah. I'm not saying we'll never write another out and out rock'n'roll album, because they are exciting when you get them right. But by the same rule, I'm 32 and I don't want to write songs like a 25-year old, because people would just go, 'He's not a kid anymore,' do you know what I mean?
But I wouldn't go into a studio with any set agenda. In fact, this time we've got to knock half an hour of the record, because the last one was 75 minutes long - too f***ing long. But we never go in there with, like, 'Right, this year we will be mostly making samba music.' There'll be none of that going on. Unless, of course, samba becomes extremely popular and we're skint.
Is it strange that having escaped small-town hell, you now have a different set of problems?
It's the same old shit in a different way. But I mean, if you lived the perfect life, in the perfect band, writing the perfect music, how boring would that be? You'd be like, 'What's the f***ing point?'
There's a lot of things in life that I'd like to change. I'd like to be the ultimate controller of my own destiny. I would like no to work for The Man. But that's all to come in the future when we finish off our contract and we decide where we want to go. Do we start our own record label? What do we do? There's probably some things we'd fight to change: like demand our own record label, like get out of our contract, and we don't want to go on tour. But that would take a lot of f***ing about in court rooms.
We've only got two more albums after this, so that day's approaching quite quick. I'm sure we can change that when the time comes to it. It's like, I've got a little baby coming and all that, so there's a lot of balls to be juggled at the moment. I've got toi be a dad, I've got to be a husband, and I've got to be a f***ing rock'n'roll star. It's going to be interesting.
Will it be hard balancing rock'n'roll and fatherhood?
Yeah, yeah. It's like you do have to sort of say, 'Right, today is husband day, today, let's take the wife out shopping.' It sounds naff, but that's the only way to look at it. You have your set time for being a rock'n'roll star, which is when you're on tour, when you're on Top Of The Pops, or in the studio. And then there's going to have to be times set aside for being, you know, daddy, and having f***ing chocolate rubbed in my face.
And that's just Meg!
[laughs[ That's just Liam
Is it weird living out your relationship with Meg in public?
Yeah. It's weird because it's like, Meg does a lot of stuff that I generally wouldn't agree with - she'd do a lot of stuff in the past where she'd come home and say, 'Oh, I've been offered all this money to do a photo shoot for something: what do you think?' and I'd go, 'No, don't man' - because she's going to kick off a f***ing shit storm - 'don't.' She'll always ask my opinion, then she's always told me to go f*** myself. Which is fine.
I suppose I could be the archetypal husband and say, 'F***ing hell, love, your place is in't kitchen and my place is on't telly.' It's not worth getting a divorce over. So if she asks my opinion and I say I really don't think it's a good ideas, she'll say, 'Well, I want to do it' and other than that you can't go round grabbing her by the ear. She's her own woman. I'll give her my opinion and we'll agree to disagree, and that's it.
Is she hard on you?
Er�not a lot. No, not really. We don't really tend to bring work home.
Another good day at the office, dear?
Yeah, I wouldn't. If I was playing some stuff at home that I was writing, and Meg came in and said, 'I don't like that,' it would be like, 'I don't give a f*** whether you like it or not, you're not going to buy it anyway, are ya?' I never ask her opinion on the music side of things, because - not that I don't value it - it would be irrelevant. If she said, 'I don't think it's very good,' I'd get upset and think, 'What the f***ing hell do you know about it?' Whereas if she said it was good, it would be like, 'Well, of course she's going to say that because she's my wife.'
Is it difficult when you're writing lyrics? As though your thoughts will eventually be scrutinised for revealing references?
Oh, yeah, every f***ing day of the week, mate. This is f***ing incredible. She'll be like, 'Can I listen to some of the new stuff?' And I'll be like, 'Yeah, all right, but I want to go out while you do this,' because it's all, 'What's all that about? What does that mean?' 'Well, it doesn't mean anything.' 'They're not arguments, but it's like doing the press conference two years before your record comes out.
Is that a barrier to clarity of communication - you can't really say what you want to say?
No, I can, I can say what I want to say. It was worse before, actually, with the previous three albums, because the songs were quite vague, they weren't really about anything. People would say, 'Is that about me?' and you'd go, 'No, it's not really about anything.' And when you're trying to explain to your wife about a song that you cant remember writing, and it doesn't mean anything, you always end up talking complete and utter bullshit. She'll go, 'You're lying' and you go, 'It doesn't mean anything.' So we tend not to talk about it.
I've written a few songs about Meg, but you wouldn't know they're about her. just about feelings that I have. You don't want to get into a mutual f***ing lovefest on a record. All that stuff about Damon [Albarn, Blur] and his girlfriend Justine [Frischmann, Elastica] is just - how can anyone possibly listen to that record [Blur's 13]? Because it doesn't mean anything, does it, to anyone other than him and his missus? I just don't get it."
What about John and Yoko?
I don't get that, either.
Really?
No, I'm not having that. No.
What about catharsis and regression therapy?
What, sitting in a room, screaming?
Baring your soul.
I mean, whatever gets you through the night, you know? It's not really my bag. I find, when Lennon's singing 'Mother', it's all well and good and he probably felt good after he'd done it, but after you've listened to it twice you just go: 'Mother'. It just sounds like f***ing what's his name, the banjo player?
George Formby.
George Formby. [Does passable Formby] 'Mother!'
So it's more fun for the musician than it is for the listeners?
I think there's always something they've got to get out of their system. It's interesting to listen to, say, Joy Division's lyrics and to Morrissey's lyrics. It's interesting, but it's not particularly f***ing entertaining.
But don't they provide helpful insights into the human conditions?
Yeah, I suppose. If you were of the same mental state as Ian Curtis and you understood what he was going on about, that could help you. And if you were, you know, of the same gender as Morrissey, then I suppose, yeah, it did help a lot of young men and women at that point, especially up North, I would imagine. But not when someone is singing about something that is so personal to them yet so alien to you it just doesn't f***ing compute. You just blank out.
Now do you make that transition from writing a very personal song to writing a song that is personal in the first instance but that then becomes universal?
It's difficult, for me anyway. The thing is to try and convey a feeling more than an actual fact. To write down, 'I am feeling pissed off today because I am famous' - you just go, 'F***ing big deal.' The point is to try and convey a feeling - an emotion - in the sound of the record and the sound of the phrasing of the words. And to be a bit vague about it. But it's a fine line. I'm sure that Liam must sing 'Wonderwall' some nights and think, 'It's about his missus.
I suppose what I'm asking is: does your brother's "Little James" have that magical "Hey Jude" X-factor?
That particular song, even though it's about someone specific the first line mentions his [Patsy Kensit's son by Jim Kerr, James] name - after that it's all about plasticine and trampolines and you're sailing out to sea in a boat with the two people that you love most in the world. I think every f***er can relate to that, man.
In that song, he is doing the same as I would do. He's stating the fact in the first couple of lines and then it's all about childlike attitudes. Because Liam's still a child and the child that he's writing the song about is most probably more mature than Liam, if the truth be told. I think a lot of people are going to relate to that.
You and Liam are quite conventional: both married with children. Do you need that securfty? You went almost directly from (long-term girlfriend) Louise Jones (as immortalised in "Married With Children" from 'Definitely Maybe') to Meg (Matthews)...
Well, I don't generally spend that much time as a single man. I really haven't, since I left school. I'm generally a loner anyway, but I always like to have a mate. I don't tend to hang around with geezers that much, because I'm in a band with four of them, and I've got two brothers.
I've been in steady relationships ever since I was quite young. I've always been quite conventional. I mean, the bad boy image of, like, the sex, the drugs, and the rock'n'roll was only true around the time of the first album, because I was single then and so was Liam, so that was perfect. But when you find the right person, there's nothing you can do about it, you know what I mean?'
Do you over feel as though people are willing you to behave outrageously, for their own vicarious enjoyment?
Of course. The people in the f***ing tabloids want the two obnoxious twats from up North because it makes for good copy.
Was there one single vivid moment, over the last six or seven years, where you almost caught yourself watching yourself as it was happening and thought, "This is a bit near the knuckle?"
When we were at The Brits for the first time [1995]. We had a big table with about 10 seats 'round it and in between the awards being dished out, because it had a big thing over the top, we ended up sitting underneath most of the night, just f***ing messing about. And we had lots of Jack Daniels, and it was like, 'And the best newcomer is Oasis' and we were climbing out from under the table!
We were blatantly flaunting it in front of the whole establishment of the music industry. I remember the tables round us were pretty major league pop stars who were all f***ing disgusted at our behaviour. But at the end of the night, right, there must have been about 500 people round our table! Everyone else was,' That's where the party is.'
At the end of the night, we'd done loads of pills and that, and I was just sat around the table chatting away to Meg, just talking nonsense. Suddenly, we looked 'round and the whole f***ing building was empty. The disco had finished and everyone had gone home. We were the last two people in the middle of Earls Court! And I had this flashback of what it must have looked like. We were like two little tiny dots going, 'Blah blah, blah, blah.' We must have just been totally oblivious to the whole world. We were like, 'Oops, sorry about that.' Then we stood up casually and fell over a table full of drinks.
Is it easy to wind up, of all people, the British music industry?
Yeah, well, if you get up on a f***ing TV show and do a bit of swearing it's like, 'oh, gosh,' you know? I don't understand that at all. Everybody swears, don't they? The thing is, when certain things would happen, whenever stories would break in the press, now whether it be connected to Oasis or not, they would always send somebody round to my house - a film crew, or somebody with a f***ing tape recorder and microphone - knowing I would have to say something, because I'm f***ing Noel Gallagher.
[To invisible TV crew] 'Do you want my opinion on it? You wait there a minute while I get dressed and I'll be out in a minute.' And they go [hands rubbing together], 'Brilliant,' and I'll be thinking, 'F***ing brilliant.' They'll be going, 'What about such and such a person?' and you'll be like, 'He's a f***ing c**t and his f***ing wife is, and if I ever get my way�' And they'd be down the phone to the editor, going, 'Brilliant.' And I'd phone me manager [Marcus Russell] and say, 'Call the lawyer because it could get heavy, I think I probably accused the whole of the cabinet of being heroin addicts last night.'
And he'll be like, 'Fair enough, OK.' [Russell to lawyer] 'John? Yes, it's Marcus. Can you get round the house straight away?'
Go to Part 3

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