Noel Gallagher‘s last minute stand-in Matt Deighton received a taste of things to come last night when the Irish media flocked to DUBLIN‘s TEMPLE BAR MUSIC CENTRE to catch a glimpse of the new OASIS recruit at a long-planned solo gig.
Everyone wanted to see if the former Mother Earth frontman still resembled a hairy dinosaur as seen exclusively on nme.com yesterday – but were surprised to see him neatly dressed in loafers and with freshly-shorn hair. In fact, looking just like an Oasis member. nme.com can reveal Matt had his locks chopped just a week ago – giving credence to the theory that the singer and guitarist had been offered the job more than a few days ago, as suggested by recent press releases. He’s due to take over Noel’s overseas onstage touring engagements from next Tuesday (30 May) following Noel’s shock announcement on Tuesday that he would not play the next 21 dates of the Oasis world tour.
Deighton was already booked to play an acoustic set as a special guest at the venue’s Hit & Run club the night before he received the news that Oasis would be requiring his services.
He said: “I got the call on Monday night out of the blue. Their management told me what it was all about, but they didn’t tell me who the band was. I found out who it was the next day. They wanted me out there straight away, but I said no, I’m not cancelling this gig. I’ve been looking forward to doing it.”
Accompanied by his wife on backing vocals and a harmonica player, Matt played acoustic guitar and sang. His set was made up of stripped-down, introspective folk songs from his 1995 solo album ‘Villager’, the more recently recorded ‘The Common Ground’ – an album which featured his old mates Paul Weller and Mick Talbot – and his new album ‘You Are The Healer’, which is due to be released on his own Barley Wheel imprint.
Despite one call for ‘Some Might Say’, which was greeted with a firm “fuck off”, Deighton’s set was otherwise uninterrupted by a relatively attentive audience. Earlier in the day, at a promotional instore appearance at Tower Records, he refused the invitation of being photographed holding a copy of Oasis’ ‘Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants’.
Although ticket pre-sales for the show were reportedly poor, between two and three hundred people showed up to catch his last solo show before joining Oasis in Milan.
“They sent me over all the CDs, and a set list, so I’ll probably be working it all out on the plane going over. Doing this Oasis thing won’t disrupt my plans very much – I’ll just have to postpone everything. And by that time, I’ll probably be a lot more well known,” Matt said.