NOEL & GEM – THE FAN-ISH INQUISITION PT 3!

The most controversial Noel interview for years - Noel slams the British Royal Family but says he loves drugs - plus Gem reveals his favourite biscuit. It's all here...

You’ve read Parts One and Two – but here’s the best bit yet. Here’s the third part of our Oasis exclusive interview with Noel and Gem where YOU asked the questions – and Big Brother Gallagher gave some of his best answers ever. Read on!

What did you do on Millenium night? – Gaby, New York City

Noel: “I, if I can be a name-dropping rock star, went round to Ronnie Wood’s house and got totally pissed. And an amazing fact is that he’s got this thing in his hallway, looks like a roulette table. It’s a round thing with nails in and in the middle is a thing that you spin and on each point is a little model of a horse with a jockey on it and on its tail is a feather. Each time that you spin it a feather catches on a nail, like a roulette machine. He was explaining it to me and I wanted to know what the point was. He said (Ronnie Wood voice) ‘well, that Noel, is where the term ‘having a flutter’ comes from’. That made my night.”

Advertisement

Gem: “I played board games in Birmingham. Very sober night.”

Noel: “That’s not what you told me, you lying c—! You told me you went to Nigel from Dodgy’s studio and rocked out all night!”

Gem: “That was the next night.”

Eastenders or Coronation Street? – Ricky Sharma, Hove, East Sussex

Noel: “Eastenders. Because nobody, but nobody in the North had an accent like Ashley. I don’t give a fuck what anybody says. There are no cobble-stone roads in Manchester anymore. And nobody owns hair-dressing salons like that, there is no Jim MacDonald. There isn’t. There is no Rovers Returns in Manchester because they are all crack houses. Eastenders I can sort of relate to.”

Gem: “As soon as I hear those theme tunes I’m straight upstairs…”

Advertisement

Noel: “Yeah, to watch it on the big telly.”

Why is Gem called Gem? – Adam Higson, Middlesbrough

Gem: “Because my surname is Archer and there used to be a footballer called Archie Gemmill. I was nine….”

Noel: “And there you have an insight into the minds of people from Middlesbrough. Frightening, isn’t it?”

Gem: “With a hard G please.”

Who is the mystery guitar player on Roll It Over? – James Griffiths, Cardiff

Noel: “His name is Paul ‘Strangeboy’ Stacey. He was the engineer on the album and did all the demos with me. We were doing the demo for ‘Roll It Over’ in the studio at Supernova Heights and it got to the bit for the solo and I couldn’t play it. So he did. We listened back, it was good, and left it on the demo and we were going to re-do it when we came to record it. But as luck would have it, we never got the sound back that matched that so we just left it. But I can play it, honest. I can.”

What is the best drug? – Eric Jones, Willington, USA

Noel: “If you’re talking about the best chemical drug then it’s got to be alcohol because it’s freely available, it’s legal, it gets you shit-faced and you think you’re superman and fucking Jim Carrey rolled into one. You think you’re really hard. But otherwise I’d have to say love, man.”

“I think they’re all good, actually. Every single one. They all serve a purpose. Apart from crack and heroin which are pretty bad because they kill you – or in the case of crack you kill other people, ha! I’ve had good times on them all. As long as you use them in the right way and don’t abuse them and don’t let them fuck you up they’re fucking top……D’yer hear that? That’s the sound of a million tabloid journalists’ pens going ‘yes, Noel says drugs are top!'”

NME: What about that ‘drugs as normal as a cup of tea’ fall-out?

Noel: “I always get in trouble for being honest. The twats with the microphones go ‘thanks for your honesty’ and then phone their editor and go ‘you’ll never guess what he said this time!’ But that was probably not the right analogy, that taking drugs was like having a cup of tea. But as soon as people accept that in this country we are in the midst of a massive drug culture and have been since the dawn of the ’80s the better. It’s no big deal for most people. When kids go out on a Friday, Saturday night they are taking drugs. Do you think people go to Ibiza to sip tea and sun-bathe? Do they fuck! You can’t go to a nightclub and dance for 12 hours with a bottle of Evian! You cannot! You’ve got to be fucked off your head on drugs, simple as that.”

Gem: “There are people who go to the kebab shop on acid. We used to go on the golf course on acid.”

Noel: “I only know five people who haven’t taken drugs and that’s my mam, me gran, me father-in-law, me mother-in-law, and my new-born baby. Everyone else I know, be they lawyers, doctors, or what have you, they’ve all got their heads down once in a while. Nothing wrong with it, all part of growing up.”

Are you still bothered about conquering America? – Stacey Whitworth, Florida

Noel: “All I know is that when we go to America we generally play to somewhere between 5 and 10 thousand people. And that we’ve sold five million albums out there last time. If that’s not conquering America, then what is? Ask Travis when they come back from supporting us what it’s all about out there because it is fucking hard work. Out there you cannot do one radio interview, be on the cover of the NME and have it all over the country the next day. You have to work and in the begining we were prepared to do that work. I suppose it all paid off when ‘Be Here Now’ went in at number two. We sold five million copies of that album, which is fine. I do good enough for me out there. If it isn’t good enough for the British music press then that’s their problem. The feedback I get is good enough for me.”

NME: Half the questions here are from America and Brazil.

Noel: “Brazil? We’re massive in Brazil. We are! We play to millions of people there.”

Gem: “I’ve never been and Liam said it was heaven.”

Noel: “All South America is top. They kept us from going there for three years. Marcus (Russell, manager) would never book us any gigs there because of the drugs. As soon as I signed the record deal the first thing I said was ‘right, South American Tour! What do you mean, The Water Rats?! Fuck that! Stop me, McGee, if you think I’m wrong but, we do South America first, then we play The Water Rats.’ ‘Course McGee’s going (makes chopping movement on desk-top and adopts Glasgow accent) ‘great man, fucking brilliant, I’m with yer!'”

When did you and Liam last fight? – Helen, Holland

Noel: “Day after Boxing Day. He was trying to nail down the writing credits for the next album and I was like ‘we’re not making another album for two years, can this not wait?’ ‘Course he got pissed and started giving it the big ‘un, like he does, so I threw him out. We haven’t physically had a punch up since ‘Mornin’ Glory’, which I hasten to add I won. So I’m still the undisputed lightweight champion in Oasis.”

What do you think about your album being available free on the internet with the MP3? – Paul Roe, UK

Noel: “It’s one of those things, it’s going to happen to everybody. I’ve heard the quality you get off one of those MP3s and it’s not digital quality, that’s bollocks. In five years when the quality has upgraded, I suppose you’ll get good quality but I still believe in the symbolic thing of going to a record shop and buying it because it’s your band. U2’s next album will be on the internet but who’s going to put Cotton Mather’s album up? No c—. You’ve got to go find that for yourself. It’s like the calculator. In five years everyone will wonder what all the fuss was about. They said that home taping would be the death of music too, I remember in the ’70s.”

Gem: “I used to tape stuff and if I liked it I shelled out. It’ll probably be like that.”

Noel: “I think it’s good for kids who live in Brazil who won’t get the album for ages, and it’s also dead expensive for them to get. They probably don’t give a shit about the quality. I guess it’s supply and demand. If there wasn’t a demand, then there would be nothing to supply. I’m not quaking in me boots worrying about those five thousand sales that I’m missing. When we’re 45 and not selling any records we’ll be glad of the internet! We’ll be putting our own albums out on it. And if it puts fat fuckers like Mick Hucknell out of business then I’m all for it.”

What’s your favourite biscuit? – Matt Roberts, Stockport, Manchester

Noel: “It’s got to be the chocolate digestive, plain or milk. Unsurpassable in the biscuit world.”

Gem: “True. But if you’re feeling a bit fancy, perhaps a Hobnob.”

Noel: “Ah, but when you’re stoned all the little bitty bits get under your false teeth. Horrible. The chocolate digestive, though, I’ve had packets of whilst stoned and watching Prisoner Cell Block H. Fantastic – those were the days.”

If you could have one super human power, what would it be? (Alison Ray, Chicago)

Noel: “Go back and forth through time at will.”

Gem: “To fly.”

Noel: “Yeah, but you can fly when you’re playing guitar, man.”

Gem: “Yeah, man, I fly in my dreams every night and I rise above my troubles.”

Noel: “I seen you kiss the sky a few times, man.

If you were Prime Minister, what would be the first thing you’d do? – Live Forever, Sweden

Noel: “I would outlaw the Conservative Party and make it a criminal offence to be in the Conservative Party. I would make it a criminal offence to vote Conservative and a criminal offence to have relatives who are in the Conservative Party, and to be part of any royal family or to be a fucking lord or lady. I’d have the lot of the bastards shot. And if that’s a bit too extreme, at least seriously maimed.”

Gem: “There’s your headline.”

Noel: “Well…..fuck ’em.”

Gem: “I’d resign and install The Natural Law Party instead.”

Noel: “Fuck that! I would make it a criminal offence to resign and to have The Natural Law Party put in instead.”

Gem: “You’re not having tantric flying?”

Noel: “Fuck. Right. Off. It’s eating cross-legged and farting, all that shit. ”

That’s how it ends: with Noel Gallagher PM insisting on corporale punishment for the right of wing. Hard, but no doubt fair. See ya.

You May Also Like

Advertisement

TRENDING

Advertisement

More Stories