10 September 2021
Newsdesk
Noel Gallagher chatted to Jo Whiley on her Radio 2 show and played a Sofa Session. Check out the quotes below.
Talking about decorating his toilet in his new studio and working on a new album:
Jo: You’re in your studio… is this the one you’ve decorated yourself
Noel: Well I wasn’t walking round with sheets of wallpaper, but I did do the interior design yeah. I decorated the toilet in lockdown actually.
Jo: What’s it like?
Noel: My lads have got these sticker books which have thousands of stickers in
Jo: Of what?
Noel: Just like nonsense, kids stickers, and during the lockdown I got so bored I stickered both their bedroom doors and it looked great and I thought ‘I’m going to do that in the toilet in my studio’ so I’ve done it all four walls from floor to ceiling and it looks great actually. But it’s an amazing studio. It’s my first ever privately owned studio so I’m in there most days noodling away… it was opened in November last year so I’ve been writing a new record in there ever since.
Jo: Oh wow, so how far are you into that?
Noel: I’ve just started side 2
Jo: You still think of it in that way?
Noel: Yeah yeah of course yeah yeah. I had side 1 completed before the summer holidays and just started the first track of side 2 today. It went pretty well actually.
Jo: What’s your state of mind?
Noel: I’m just back from LA so a bit jet lagged, but good, optimistic and creative… generally working on an 8 and a half out of ten anyway… there’s not many things get me down
On whether he’d work with Damon Albarn
Noel: If I’m asked, I’ll get up with Gorillaz any day of the week… it’s a great big thing he’s got going on there
Jo: So if Damon asks you then you’d happily be on the next record?
Noel: Of course! Yeah yeah yeah.
Talking about why he chose to record Live Forever exclusively for Jo’s show
Noel: … Look Back in Anger and Wonderwall and Half the World Away, I’m so bored of doing them for radio stations and… never ever… since the day I wrote this song and since the day I sang it to the band in 1993 in the rehearsal room, I’ve never sang Live Forever once never in a soundcheck, never, even when Liam didn’t bother to turn up for gigs we never did it. It was always his song and he sang it amazingly well and, I don’t know why, that day I just started the guitar in a different tuning for some reason, it suited my voice that day and I kind of strummed it a little bit and I was like, ‘Actually this might work.’
He continued…
Noel: Now as it unfolded, the version that you are about to hear, it suddenly dawned on me that I wrote this song as a 23 year old and, singing it as like a 54 year old, it started to take on a different meaning and I got quite emotional singing it, and I couldn’t sing it all the way. I had to stop a couple of times because it’s a little bit different, some of the chords structures are a little bit different, but the melody’s the same and all that and… because it was a song that changed my life - Oasis was a going concern and we were a good band, but it was indie music, but the day after I wrote that song we became great and I knew that I’d set the bar high, that that was the benchmark and went out to outdo that song every time I wrote a song. And everything that made Oasis great stems from that moment, and to get to sing it now as a father of three and been all the way through. And in its original form Live Forever is a fist pumping, you know we are going to take on the world, me and my best friend are going to take on the world, and no one’s going to get in our way and we are going to live forever; and singing it now as a 54 year old father and you’re kind of looking back over your life, and it’s taken on a completely different meaning. And everyone that’s heard it has got quite emotional listening to it, thinking ‘Wow, it’s actually… the best song I ever wrote - ‘cause you know people usually people think Look back In Anger and Wonderwall - but actually this is the best song I ever wrote.
He confirmed to Jo he’ll be doing it at the gigs, saying ‘It’s going to be amazing. I can’t wait.’
