Noel Gallagher compares touring solo to life on the road with Oasis (and how many of his fans wear ‘Pretty Green’)

Noel Gallagher compares touring solo to life on the road with Oasis (and how many of his fans wear ‘Pretty Green’)



Noel Gallagher has spoken of how touring life with the High Flying Birds compares to that with Oasis – as well as questioning why his brother Liam wants to reform the band when he’s making so much money from his clothing label Pretty Green.

NME was in attendance last night where Gallagher gave a live Q&A to launch his new book ‘Any Road Will Get Us There (If We Don’t Know Where We’re Going)’ at Kings Place in London.

The book tells the story of High Flying Birds’ recent world tour and the making of his latest, Mercury-nominated album ‘Who Built The Moon?‘. The book also features exclusive images by photographer Sharon Latham.

“Sometimes you do get a bit jaded about what you do,” Gallagher told the audience. “Sometimes you kind of treat it as a job, but on this tour it’s been fucking great. It’s like, ‘I am amazing, fucking hell’.”

He continued: “There were three or four phases of Oasis. The first phase was like ’94-’96 – that was just the huge explosion, but we were so young I didn’t really think about any of it. You just knew that the next thing was going to be bigger than the last thing. Then it was like ’96-’98 where it was just hugeness all over the place, then ’98-mid-2000s we kind of just levelled off and then it started to fall apart a bit. But this is completely different.

“I do this at my own pace, and the band; I wouldn’t be on tour with another set of people. If I could choose any people in the world to tour with, it would be these. They’re great to hang out with and not too expensive – which is important.”

Gallagher added: “I’ve often said to people in my band, ‘None of us here are the best in the world at anything’, do you know what I mean? We’re a group, we make this noise and people love it. From my own part in it, I’m not the best singer, I’m not the best guitarist, but I’m the best in the fucking world at being me. All these people pay to be me, so it’s fucking easy.”

Speaking of how lively recent crowds were during Northern festival gigs, Gallagher then noticed how many of the audience were wearing his brother’s clothing brand.

“There were just these kids with their dads, all of them dressed head to toe in Pretty Green,” recalled Gallagher. “All of them in the fucking field. I was saying to my mum, ‘What the fuck does he want to get Oasis back together for? He must be fucking loaded’.”

Earlier this year, Noel teased that he may in fact have two albums’ worth of new material due for release. Speaking to NME, he suggested that some of his new material sounded like ‘The Police meets The Cure‘.

‘Any Road Will Get Us There (If We Don’t Know Where We’re Going)’ is released on November 1.

Source: NME