The frontman of Oasis is
finally back - and ready for a fight!
It might not have seemed like it during the champagne-and-cocaine supernova of his Brit-pop Nineties - back when a given night might find him detained by police on a ferry to Amsterdam, tossed out of Abbey Road Studios midsession, or skipping an Oasis gig to go houseshopping - but Liam Gallagher was always thinking long-term. Or at least he was always thinking. Take his habitual onstage pose: arms clasped behind his back, every part of him immobile save for his lips. “I knew for a fact I was gonna live forever," he says now, having made it to a lean, fiery 45.
“So I thought to myself, ‘When I get to about 80, there ain’t no fucking chance I’m doing fucking dance moves like Mick Jagger.’ ” He throws his hands behind him and leans forward to an imaginary microphone. “So all I have to do is just fucking stand still. Jagger’s still gotta jump up and down!”
Unlike Jagger, Gallagher doesn’t have his band anymore, and the odds of ever getting it back are not, at the moment, looking great. Oasis blinked out of existence in Paris eight years ago, after a final confrontation between Liam and his brother Noel, the band’s guitarist and songwriter. Noel’s version is that Liam threw a violent tantrum that night; Liam argues that he was provoked (“He set a few booby traps for me, and I walked right into them because I’m passionate and I wear my heart on my sleeve”), that Noel had been secretly planning to leave the band for months or years and that Noel’s accounts of an attempted assault with a guitar are false. The brothers don’t speak to each other, and Liam says that even their mother has given up on making peace between them. “My mom’s done with it,” he says, laughing a little. “She’s like, ‘I don’t give a shit. I’m 75 now! Fuck the kids, I’ve had enough!’ She goes swimming, she does her thing. She’s not interested.”
This is his first solo album, “As You Were”. While Noel was, with rare exceptions, the sole songwriter in Oasis, Liam’s record is a pleasant surprise: a bracing, sometimes wistful collection of unadorned rock tunes (including the excellent single “Wall of Glass”) and a reminder that he’s always been one of rock’s great voices.
Liam Gallagher is proud of his album, even though he finds performing and recording under his own name “a bit embarrassing.” And he isn’t shy about admitting a fact that more mercenary artists might avoid: “I would prefer to be speaking about an Oasis album than the Liam solo album,” he says. “And I know Noel Gallagher would. Because we’re better together. I’m well aware of that, and so is he.”
It might not have seemed like it during the champagne-and-cocaine supernova of his Brit-pop Nineties - back when a given night might find him detained by police on a ferry to Amsterdam, tossed out of Abbey Road Studios midsession, or skipping an Oasis gig to go houseshopping - but Liam Gallagher was always thinking long-term. Or at least he was always thinking. Take his habitual onstage pose: arms clasped behind his back, every part of him immobile save for his lips. “I knew for a fact I was gonna live forever," he says now, having made it to a lean, fiery 45.
“So I thought to myself, ‘When I get to about 80, there ain’t no fucking chance I’m doing fucking dance moves like Mick Jagger.’ ” He throws his hands behind him and leans forward to an imaginary microphone. “So all I have to do is just fucking stand still. Jagger’s still gotta jump up and down!”
Unlike Jagger, Gallagher doesn’t have his band anymore, and the odds of ever getting it back are not, at the moment, looking great. Oasis blinked out of existence in Paris eight years ago, after a final confrontation between Liam and his brother Noel, the band’s guitarist and songwriter. Noel’s version is that Liam threw a violent tantrum that night; Liam argues that he was provoked (“He set a few booby traps for me, and I walked right into them because I’m passionate and I wear my heart on my sleeve”), that Noel had been secretly planning to leave the band for months or years and that Noel’s accounts of an attempted assault with a guitar are false. The brothers don’t speak to each other, and Liam says that even their mother has given up on making peace between them. “My mom’s done with it,” he says, laughing a little. “She’s like, ‘I don’t give a shit. I’m 75 now! Fuck the kids, I’ve had enough!’ She goes swimming, she does her thing. She’s not interested.”
This is his first solo album, “As You Were”. While Noel was, with rare exceptions, the sole songwriter in Oasis, Liam’s record is a pleasant surprise: a bracing, sometimes wistful collection of unadorned rock tunes (including the excellent single “Wall of Glass”) and a reminder that he’s always been one of rock’s great voices.
Liam Gallagher is proud of his album, even though he finds performing and recording under his own name “a bit embarrassing.” And he isn’t shy about admitting a fact that more mercenary artists might avoid: “I would prefer to be speaking about an Oasis album than the Liam solo album,” he says. “And I know Noel Gallagher would. Because we’re better together. I’m well aware of that, and so is he.”
From the Rolling Stone mag, issue 1298
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