The tears, triumphs and traumas of stardom. We don't need another hero...because, as explained by three hand-picked pundits, Liam Gallagher is the most all-encompassing icon ever (apart from Elvis, possibly)

"The Lad's Lad"

by James Brown

Founder of Loaded magazine, now editor of GQ

"Liam's persona, his behaviour, is only tolerable because of how he looks. If he was staggering around, out of shape, with bad-looking clothes on, we'd have probably all have laughed him out of town: he works as an icon because he's a composite. Beacuse he's stylish, but he can also be a hard bastard.

Liam appeared in a '200 Most Stylish Men' piece we did in GQ, and I think style is what'll give Liam his longevity. I actually think Liam is a style leader, in the same way that David Beckham is. Some people will say 'What's that all about?' but if you look at the way Beckham is portrayed off the pitch, every time you see him he's with a very beautiful, very famous woman, he's in a very expensive car and quite challenging clothes - and I think the same thing applies to Liam, only ten times more.

Men like him because he's genuinely stylish I think of him again and again in the context of shopping. It's alright for Liam to go shopping: you'll see him coming out of Clarks on Regent Street with a couple of pairs of desert boots, or you'll see him in a new Elk jacket. It goes much further than just his Kangol hat and his swagger. You know, it's perfectly acceptable for him to appear on the cover of Arena Homme Plus.

Is he up there with the real male icons of the last 20 years? Well, the best people have always lived it large but continued to be successful. I think that lifestyle can be very destructive, and you've got to have real swagger, real verve to carry it off. For Liam to last the course on the level of the Richard Harrises and George Bests, he's got to carry on making great records and carry on performing on and off stage, inside and outside the group. Performance is a great word for Liam. He's full-on all the time, and I think that endears him to people.

Do I like him? Yes. And I like them, because I remember what it was like before. I remember, in the mid-80s, being force-fed Elton John and Tina Turner, and I used to follow a lot of pop groups around who had the right politics and the right attitude and they were outsiders, but they didn't have the swagger.

John Simm said recently that he sees Liam as a comparable style icon to Robert DeNiro in Mean Streets. He acknowledges that Ian Brown forged the path and that look, but for him it's Liam. And he should know."

"Working-Class Hero"

by Irvine Welsh

Celebrated author and pal of Liam

"It's only in the last 30 years that you have had a lot of working-class people beoming mainstream figures in Britain. There's always been middle-class drop-outs turning themselves into debauched enigmas, but Liam remains unaffected. He makes that faux-decadence seem contenptible.

It's almost a crass thing to say, but he is an ordinary guy from a housing estate, and he's got that sort of swagger. People can say, 'That could be me up there'. With a Camden-band guy, the same masses might think, 'What a wanker'. Ordinary punters see Liam as one of their own.

There's no pretension about Liam and that's always going to be appealing to working-class people, who act more by instinct than artifice. People in the public eye now are so encased in this PR machine, so anybody who does something spontaneous and instinctive - whether it's Liam, Clinton or Gascoigne - they get enormous attention. But, despite all that, Liam retains this completely direct mentality. One of things that I hear people saying is that in Liam's position they'd do exactly what he does.

Some people may say Oasis are a factor in the dumbing-down of culture. But people have completely unrealistic expectations. You know that Oasis line, "Please don't put your life in the hands of a rock'n'roll band"? Well, why should a band have to provide all the answers?

I think the media do feed this messianic idea. I don't know if we need so many icons - I think we've over-iconised our society and I think that's a middle-class thing. I you ask your average working-class punter about Liam Gallagher, they may have a picture of him on the wall and be into the music, but I think today kids are a lot cooler about things.

With the breakdown of the family and the church, there is a temptation to look for figureheads in other areas - as with the argument about people seeking a spiritual content to the arts. People like Liam, but he's not a substitute priest telling people how to live their lives. It's religion that's supposed to be the opium of the people, but Liam seems to be happy with the booze and charlie.

Despite all the fame, Liam has really remained an ordinary geezer. And that is a key reason why ordinary people like him so much."

Androgynous Popchild"

by Jon Savage

Author of punk history England's Dreaming and Britain's leading pop intellectual

"Back in 1994, I was very irritated by the press portraying the Gallagher brothers as simple, Norther, working-class, unreconstructed thickos. And it seemed to me that if they were pop personalities, they had to have a lot more than that - to appeal to the amount of people they appealed to, and indeed to appeal to me, because I'm extremely hostile to lad culture.

What fascinated me about Liam was the fact that he seemed to be androgynous. Obviously there is a hard side, with the audience-baiting and all that stuff. But there were moments - many moments - when Liam would actually look very beautiful. Like a spoiled Greek god. I saw them play at The Academy in Manchester. He looked exactly like John Lennon in 1966. That's not a 'geezer' with cropped hair doing V-signs. It's a beautiful popchild.

That isn't saying he's gay. It's about the fact that there's a softness, and a slight ambiguity there that gave the whole thing a twist. That's what makes them a pop band. Does he know that? No. But performers don't have to know that. The whole point about pop music is that you transcend who you actually are and become something different, something greater.

I've always thought there is something androgynous, and quite camp, even in the hardest bloke in the North West. In relation to London, that's very true. I think it's because the North West is a matriarchy: if you look at Coronation Street, it's run by the women.

Some men will be revolt against all that, and they'll try to be well 'ard. But there'll also be a slightly feminised element to Northern men. Even the Perry boys in the late '70s had those wedge haircuts, flicking their hair back all the time. And look at that great Shaun Ryder hairstyle: parted in the middle, with a bouffant. It's not a gayboy hairstyle, but it's not the haircut of the archetypal hardnut.

I've always had a problem with the way that Oasis were framed within lad culture. They've gone along with that, but it's not the only side to them. Lad culture has been a cultural disaster, because it has created conformism - most particularly in sex and gender matters.

Thankfully, I always thought that Liam was greater than all that. And I still do. Liam is what gives Oasis their edge, and androgyny is part of the edge. He's a very, very complex person up there onstage. And gender and sexuality are far more complex than anyone at the moment will admit."

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c 1998 Andrew Turner

aturner@interalpha.co.uk

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