STANDING ON THE SHOULDER OF GIANTS (Big Brother)

photographs by Retna

Noel on the cover and inside in colour wearing a black jacket

Oasis' songwriter, guitarist and occasional singer talks us through the band's long-awaited new album.

"Fucking In The Bushes"

Floor-filling instrumental...with samples!

"It started off a B-side. It's the first track on the album because we were thinking, 'What would be the thing you would expect most from the band?' You would expect the first single to be first. So we thought, 'F*** that, let's put the first single second.' The instrumental would usually come halfway through the album to break up side one and side two. It's such a non-Oasis track, but the vibe is totally Oasis. The kids will go, 'What the f**k have this lot been up to? I thought he'd given up drugs!'"

"Go Let It Out"

The first single, a full-blooded Oasis sing-along

"We picked that for a single because it contains and represents everything that the band are about and also it's a good representation of what people will hear on the album. It's quite groovy, it's got a brilliant bassline, it's got the Sixties psychedelic feel, but it's also got the big guitar sound you would associate with Oasis. There's a scratching sound at the beginning which everyone says sounds like a record deck. I played bass on that track and that's me running my fingers up and down the strings. I was going to put it on the record's sleevenotes, like 'Scratching: Noel Gallagher', but I thought, 'Nah, the f***ing c***s will be booking me to play at Cream if I do that!"

"Who Feels Love?"

Backwards guitars, sitars...it's The Beatles!

"'Who Feels Love?' was written in Thailand. When I packed up me gear and decided I didn't want to live in London any more, I decided I was going to stop taking drugs and stop drinking and I went to Thailand with the wife, an acoustic guitar and a little tape recorder. We did a bit of mooching round, visiting temples and all that stuff. Not that we're spiritual or religious in any way, just to check it out. They are f***ing fantastic."

"I was coming out of the biggest hangover I've ever had - 14 years. I'd look up and down the beach and think, 'Yeah, I do love my life, I do love myself and life is f***ing good, man. It's not all about sex and drugs and rock'n'roll.' You're around all these really spiritual people and it's...there's a line in the song, 'My spirit has been purified', there you go. Old hippy bastard!"

"It started off really slow. I had the melody and arrangement and it was quite Beta Band-ish. Then I went to New York with my missus, She was doing...f***ing shopping or summat, so I tagged along with a guitar. I would go out walking at night to try and get the vibe, and come back and play it faster and faster. That city is just the f***ing most fantastic place. I was carried away with the energy of it. When I came back to England, it was like, 'I've got it now,' So it's got a sort of New York vibe."

"Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is"

A song with melody by the shovelful. Loud too

"It's sort of a Sixties garage punk track. PP Arnold sings the backing vocals because we wanted it to sound like '20th Century Boy' by T-Rex. The lyrics don't mean anything. I was meant to finish that one off and never got round to it. You can't write volumes of lyrics oil the time, man. I think it's just good sometimes to…you know."

"Little James"

Liam’s songwriting debut. Homage to his stepson. And The Beatles

"He'd be always playing these same three chords over and over again, everywhere. We'd try to sit him in a spot and say, 'We'll turn the tape machine on, play this f***ing song and we'll see what we con do with it.' But by the time we'd get in there, he'd be off somewhere else. It was like trying to get a Jack back in the fucking box trying to get him to sit down."

"He was saying that he wanted that song to be an acoustic number, which is not how I remember it at all. Eventually I sat him down and he played it acoustically. We worked out an arrangement because he had about 50 verses for it and it went on far ages, So I went, 'I see it like this', and played it on an acoustic guitar and he said, 'Perfect!' I wouldn't have anyone telling me what my songs should sound like because that's my prerogative because I'm the songwriter, so I said, 'What do you want it to sound like?' and he just said he wanted it to sound like The Beatles. So we went, 'We can do that.' And that's what we did."

"The outro bit went on for ages and I just thought it was overstating the point a little bit. The thing is with some of the last songs, you'd get into it and go, 'All right, pack it in now', and then it'd be like, 'Hang on, there's another two verses yet and we're not f***ing stopping.' I like the song, it's really touching. It's a good way to finish off the first side. I think the first side is quite light and uplifting."

"Gas Panic!"

Old school Oasis. Guitars at 11, heads down

Gas Panic' was written in London when I was getting severe panic attacks after given up. I don't know whether it was withdrawal or what it was, but there was a six-week period where it was just f***ing...I used to have nightmares every night, horrible f***ing times, wake up in cold sweats. It was probably a form of withdrawal."

"I was trying desperately to see if I could make it any easier on myself. There's only one way to do it, which is lock the doors, put the kettle on, sit down and wait for the demons to come. So that was written in the midst of a panic attack one morning about 5am. I thought, 'I'm not just going to sit here and store at the ceiling all night.' I've got a studio above my bedroom, so I took the guitar up, switched on the tape recorder, just wrote down what I was feeling. It's about the demons that visit you in the middle of the night. I hate filling saying that, You sound like a right pretentious twat. When people say that about their lyrics I always go like, Piss off, it f***ing rhymed.' But that's what it's about, anyway. It's like "D'You Know What I Mean"s big brother."

"Where Did It All Go Wrong?" &

"Sunday Morning Call"

Noel sings on these two theme-linked songs. "Where..." is a bit Dadrock. "Sunday..." is deliciously infectious

"Where Did It All Go Wrong?' was going to be the title of the album, but I didn't want to name it after another song - I always think that's a cop-out. It puts too much emphasis on the track."

"They come as a pair because they are about a certain person. I cent tell you who it is. All I can say is that they're f***ing really famous and really successful, but really f***ed up at the same time. The reason they're f***ed up is because they've let themselves go so far down that dark alley of...mad for it, gone mad, if you like. And it's not about Liam. They've gone so far down that hedonistic lifestyle and they want to get out of it so badly, but they can't because they don't know where to start. It's like they're hanging on to a balloon, they don't know whether to just carry on or whether to let go. I hope when they hear it, they go, 'That's not about me.' In a perverse way, I hope all my friends think it's about them. I haven't told any of them who it is, so they're all going, 'Is it about me?' They're all waiting for the album to come out, read the lyrics and go, 'Am I like that? I'm not like that!"

"'Sunday Morning Call' is about professional people who've got everything they could wish for, but are still hellbent on destroying it all and destroying the people around them. Which I find quite sad. The reason I'm singing on both of them is because I do all the demos myself and sing on all the tracks. As the sessions wear on, it becomes apparent who's going to sing what because of the way the songs are going. It just became apparent they were going to be the two songs I'd sing. It wasn't a big thing to put them together on the album or break them up, it was just the way it was."

I Can See A Liar"

Guitars at 12. Heads right down. Rawwwwwwwwwwk

"Someone said it sounded like AC/DC, but I think it sounds like The Sex Pistols. We were listening to a lot of AC/DC while we were recording the album, actually. It's the one song I wished I'd worked on the words a bit more. I could have made a really nasty f***ing bitter Sex Pistols-type rant out of it...but I didn't get round to it. It's about a certain type of person: just bullshitters. 'I can see a liar/sitting by the fire'. That's horrible, innit? I f***ing hold my hands up, man. I could have come up with something better than that, but I didn't f***ing get round to it. It'll be great have a picture of a fire behind us!"

Roll It Over

A stomping hands-in-the-air finale

"It's my favourite track on the album. The guitar solo isn't actually played by me, it's played by a friend of mine. I was having quite a bit of f***ing trouble working out a guitar solo, me not being Jimi Hendrix and Gem not being involved at the time, so I said to my friend, 'Can you show us something to f***ing play?' He said, 'What do you want it to sound like?' and I said, '[Pink Floyd's] Dave Gilmour or summat like that,' So he played this thing as a demo take in Supernova Heights. When it came to doing it for the record, we couldn't get the same sound, so we just took the bit from the demo, put it in the computer and spun it in. I can play it, I can, honest, guv. I think it's a good way to end the record because it's quite, 'Phew, right, now that's over let's get on to the next one.' like breathing out. I also think the end of it sounds quite like the old Verve before they went all poppy, with the two chords going round and all that...very spacey."

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c 2000 Andrew Turner

aturner@interalpha.co.uk

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