Noel Gallagher announces High Flying Birds Australian tour and love of Violet Crumble and Cherry Ripe
WHEN Noel Gallagher saw he was playing Bluesfest he was shocked. But he loves our chocolate and our weather so his band’s hitting capital cites too.
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THE planet’s most acid-tongued musician has a sweet tooth.
Noel Gallagher reveals he has a fondness for our confectionary, and in particular, Violet Crumble and Cherry Ripe.
“Obviously the Tim Tam goes without saying. Australian chocolate is f!@#in’ good, man,” he says.
And that’s about the end of the positive affirmations from a man who music critics now joke puts out an album to promote his interviews.
Funny, intelligent, irreverent and damn good fun, Gallagher is the rare modern musician without a script or filter. You ask a question and hang on for the ride.
Our latest conversation was prompted by the announce of his Australian tour with his High Flying Birds next year off the back of his Bluesfest appearance.
“Well, I thought as one of the foremost blues artists of all time, it’s about time I played a blues festival,” he quips.
“I was saying to my agent ‘What’s this Bluesfest thing? Why am I playing it?’ He said they just call it a blues festival. So it’s like the Montreux Jazz Festival which has f!@# all to do with jazz.
“Who cares? When I found out I am going to Australia in summer time, f!@#in’ great.”
Except it will be autumn.
“Well that will do.”
Gallagher’s post Oasis solo career has proven to be a chart and critical triumph for the mouthy Mancunian, with his second record Chasing Yesterday this year’s fastest selling release in the UK — until Adele’s 25.
It sold more than the latest Elvis project If I Can Dream in its first week and was also named Best Album at the recent Q Awards.
“They call him the King but is he really? Coldplay will probably sell more records than I will in their first week,” he says.
“But the minute it comes out, I will rubbish it. I will f!@#in’ slag it until nobody buys it any more.”
That tactic won’t work and would prove counter-productive to his own fortunes considering Gallagher is one of the guest artists on the British supergroup’s seventh studio album A Head Full Of Dreams, alongside such esteemed company as Beyoncé, Tove Lo, Merry Clayton, President Barack Obama (seriously!) and Gwyneth Paltrow.
Gallagher contributes “additional guitar”, as they say in the credits, to the closing track Up & Up.
The singer and songwriter can count his guitar guest appearances on one hand and most of them have been on records by his mate Paul Weller.
“I have known Chris (Martin) since their first album came out and I just happened to be in LA for gigs and had a day off when he called. ‘Do you want to come and add some credibility to our next album?’ I told him ‘Seeing as though it is you, I will do it. You need some credibility and I am available,’” Gallagher recalls.
The musician may have sold 70 million albums with Oasis, who called it quits in 2009, and possess an easily recognisable mug yet Gallagher enjoys the kind of celebrity which allows him to still catch the London Underground tube at home in London.
A recent journey to a U2 concert at the O2 arena was deigned “news” by the British gossip sites. As the musician himself notes, it must have been a slow news day.
“I have been getting the train regularly for years and this time someone snaps me so it’s ‘Famous Person Gets Train. Shock, Horror,’” he says.
“What usually happens is some guy will sidle up to me and whisper conspiratorially ‘I know who you are.’ I will play along and ask them who I am. And they will say ‘You are Liam Gallagher. You still talking to your brother Noel?’
“And then I will mention what a talented, handsome man Noel is and ask if he has met his cool wife and kids. Even his cat’s cool.
“Many people ask if I am Liam and when I say no, they usually respond ‘But you look just like him’.”
The familial resemblance does not extend to their respective frontmen personas. Noel says it took him quite some time to enjoy “standing in the middle of the stage”.
He cites Mick Jagger, Bobby Gillespie and even his brother as among the unbeatable band frontmen but his confidence about owning the role has grown to the point he looks forward to getting on stage now. But he will never relinquish his guitar.
“Very rarely will you see me attempt to sing without the guitar. I did it once in my life to sing with Burt Bacharach and I felt naked,” he says.
“If you see Neil Young or Bob Dylan without a guitar, it looks wrong. By the same rule, if you see Richard Ashcroft, Bono or Liam pick a guitar up, you need to tell them to put it down. It doesn’t suit them. As a guitarist, they make brilliant singers.”
Seeing as he mentioned Liam, again, it begs the world’s most obvious question to ask a Gallagher, the subject which just won’t go away.
And the answer remains a big, fat No. Oasis will not get back together.
“If I felt like doing it, I would do it, but I genuinely think we gave it our best shot and we were together for 20 years, for f!@#’s sake,” he says.
“The musicians graveyard is littered with guys who thought they could do it on their own and sloped off into obscurity or got the band back together.
“I am extremely proud of where I am now but I don’t tend to over-think these things, I take it one record at a time.”
SEE: Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Hordern Pavilion, Sydney, March 26, Bluesfest, Byron Bay, March 27, Margaret Court Arena, Melbourne, March 29, AEC Theatre, Adelaide, March 30. Crown Theatre, Perth, April 1.
Telstra Thanks presale from noon tomorrow, with general tickets available from 10am on December 9
Originally published as Noel Gallagher announces High Flying Birds Australian tour and love of Violet Crumble and Cherry Ripe
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