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OASIS IN AUSTRALIA "The Spite Boys", published in The Daily Telegraph, Sydney Saturday, 28 February 1998 In Perth on Thursday night, Oasis - one of the most successful and controversial musical outfits of its era -stepped on to an Australian stage for the first time. The event had been a long time in coming for the band's local fans. Indeed, with the bitter experience of three cancelled tours behind them, most had accepted the apparent inevitability that they would never get to see their five fab Manchester lads perform their favourite songs in person. "We've let them down a couple of times but we're really going to go on now, we really are," songwriter Noel Gallagher assured everyone just hours before the show. "Was it worth the wait?" he then asked the crowd midway through the concert at the Perth Entertainment Centre. Going by the euphoria in the room, it certainly was. Beyond all the scandals, beyond all the bad behaviour, beyond all the criticism that they're too derivative by half, Oasis puts on one hell of a show. Supersonic, Roll With It, Wonderwall, Cigarettes And Alcohol, Live Forever, Don't Look Back In Anger -big songs that have become the theme music for a new generation of disenchanted youth. The last time Oasis pulled out of an Australian tour, only a couple of weeks before the first scheduled show at the end of 1996, the band - at that point only two albums old - went to the brink of implosion. Midway through a short run of shows in America, Noel and his younger brother Liam, the band's dark and enigmatic lead singer, came to blows. Noel immediately got on a plane and went home to the UK. The world media jumped to the conclusion that it was all over. But it wasn't. The band reconvened at home, Noel and Liam got married and within a year, there was a new album, Be Here Now. Speaking backstage during a break in rehearsals at the Perth Entertainment Centre, Noel Gallagher describes that incident in an American hotel in the middle of nowhere as a watershed for both himself and his band. "I think we've got a bit more tolerance of each other's bad points," said Gallagher in his thick Mancunian accent. "It must have been positive because it hasn't happened again. So it must have had a positive effect on somebody, not that I noticed any difference in anyone's behaviour. "I suppose I've learned to walk away from a lot of arguments. I used to always have to win them at someone else's expense, who'd get upset. I can't be arsed arguing with anyone any more." In fact, three albums down the line with over 20 million copies sold, Gallagher knows he's got nothing left to prove to anybody. The 30-year-old says he plans to retire by the time he's 35, doesn't want to become one of those aged and haggard rockers he despises so much. "I don't want to do it when I'm 40," he explained with typical candour. "I think what Mick Jagger's doing now is just pathetic, just an old man going around trying to relive his youth. Keith Richards and that -I think it's a fucking joke." It's seemingly passionate diatribes like this that have given the world media - especially the British press - a field day at Oasis' expense. Gallagher is infinitely quotable. In the past, his ramblings about drugs (he once declared taking them was "as normal as getting up and having a cup of tea") and other artists (he wished the members of Blur would contract AIDS and labelled Michael Hutchence a "has-been" on stage at a televised awards ceremony) have been a constant source of front-page copy. It's easy to extract offensive comments from Gallagher. What's he think about Elton John getting knighted this week? "What, did he get a damehood? He got knighted for his tune for Diana, didn't he? Good luck to him, if that's what he's into." And how about the death of Princess Diana? Did he share in his country's mourning? "It didn't affect me. I really couldn't give a shit at the end of the day. She never entered my life. I didn't buy any magazines about her, I wasn't interested in her personal life or anything she'd done for charity or anything. So she died in a car crash. Big fucking deal. "Fat fucking British housewives are a pathetic bunch of fuckers. Do you know what I mean? Half the people there probably wouldn't go visit their grandmothers' graves and then they go and throw flowers at some coffin of some bird they'd never met because she'd done some work for charity. "But I say to them what else was she supposed to do? Sit on her fucking arse all day and eat cream and cakes? You'd hope she did do some good for somebody. We're paying for her and her kids to go to school. Lazy cow. (laughs) No, I'm sure she was probably a nice woman. I just don't believe in the, `Oh, the royal family -they're lovely.' Well, they're supposed to be lovely, you know what I mean? Because we'd want to kill them all if they were twats. They're not going to be offensive, are they? "They're just fucking horrible people, aren't they? Well, I wouldn't say they're horrible people, but kings and queens and empires and all that shit doesn't agree with me. That and the fact that they're all fucking Germans." Well, you can already see tomorrow's front pages in England, can't you?* Such off-the-cuff ramblings will undoubtably appear to many like cynical publicity-seeking excercises, but watching Gallagher deliver one of his manifestoes, you realise that's not the intent. He speaks in a very distracted manner with a droll, almost monotone delivery. It's chit-chat more suited to the barstool than international digestion. Of course, Australia got its own taste of some Oasis chaos this week. Gallagher, who insists he slept the whole way through that already infamous flight in from Hong Kong on Tuesday, dismisses the whole incident as a media beat-up. "It's a typical scenario," he explained. �Some fucking knobhead complains about something - I don't even know what he was complaining about - and the media whip it up. The press is quite responsible for turning something that wasn't such a big deal into a massive big deal. But fuck them, that's what I say." Before arriving here, Gallagher was caught up in another media-spured controversy. This time it was the latest instalment in his on-going public slanging match with the very people that got him into music - the surviving members of the Beatles. Paul McCartney and George Harrison haven't had too many kind words for Oasis. Gallagher hit back by tagging them old men who have forgotten what the establishment thought of their music three decades back. "I just hope I've got a bit more dignity when I'm 50," he added. Gallagher said the next Oasis album won't feature any Beatles allusions. Been there, done that, copped the critics' flak. Describing his band's most recent album as "a bit pompous", he wants the next one to be a lot more straight-forward, a guitar-rock album free of nine-minute epics. He's also not concerned in the slightest that Be Here Now sold "only" seven million copies worldwide, just under half the amount of its predecessor (What's The Story) Morning Glory? "So that's seven million? That's a damn shame, isn't it," he said mockingly. It's possibly the ultimate paradox that a band which is painted by the media as the spawn of the devil himself has provided this decade's youth with some of its most uplifting and uniting music. Noel blames his brother for that. "You'll have to speak to Liam. It's all down to Liam. He's the troublemaker. I know it's a paradox: how can we sing Wonderwall and throw chairs through a window. I haven't worked it out myself yet. "Not that I indulge in that sort of behaviour myself, of course. I'm far too busy working." ? Postscript: Noel�s slurs here on the royal family did in fact make it did on to the front pages of the British tabloids the very next day. The front page of the News Of The World, to be precise. The next thing I knew, BBC radio were calling me on my way to work on Monday morning for comment. This is how my own paper, The Daily Telegraph, reported the incident Outrage over Oasis swipe at Princess Di By KELLY RYAN The Princess's most senior aide said yesterday the outburst by songwriter Noel Gallagher was certain to "distress" her two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, and devastate those who mourned her death. Gallagher's interview with Daily Telegraph music writer Dino Scatena, published on Saturday, led to front-page headlines in Britain yesterday condemning the group. Gallagher, 30, said he had no interest in Princess Diana's charity work or personal life. "So she died in a car crash. Big f . . . ing deal. It didn't affect me. I really couldn't give a shit at the end of the day." And he dismissed the national outpouring of grief on her death, saying: "Fat f . . . ing British housewives are a pathetic bunch." Michael Gibbens, who was Princess Diana's comptroller and closest aide, said Gallagher's outburst was "appalling". "I find it extraordinary that he has said these things publicly which would seem to me to be completely at odds with the general feeling of people in this country," he said. "That sort of statement can only be incredibly distressing to members of her family and particularly to the two boys. "I expect to be approached by many devastated people over this. It's appalling." Oasis, who have sold more than 20 million CDs around the world, have been been one of Britain's most successful groups in the past decade. But their tour of Australia has been full of controversy from the moment they landed in Perth a week ago. They stepped off the plane after a 7 1/2-hour Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong during which they were accused of swearing, being drunk, smoking, and throwing things at other business class passengers. Noel Gallagher's younger brother Liam said after the flight: "If I ever meet f . . . king captain again with his top off or on a plane, see that (pointing to his upper arm), I've got a tattoo mate, and I'll stab him." The flight attendants' union threatened to blackban the group's tour but eventually agreed to crew their plane after Ansett hired two security guards to protect the air crew and passengers. An Ansett security guard was on board again yesterday when the group flew to Melbourne. . . . WHAT GALLAGHER SAID ABOUT DIANA On Princess Diana's death and funeral: "It didn't affect me. I really couldn't give a shit at the end of the day. She never entered my life. I didn't buy any magazines about her, I wasn't interested in her personal life or anything she'd done for charity or anything. So she died in a car crash. Big f . . . ing deal. "Fat f . . . ing British housewives are a pathetic bunch of f . . . ers. Half the people there probably wouldn't go visit their grandmothers' graves and then they go and throw flowers at some coffin of some bird they'd never met because she'd done some work for charity. But I say to them what else was she supposed to do? Sit on her f . . . ing arse all day and eat cream and cakes." On the royal family: "Well, they're supposed to be lovely, you know what I mean? Because we'd want to kill them all if they were twats. "They're just f . . . ing horrible people, aren't they? Well, I wouldn't say they're horrible people but kings and queens and empires and all that shit doesn't agree with me. That and the fact that they're all f . . . ing Germans." The Daily Telegraph, Sydney 2 March 1998
