MILAN - I'm adding more stuff, videos, photos to the Milan gig post.In August it'll be 20 years since Gallagher and his brother Noel first took the stage as Oasis. It'll be almost two since they broke up backstage in Paris in a shower of guitar splinters. As in a proper divorce, Noel cited Liam's "verbal and violent intimidation." Meanwhile, Liam, 38, took custody of guitarist Gem Archer, bassist Andy Bell (now on guitar), and drummer Chris Sharrock, renamed the group Beady Eye, and recorded Different Gear, Still Speeding. Fresh from rehearsals for their inaugural tour, he swaggers into the band's London management office wearing a green parka and a fedora from his Pretty Green clothing line. Today he had an epiphany: "Guess what, mate? I reckon I'm in the best fucking band in the world. Twice that's happened now. Mega, isn't it?"
Is Beady Eye really a new band? It's Oasis without the songwriter.
Course it's a new band. We're writing great songs. We're doing things how we want them done.
Are the songs new?
Sixty percent is new. Forty percent is stuff we had knocking about -- demos that maybe Chris had never drummed on or I had never sang on. Never have all four of us been on those songs before. "Wind Up Dream" and "The Morning Son" was knocking about…
When you say "knocking about," does that mean they are actually old Oasis songs?
No way. Me and Gem always used to go to Wheeler End [Oasis' studio in rural England] and do demos. We went through all the demos, and it was obvious which were ours and which ones were the little fella's. How? They were the good ones.
The little fella? How is life without him?
The little fella's gone. I watch enough Sky News to know that we shouldn't have leaders. This band is four geezers all on the same page, wanting to make this the greatest band in the world.
Another new song, "Beatles and Stones," pays tribute to your heroes. What did you do for John Lennon's 70th?
I had a little drink. I didn't make a big deal of it. I didn't lie in bed naked or go for a fucking Japanese, if that's what you're on about.
"The Morning Son," what's that about?
It's about Jesus. It's about resurrection: "The morning son has rose." But most songs are about me getting to the end of the song and thinking, "Thank fuck that's over." I find words really hard.
Do you feel you've got something to prove?
No, I'm in the top two human beings on the planet.
Who else is there?
I dunno. Could be Elvis. Could be Gandhi. Could be the street sweeper. Could be you. We all think we're Superman from time to time. I feel like I've contributed. I feel like I've got kids off their arses. I think there's a lot of kids out there who have got something from our music.
Let's go back to the breakup in Paris in 2009. Say you don't smash Noel's guitar. Say you sort it out. If you could go back, would you?
No. Let's nail this down: This ain't no stopgap or side project. We're not hanging around waiting for the little fella to come to his senses. By the time he does that, we'll be flying.
What's he doing?
Recording probably. I'll check it out when the time comes. We share the same management, so I'm sure he's had a little listen to ours. Whether he likes it or not, who cares?
What do you miss most about him?
I'm not pleased we're not talking, but I want to do things the right way -- my way, for once. Noel used to have the big vision. Sometimes he treated us like his fucking backing band. Some of the videos we did were fucking shocking. "Lyla," for example -- we look like fucking Culture Club on shit acid. This time 'round, we're in control of the details.
What don't you miss?
Oasis was done. Even a blind man could see it. It was: new record, do the videos, big tour, have a fight. I'm glad that routine has come to an end.
Noel had a baby in October. Didn't you send a card?
A lot of people have kids. He's not the first and he won't be the last. I wished him all the best through me mam.
Your clothing label, Pretty Green, has done well. What am I going to experience wearing your gear as opposed to, say, Jay-Z's Roca-wear?
You're going to be fucking arrested wearing his gear and you're going to pull a really nice-looking bird wearing mine.
So, we'll never hear Oasis live ever again?
No. Never. I'll miss them songs, but they are in me head. They are in my life deeply already. In my DNA. But Beady Eye can't start banging out fucking "Live Forever," can they? Never say never, but…no.
"It's not about getting beaten and 'See you later.' It's about getting beat, getting up, dusting yourself off, and smashing the fuck out of the next person you see in front of you."
Liam Gallagher is talking about the possible return to the ring of his good friend the boxer Ricky Hatton, but he might as well be referring to his own reaction to the spate of backhanded compliments for his first post-Oasis record. His new band, Beady Eye, whose line-up includes all remaining members of Oasis except for his brother Noel, were written off by many critics and fans long before a single note had been released.
"I'm surprised that people were surprised that we'd make good music without Noel Gallagher," he tells me, indignant, from a hotel room. "I'm surprised and a bit disappointed that people think Noel Gallagher is the brains behind everything."
Last month's release of the album (Beady Eye Records) marks a new era for Gallagher and former Oasis members. Some critics are backpedaling from their preliminary conclusions and conceding that the album is not half bad. Diehard Oasis fans compare it favorably to the band's work in the 2000s. "I've been doing this for 18 years; Gem's been doing it longer. They know how to write music - and I certainly know how to sing. We know how to put on a gig and we know how to write a tune."
Noel's bailing on Oasis just 18 months ago - on the heels of another legendary altercation between the siblings prior to a gig in France - has done nothing to stymie Liam's musical cocktail of Kinks, early Stones, and of course, Beatles influences. Beady Eye certainly keep alive the Oasis tradition of eschewing the reinvention of the wheel in favor of throwing new rims on a road-tested rig of melodies.
"Our musical journey doesn't stop because Noel Gallagher jumped ship," Liam says. "We've got to get back on track, and I was never nervous about it, really. I loved Oasis, but to split Oasis up was out of my hands. I'd have carried on doing Oasis, but you've got to do what you got to do."
Comparisons with the 'Sis are inevitable, though by now irrelevant. After 1995's masterful (What's the Story) Morning Glory? - the second half to one of the most successful one-two album punches in pop-music history - you had to dig to find any sonic gems in the sawdust of the five albums that followed. It's no secret that Noel ran the show as songwriter, but the album is perhaps more consistent than any recent Oasis release, in part because Liam was invested in it from the outset. "Normally, Noel would do all the guide vocals, so I'd be listening to his voice pretty much all the way through the bloody album, and then I'd sing at the end. I think the playing would sort of go around Noel's voice, and as much as he's great and all that, he's not rock and roll, is he?"
And there it is. As if on cue, and with no prodding: the first chip shot at big brother's expense. Almost two decades in and it's just as entertaining to watch this sibling rivalry still rage. "Me and Noel can't get on with each other. He thinks he's fucking God, I think I'm God — it doesn't work. We never really had an argument about music; it was always about personal things. It's a shame that in the end that broke the band up, but at the end of the day, I think it's better off for everyone. You change as you grow up, and maybe Noel isn't as rock and roll as he once was, and maybe he's scared of being in a rock-and-roll band and wants to take things a little bit easier and sit on his hill and be Bob Dylan. That's fine, mate, but you're never gonna get me sitting on a fucking stool playing acoustic guitar. I need to explode when I'm on that stage."
Behind the microphone stand is the spot where this Gallagher is at his best. Hands clasped behind his back, knees slightly bent, neck craned with a disaffected preen - it's a posture that's been both imitated and ridiculed. Liam flourished belting out the multitude of Oasis classics over the years, but those are songs he promises are forever in the rearview.
"I sang them to death," he says of "Wonderwall" and "Rock 'n' Roll Star." "If I didn't have a band, I'd be missing them, without a doubt. I gave Oasis everything and more, so I don't feel like I had anything more to give. I mean, I could have, but I have a new batch of songs now, and I'm quite happy singing them. And why the fuck should we sing his songs? We write our own."
Beady Eye tracks and the odd cover fill the live set, and reviews for an initial series of European dates have been mostly positive. To Gallagher, relying on the Oasis back catalogue is akin to "sleeping with your ex-missus." But he insists his brother will revisit the hits when Noel's pending solo career launches. "He'll take great pleasure in letting everyone know what songs he wrote and what songs he sang on, and he can top off his little set list with all his new songs. So that guy will be playing for three hours boring the fucking life out of people. We don't. We just hit people with an hour, and it's great."
So far, just three live dates in North America have been confirmed: New York, Chicago, and Toronto in early June. More are expected to be added, but if and when a Boston date is set, we might not find Gallagher out sauced on the streets. He's pulled back on the shenanigans that once cost him his front teeth in a German bar brawl, as well as getting him thrown off a ferry in Amsterdam, and leading to numerous entertaining, albeit dodgy, shows. "Yeah, without a doubt," he says when I suggest that he's dialed down the partying. But he adds a disclaimer: "Not to the point where it's all Chris Martin and you're in slippers or whatever and debating cheese and shit. We still have a party, but we only stay out three days now instead of four."
Told this piece will be hitting stands on St. Patrick's Day, the biggest day of the year in Boston to throw down a gaggle of pints, he reflects on his lineage as the youngest of three born in Manchester, England, to Irish emigrants. "They're just fucking amazing people, aren't they? They don't take themselves that serious, they just like to have a good time, and they're brutally honest, which is great. That to me makes a great person - what more do you fucking want?"
When asked whether maybe a decade down the line he'd be up for an Oasis reunion headlining, say, the Glastonbury Festival, Gallagher says that would be admitting Beady Eye had been a failure. "I don't want to get Oasis back together. We had a great run. We ended it with stupid behavior, and I'm not proud of that, but that's the way it was."
Besides, he adds, any Oasis reunion "certainly wouldn't be fucking Glastonbury, because it's a shithole. They ought to put all that fucking money they make and buy a decent fucking sound system. You can hear people speaking in the crowd when you're on stage - what's that about? Fucking rubbish."
Talk then inexplicably shifts to UK pop group S Club 7, a Gallagher obsession. "I'd be more excited about them getting together than Oasis," he gushes. "People would come around to it in the end. S Club 7 Juniors at Glastonbury, headlining - that's what I want."
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