Dear Superstar: Noel Gallagher

Noel Gallagher is in a good mood—which is a relief. The sun is shining (or sheeee-iiiii-ning, as his brother Liam would sing), and the notoriously combative songwriter feels confident about Oasis’s seventh studio album, Dig Out Your Soul. In a vast studio complex on London’s western fringe, Noel is overseeing rehearsals for a world tour—the wailing guitar intro to “Morning Glory” is audible from the next room—before heading off to collect his 8-year-old daughter, Anais, from school. “She bought me the new Portishead album,” he reports. What did he think? Noel’s famous eyebrow slopes downward. “It’s very harrowing.”

Harrowing is one of the qualities Gallagher hates in rock music. He cherishes the ’60s, has little use for any music made after 1972 and scoffs at experimental bands “banging two fucking cabbages together or singing into a tin of beans.” Dig Out Your Soul is stuffed with Oasis’s baffling lyrics, shameless Beatles references and the lager-hoisting choruses that characterize “Wonderwall,” “Champagne Supernova” and “Live Forever.” One highlight is “I’m Outta Time,” a surprisingly tender ballad from the band’s hellraiser-in-chief, Liam. “You don’t think that front is him  do you?” asks his older brother, 41. “He’s a pussycat.”

Oasis’s front made them the biggest British band of their generation. Like a cartoon fight in which all you can see is a cloud of dust and whirling fists, their first years passed in a blur of punch-ups, arrests, drug binges, feuds and firings. As he pulls up a chair in readiness for Blender readers’ questions, Gallagher differentiates Oasis from hipper British bands. “Radiohead and Coldplay think too much,” he declares with blunt certainty. “They get to a certain level and start worrying about the environment. That’s for the governments of the world to worry about. We need to concentrate on fucking women, taking drugs, wearing sun­glasses and being cool. Never mind the polar bears.”
 
You once worked as a roadie. Did your job include procuring drugs for the band?
Fertile.green, Columbia, MO

The band, the Inspiral Carpets, didn’t take drugs, so there was more for the crew. I look back on those days as some of the best of my life. No photographs, no interviews. Just get up in the morning, make sure the gear works, do the gig and then fucking party.

Your new album is called Dig Out Your Soul, which doesn’t make much sense. None of your album titles make sense. Do you have trouble naming albums?
Noeliam87, Meriden, CT

Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols—does that make sense? Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—does that make sense? Dig Out Your Soul is a metaphor for DJ’ing, when you get out a soul record. The double meaning is, you can also try and find yourself. I wouldn’t expect Americans to get it.