Interview: Former Oasis Frontman Noel Gallagher Discusses His New Solo Album, 'Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds'

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The story of that song is, “Wonderwall,” the single, was coming out, and we didn’t have a B-side. My label hooked me up with a studio and said we need a B-side, so the night before I wrote it in my kitchen and I thought, “Fucking hell, that’s really good.” I didn’t really think anything of it at the time. I just thought it’s a really good song. We recorded it over a few days and then as the finished thing emerged, everyone was going, “Are you sure you want to send this out as a B-side?” And I was like, “What do you want me to fucking do? You asked me to write a song, there it is."

I was a bit headstrong and arrogant. I mean, I would have fucking saved it and built an entire career around it. But I kind of threw it away. But the flipside of that is, that’s one of the great things about Oasis. For every great album, there’s like five or six great B-sides that are there to discover. Which I think will be a great thing for future generations. Even on Stop the Clocks, the best-of -- there’s a lot of great stuff not on that. So there are lots for people to discover down the line, if they wish to do so.

Yeah, now you can just fucking buy them on iTunes. But that’s the kind of thing I do. The B-sides for all this stuff, you’ll really like as well. I don’t really sit and write B-sides, I just write songs in my spare time. Then I kind of pick the best ones for the album and then the things I pick as B-sides aren’t necessarily not the best; they are just, you know, maybe I don’t like the lyrics, or the lyrics are great but I don’t like the tune, or the tune is good but I don’t like the singing -- or there’s just something and they’re not perfect. But people hear them and go, “God, I fucking love that.”

The only thing I toyed with was a song I have leftover and that’s fucking incredible. It’s fucking incredible! I wrote it right before the end of the mixing. And I was like, “Put it on the fucking record.” In the end, I decided this record didn’t need it. And the next record I make might fucking need it. So I toyed with it for ages and then would put it in, take it out. I never got around to recording it, but I would play it for people and they would be like, “Fucking hell, what are you sitting on that for five years?” But in the end I decided the High Flying Birds thing doesn’t really need it.

Yeah, but I’m not writing contemporary music. I’m writing timeless songs. So I’m not reliant on trends or fashions. Believe you me, this song is like “If I Had A Gun” in the sense that “If I Had A Gun” would have sounded great 15 years ago, and it will sound great today. It’s just one of those timeless songs where you're just like, “Isn’t that great -- he’s a genius.” (Laughs)

Well, it’s really only in America. In England we put out that B-side album, which was called the The Masterplan and it sold like a couple million copies. So all of those songs in England are really famous. It’s really only in America. Because we never really release singles in America. It was interesting because we used to play all the B-sides at Oasis gigs in England and half the set would be B-sides.

I don’t know. You know that’s something one of my friends pointed out when I was playing it to him and it got to “Record Machine,” which is track 5 and he went, “That’s the first guitar solo.” I didn’t even notice because I was just making a record. The other songs didn’t require a guitar solo. “What a Life,” which is essentially a disco tune, has two tiny guitar bits in it. That’s where I’m at with it at the moment. Usually when guitarists go solo, it's fucking Wayne’s World. But it's just that the songs I wrote didn’t require it. Now the other album I wrote is coming out after this. The Amorphous Androgynous album is coming out next year. That has a lot of guitars in it and a lot of different guitar players, with lots of different styles of guitars. I can only do what I do. Those producers were getting session guys in, and that was guitartastic.

Well, I afforded myself a very, very rare luxury, which was you’d start on the first of whenever it was and you’d work to a set date where you’d finish and then you’ve go the finished thing in your hand. Then only after listening to it for a few months, you’d think, “Well, I could have done that a little better.” Whereas with this, I finished all the tracks -- did everything -- then I had six months off. I spent that six months listening to it every day on headphones and was mentally making notes on what would make it better. Then four months down the line, other ideas would pop into my head, whereas when I got to mixing it I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. It was a luxury I have never had.

No. Like, I know when it's done, but the more you listen to things the more you get another idea that can pop into your head, but it might be finished then so you’re like, “Oh fuck.” Whereas with this I’ve kind of taken a great piece of time off in the middle and just listened to it. Mentally make notes about how I could get it back. That’s why this sounds the best of all the albums I’ve made. I wouldn’t change a single thing.

It’s a melody. What makes it good is the chords and the melody. But what makes it great is if you’ve got great words. A lot of the time I don’t get that hung up about words, so it’s a bonus if the words are great. On this record a lot of the lyrics, I really like them. It never really dawned on me until I haven’t written any of the lyrics out because I remember them all. So I’ve never actually had to commit anything to paper at all, even when I was singing in the studio.

Dave Sardy was going, “Where’s the lyric sheet?” And I was like, “I haven’t gotten any.” And he’s like, “Where are all the words?” And I went, “They’re up there.” [Pointing at his head] And he’s like, “Well, what if you forget them?” I said, “I won’t forget them.” And I would step to the mic and I haven’t forgotten them. So there’s my record. I have to send it to my publishers and they say, “Where are they lyrics?” So I have to type them out because only after I start to type them out I realize what I was singing. But the melody is the most important thing. Because the melody is what pulses in your fucking heart. The lyrics go to the brain. The melody is like the thing that you whistle on the way home.

I think I’m a better songwriter than I was 10 years ago. I don’t know. See, I don’t have to write words for other people now. That’s quite liberating to know these words are for me and they come from me. So I don’t have any bones about singing them. Whereas when you write for someone else, it’s all about compromise. I know I can deliver these words in a way that a singer I had written them for couldn’t possibly understand. 'Cause if I’m writing a song about something I’ve experienced or I’ve seen, then to write it and give it to someone else they’re only going to sing it from their perception.

Relaxed, yes. It also meant that I could dictate all the way through and set the pace. Because I could have that six months off at no one’s expense but mine. And how I worked is I would book a studio for two weeks. When I work in the studio I work fast and I don’t fuck about and I work long hours, and I eat while I work. And then after those two weeks I sit and take six weeks off. So it was kind of quick bursts and then listen to it, quick bursts and then listen. At the same time, I was doing the other album as well. So I was kind going from one project to another. So I was quite busy but I was never on the same project for more than two weeks at a time. Which has made it even though I did a lot of work and I was fucking tired and spent over a year in the studio I never really got jaded with either projects.

Well, I’ve got to say; this High Flying Birds album was born out of the other album. I started making the other album first. So for instance one of the first songs I recorded was “If I Had A Gun.” So I did the back track then I left it and came back and they completely demolished it. And it was like, “Where’d the fucking chorus go?” And they [The Amorphous Androgynous] said, “Oh, the chorus, we didn’t like that, so we just put another few chords in there.”

I was like, “No, no, no.” Then I kind of went with it, but then I thought I can’t have that song ruined. Not ruined, but that song needs to be the way you hear it today. So I thought, right, so I’m going to do two albums. Because they’re going to do this thing where they deconstruct everything and make it fucking sound not like nothing else. So I wrote some more songs and gave them to them and then I took these other straighter-sounding songs and said I’ll make two albums. Which starting off on the journey of that was quite dawning, but I pulled it off in the end. I was tired at the end of it. I was sick at the end of it. You know, I spent a year solid in the studio and then I was doing B-sides at the end. They would say, “We need a solo in this section here,” and I would start playing guitar solos and he’d go, “Yeah it's good but what it is actually is the solo from “Supersonic.” And I would be like, “Is it?” I had completely run out of ideas. I was suddenly thinking I can’t pull another thing, I don’t know, I want to go home.

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