The Britpop legend chews the fat on the ’90s, selfie-hunters and songwriting – and reveals the one time Bono was left lost for words...
The trouble with writing songs for Oasis was…
“There was a responsibility to everyone else, and some people in the band were very conservative in their views of rock music. The longer you stay in a band like that, the more you become institutionalised – the way things are done is the way things are done. You’re making music for your surroundings, so you just make music to fill stadiums and, when it’s great, it’s the greatest thing ever. But it got to the point where I’d said it all and done it all.”
The Masterplan was only a B-side because…
“The singles had to have three B-sides and I was always coming up two songs short. I remember writing The Masterplan at home in Camden and then going to Maison Rouge [Studios] in Fulham the next day and playing it on an acoustic guitar to silence. I'd write The Masterplan, Talk Tonight or Half The World Away and nobody would say, ‘Do you want to hold that back?’ It’s only as the years have gone along that I’ve realised that was mental. But we were all mad in the ’90s – Alan McGee was off his tits and he was running the label.”
The Be Here Now album cover shoot cost £75,000...
“But those were the days when you’d say, ‘Let’s fucking throw a Rolls Royce in a swimming pool’ and somebody would just go, ‘Done!’ Nobody was going, ‘How much is this costing?’ Nobody fucking cared, because everyone was selling so many records. Now, I have meetings daily where people say, [whispers], ‘I’ve got some bad news… The video’s gone £5,000 over budget. We’re going to have to cut it from somewhere, Mumford & Sons don’t spend this much on their videos’. And I’ll be like, ‘They play banjos and chew fucking daffodils, who gives a shit?’ Five grand over budget, fucking hell man. I spend that flying a pair of scissors around the world.”
The problem with acts not writing their own songs is...
“These guys are only going to write with you until your star starts to fade, then they’re going to move on to someone else. So where does that leave you? You’ve got no talent and you’ve been trying to invent a perfume for the last two years. Now you’re sitting there with your arse hanging out going, ‘Hang on a minute, the people that wrote the songs now write for a younger girl. Or a guy with more ginger hair – he’s got a ginger afro, this fucker’. So you’re fucked.”
One of my least favourite inventions of recent times is…
“Camera phones. Everybody’s second question now – after, ‘Are you Liam Gallagher?’ – is, ‘Can I get a picture?’ And it’s funny how some people get offended when you say no. I don’t mind doing them, but I don’t mind saying no either.”
The best song I’ve ever written is…
“Well, clearly, Don’t Look Back In Anger is the one that has resonated with the most people. But is it the best song? What’s the criteria? Has it got the best chords? No. Has it got the best words? No. Is it the best vocal performance? No. But I play it all over the fucking world and even the people that can’t speak English know what it’s about. We’ve just done a month on the road with The Smashing Pumpkins on their American tour and you’d see a guy in a Kiss T-shirt and a guy in a Rancid T-shirt, with their arms around each other, singing it in Arkansas and you’re just thinking, ‘Fucking hell, I am a long way from Burnage’.”
The first time I played Don’t Look Back In Anger live after the Manchester attack was…
“With U2 at Twickenham. And it was a bit of a missed opportunity because I thought Bono was going to say something [beforehand], but it’s the one time in his fucking life he’s never said anything. He said, ‘I thought you were going to say something?’ And I replied, ‘I’ve not said anything in fucking 20 years, you can’t stop saying fucking shit! Why couldn’t you say something then?’”
