Noel Gallagher turns 59 today, and while the songs will always be the main event, a very close second is the man’s mouth. Nobody in rock and roll gives an interview quite like Noel. He is quotable in the way a force of nature is quotable — you never quite know what’s coming, but you know it’s going to be memorable. Here are 59 of his finest moments.
On his brother Liam: “He’s rude, arrogant, intimidating and lazy. He’s the angriest man you’ll ever meet. He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.”
On Liam again: “I read these interviews with him and I don’t know who the guy is who’s in these interviews, he seems really cool. Because the guy I’ve been in a band with for the last 18 years is a f***ing knobhead.”
On Liam trying to be John Lennon: “He was talking in a Scouse accent for three days. He told me I should refer to him as John and I was like, ‘I just prefer c***, man.'”
On sitting next to Liam on a long flight: “Being sat beside Liam on a 15-hour flight. It happened just the once, going to Japan or somewhere. It’s just horrible.”
On interviews: “Interviews are an occupational hazard. You’re sat in a room with some guy from Stockholm who you’ve never met and he’s asking you about your mum. It’s preposterous. Because the honest answer to that is: ‘What’s it got to do with you?’ But the smart answer is always: ‘I liked her until she gave birth to Liam.'”
On his recipe for success: “All I ever wanted to do was make a record. Here’s what you do: you pick up your guitar, you rip a few people’s tunes off, you swap them round a bit, get your brother in the band, punch his head in every now and again, and it sells. I’m a lucky b******.”
On Phil Collins: “Just because you sell lots of records it doesn’t mean to say you’re any good. Look at Phil Collins.”
On Phil Collins again: “People hate fing cs like Phil Collins, and if they don’t, they f***ing should.”
On why he voted Labour: “Phil Collins is threatening to come back and live here if the Conservatives win, and let’s face it, none of us want that.”
On Jack White: “Jack White has just done a song for Coca-Cola. End of. He ceases to be in the club. And he looks like Zorro on doughnuts.”
On the drawbacks of fame: “I bought a really nice jacket in Japan, and in this massive swirl of people, someone with a pen scribbled on my jacket. It’s ruined. So that’s the downside of fame. But otherwise it’s great.”
On wasting money: “I had built for me a customised 1967 Mark II Jaguar convertible at a cost of £110,000, and I haven’t got a driving licence. It’s useless to me.”
On Liam getting a Rolex while he got a Rolls-Royce: “Which is brilliant, cos I can’t drive and Liam can’t tell the time.”
On meeting Paul McCartney: “I went to Paul McCartney’s daughter Stella’s party and who should open the door but the man himself. There were all these questions I wanted to ask him but I settled on, ‘Do you watch Brookside?'”
On being a roadie for the Inspiral Carpets: “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 party.”
On meeting Tony Blair: “I don’t have a crystal ball. I didn’t see he was going to turn into a ****. I was 30, off me head, and everyone telling me we were the greatest band since who knows. Then the prime minister invites you round for a glass of wine. It all becomes part of the high.”
On ambition: “Phil Collins has got to be chased out of the charts. It’s the only way to do it, man, to get in there among them and stamp the f***ers out.”
On wearing sunglasses indoors: “Well it’s in the manual isn’t it. It actually says in the rock star book ‘Thou shalt wear shades at all times, preferably indoors.'”
On social media: “I’m not a tweeter. Stuff like, ‘Oh I’m going for a shower,’ great. ‘I slept in again, bugger.’ Life’s too short for that kind of thing.”
On space travel: “If I ever get to go to the moon, I’ll probably just stand on the moon and go ‘hmmm, yeah… fair enough… gotta go home now.'”
On his peak fame: “Look. I was a superhero in the ’90s. I said so at the time. McCartney, Weller, Townshend, Richards — my first album is better than all their first albums. Even they’d admit that.”
On Oasis in 1997: “We’re not arrogant. We just believe we’re the best band in the world.”
On losing his privacy: “This guy came up to me and said, ‘Man, I’d hate to be you right now, no privacy at all.’ I was thinking, I have a Rolls Royce, a million dollars in the bank, a mansion and my own jet. What are you? I’d hate to be you, broke as hell living on the dole.”
On NME journalists: “If you see an NME journalist at any of the gigs — and let’s face it, they’re pretty easy to spot, they don’t stray far from hospitality, wear God-awful clothes, got dreadful hair and that kind of ‘mug me’ look about them — give ’em a clip round the earhole from me.”
On his own lyrics: “When I’m halfway through ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ I say to myself, ‘I still don’t know what these words mean.'”
On ‘Champagne Supernova’: “Slowly walking down the hall faster than a cannonball — what does that mean? I don’t know what it means. I don’t care what it means. It must mean something, though, because I play it to a sea of people every night and they seem to understand it.”
On ‘Be Here Now’ and cocaine: “I still tell people that the ‘Be Here Now’ album is the best advertisement against taking cocaine.”
On the death of guitar music: “They’ve been saying it for 30 years, ever since The Beatles split up, that rock and roll’s dead. When there’s a boom there’s always a bit of a lull afterwards. I suppose avant-garde punk rock will come back for a while, and it will all be sh** again, and then guitar music will come back.”
On touring America: “Got thrown out of a taxi this morning. At least I think I did. Hard to tell over here. There was shouting and pointing and then the international hand signal for ‘Get the f*** out of my cab, you western dog.'”
On the press: “Well, they’re just waiting for us to make some monumental f***-up, and they hope to be around when it happens. We’ve got to get one step ahead of those fellows.”
On ageing: “I don’t stay up for two or three days on end, talking sh** about aliens, but I’m becoming more of a belligerent old man. When you get to a certain age you find that other people’s opinions don’t really matter anymore.”
On fame and whinging: “Nothing bothers me more than when groups like Pearl Jam and Nirvana whine and moan and complain about life and being famous. Let me tell you, being famous is great! If you hate your job so much, why don’t you go work at a car wash or McDonald’s?”
On drug legalisation: “I really think that the legalisation of drugs over 25 years probably would be a great thing because it would take the romance and the rebel element out of it for kids. But that 25-year period would be utter chaos and disaster and scandal after drug-addled scandal.”
On his guitar ability: “I’m unfortunate enough that two of my best mates are Johnny Marr and Paul Weller. Those two are virtuosos. So if you’re asking me how I compare to those two — I’m average at f***ing best.”
On songwriting: “I’m not saying, ‘I’m the greatest songwriter in the world. Listen to me.’ Usually, I’m saying, ‘These are the greatest songwriters in the world. And I’m gonna put them all in this song.'”
On stealing riffs: “If I’m writing a song and I say to myself, ‘Oh hey, it sounds like the Kinks,’ then I’m going to turn it into a Kinks track.” And on accusations of plagiarism: “No, I don’t feel guilty. But you feel pissed off because you didn’t do it first.”
On the meaning of life: “Some people worry about the destination. They worry about where they’re going. I enjoy the trip. Wherever you’re going is where you’ll end up. Don’t worry about that. Enjoy the scenery on the way.”
On slamming other pop stars: “People think I’m controversial for the answers I give to silly questions in interviews. But if somebody asks me what I think about Robbie Williams or Madonna, I’m not thinking about insulting those people. I say what I genuinely feel is in my heart. My conscience is clean. I’m true to myself — f*** everybody else.”
On his funeral: “I’m not really bothered, because I won’t be there. I don’t give a s***.”
On what would have happened if he hadn’t made it: “Doing a nine to five, hating yourself forever.”
On Kylie Minogue: “Kylie Minogue is just a demonic little idiot as far as I’m concerned.”
On regrets: “One of the worst things that ever happened to me was when I said that thing about Blur. My mam rang me up when she saw it and she was really angry and she said, ‘I didn’t bring you up to talk like that.'”
On the Oasis-Blur rivalry: “The whole thing was conceived by NME and members of Blur’s entourage as a ploy to raise their respective profiles, and I’ve had no respect for either party ever since.”
On culture and coffee shops: “Since the rise of the coffee shop, culture has disappeared, don’t you think?”
On being unable to tour with Liam: “I can’t envisage the morning I wake up and think I’d like to spend two years on the road, arguing all around the world with Liam.”
On Twitter: “More people retweet than buy records. It’s a sad state.”
On his best mate’s guitar playing: “I can barely play like Peter Green, let alone Jeff Beck.”
On his role in Oasis: “I get a lot of stick for it, but I’m the best drummer in the group.”
On leaving Oasis: “It’s with some sadness and great relief to tell you that I quit Oasis tonight.”
On Bonehead leaving Oasis: “It’s hardly Paul McCartney leaving the Beatles, is it?”
On being James Blunt’s neighbour in Ibiza: He sold his Ibiza home reportedly because he could not “stand living there in the knowledge that Blunt is nearby making terrible music.”
On wealth: “In 2001 I was worth an estimated £25 million. In 2009, The Sunday Times estimated mine and Liam’s combined fortune at £52 million. So either I made a lot of money in eight years or Liam made absolutely none.”
On getting older: “It’s not fun being on a bus for six weeks in America. It’s fine when you’re young, but I’m almost 50.”
On his own songs: “If you’d written ‘Live Forever’, you’d be walking to a different tune the next day too.”
On Manchester: “You want to sell 5,000 limited-edition red vinyl seven-inches, that’s fine. Make music for a closet full of people in Bradford somewhere. But it doesn’t mean anything to anyone.”
On politics: “David Cameron — bell-end. Ed Miliband — communist. The rest of them don’t really count.”
On the Oasis reunion: Asked if there would be a reunion in 2012: “It would be mega for the millions and for everybody else it would be brilliant, but I wouldn’t be very happy about it.”
He came around. Happy 59th, Noel. Never change.