Episode 110 - Noel Gallagher

Welcome everyone to a very special festive edition of Soda Jerker on Songwriting. This is our final show of 2017 and what a guest we have for you to round out what's been another amazing year for the podcast. Joining us today is quite simply one of the most influential British songwriters of the last twenty five years.

Over a fifteen-year period, he enjoyed stratospheric success as lead guitarist, chief songwriter and occasional vocalist for Oasis before embarking on an acclaimed solo career with his High Flying Birds.

He recently released his excellent third solo album, Who Built the Moon, something of a creative departure, which as we record this is currently sitting pretty at the top of the UK charts. We are overjoyed to welcome the great Noel Gallagher to the show.

We met with Noel in early November at a rather nice restaurant in London's Covent Garden, just prior to Who Built the Moon's release. Noel was in fine fettle, and every bit as entertaining, funny, and opinionated as you'd expect, and you're really gonna enjoy this chat. We'll stake our reputation on it.

Such as it is. Arguest was born in nineteen sixty seven in alongside Manchester in the north west of England and grew up in Burnage. His was an unhappy childhood, and he was something of a tearaway as a teenager, but inspired by seeing fellow Mancunians the Smiths on top of the pops, he took up the guitar as a hobby aged thirteen.

However, it wasn't until much later that his music career began, before which he worked as a roadie for and toured the world with, another Manchester band, in Spiral Carpets. In August nineteen ninety one, Noel attended the debut gig of his younger brother Liam's band, Oasis.

I do, yeah.

And I was really struck by that kind of falsetto leap at the end of the chorus.

Yeah, it's a great moment and a striking record for sure. I think our former guest Johnny Maher was a mentor for the band early on as well, wasn't he?

Yeah, I think Noel managed to get a demo tape to Johnny's brother, and Johnny liked what he heard and and took Noel under his wing and and actually helped the band find management. Johnny even gave Noel a Gibson Les Paul, formerly owned by Pete Townsend.

What a mensch, but then when we spoke to him he was great, wasn't he?

He's an awesome guy.

Yeah. Oasis were eventually signed to Alan McGee's creation label in the spring of nineteen ninety three, and their debut album Definitely Maybe, released in the autumn of nineteen ninety four, became the fastest selling debut album of all time. yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw

Absolutely. The band were very much at the forefront of what became known as the Britpot movement and were ubiquitous for the next few years, constantly making the headlines. Not least due to their ongoing rivalry with Blair. Although I think Nol since said that a lot of that apparent animosity between the two bands was kind of manufactured by the UK tabloid press and they just sort of went along with it.

Any publicity is good publicity, as they say. Mm-hmm. The second Oasis album, What's the Story Morning Glory, released in nineteen ninety five, went to number one in seven countries and remains one of the best selling UK albums ever and yielded a US top ten hit in Wonder War. He really had the mildest touch by that point, didn't he? Yeah.

Yeah, and you just couldn't escape their music around that time, could you? I mean, we were in six form back then and I remember um the B side album, The Master Plan, just playing constantly in the common room.

Yeah. And their B sides were arguably a match for their A sides too, aren't they?

I would say so.

Be Here Now, the band's third album released in nineteen ninety seven, was another commercial success, but it's not one that Noel looks back on particularly fondly, I don't think. No.

It's not. I think it divides the fans too, that one. Two thousand Standing on the Shoulder of Giants was recorded by just the Gallagher's and drummer Alan White, following which Knoll formed his own record label, Saurmash Records. After two thousand two's Heathen Chemistry and two thousand five's Don't Believe the Truth, the band's final album, They Got Your Soul, arrived in two thousand eighteen.

High Flying Birds was formed in twenty ten and our guests' first self-titled album under that moniker was released twelve months later. The second, Chasing Yesterday, arrived in spring twenty fifteen. Both albums reached number one in the UK.

Unsurprisingly, Noel was presented with an Ivan Novello Award for Outstanding Song Collection in twenty thirteen, and you can hear a selection of tracks from that collection, as well as cuts from Who Built the Moon, if you check out our Spotify playlist for this episode. Head to sodejer dot com slash podcast and you'll find a link on Noel's page.

We'll also post it at twitter.com slash soda jerker and facebook.com slash soda jerker where you can contact us with your feedback and guess suggestions and be the millionth person to tell us that Jackson Brown wants to use the word deluge in a song. Oh and if you get a moment do head over to iTunes and give us a glowing review and a five star rating.

You can get all the latest news on our guest at nolaga.com, twitter.com slash nolga, and facebook.com slash nogalagamusic. Okay, here we go. Top up your eggnog, settle into your favourite chair, and enjoy our chat with the one and only

Noel, thank you for joining us on the podcast. really enjoyed listening to the album. We've had it for the last couple of days, we think it's fantastic.

Thank you very much.

Um the last High Flying Birds record there's quite a broad pallet of sound. Feels like even more of a kind of wall of sound, if you like. Yeah. On this one.

Well David Holmes is he makes film soundtracks. And his his thing is all vibe and sounds. Um obviously my thing is songs and choruses and

partnership in the sense that he would sit for hours trying to get the guitar to sound like a synthesizer. And why, you may ask, does the guitar sound like a synthesizer? That's because the synthesizer sounds like a guitar as Ringo Starr once said. Um so that was his thing. And I was as amazed by the sound of the record as it was taking place as anyone else.

Well Fort Knox really kind of um really sets the tone, doesn't it? sets the mood, there's that kind of intoxicating kind of dark energy to it. And there's some quite unpredictable notes melodically.

Well I don't know whether you know the story, but on the day that Kanye released or as the young kids say dropped We happened to be in the studio and I'd heard it and I was completely blown away by it. And I'm not a massive fan of Kanye, but I've got some of his stuff. And we were playing it in the studio. And I mean in awe of this fucking track. And it's like, wow and then I'd always liked that track of his The Power.

Yeah.

And uh and as well he added the sort of little thing that he added towards the end, which I was like, you know what man, it's worth it for that is when he just put this alarm clock on it.

Keras kataan.

Why would you think of it? Why on earth would you think of it? And it's genius because it's almost like a fucking Right, we'll wake up, you know what I mean? It's a real alarm clock as well. Right. I don't think it's from like a sound effect CD, I think it's like a proper alarm clock. And uh I was like, Wow, that's fucking great. And um it's the first time I've ever worked with a producer who would

Yeah, it sounds like he had quite a big impact on the sound of the record.

Well he's the biggest influence on it, you know. He's a proper producer. The producer I've always worked with have come in and said, Right, how many songs have you got? and I've gone, I've got fucking two hundred and six and they go, Well, this is easy. I just press play and record. We pick the best songs and that's it.'Cause all the hard work's done at home. David is like, that's no fun for me. I wanna wear what you've got, you know, so that when it's starting, it doesn't sound like oasis.

I wondered if it was just human whistling.

Well i on my record it's a guy playing a tin whistle. All right. On the sample from the chewing gum kid thing. I think it's an organ'cause it we had to replay the sample. But it was fucking great and it was instantly annoying enough for it to be right, that's gonna be the first thing'cause that's so annoying that it's too good.

It seems like um when you mentioned that David's involved with film soundtracks, there's a couple of instrumentals on the album, isn't there? You got Wednesday part one and two. Is that another part of his influence getting you to think less in terms of vocals and

Yeah, well he didn't give a fuck about what I mean, he knew who I was, right? And I'd met him and all that. He didn't give a fuck about what anyone was going to think of this record. How that came about was We were watching YouTube, right? And it was some French

Yeah, it's a very cinematic sound in an album, isn't it?

That's his game. Yeah. That's what he does. Mm-hmm. You know, he's he works in Hollywood and he you know, he does all these like great films, you know, and um he puts together soundtrack albums and gets all these great session musicians to play the song. And um that's what he brought to the table, you know. And I brought Someone who writes pop songs.

Yeah. And um The Man Who Built the Moon is another one we wanted to to mention. Uh we loved the kind of um the instrumental hook which has that kind of unusual sequence of notes and it's kind of quite dissonant. Yeah. Were you actively kind of looking for those kind of moments?

Uh I have to be careful what I say here'cause it will infringe somebody's copyright.

Yeah.

But it's very close to another thing. But that song, I wrote eight choruses for that song. And uh every chorus I wrote I thought was fucking amazing. And he was like, Done that a thousand times and I'm like, for fuck's sake. And the one that you made on the record was the ninth one, and he was right. The one that made it on the record was the best one.

You know, I I only work from midday till six. I always have done. That's what I do. I start at twelve and I finish at six and it's an intense six hours I eat while I'm working. And I've done that since Morning glory. And the difference between David and other producers is every other producer at five past six will follow me out of the studio and think, Well, this is fucking great. Whereas that's when David would start. He would start working at six.

I was thinking about Keep On Reaching as well and how kind of uplifting that is and it made me think of you know some of the songs from the past that you've done which like even as far back as Live Forever there was always that kind of message wasn't there?

Yeah, I wrote that in the back of a taxi. I did, seriously. Not that the tune came out jamming but

Have you written other songs in interesting locations?

Uh let me see. No, some of it uh some of Man and Built the Moon was written in Belfast. Holy Mountain was written uh Ollie Martin I wrote walking down Baker Street. I do a lot of writing in my head, you know what I mean? I kinda I'll come up with a with uh a phrase or something.

We've had a few songwriters say that though haven't we?

Ron Sex Smith.

said you know walking really helps

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean there's a great book that I was given a few years back called The Isle of Noises.

You're in Nashville.

Yeah, yeah. I was fascinated when I read that book because everybody's got a different way of doing it. No two people are the same Although you end up at the same place, which is you know, which is what's fascinating to me about music anyway, is kind of like two people can hear the same song and one can go

Yeah, and you didn't sort of study songwriting or music formally, did you?

No, I don't know anybody that does. Yeah. I get asked that a lot. Do you read music? I don't know anyone that does. Yeah. And I can guarantee if you do, your fucking songs are shit.

But you do have a knack for like a really nice chord change. So has that just been developed by kind of listening to records?

Yeah. Initially, yeah. Uh how I normally write songs is uh I'll be sat on, the tele will be on with the sound down, I'll have an electric guitar on my lap. And so the untrained eye I'll look like I'm watching telly while playing the guitar. But what I'm actually doing is neither. I'm neither taking any notice of what I'm playing.

And you've always been able to capture the essence of things that you've been inspired by as well in your music and kind of I guess reinterpreting new ways. Like um I was listening to um Riverman yesterday.

Yeah, but you know he nick that line from somewhere else, don't you? You know that's not George.

James Taylor was

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you do get a lot of squares going, No, it's fucking Beatles Line there And you're just like, Really? Go and Google it, you penis. I'm not and and I'm not expecting nobody to notice. You know what I mean? It's kind of like uh these are my influences.

Yeah.

This is where it comes from. This is not art. This is just a channeling something else. I was always from the school of music where if I write a song and I think it sounds like T-Rex, then I'd make it sound more like T-Rex. Lot of other songwriters try and make it sound like the opposite. I've never shied away from that. You know what I mean? Most people with a good record collection could do what I do.

Well it's kinda something like something like Jeff Lynn does as well. Like a lot of the yellow stuff you can pinpoint oh I see what he's done.

Yeah, you just like a fan making music from a fan's perspective. And when you get it wrong, right, you do fall completely flat on your fucking face. And nobody's fallen further flat than I have down the years. But when you get it right. It becomes something new almost. So for instance, uh cigarettes and alcohol, right? That riff is clearly T Rex, but I can assure you he got it from somewhere else, you know, it's a standard blues thing.

Is there a particular guitar that you turned to that you've written a lot of hits on? Uh

Uh I've got um I've got personally Well I've got two guitars which were given to me by Johnny Ma. He says borrowed, I say given. Okay.

Permanent loan.

Yeah. He wrote Panic On and I wrote Slidaway on it on the same guitar. And for that reason alone he's never getting it back. Uh and I've got uh his blackless Paul that he wrote The Queen Is Dead on and I wrote Might be little by little or something on it, you know what I mean? And I've got I've got one acoustic, I've still got it that and one electric.

And will you ever sort of um experiment with like different tunings or anything like that? Or even like migrate to just another instrument? Like

Uh I di yeah, I there's a track on the album called If Love is the Law which I wrote on a Melotron. Right. Um it's just a riff that I had that David jumped on and went, That's gonna be a song. Um I've never written anything on the bass. The only tuning that I go to, which I use quite a lot, is if I tune the B string down to an A, so it drones and I wrote Lila like that and go let it out. There's a couple on this album I can't think what they are. Um

Do you usually have a pretty good sense of when you've got something special?'Cause you know, thinking back to some of those sort of more epic ballads like, you know, Champagne Supernova or

Dead in the war.

Yeah.

So that that's the last thing that I did that gave me the chills. And the story behind that particular thing is we were in the middle of the last tour and we were in Ireland and I was doing a a radio session for RTE and the performance of The Dying of the Light is on YouTube. And in between the takes, what you hear there is them fucking around trying to fix a microphone. And I'd written Dead in the Water about a week before at home. And the sound was so good in my headphones.

Do you find sort of like a lot of songwriters do that the the best songs tend to come pretty quickly?

I think like um Dying of the Light and that they all arrive fully formed. It might take you a couple of hours to write it. But then I've had songs what I've chipped away at for a bit. As kind of a rule, the longer a song takes to write, the more thought out it's gonna be, the less pure it's gonna be. But there's exceptions to the rule like rock and roll star. It took me fucking ages to write that song and that is incredible.

And in terms of capturing your ideas, is it just a case of if it's good I'll remember it, that's

Yeah, I don't have a Porta studio. I've never been able to master the Fortrack. I d I d I do it once I on average I do it once every five years while I go and buy the new Fortrack. And then it it almost falls down at the manual. I get it out, I set it up, I switch it on, the lights come on, I'm like, right, this is it, man.

En ik denk het was Don't Look Back in Anger, dat was one dat was written pretty quickly.

Yeah yeah, one night in Paris, rainy night. after being out at uh funnily enough, after being out at a strip club. Kinda wrote it drunk, I got up the next day and the words were lying there on a fucking thing and the guitar was on a on the floor in a hotel room and I played it back. My initial reaction to it was That'll sound pretty good if we do it for the next record. And lo and behold it's become

Because even sort of back then, back in sort of 1995, 1996, they'd already kind of been embraced. Yeah, I mean, yeah.

We used to like hang around as teenagers in bars in Liverpool and everyone was singing those songs. They were like sacred kind of

18 months old at that point when it felt like they'd been

But they come but they come from a place of truth. Now what that truth is, everybody's got their own opinion of it. It'll mean so you'll think back to your mates in the pub and those nights. in the park or wherever, you know what I mean, or football matches. But the essence of that song is it comes from some fucking point of truth. It has to because

That's so great about

Yeah, totally. Almost anything.

I think me as a songwriter the greatest gift is not coming up with the chords or the melody, other words, it's recognising there's something happening. You know, and to be switched on. Right? And if you're not at the river you're not catching out, you know what I mean? And I go there every fucking day of my life. If I've got an hour to spare before I came here today, I'll sit and I'll play the guitar for an hour, watching match of the day two with the sound down.

And do you think of those songs as kind of fully formed and you're just channeling them or do you see yourself as the person who who makes that happen?

Well, I I don't know, you g I had this moment on the last tour where I was playing the Hydro in Scotland. And I was on stage playing Champagne Supernova. And I got asked about that song all particularly the line about the cannonball. What does it mean? I'm like, I don't fucking know what it means, I don't know, I only wrote it. You know what I mean? Don't ask me what it means. And I was playing it.

So I guess um in terms of the new album then, we know you've never been one necessarily for co writing, although I know you have done that with people like Paul Weller and stuff.

I only do it if it's gonna be on other people's records. Right.

So does that mean that maybe in the future we'll see more kind of producer collaborations?

do collaborations with producers.

What about David Holmes?

He doesn't fucking can't play an instrument. So it does no he's producer. No one gets the writing credit. I write, that's it. I'm not interested in writing with anybody else. Unless we're gonna start a new band. You know what I mean? I am offended by singer songwriters. Who when you scratch the surface actually don't do any fucking songwriting. I'm offended by that. As far as I can be aware.

Prefer to be the lone wolf.

No, it's good'cause it fuels my arrogance, which is good for me.

Cảm ơn các bạn đã theo dõi và hẹn gặp lại.

No, no, but I w it's not I'm not I think it's important that as a solo artist It's coming from you. Or else what is it? What is it? It's someone else's melodies and someone else's words. If you're just doing that, you just I mean, crack on, make a living, right? Don't have a fucking big mouth about it, you know what I mean? You know, and even like that tune, Dead in the Water, people build careers on that shit. I'll just give that away. I'm that fucking good.

Thanks so much for doing this and uh congrats on the album.

thank you very much cheers

That was Noel Gallagher talking to us in central London. Hope you enjoyed that chat as much as we did. It was another one of those surreal experiences for us, wasn't it?

Yeah, we've had a few of those in the last eighteen months or so, haven't we?

It's just so familiar and that face is so distinctive and and recognizable and there it is right in front of you across a restaurant table.

But at the same time as it's strange, it also feels oddly normal, doesn't it, when you start talking. Yeah, yeah. You just become three blokes having a conversation.

that's it and he was terrific value as we fully expected

Yeah, well I don't think I've ever been as confident going into an interview that it was going to be good.'Cause he just doesn't give bad interviews, does he?

And I'm not sure if he's made some kind of Fausti impact, but in person he somehow looks younger than he did twenty odd years ago.

Yeah, it was toch phenomenal.

Yeah, some serious Dorian Gray shit going on there, I think.

Damn him. So many thanks to Noel. Thanks once again to Lorraine. Thanks to all of you for listening. Not just to this episode, but to another year's worth.

We'll see you in 2018. In the meantime, a very Merry Christmas to you all. Or should that be a Joyu Noel?

Oh yeah. Just had to dip your breath.