Feuding Gallaghers keep their distance in advance of Oasis tour in Canada: Liam

TORONTO — The album is ready, the Canadian tour is imminent and the insults have been flying for weeks.

Brit loudmouths Oasis are kicking off their Canadian tour Wednesday with the requisite boasts about their upcoming disc and potshots at acts like Coldplay, Radiohead and Amy Winehouse.

Such outbursts are par for the course with the outspoken Gallagher brothers, whose reputation for shock and awe dates back to their earliest days.

But frontman Liam Gallagher says from his London home that despite all the ballyhoo, he's been tamed by age and family life, having married his longtime Canadian girlfriend Nicole Appleton, the former All Saints singer, in a private ceremony earlier this year.

"I'm sick of drinking and smoking . . . you know what I mean," Gallagher says in an expletive-riddled phone interview.

"I've calmed down drinking," he says in his thick Manchester accent. "I don't really smoke as much as I used to and I'm just looking after myself a bit better. For me and my children. I just want to live forever, man, I don't want to be not well."

Still, avowals of a more balanced outlook come amid a slew of heavyhanded insults he and his brother have reportedly levied in recent days. Last week, the Guardian quoted Gallagher as calling Coldplay and Radiohead fans "boring and ugly," while older brother Noel made headlines after a BBC Radio 1 interview in which he compared the troubled Winehouse to a "destitute horse."

But as often as they tear a strip off others, the Gallaghers are notorious for feuding among themselves. That's something that will likely never change, says 35-year old Liam, noting the wild pair have settled into a truce of sorts that centres on as little contact as possible.

"We don't really speak that much, there's nothing to say," Gallagher says of 41-year-old Noel, the band's principal songwriter behind such monster '90s hits as "Wonderwall," "Don't Look Back in Anger" and "Supersonic."

"We speak if the music ain't right, we sort of pull each other aside and go, 'Look, you're doing that wrong or you're doing that right' and that's it really. ... We see enough of each other on the stage."

"I'm cool with it, there's things he don't like about me, there's things I don't like about him. I refuse to be like him and he refuses to be like me."

In the past, spectacular Gallagher blowups derailed several public appearances and tours, with Noel quitting the band following an onstage row in 1994, Liam backing out of a U.S. tour in '96, and Noel walking out on a European tour in 2000.

Things have calmed considerably since then, with recent tours passing without incident.

Tensions obviously remain, though. The elder Gallagher wasn't even at Liam's wedding - but then again, neither was anyone else. Gallagher says he kept the ceremony secret from everyone in an attempt to keep paparazzi at bay.

"I'm a pretty private person," says Gallagher, who wed the Toronto-raised Appleton on Valentine's Day.

"The minute you tell someone, someone tells that, and then you end up ... paranoid and blaming people. So I thought the best way to do it was to tell no one."

Meanwhile, it seems that he, Noel, bassist Andy Bell and guitarist Gem Archer have found a bit of spirituality. Most of the songs on their new disc, "Dig Out Your Soul," deal with religion in one way or another, but none of that was planned beforehand, says Gallagher, who wrote three songs. Bell and Archer each contributed one.

"We're not God-heads, and we don't go to church or anything," Gallagher says of the coincidence.

"It's just, we're talking about love, life, religion, death, but not in a morbid way. Angels and shit like that; it is what it is."

Gallagher's track "I'm Outta Time" includes a radio clip of John Lennon speaking shortly before his death in 1980. But he says it's not meant to be an ode to his musical hero, as some British press have suggested.

"People are sort of going on about this tribute to John Lennon - it's not a tribute to John," Gallagher says.

"If I tried to write a song about John Lennon it'd . . . sound ridiculous. So it's just a song, man. You know, people will have to get what they get from it, you know what I mean. I hate when people say 'it's about this, it's about that' because instantly people stop using their imagination and you just look for that."

Likewise, Gallagher isn't one for over-thinking a straight-ahead rock show. He's not fond of stage "gimmicks," he notes, preferring his signature pose in which he sings with his head angled upwards toward a mike on a stand, hands clasped behind his back.

"I'm the only who's doing that - everyone's throwing moves and throwing their arms about," says Gallagher, slipping into another rant.

"I'm sick of all these. Everyone that's in a . . . band these days, as soon as they open their mouth their hands go up in the air. . . . They all think they're Jumping Jack Flash, man."

"When it's got to rock, it's got to rock and when it's got to chill, it's got to chill, man. And I'm pretty good at both, I think."

Oasis kicks off an eight-concert Canadian tour Wednesday with stops in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, London, Ont., Ottawa and Montreal.

via L4E / source: The Canadian Press

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