NOEL GALLAGHER is talking about fame. And he, more than most, should be qualified to discuss the subject.

After all, this is the man who, as one of Oasis's fighting Gallagher brothers, has spent a good part of the past 15 years having, not just his music dissected, but pretty much every word he's uttered and every deed he's done scrutinised as well. Particularly in Britain where, depending on whom you talk to, he is regarded as a) something of a national treasure, or b) as that dodgy uncle who can be counted on to make inappropriate remarks at weddings. Whatever your take, one thing Noel Gallagher can never be called is bland.

"I've never had a problem with fame. If anything, I enjoy being famous. It's a f---ing great thing," the 41-year-old says with a shrug. "I've always seen it as part of the job. There's no way you can be successful in music and be anonymous - that's mental. You cannot be in a rock'n'roll band and be anonymous. Unless you're in Kraftwerk or something like that. Liam doesn't deal with it very well - do you know what I mean?"

Indeed, Liam Gallagher told Britain's The Times recently that Noel "loves being famous. He adores it. I don't think about it. I don't do what famous people do. I don't go to famousy events. As long as I'm in a band and making music and playing gigs, I couldn't give a f---."

Of course, Noel's perceptions on the whole business of celebrity may have changed slightly since our conversation, just weeks before he was being poleaxed - and breaking a few ribs in the process - on stage by a 47-year-old Canadian "fan". (Though if you've seen the YouTube footage - which has been viewed by more than a million people already - you'll see Liam raise his fist, think about jumping in for a second, only to finally back away. Back in the '90s, during those legendary drug-fuelled days, chances are, the younger Gallagher would most probably have thumped the stage invader. Repeatedly.)

Of course, things have changed markedly for both Gallaghers. These days, Noel is dad to nine-month-old Donovan (with long-time girlfriend Sara MacDonald) and eight-year-old daughter Anais (with ex-wife Meg Mathews), while Liam is a father of two boys - one with an ex-wife (Patsy Kensit), one with his present wife (Nicole Appleton), and a daughter from a brief relationship with Pete Doherty's ex (Lisa Moorish). They are no longer the rabble-rousing brothers of the mid-'90s who took as many drugs as they could while somehow producing two of the greatest British rock albums ever - Definitely Maybe and (What's The Story?) Morning Glory. And they've managed to stay enduringly popular (influential British music paper NME had a countdown to their new album's release on its website) despite a spate of albums that are considered to have never reached the heights, commercially or critically, as the first two.

Their new album, Dig Out Your Soul, might finally change perceptions of Oasis as being some sort of Beatles rip-off. For the first time, they've put away the guitars - well, sort of - and embraced a trippier, Stone Roses-type feel. Lyrically, Noel has also turned inward, with religion and spirituality common themes on the album.

"The strange thing is, is that the lyrics are all quite similar - they all mention God, and Jesus, and the f---ing light and the rapture, and angels," Noel says. "And that's happened very much by coincidence because none of us write together and none of us discuss what we're writing about - that would make us like Radiohead."

But if you ask Noel whether he's stepped out of his comfort zone with Dig Out Your Soul, he rejects the idea immediately.

"I can't stand it when bands say, you know, on this album we really stepped out of our comfort zone. What does that mean? This is not a f---ing game. This is soul, man. It's about humanity. It's not a test. People who went to university are always trying to get themselves out of their comfort zone and I always say, 'I'm working class. It's taken me 15 years to build a comfort zone and I'm not getting out of it for no f---er."'

Noel was born in Burnage, a fairly rough area of Manchester, the middle child of Irish parents, Peggy and Thomas Gallagher. He had a fractious relationship with his alcoholic father, whom he says regularly beat him and his older brother Paul. Today, he's nonplussed about the beatings he took as a child and says that that sort of thing was "common" around his area. "We just got on with it," he says.

Peggy divorced her husband when her sons were barely out of their teens and today none of the sons have any contact with their dad. When asked whether he finds it hard to leave his own family for long stretches on the road, Noel shakes his head.

"You know, I saw my dad every day and look how that turned out. My kids understand - well, my daughter does - that dad's got to go to work. I've just had two years off. My son's only nine months old, so he doesn't f---ing know anyway, but my daughter understands that I'm not going to be around much for a year-and-a-half, but after that year-and-a-half I'm going to be around for two years. And they've got a wealthy dad. They'll get nice cars on their 17th birthdays," he says, laughing.

Noel says parenthood this time around is a vastly different experience. When Anais was born, he says, he and Mathews were coming to the end of a marriage that had begun at the height of Britpop and all of the madness that had ensued with the period. (Noel says that when he and his wife gave up drugs, they discovered they had "nothing to talk about".)

"It's great - it's nice to have a boy, to have a son and heir. He's a great lad. Really, really good natured. It's going to be nice, because my daughter is obsessed with ponies and all that girl stuff, and I'm a bit like, 'OK, whatever,"' he says, throwing his hands up. "It'll be nice to have a lad if he's into football and, hopefully, music. It would be great to pass the guitars on to somebody, because I don't think my daughter's that interested. She prefers the computer and Girls Aloud."

In fact, Noel says he often has to get his daughter's help for technological advice. "She just gets on the computer, and goes, tap, tap, tap. I don't know what the f--- she's doing."

He's not big on downloading individual tunes online, either. "All the soul's gone out of it, you know? Imagine if The White Album came out now: 'Oh, I'll just take tracks one, two, seven, and nine.' F--- off."

Noel says that songwriting as a craft still holds as much sway over him as it ever did and he even finds his output more prolific than it was a decade ago. Thanks to wealth and fame, the subject of his lyrics, he says, has changed markedly, though.

"When I was in my 20s and writing Definitely Maybe, to me that was my entire life. It was just based around this guitar that I had and writing songs. And I had nothing else in my life. I had no money, I didn't have a wife or kids, I had no baggage. It was just me against the world. You fast forward 15 years and you've got kids and money, so you're writing from a different perspective, so in that sense, it changes."

Of course, with songwriting duties now shared among the band - guitarist Gem Archer chipped in with a couple on Dig Out Your Soul, as did bassist Andy Bell. Liam contributed three songs.

"I find it difficult to talk about his songs because every time I do, he's like, 'That's not f---ing what it's about', so he can speak for himself," Noel says, sighing.

In fact, Noel says he doesn't understand the fascination people - and particularly the media - have over his relationship with his brother. He says he doesn't think their constant bickering and arguments are anything unusual at all.

"Me and Liam can say disgracefully hurtful things to one another and the other guys in the band will be going, 'F---ing hell,"' he says, "But imagine being in a professional relationship with your brother and trying to share the limelight for 15 years. It would drive you f---ing insane.

"As much as we don't get on, we don't not get on. He's my brother, that's where it ends. He's the last person in the world I'd go for a drink with - the last person. Seriously. If there was Armageddon tomorrow and I was walking through the nuclear waste of the planet and I saw him coming towards me in the distance, I'd be like, 'Couldn't it have not been someone else? Did it have to be you?' And he would think the same thing."

Noel says outside of music, football - specifically, Manchester City - remains his passion, but then adds, surprisingly, that his mate Ringo Starr is doing his best to get him to step back and smell the roses. Literally. "I saw him not too long ago and I was asking him what he was doing in England - because he lives in LA - and he says," doing a spot-on impersonation of Starr, "'I always come back to England for the Chelsea Flower Show - have you ever been to the Chelsea Flower Show?'

"And I'm going, 'Well, no, I haven't.' So I say, 'Why do you go there for?' And he looks at me, like really surprised, and says, 'To see the flowers.'
He's like, 'You should really go and see the flowers. They're beautiful.'
And I thought, 'What a f---ing hippie,' and then I thought, 'Well, maybe I'll check it out next year.' You know, he is a f---ing Beatle, after all."

via L4e / source: smh.com.au

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