Feature: Why Noel Gallagher will never leave his brother and quit Oasis
And the band plays on
Charlotte Raven
Tuesday August 1, 2000
THE GUARDIAN
There's a Jam song which describes the loss of fame as a scary,
exposing experience. To Be Someone begins as a dream of deliverance -
"To be someone must be a wonderful thing" - and ends in the
mundanity of hasbeendom. It's a beautiful song, but it has to be
played straight or the irony of the chorus line - "But didn't we have
a nice time?" - gets throttled by melancholia.
When Noel Gallagher sang it, on a Weller tribute programme last year,
he so wanted to make us aware of his ability to see through his
celebrity that it sounded like an elegy. It would have appeared, to
the casual listener, that Noel was mourning Oasis. If this were so,
his hopes of cheating hasbeendom by turning his back on the
indignities of superstardom before fate forced his hand all depended
on him doing a Weller, ie leaving the band to pursue his solo
interests.
Sting and George Michael have followed this well-trodden route. The
normal pattern is for the clever one who writes the songs to dump the
stupid ones who don't, as a prelude to entering a second, more mature
phase of stardom characterised by songs about "life" and the
pointlessness of worldly achievement. Had Gallagher bitten the
bullet, he might, by now, have had a well-received first album behind
him and some of Michael's calm assurance. As it is, he's a bundle of
nerves and confusion - unsure what has gone wrong with Oasis but
unable to cut his losses since he cannot, and will not ever, leave
his brother. He couldn't do it then - instead of leaving he tried to
refocus the band, making Liam sing about disillusion. And he can't do
it now - the latest row with Liam which caused Noel to abandon the
European leg of the tour was about his solo ambitions. Liam refuses
to countenance the thought of being "left on the shelf for a year"
while Noel makes an album of acoustic ditties.
When Liam was asked in Time Out recently why he thought Noel would do
that, he said he didn't have a clue. "People are saying that he's got
these songs which aren't Oasis. But you make them Oasis, don't ya?"
In other words, Noel should continue with the square-peg/round-hole
strategy that gave birth to the incoherent Standing on the Shoulder
of Giants. Having tried (and failed) to make Oasis out of the
material from this period, Noel began to paint himself into the
artistic corner that has left him unable to write songs for his
brother - "Every time I pick up a guitar or try to write some words
it's just not doing it for me" - or himself. After Liam's outburst,
he says he "can't be arsed" with a solo project. Oasis must go on.
Yet the longer it does, the more it looks like Bonehead, Guigsy and,
lately, Patsy were right to leave the Gallaghers to it.
Some would doubtless say that it was premature to write their
obituary. The group, minus Noel, may have been booed off the stage in
Switzerland last week but Oasis were never a reliable booking. There
have always been wrangles and bad days and nothing in their current
behaviour suggests that these are any worse than usual. If things are
different this time it's because the delicate balance in the
brothers' creative relationship has been disrupted by Noel's refusal
to write from inside Liam's head. This bid for creative autonomy,
while understandable, destroyed the whole point of Oasis. Whatever he
may have wished, Noel's genius only came to full fruition when he
acted as his brother's translator. He was never meant to write about
himself, but rather to furnish Liam with the means of expressing the
sodden, sullen grandeur of his soul. Insofar as he imposed himself at
all, it was as an ordering principle. Without him, Liam would have
stayed a gibbering ape and, in all probability, neither would have
ever left Burnage.
In tempering his brother's egotism with the lyricism that was his
alone, Noel created a diamond of a rock band. The only traces of his
own personality were the occasional acoustic departures and the
qualifications in the first two album's names. Definitely Maybe was
Liam/Noel in a nutshell - a paradoxical assertion that welded their
opposing sensibilities into a single statement.
The next album, (What's the Story) Morning Glory, showed the two
sides in friendly dispute. Noel's voice comes first - a plea for
explanation - but it's drowned out by the Liamish conviction that the
sound is more important than the sense. Like many Oasis coinages,
Morning Glory transports the listener to a place where whys and
wherefores have given way to the non-specific jouissance of champagne
supernovas. If only Noel himself had been happy there, the current
crisis might have been averted. But, like many artists who undervalue
what they're good at, and overvalue the creative merit of
replicating "real" experience, Noel has nurtured an urge to write
about proper things. Sadly for him, he knows that his truths are
peanuts compared with his brother's. That's why he can't do it. After
managing to write a few sub-Weller vignettes for the last album, he
has dried up. The muse has deserted him. Or, to be more precise, the
muse is berating him daily for his laziness and wilful refusal
to "write some fuckin' songs".
Cheers!
Patsy "Gallagher"
--
冬日沉寂的下午,淡淡的日影,他的眼神安靜深遂,
你跟他談話,他讓你走入他的世界,可是,顯然地,
他還有另一個世界,你可以感到他的隨和從眾,
可是你又同時感到他的孤獨...
--張曉風. [大音]. 你還沒有愛過
--
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