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Noel Gallagher: 'England becoming a difficult place to be'

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Agence France-Presse

<div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img alt="British singer Noel Gallagher performs at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, Australia, in this November 12, 2019 file photo. Dave Hunt, EPA-EFE" src="https://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2023/entertainment/06/01/noel-gallagher-epa-efe-06012023.jpg"/><figcaption>British singer Noel Gallagher performs at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, Australia, in this November 12, 2019 file photo. Dave Hunt, EPA-EFE</figcaption></figure></div>PARIS -- Ex-Oasis star Noel Gallagher has never been one to mince words, and his new album &quot;Council Skies,&quot; released Friday, sees him in a reflective mood on what he sees as the miserable state of Britain.&quot;The government needs to get its s**t together,&quot; the 56-year-old told AFP during a trip to Paris. &quot;England is becoming a very, very difficult place to be. It&#x27;s tough times for people.&quot;Gallagher wrote the songs for his new album during the COVID-19 lockdowns -- a period that he said was good for his creative process but triggered his deepest frustrations with the world.&quot;The people who dealt with it best were artists, since they could create something, so in that sense good came out of it,&quot; he said.&quot;But I hated all the masks and all that. I think the whole thing was a gross over-reaction by governments around the world, brought on by the neurosis of fucking idiots on the internet.&quot;Gallagher could not help but smile at his view of the dark absurdity of recent history.&quot;Since then, well, the world has not recovered and probably never will. And we just wait for the next one,&quot; he said with a chuckle.<div>&#x27;Fans that suffer&#x27;</div>British society is reeling from the combined impact of the pandemic and years of political chaos.Brexit has also made it more complicated and expensive for the country&#x27;s artists to tour the European continent.&quot;Instead of spending two weeks in France, I&#x27;ll be doing 10 days in the whole of Europe, just doing capital cities -- it&#x27;s the fans that suffer,&quot; Gallagher said.But aside from the grumbles about the state of Britain, the songwriter is in a buoyant mood thanks to the new album, his first in six years, and an imminent international tour of Noel Gallagher&#x27;s High Flying Birds.He is particularly enthusiastic about the new song &quot;Easy Now.&quot;&quot;I imagined the audience and the reaction when I was writing it. It&#x27;s reminiscent of what I wrote in the &#x27;90s, and as good as what I wrote in the &#x27;90s I think.&quot;I knew it straight away, you could just feel it.&quot;There is also an unlikely all-star moment on the record with the song &quot;Pretty Boy,&quot; which features Johnny Marr of The Smiths and is remixed by The Cure&#x27;s Robert Smith.&quot;I don&#x27;t know Robert Smith at all, but I got his email... I thought: he&#x27;s not going to like Oasis or me,&quot; Gallagher said.&quot;But I sent it anyway and it turns out he fucking loves it. I was like, wow.&quot;Marr, however, is an old friend going back to the days when Oasis was an unsigned band trying to get attention around Manchester.&quot;Johnny was the first person outside the guys in the band who showed any interest in us at all. No one in Manchester gave a fuck,&quot; Gallagher said.&quot;He&#x27;s got the holy spirit in him. He&#x27;s a great guy.&quot;<div> &#x27;Cursed&#x27; guitar </div>For Gallagher, coming to France is always a reminder of &quot;the catastrophic night&quot; when Oasis broke up live on stage at the Rock en Seine festival in 2009, following a furious fight between Noel and his brother Liam, the band&#x27;s other frontman.The guitar that was collateral damage during that fight was recently auctioned in Paris for 385,000 euros ($411,000).&quot;I bought that guitar in Paris, in Pigalle somewhere -- I never liked it, it was fucking horrible. If one guitar had to be sacrificed...&quot; Gallager said.&quot;The guy bought it off me smashed to bits and I never thought he&#x27;d put it back together, but he did, so good luck to him,&quot; he said. &quot;It&#x27;s a shit guitar, I never wrote a single song on it. It was cursed.&quot;<div>© Agence France-Presse</div>

Ex-Oasis star Noel Gallagher has never been one to mince words, and his new album 'Council Skies' sees him in a reflective mood on what he sees as the miserable state of Britain.