"I have to say that in the strangest way I know
exactly what the mad little f**k means ," says Noel.
The Gallaghers lead me outside the hotel and make me
smoke cigarettes. There are still some fans and a video crew present. Noel
leads them in a football chant of "We love you Michael, oh yes we
do!" I want to follow a Gallagher evening to its bitter end, but at some
point I am bundled into a lift and sent skyward to my room.
Next morning at Milan's Malpensa Airport, I catch sight
of a body clutching a hotel laundry bag lying on the black marble floor of
check-in. It's Noel Gallagher.
After leaving the hotel lounge he slept on his toilet floor because he couldn't
find the light switch.
A FULL WEEK after our trip to Milan, Noel Gallagher calls
me out of the blue at home. Not to retract quotes or what he might have done at
4am when he was incapacitated by alcohol, but because he thinks lying prone on
the floor of an airport check-in is no way to get interview closure.
He says he's glad I saw how the brothers really are. No
one ever really understands that beneath the vicious teasing and goading lies
an intense amount of interdependence. It's an odd marriage but the bond is
strong.
"People don't see what I've had to put up with for
30-odd years," he says. "But also they don't see that if we keep the
right distance it still really works."
I say that at 4am when the drink tales hold and things
get said, you do feel the edge, the fraternal darkness. You get a sense of what
Barcelona might have been like.
You say you love him but you don't like him, especially
when he's drunk. He crossed a line in Barcelona for which he cannot be
forgiven. What is so dire it can't be forgiven?
NG: OK, in Barcelona he questioned the legitimacy of my
daughter [at the time there were rumours - entirely untrue - that Noel was not
her real father]. And even now I can remember being on him and punching him and
splitting his lip and thinking, "He never really said that, did he?"
But he did and I've never forgiven him because he's never apologised. I would
apologise for something like that. I hope he's reading this and realises that.
He's my brother but he's at arm's length until he says sorry for what he's
done.
IN 10 YEARS the Gallagher struggle has gone from an
outward "us against the world" to an inward "do I really like
you?". Wives and band personnel have come, played a role in the two-handed
drama, and gone. Incredibly, the fans have stayed. Sold-out dates across the
globe show people really do care how this all works out. The Gallaghers know
the future is in their hands.
Read brand new interviews with the members of Oasis
from Michael Odell, Tom Doyle and Sylvia Patterson in the new Q issue 267, on
newsstands September 1. |
