Noel Gallagher was asked about Paul McCartney not talking about The Beatles after he left, but his attitude later changing. He was asked if it’s the same for him and Oasis.
He told GQ, “The only person I asked was Paul Weller, who is one of my oldest friends, and his attitude towards all this was “F**k them”, which was great. So it only dawned on me further down the line that actually the High Flying Birds is my Style Council.
When I saw the documentary about them recently, it brought it all into focus: they had a black girl in their band and I have a black girl now and a French girl and so on. Jam fans were saying to Weller, “What the fuck are you doing?” And Jam fans and Oasis fans are kind of cut from the same cloth, very f**king laddish and identity driven.
It’s really character building when you play a song from Oasis, which everyone knows and the place goes f**king apeshit, and then you play your new stuff and there’s clearly a f**king drop-off in people digging it. And in between those songs, people are constantly shouting out for stuff that you wrote 20 years ago.
But you either sink or swim and you have to actually look these people in the eye and say, “F**k them.” Weller never played anything by The Jam that I’m aware of for about ten years and even then he wouldn’t play “A Town Called Malice”. I feel that if I play “Don’t Look Back in Anger”, “Wonderwall” and “Half The World Way” and that still isn’t enough, I’m thinking, “Aren’t enough? What more do you want?”
