Black cotton shirt, £170, by Ralph Lauren Black Label. I didn’t have to wait long.īlack wool jacket, £2,100, by Dior Homme. I settled myself at right angles to him on a low suede sofa and waited for the fireworks. But for a couple of hours, the tasteful greys and muted beiges, smooth surfaces and soft furnishings of this spacious room served as Noel’s stage. Neither of us had been before and it’s not likely we’ll go again. It had been hired for the day as the location for the Esquire cover shoot. This wasn’t Noel’s house or mine, the latter possibility less likely given the size and neighbourhood and air of deep-pocketed seclusion. We met in the sitting room of a substantial house in Hampstead, North London, on a late afternoon in early autumn. “Sorry,” I said, but he’d already started on the next anecdote, so he didn’t hear me. You’re interrupting! You’re putting me in a corner!” “Honestly,” he said, exasperated, after perhaps the third such timid intervention, “you’re like my missus, you are. Only a handful of times in the two hours and more we spent talking did I - gently - attempt to steer the conversation, to pick Noel up on some small point of fact, or challenge an opinion. It’s not that one is a non-participant exactly, just that the vacancy is for an audience member and the requirement is to nod, laugh or grimace at the right moments. (I’d had a bash, of course, as you do, but I needn’t have bothered.)īetter to sit back, keep quiet, and enjoy the show. There’s little need for searching questions or penetrating insights, and good luck with trying to get a word in even if you had arrived armed with those. I hope it won’t sound too much like dereliction of duty but when the subject of an interview is as garrulous and opinionated and indiscreet and just plain entertaining. Little spotty herberts (and Radiohead) need not read on.
Exclusively for Esquire, he talks about the highs and lows of Oasis, marriage, midlife crises, fame, fatherhood, going solo and life as the last of a dying breed. Twenty years after Britpop, Noel Gallagher is still our most outspoken rock star. And the people said, 'yes.' And then it just exploded.”
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