Shitholes, USA: Noel and Liam Gallagher On When Oasis Toured America

Noel: Arriving in New York for the first time, I can look back now and think how it must have been annoying for the rest of the band, because I was like, “I’ve fucking seen Times Square, so I’m going to fucking stay in this room and get through this massive bag of psychedelics. See you at the soundcheck.” The Inspirals prepared me because I’d been on stage, even if it was only handing a guitar to somebody, you’ve kind of been out there in front of a big crowd. And I’d done tours, I’d been on tour buses, I’d been through customs, I knew what it fucking was. American customs fucking blow Liam’s mind.

“What is the purpose of your visit?” “You what?”

“Purpose of your visit.”

“What fucking visit, I’m not visiting, mate, I’m a fucking rock star. I’m here to steal your soul.”

“Okay, you can follow me now, sir, you’re coming this way.”

Liam: Never been to America, man, never been. Never been anywhere, so it was fucking great. It was mega. You could smoke on the planes then and everything. The roads were massive, and the food. I was always, “Can I get a cheese-and-ham,” then the sandwich come and I’m just sitting there getting rid of twenty layers, launching half of this food into a bin, and then going, “That’s fucking more like it.”

Noel: I meet the video director. This guy is talking director bullshit and he said to me, “I was thinking at the end we should bury the drum kit.” I said, for a laugh, drunk, “Why don’t we bury the drummer?” and he went, “Great. That’s amazing, wow, fucking hell that is amazing.” I remember looking at him thinking, is that how easy this shit is? You just suggest shite randomly? While we’re at it, why don’t we throw the singer off the Brooklyn Bridge? Fucking hell. Fucking dreadful video. I will tell you what’s good about that video, there is a bit where Liam’s strapped to a chair, halfway up a wall. Never get him to do that now.

Liam: I’d been out all night partying somewhere and I remember getting down to wherever it was on the docks, and there was this chair there. I hadn’t had any sleep and I was thinking, “Bastards are going to put me in that.” It was stupid. I was fucking singing and lip syncing and I could just hear it creaking. I think that sealed the deal for me with videos. Who fucking screws a chair to a fucking brick wall? That’s not cool, is it. The last thing you fucking want is to be stuck on a wall, you want to be on your sofa or in bed.

Jason: We did the Wetlands, a great little gig downtown, proper classic New York club, it’s great. Once you get the gig out the way, it’s head out into New York. It’s always a great city is New York, it’s got that certain something, a certain energy. I think that night we bumped into the “rock chicks.”

Noel: “Have you met the ‘rock chicks’?”

“No. What, are they a band or something?”

They were quite famous for their after-show parties and seemingly every band in the world would end up back at their apartment. One of them, Christine, would end up working for us at one point. She has remained a very dear friend of mine. There were lots of people at these parties, but they weren’t wild. Americans are like, “Fucking hell, a wild party . . . we’ve got twelve beers and half a joint!” I was like, holy shit, honestly I’ve had better parties on a fucking Wednesday afternoon.

Liam: The beers were always shit until we found a decent Irish bar. Them light beers, how do you get drunk on this shit? There was one in New York, I can’t remember what road it was off, but it was just called the Irish Pub and it was amazing. It had the best jukebox, we would go in and stay there till five in the morning. The geezer’d come over and go, “Right, lads, I’ve got to have a clean up and you’ve got to get out, we will be open at eight.” So we’d go back to the hotel, hit the mini bar for two or three hours, then we’d come back into the Irish Pub and stay there again and do the same fucking thing. It was a good crack, man.

Noel: So by the time Oasis had kind of come to do the American tour I was very focused and I was going to drive it.

Liam: I went over there with a chip on my shoulder, but a good chip. It was like, “Look, we’re going to fucking have you and we’re going to do it our way, the same as in England. You won’t be molding us to be one of your own. I wasn’t mithered whether we made it in the States. Obviously we would give it a good crack, but it would have to be on our terms. It was never about changing your style—trying to turn a fucking grape into a diamond—to sell a few records because I would have been off. If you like us, great, if you don’t, give a shit. My main thing was to make an album and be fucking great where I lived. To be the best band in my country. In America it was, if it happens it happens. I knew we were the best band in the world, regardless whether they did or not.

Noel: The contrast of getting on a plane from England, where the mania was just starting, and going to Japan, where the mania was like fucking “blam,” then getting on a plane and going to America, where nobody had heard of us, it was huge. That didn’t freak me out, I was ready for that. I don’t know if anybody else felt it was beneath them to be playing tiny little fucking nightclubs, but I was ready for that.

Jason Rhodes (roadie): The venues were really, really tiny on that first American bit and you couldn’t even fit the equipment on the stage. We just got on with it. It was a new thing: we are in America, we are going out, we are doing gigs, it’s getting well received, it’s got plenty of people, plenty of interest, and the more that we went out, the more gigs we did, more word got out and more people would turn up. I think it served its purpose. When you start off in any place you’ve got to do the smaller venues and then work your way up. You can’t just go play Wembley from doing a Saturday afternoon at the pub, can you?

Maggie Mouzakitis (tour manager): They were quite small gigs, proper little shitholes where literally you’d have a pillar down the middle of the stage and you’d have to put Liam on the side. It was the toilets of the world.

Noel: I thought the gigs were great—apart from the one in the Whisky, which was fucking appalling. The crowd reaction was mixed. You’ve got a few people down the front—and I mean a few people—not necessarily British, but anglophiles who are into it, if I’m being honest, just a little bit too into it, do you know what I mean? Then you’ve got a group of people in the middle who are completely perplexed, “Who the fuck are this lot?” And then you’ve got the people at the back who are just not interested at all. You would be playing to a thousand people a night; 750 had heard of you and the rest had come along to see what all the fuss was about. But there was a thousand leaving who were into it. So that, to me, is what it is all about. I remember enjoying it all, but I’ve heard it said that junior was a bit perplexed about going from a nice tour bus to a fucking van, but there you go.

Liam: So we went over there behaving the way we were behaving in England, and it just didn’t happen. They were like, “Get to fuck, no way.” The way we were on stage wasn’t a polished thing. They like things a bit more refined and stuff. They want to be told how great they are, don’t they?

Are you having a good fucking time? Clap your hands together. They want the big fucking thing, don’t they? Not into any of that nonsense. I never felt the pressure to move or get a little dance routine together or anything like that. Or speak to the crowd, or even acknowledge the fucking crowd. Are they here to hear us talk about our day? They are here to hear the tunes, aren’t they, surely? Once you get into that world of, “This song is about this and blah, blah, blah,” you open a can of worms because you are expected to tell some funky little story. It’s not a fucking comedy show and we are not up there for a laugh, we are up there to fucking sing and play music, I ain’t saying fuck all. They were confused when there would be no chatting or banter in between the songs. It would just go silent— sometimes people get awkward around silences, where I thrive on it. My vibe was get your head down and get on with it, blast their souls into a good place with your music. We’ll have a chat later in the bar.

Noel: I’ve never been one that actually gave a shit about what the audience felt. I’ve done plenty of gigs where you are looking out at the audience and thinking, “I wonder if they are getting it?” Particularly in America where they’re blankly looking at you. But I don’t give a fuck whether they are getting it or not, as long as they are there, I don’t give a shit.

Liam: I haven’t begged you to come here, you’re going to get it how we want to give it you and, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to come back. I wasn’t doing it for them, I was doing it for us. They just didn’t get it, and so be it. Fair play to them. They weren’t budging and neither were we, at least there are people with a bit of integrity.

Noel: We were winning over a lot of skeptics. We were doing a gig, in Washington or New York; we did “Cigarettes & Alcohol” in the soundcheck and it was fucking great. I remember there are lots of crew putting a PA up and all that—generic crew in Black Sabbath T-shirts, shorts, key chains, and the long hair—and when we finished the whole place just started clapping.

There is a lot of shit you have to do in America. For instance, on that trip, me and Liam got taken off to a recording studio and given a sheet of paper with all these one-liners for radio stations. We had never done this before, I was never aware of it when I was a roadie, this is fucking news to me. So we were looking at each other and going, “What do you want us to do? Read these out? There are like blank spaces.”

“Yes, well, put your name in the blank spaces and read it out.”

So there’s me and Liam round one mic going, “Hey! This is Noel and Liam from Oasis and you’re listening to WX9 fucking blah, blah, blah the only place to listen to modern rock in the whole of the fucking universe.”

I think it might have lasted to about the third one and we are like, “No, this is not going to fucking happen.” And that kind of set the tone for our relationship with Epic records in America.

Liam: I had gone in to do some interviews in a Sony Music building. This guy was sat there, throwing this American football up in the air.

“You the guy from Oasis, man? I’m such and such, head of . . . You must think yourself really lucky in the position you’re in.”

“Why is that then?”

“Being signed to Sony Music.”

“You’re lucky that you’ve got a band like us on your fucking label.”

Some fucking big knobhead who doesn’t even know who you are and doesn’t care, telling you how fucking lucky you are to be on his label. Fuck off, knobhead; you’re lucky to have us. You’re lucky there’s a band like us that give a shit. Now put your cigar down, put my beer down, and get the fuck out of me room, fatty.

Noel: You don’t realize until you get there, the amount of fucking bullshit you have to do. You’re expected to go and meet the guy who runs the biggest record shop in that state. Not only the guy that runs the record fucking shop, but the guy’s wife and their kids. To me that’s all fucking bullshit. That was a thing that went on for years in America. It was like, “We’re not playing a game here to be contrary or to be cool; I don’t want to go and sit in a fucking meeting with a load of radio people. I don’t want to do it.” I feel uncomfortable. When they talk, it’s like they are talking about somebody else. There was this dinner thing and I said to this guy I would go, but I don’t want anybody to talk to me, I’ve got nothing to say. This guy stands up and announces, “He’s coming here, but he doesn’t want to speak to anyone.” Everybody started clapping. So fucking cool. I was really embarrassed, I remember sweating, thinking get me out of here. We famously went to a thing in L.A. before a gig and we were taken by the head of somebody to meet some sales team in a fucking room. The guy was such a fucking bellend he introduced us as Leyland and Norton. Liam said, “What? One of us named after a fucking car firm, the other one’s a motorbike.”

Liam: It wasn’t like, “Either get us or we’re going home!” We definitely went back for more in America, but not to the point of selling our souls. It wasn’t if you don’t get us after one gig—you should do because we are fucking great— we’re going home. We knew it would be a long process and we definitely grafted over there as much as we did over here, it just didn’t happen as big as what people thought it might have.

(Mark) Coyley (producer): There is all this pressure on bands to break America, you know, everybody sees it as so important. But breaking America quite often breaks the fucking band, because they’re that concerned about it. It’s that vast, fuck me, man, you could tour forever. You have a good time and all that, but I tell you what, when you get home, your carpet doesn’t look the same. That was always a sign for me, you don’t recognize your own fucking stuff when you get home. That means you’ve been somewhere too long; you need grounding again.

Liam: He lived in Liverpool, his carpet probably wasn’t the fucking same. Someone had probably been in and had it.

Noel: We would get subtitled on MTV, which I found fucking hilarious. People would say, “Does that offend you in any way?” I would be, “No, I think it’s fucking brilliant.” Life should be subtitled.

Liam: I had a feeling they’d never take to us. I just wanted to go home, to be fair. Can we just go back to England where we are fucking massive and everything is great. People get us and we don’t need subtitles and people call me Liam instead of Leyton? I know a load of big bands that have been great in the world, but I know they’ve been bent over and fucked up the arse to get to that status. I’m quite happy where I am. I can sit down and my bum doesn’t hurt. So I am quite happy with that.

Noel: The American thing exhausted me a little bit. I never got two minutes to sit and have a cig and stare out the window. “Got to come and see Marty. Marty’s in town, you’ll fucking love this guy!” Who the fuck’s Marty, you know what I mean? I was glad when it passed if I am being honest. I guess I was beginning, at that point, to see my own limitations and I didn’t like it.

Liam: In England people kind of got what we were about more. Abroad it was like “Who the fuck are these fuckers?” and I guess the standing still and the staring people out or not saying much, people thought that we were trying to cause shit, but we weren’t, we just didn’t have fuck all to say. We were there to sing music. I think people just wanted to have a pop and all that, but some days you’d walk on stage and go, “Right, this is going to be a bit of a battle.”

Noel: The funny thing is, in the States we made it because we weren’t English. There was no English blood in anybody in that band. Blur’s tunes were about the quirkiness of English life and English things; that won’t come as a surprise to anyone, them being English and very English. Pulp’s songs were witty and northern; that won’t come as any surprise. My songs weren’t either of those things, my songs were quite universal, the words were kind of inclusive. I wasn’t picking any scabs off my heroin-riddled arm. We are all about having a good time—as Spinal Tap as that sounds. You don’t sell out Madison Square Garden singing songs about Walkers crisps and the delights of an Eccles cake; you don’t do the Hollywood Bowl raving about Vimto, I’ll fucking tell you that for nowt. And “Cigarettes & Alcohol” means the same to the lad from Burnage who wrote it as it did ten years later to the kid in Brooklyn listening to it. So I didn’t think we were going to struggle over there. We struggled over there because of our personalities. We were on a massive corporate record label and we are not corporate people, at all. Professionalism meant nothing to us, it was beneath us. I’ll turn up for interviews and all that; I am not spending eight hours on a photo shoot for Rolling Stone, they can kiss my arse. In the end we fucking smashed the arse out of it in America. For a brief period we were sell-ing more albums in America than we were in England. It was only six months, but we were the biggest band in the world. I know what it feels like to be in the biggest band in the world . . . even if it was only while U2 were having a cig somewhere. We still did it, and I can tell you it is fucking hard work and we treated it with the contempt it deserved.

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Excerpted from Supersonic: The Complete, Authorized, and Uncut Interviews by Oasis. Curated by Simon Halfon. Copyright © 2021 by Nemperor Ltd, Burnage Films Ltd, Big Brother Recordings Ltd. Published in the United States by Crown, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Originally published in hardcover by Headline Publishing Group, London, in 2021. Lyrics reproduced by kind permission of the publisher: Dead Leg Music / Sony / ATV Music Publishing Ltd.