Is there a story to be told in the tracks that you’ve picked a definitive timeline?

NOEL: To me, the songs that are on it are the songs that we generally have played live over the last fourteen years or however long it’s been. Those are the songs that I, feel is our best work. Five of us, four of us can’t sit in a room and pick a track listing. I always pick the set list and if anyone’s got a problem with it they say right I’m not doing that, I’m not doing that, I’m not doing that. It’s the same with the track list. I picked it, it all went round, I didn’t get any of the usual phone calls at you know quarter to four in the morning, I didn’t get one of them so I assumed that everybody was happy with it.

What’s it called?

NOEL: Were calling it STOP THE CLOCKS!.

LIAM: We might put a bookmark in like ‘that’s what we’ve done’. If I can understand it then, so can the rest of the country.

NOEL: Precisely. I didn’t put it together because that bit’s great playing or that starts an amazing recording because listening back to them some are not some great recordings, do you know what I mean? Some of the later stuff is brilliantly recorded but…!

LIAM: You want it to sound like a nice flowing record, you know what I mean?

THE SONGS

Supersonic

NOEL: You know a lot of bands’ first singles, they’re kind of finding their feet a bit you know. We hit the ground running with that one. That song, at the time it comes out, separated us from every other single band in the country that were all (still) immersed in irony. It’s still a blinder to me, still sounds like it was written and recorded yesterday. Written and recorded in one night in Liverpool. We went in to do a demo of Bring It On Down for the gig and we couldn’t get it right and we had to have something, and I went in the back room and wrote Supersonic in about half-hour. It was never re-mixed either. A magical night, it was brilliant.

Lyla

NOEL: I never realised how good it was until we went out and played it live. All the gigs all around the world people were going bananas for that song and that never nearly made it onto Don’t Believe The Truth, never mind this…

LIAM: Yeah, I love it man, I love it. I love the guitars, I love the drums, love the vocals, love it all mate. It’s dead easy. It’s not cryptic or anything it’s just an out and out great rock and roll tune.

Talk Tonight

NOEL: We were on our first tour of America and, funnily enough, me and the singer had a falling-out. I got the needle and got my passport back off the tour manager and said right, that’s it, ‘I’m out of here’ and got in a taxi and went to San Francisco and then to Las Vegas, and just had a bit of a lost week. And that’s when I wrote that song and Half the World Away and It’s Good To Be Free.

I managed to get hold of a copy of… I think it was a Melody Maker and we’d already booked this tour in England and it had all sold out and there was an advert saying all the gigs had sold out. I kind of met up with this girl and she was going, “you’d be mad if it’s all blown up over there, you know, you got to do the tour!” And I was like ‘yeah man, fuck it!’

So if you hadn’t have met that girl, would you inevitably have been back with Oasis a week later or is that an important meeting?

NOEL: No no, no I’d have gone, of course I’d have gone back. What are they going to do without me?

Wonderwall

NOEL: It’s not one of my favourites but it is a great song. I’ve heard a version of it by Ryan Adams and it is brilliant.

Some Might Say

NOEL: To me, that’s the archetypical Oasis song, I think. It’s kind of – you know like the archetypical Beatles song is We Can Work It Out, that’s what defines Beatles music. I think Some Might Say defines what Oasis is. That song freaks me out because it’s on MORNING GLORY and to me when I think about it, I think of it as a one-off single on its own with Acquiesce because it wasn’t recorded at the MORNING GLORY sessions. It was done way before that. I wrote it in a bed-sit when I was poor. I was living in Chiswick then. At those points I used to write really pissed and out of it so I can’t remember what I was thinking about. I really don’t know what it’s about to be honest. But it’s in there because it’s our first number one as well and nobody wrote songs like that at that time with that kind of rock and roll riff you know. We had that, every tune was like that. It was brilliant.