Acquiesce

NOEL: Wrote that on the train on the way to Loco Studios for the sessions of DEFINITELY MAYBE and it got stuck on the Severn Bridge and I had my acoustic guitar.

LIAM: I remember that.

NOEL: You weren’t there! I was on my own.

LIAM: I remember that.

NOEL: I was taking it all in man. I was like ‘yeah pass me the guitar.’ Yeah, what’s that word, acquiesce, what does that mean? What I’m amazed by is the fact that you know the second verse, I only hope to say the things I wish I said, I sing myself - never sings it live, ever.

LIAM: I’ve never heard it before. What words are them? You wrote another verse?

NOEL: There’s another verse that you just refuse to sing.

LIAM: I don’t refuse man, never heard it. It’s not that I don’t like it, I’ve never heard it. The geezer who puts the words in front of me has obviously fucked it off. I just sing, I just sing what I read, man. You know what I mean?

NOEL: The geezer who puts the words in front of me!

LIAM: Jason man, you know…

NOEL: The word midget. Squats behind the monitor…

LIAM: I just sing what’s in front of me mate.

Don’t Look Back In Anger

NOEL: That was a good moment when we recorded that in the studio. I remember thinking this is going to be brilliant. That was written in an hotel room in Paris, right, when we were just on the way to Sheffield Arena to play our first ever arena gig in ’93 or ’94 and I was doing it in the sound check and it was the ‘so Sally’ bit, I wasn’t singing that, and he come up to me in the sound check and he went – ‘are you singing so Sally can wait?’

LIAM: No I walked in and said ‘I reckon you should sing so Sally can wait.’

NOEL: Alright, let’s just say for argument’s sake, right, he alluded to the fact – ‘were you singing so Sally can wait?’ And I said no and he said well you should do…

So what were you singing at the time?

NOEL: I don’t know, I was singing, I don’t know…

LIAM: He was singing Jim’ll fix it.

NOEL: I don’t know. I don’t know but get on this. I was at…

LIAM: All coming out now, innit?

NOEL: I was at a gig one night and some girl come up to me and she said real earnest like, “you know the song Don’t Look Back In Anger?” And I went ‘yeah’, and she went “is Sally, Sally Cinnamon?” And I went ‘oh that’s brilliant, I wish I’d have fucking come up with that!’

Rock N Roll Star

LIAM: That’s a song that never leaves my heart, every day I wake up man, you know what I mean, night or day. You know what I mean? That’s the way it is, man.

NOEL: He said to me one night, “all your songs are about me aren’t they?” No, I wrote that in Manchester. I don’t know, I think it’s probably – it’s one of my best ever songs.

LIAM: I think it’s the most arrogant song ever. If you were playing that in front of two people in a boardwalk…

NOEL: Yeah but at the end, it’s just rock and roll, and good night.

LIAM: And people were just like that – you dicks. We’re going working the next day and they were like… but they were the days man, playing in front of two people man, saying we were rock and roll stars…

LIAM: The thing I get from that when I sing ‘I live my life for the stars that shine’, the stars are in the crowd, do you know what I mean? I don’t know what your vibe is on it but the stars are the crowd, you know what I mean?

NOEL: I know what you’re saying. I was thinking of an astrological vibe…

So final question then, ten years from now, will we do this chat again for the second retrospective and can the tracks be as good?

NOEL: I really really hope so.

LIAM: To me it’s only like looking back at fucking old photos of your kid and going ‘oh you’re fucking joking – oh man, look at that, you’ve got an ice-cream fucking on your head and all that, remember that when you were five, your fucking kecks around your ankles. It’s just like fucking looking back in time and going there’s the fucking tune, you know what I mean? And if we don’t fucking do as many great tunes, then we’ll fucking see but who’s going to tell us we’re not going to fucking do many great tunes. I reckon we’ll be rocking till the cows come home.

END?