Noel Gallagher has discussed what a potential Oasis reunion would look like, now he and the rock band’s former members have reached a “certain age”.
The High Flying Birds frontman has previously rejected the idea that the band, fronted by his younger brother Liam, will ever get back together.
However, he sounded less opposed to the idea in his latest interview, in which he joked that he’d have to see “what everyone’s hair was looking like”.
“My hair was a bit thicker in Oasis. We’d have to see what everyone’s hair was looking like,” he said, in an interview for Gibson’s “Icons” series.
He then claimed that a reunion would likely involve him, Liam, and “a load of fit f***ing birds”.
Oasis split up in 2009 after 18 years of performing together, following a bitter feud between Noel and Liam which has yet to come to an end.
Discussing Oasis’s early days, Noel said it was remarkable how they managed to get by.
“Have you seen the shot from the side of the stage at Knebworth?” he asked, referring to the band’s historic shows at the Knebworth Festival in 1996. “I’ve got a pedalboard on a piece of plywood, it’s got a delay pedal and a tuner.
“125,000 people each night and I didn’t have a proper pedalboard.”
Liam returned to Knebworth Park last year to play a number of Oasis’s greatest hits, along with a number of his own solo tracks. The live performances were then turned into an album, released earlier this month, which topped the UK’s official albums chart.
Oasis at Knebworth in 1996— (PA Archive)
Appearing on the Pub Talk podcast in October last year, Noel said that it would take “a set of extraordinary circumstances” for fans to see Oasis perform together.
“I don’t like going back over things. I always say to people, ‘Would you go on holiday with your ex missus?’” he said.
“Oasis sell as many records now, per year, as we did when we were together,” he continued. “We’re as popular now, in the eyes of the people, as we ever were and I’m happy with it.
“If we got back together, it would be a circus and there’s no point. Just leave it as it is. I’m happy, [Liam’s] doing his thing, he’s f***ing selling out Knebworth, it’s like, ‘Mate, good luck to you.’”
However, in an interview on Radio X earlier this year, Noel was asked by host Johnny Vaughan whether he’d agree to an Oasis reunion for £8m.
“You said (previously), ‘If you turn up to my house with eight million quid cash in an Adidas bag, I’d put them back together’,” Vaughan reminded him.
“If I was the middleman in that, we still up for that?”
“I would consider it... I would properly consider it, yeah,” Noel responded.
Noel Gallagher has discussed a potential Oasis reunion— (Getty Images for Bauer Media)
Noel’s High Flying Birds released their latest album, Council Skies, in June this year, with single “Dead to the World” praised by Liam as a “beautiful song”.
In a four-star review for The Independent, critic Helen Brown wrote: “It’s an easygoing and expansive record, which finds Gallagher relaxing into his knack for big, bittersweet tunes. His whole band is playing for the first time (usually, mostly it’s just him) and the communal spirit generates a new sense of space. Emotions soar and swoop, while the rhymes roll predictably into place.”
She concluded: “Gallagher urges fans to ‘remember the dream you’re keeping alive’ and whacks out the consoling platitudes to chords that feel as easy to sink into as the sofa decorating the sleeve of Definitely Maybe. Similarly, Council Skies is guaranteed to make the old fans feel right at home.”
Additional reporting by Press Association
