STACK NZ Mar #60

58 / 58

NOEL GALLAGHER
2 1
Space jazz? Saxophone solos? Disco
beats? Former Oasis man Noel
Gallagher has certainly wrung the
sonic changes for Chasing Yesterday, his
second solo album with the High Flying
Birds.
While the self-titled 2011 debut didn’t
stray too far from the familiar Oasis
template, his new set sees him in a much
more adventurous mood, partly because
this time he also sat in the producer’s
chair.
With no producer to bend and shape
him into any one direction, Gallagher
was determined to let the High
Flying Birds take flight, even if he
describes the experience of being
“a major pain in the arse”.
“It’s not that I’ve ever had
people telling me what to write
or what direction to go in,”
he continues. “But managing
sessions from one end of
the week to the other proved
extremely difficult. I’m not one for
taking notes, whereas producers
have systems to know how to book
session musicians and so on. I had all
these people looking at me and saying:
‘right, what are we doing today?’ I was
making the whole thing up as I went
along.”
Probably the most out-there track on
Chasing Yesterday is The Right Stuff. “I
played The Right Stuff to a mate of mine,”
recalls Gallagher. “And he said: ‘finally’.
I didn’t know what he meant at first, but
then I realised. The Right Stuff is space
jazz. We used to take the piss out of space
jazz in Oasis. When people told us we
weren’t adventurous we would say, ‘what
do you want, space jazz?’ And now I’ve
made a track that is real, actual, spaced-
out jazz. And you know what? It’s great.”
A saxophone is also not something
you would normally associate with Oasis,
yet there it is on the opening track.
Gallagher reckons it was time to make the
instrument cool again.
to that saxophone, please, don’t think
about the guy from Spandau Ballet. Think
about a dude from New Orleans in 1963,
smacked out of his head and incredibly
cool, because it’s time to reclaim the
saxophone.”
Elsewhere on Chasing Yesterday, there
are also few nods to the dancefloor,
particularly on the singles In The Heat Of
The Moment and Ballad Of The Mighty
I, the latter featuring fellow Manc icon
Johnny Marr.
However, long-time fans will be
pleased to know that Gallagher hasn’t
lost his knack for writing hook-laden
anthems and the likes of You Know
We Can’t Go Back, The Dying Of
The Light and Lock All The Doors
wouldn’t sound out of place on
an Oasis album.
In fact, Lock All The Doors
is actually a song that has
taken Gallagher 23 years to
complete. He gave a verse of
an early draft of the song to the
Chemical Brothers for their 1996
number one hit Setting Sun, thinking
he would complete it soon afterwards,
but it never came together until he had a
flash of inspiration while on the visit to the
supermarket in 2013.
“It’s always like that: songs fall out of
the sky in a moment of inspiration and you
have to be ready for it,” says Gallagher,
“And if that moment arrives when you’re
coming out of Tesco Metro on a Sunday
after [Manchester] City have just drawn
one-all with Everton, that’s how it goes.
I found the missing melody there and
then.”
“We made a demo of Riverman and
we knew it was amazing. And then I was
listening to [sax-laden one-hit wonder
from 1974] Pinball by Brian Protheroe and
thought: Shall I? And what if I get him to
play not one but two solos? I know I’m
going to be accused of sax crimes but
f*** it. This is not Oasis. There’s nobody
to tell me not to do it. And when you listen