Following last night's show at the Sound Academy, we caught up with ex-Oasis members Liam Gallagher and Gem Archer to talk about their new band, their love of Toronto and why all you techno-loving futurists can just fuck off.
Oasis has always received a great reception in Toronto, V-Fest aside . How do you feel about the city?
Liam : The shows have always been good, I’ve always enjoyed coming back here. I look forward to coming back here. Nice city, nice people.
Your wife is originally from Hamilton. I understand that, at some point, you were considering moving here.
Liam : I’m not living here yet. My wife [Nicole Appleton] is doing a TV show out here [CBC's Cover Me ] though so I’ll be in town for a couple of weeks.
Will we be seeing you out in the city?
Liam : Of course I’m going out. I’ve got my kid with me, I’ll be hitting the streets, man, looking for people to push over.
Since you brought it up, was there any ill effects on our reputation after that V-Fest incident?
Liam : I got no fear about anything. One person is not going to stop us from coming to Toronto. It was a dark force that needs to be put out.
Did you ever get to see the attacker, face to face?
Liam : No, I never got to. It was more to do with Noel [Gallagher] than to me.
You wear a Union Jack jacket on stage. Do you still feel you and your music still represent the British sensibility?
Liam : Yeah, but it’s past that. We’re thinking on a worldwide scale now. We’re thinking outside of England. But I’m definitely proud of being English. I love everything that England stands for when it comes to clothes, fashion, music, football—the culture is cool. The Union Jack just fucking looks cool. There’s no big statement, it’s just a fucking coat, mate.
One of the main knocks against Oasis were the simple lyrics. Do you feel that you get a chance to rectify that with Beady Eye?
Liam : Not really. I’ve got absolutely nothing remotely important to say that hasn’t been said before, so I’m just gonna say what comes into my fucking head. If it works, and it’s true and it’s not bullshit and it’s not pissing anyone off I’m quite happy with that. I’ve got nothing big that I want to get off my chest. I just want to get to the end of the song and go, “Those are some nice cool words I put together there. They’re not changing the world.”
Gem : Everything he just said to me is a political statement because everything he just said there is about being yourself. What you just said about Oasis, that’s the first thing that just hit me about how great them lyrics are. I mean, “you might as well do the white line “—that’s a political statement right?
Liam : So you can be adept at fancy words but, if it don’t ring true, it’s all gone tomorrow.
You’ve spent most of your career as a representative of the common, lower-to-middle class man, a working-class hero if you will. Do you still feel you relate to that?
Liam : We’re just doing music. It’s not about the fucking working class, it’s about playing music.
What lessons did you take from being in Oasis that you’ve implemented in Beady Eye?
Gem : It’s all about the music. We don’t sit around thinking of gimmicks to compete with the Black Eyed Peas. It’s just you write your songs the best you can, record them the best you can and you play them you better fucking give it.
The Beady Eye album [Different Gear, Still Speeding ] has a much more grungy, club feel, in contrast to Oasis’ anthemic hit machine. Are you still aiming to challenge for pop acts for stadium touring or do you feel this band is better suited for sweaty clubs?
Liam : I don’t think you go out trying to write a stadium tune unless you’re Dave fucking Grohl. That’d be mental: [air strums ] “Well, that’s a fucking tune but it’s not good enough for a stadium,” do you know what I mean? If it’s a fucking good tune, it’s a good tune anywhere. The idea is [to be] the best band in the world and the biggest band in the world, without a fucking doubt. We’re happy where we are now but come album two we want to blow that first album out of the water. And if that means more people like it and we get to play in a stadium again then so be it, but there’s no fucking rush. I’m not desperate to get back in a stadium.
Let’s talk about album two. What’s the crack with that?
Gem : Album one was about keeping moving. If we had taken a year off it would have been hard to press that red button. So the next one, because we’ve got a better perspective on ourselves, there will be natural changes. With the first one it was just our set so we didn’t want to get too studio on it.
Liam : I think we have to wait and see with the songs, do y’know what I mean? You can only push the song so far before it disintegrates. If a certain song has room to be fucking huge it’s gonna be huge.
Gem : I can’t see us spending months and months in the studio.
The Beatles had the Rolling Stones and, to a lesser extent, the Beach Boys to push them creatively. Who do you see as Beady Eye’s friendly rival?
Liam : The Beatles and The Stones. For me there’s no one personally that I’m sitting here shitting it about.
Do you consider Kasabian peers, considering they more or less took over the Oasis fan-base?
Liam : No they didn’t. No one takes anything off me. What we do may not be hip at-the-moment but it’ll come back. I’m not having fucking techno-sounds in a rock and roll album.
Gem : We just tend to bounce off Elvis rather than the Wombats.
Liam : We just did a tune the other day for something coming up. We were in there for four hours, Gem recorded it and mixed it and that was that. Shit like that is like old-school Elvis fucking tackle. That shit gets me off more so than going up against the likes of Kasabian or whoever. Recording like that is where it’s fucking at. It’s about taking it back old-school, it’s not about taking it forward. Fuck the future!
Do you feel that Noel’s solo album might be the one that there might be the one that pushes you, if only for the sibling rivalry?
Liam : I think he’s going to write a good album with a lot of good songs on it. If people want to make it a rivalry then bring it fucking on. I don’t care who the hell it is, even if it was me mum. If me mum put out an album she’s be getting it as well. I am pretty competitive and that can be a bad thing but fuck it, I like it.
