NOEL ON AMERICA
America: you're selling, but do they get it?
"Americans just fundamentally do not get it. That is the one thing about Yanks, right? They. Do. Not. Get. It. Whatever it is, they
don't fucking get it. We did an interview for Rolling Stone. Now we've been photographed by some pretty fucking famous
photographers down the years, but we turn up for the cover shoot, me and our kid, right? And we go, Right, an hour, and then
we're fucking leaving because we've got bad hangovers... We only do half an hour for any other cunt in England, so it gets to an
hour and this bloke's been fiddling about all afternoon. It suddenly dawned on me that he didn't know what the fuck he was doing.
So I says to him, Have you ever done this before, you cunt, or what? He says, No no, I usually do fashion shoots, this is the first
time I've ever photographed a band. So I said to the woman from Rolling Stone, Are you taking the fucking piss? And she goes,
Well, usually our cover shoots take about eight hours - when Pearl Jam done it... We were like, You could not have picked one
single worse fuckin' sentence in the world. You have got precisely another eight minutes left to get this cover and we're out of
here. Anyway, this cunt was an fuckin' arsehole and the woman was a bitch, so in the end, we just booted over a few chairs, told
her to fuck off and left.
Is that why the article turned out pretty nasty?
"They send this journalist all the way to England. He doesn't interview any of the band for more
than five minutes, he goes to the Brits and sees us pissed up swearing on the telly, and then goes on
about all the drugs and rock & roll behaviour, two years behind everybody else. And his whole vibe
when he interviewed the rest of the band was, How much of a cunt is he to you lot? They were
like, Well, he ain't! And he's going, No, no, it's the same in any band, Kurt Cobain was a cunt to
everyone else... He kept on and on, and until one by one, they all walked out. Americans think that
English bands have got a foul attitude, because English bands have got a foul attitude towards
American journalists, because American journalists are fucking wankers. Simple as that."
Rolling Stone weren't the only people to criticise the lyrics on 'Morning Glory'. Did that
hurt you? Or make you want to try harder this time?
"It doesn't hurt me. Everything they say is fundamentally true. My lyrics don't mean that fuckin' much. "You've gotta roll with it"
Ð what the fuck does that mean? It pissed people off that I just admitted to it and went, Well, it must mean something to someone.
Because all these people (gestures towards 125,000 crowd) don't turn up for nothing. Ryder's lyrics don't mean fuck all, but he's a
genius, inne? People say, Why are we not supposed to look back in anger? I don't fucking know. Because it sounds good on a
fuckin' record, you stupid cunt. Just sing it, you might have a good time.
"I must say, I've tried harder this time. When you've got no-one, a Keith Richards or someone, to push you on and say, Maybe
that's a bit shit... With the last album, it was like, Fuck it, that'll do. This time, I sat down and thought about why I was writing the
song in the first place, tell a few stories. So they took quite a long time, really. But people have got a set attitude towards the band.
I'm the songwriter, the brains behind the band, the quiet, calm one. Liam's the nutcase, and then there's the other three. The tunes
are really good and catchy, but the lyrics are shit. I don't think that attitude's ever gonna change, so I'm arsed, me."