Album Review: Noel Gallagher ‘High Flying Birds’ : March 31, 2012

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Gallagher recently spoke--in his typical unfiltered manner--on the subject of bands putting out new material past what some would cons [...]

Noel Gallagher Extends World Tour into Spring : November 15, 2011

Noel Gallagher and his new band, the High Flying Birds, only have a few more days left of their current mini-tour around the United States, but they’ll be back. The [...]

noel gallagher Biography

Noel Gallagher is the former principal songwriter and lead guitarist of the Britpop act Oasis, best known for hit singles such as ‘Wonderwall’, ‘Champagne Supernova’ and ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’. At present, he now fronts a freshly formed rock band named Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, following his abrupt departure from Oasis in 2009 and the subsequent demise of the band.

Born on May 29, 1967 to working class Irish parents, Manchester-native Noel had a rough childhood. His alcoholic father had consistently beaten him and his two other brothers, resulting to his introversion and stammering, a speech defect or condition he and his younger brother Liam shared as youngsters. As a student, he and Liam were often caught cutting classes, but it was after throwing a bag of flour onto one of his teachers that got him expelled from school. As a teenager, he lived on the wrong side of the tracks, enjoying the company of notorious bullies such as Maine Line Crew, Young Guvnors and Under-5s. His great aptitude and proficiency for music particularly for playing the guitar was first harnessed during a lengthy idle time he had to serve as part of his probation after he was charged of robbery. He looked to Johnny Marr of The Smiths as one of his first and biggest musical influences.

While he was working as the Inspiral Carpets’ roadie and technician during the late ‘80s, he learned that Liam started a band named The Rain. He joined the band after Liam and the rest of the group agreed that they will utilize Noel’s material, as such he earned the moniker ‘The Chief’ and right before they were discovered, they christened themselves as Oasis. Noel’s time with Oasis sparked the birth – along the with other English bands such as Blur and Suede – of the Britpop music movement, a backlash from the surge of pessimistic grunge-rock sounds from the US, infesting the English rock music scene at the beginning of the ‘90s. In fact, NME credits Noel as the initiator of the genre, tagging other rock outfits of the same musical style such as Cast, The Boo Radleys and Ocean Colour Scene as ‘Noelrock’ acts, defined by John Harris as having "a dewy-eyed love of the 1960s, a spurning of much beyond rock's most basic ingredients, and a belief in the supremacy of 'real music’”. Apart from being one of – if not the – originator of Britpop, Noel’s time with Oasis also sparked a tumultuous and controversial life under the spotlight involving extensive drug abuse, brawls with fans, critics and even with his own brother Liam, and more than a handful of public remarks and harsh criticisms – verbal and in print – towards other music acts, political figures, his family and life in general that had put him in hot water. Among those were his remarks towards the band Blur, which was considered as Oasis’ greatest rival during the peak of the Britpop music movement. His comment regarding Blur’s Damon Albarn and Alex James back in 1995 as printed on The Observer was perhaps his most controversial to date, saying that he wishes for the two “to catch AIDS and die”, a remark which he quickly withdrew by saying that "AIDS is no laughing matter." After more than a decade of recording and touring successes and cringe-worthy and infamously news-making lifestyle choices and antics, Oasis eventually disbanded following the departure of Noel in 2009, citing long-standing verbal and violent conflicts with Liam.

A year after, he started a new alt-rock group named Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, with the name denoting the extent of his control – creatively and in management – over the act. It practically seemed like the act was a one-man band. In October 2011, Noel and the band released their eponymous debut with the lead single ‘The Death of You and Me’ generating mostly rave reviews. The album also spawned the single ‘AKA…What a Life!’ and his first US single solely credited to him, ‘If I Had a Gun…’ By 2012, a yet-to-be-named follow-up is expected to hit the market. The set features an extensive collaboration with electro act Amorphous Androgynous, which he described as "sounds a bit like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. The sound is similar to High Flying Birds, but more psychedelic and tripped out."