Liam: "As much as people like to think that Beady Eye are stuck in a rut, we’re not. We like to take chances and this manager guy goes, "look, you don’t want to go with a run of the mill [producer], you want something a little bit leftfield and I think it might work". If it didn’t work then we might have gone back and started again. I thought that by hearing his music I might have been put off so I just went with the flow, man. I just said, "fuck it. We start at 12 on Monday" and I knocked on the door, he opened it and went, "I’m Dave" and I went, "I’m Liam" and we cracked on. He’d already started work on Flick Of The Finger and we went, "whoah! I like that, man!" and then we got to Soul Love. We saw that he started doing his magic and I thought, "fucking hell"! So we said, "carry on doing what you’re doing ‘cause it’s amazing!
There are a few songs where Dave’s magic didn’t work on so we went back to how it was. But yeah, man, the main thing was staying out of the way and letting the magic happen. And I think there’s a lot of magic on this album whereas there wasn’t on Different Gear Still Speeding – which isn’t to say it was a bad album and I’m not having a dig at it – but Dave Sitek is the bollocks, man."
Liam, you’re a rock star with everything that goes with it. Does it bother you how you’re portrayed in the tabloids, where being a figure of fun – ie riding a dog when you’re drunk or asking for tickets for the Chelsea Flower Show – seems to overshadow what you do musically?
LG: That’s what rock stars do. I haven’t got a motorbike licence, so a dog it is! I don’t care, mate, I really don’t care. I don’t want to be took as a ‘serious musician’ either. I find that a fucking insult, an’ all. It’s boring and not colourful. I’ll leave that to some other cunt. It’s all a little mix of fun, you know what I mean? I don’t mind; it’s no skin off my nose if that’s what they want to write.
Andy: I quite enjoy the stories, I’ve got to say. The dog one is a classic. That had me rolling around.
LG: It’s fucking funny. It’s great, man! But there was no dog there. It’s fucking funny how they take a picture of you having a beer but where’s the picture of me riding the dog? Show me the picture of me riding the dog and I’ll give it to you. But I could’ve rode a dog but I don’t know; I was pissed!
A: I’m pretty sure you rode a dog.
LG: I don’t know! I’ve ridden quite a few dogs in my time and I’ve remembered every single fucking one of them!
And as for the Chelsea Flower Show, I don’t know where they got that from. Seriously, mate. Here’s what happened, right. They rang Pretty Green and they asked would I design a gnome? Like, Elton John’s doing one, Ringo Starr’s doing one and Rod Stewart’s doing one. I was somewhere else and they said, no, that’s not cool, and when I found out about it I said they should’ve fucking told me that. I can design a gnome, man; it’d be cool. I’d do a little one of me and put it in the garden; it’d be great! It didn’t happen but it must have come from that but I didn’t apply for tickets. You know me; if I did I’d fucking tell you.
But don’t these inaccuracies piss you off?
LG: No, but they’re just stupid. When they’re talking malicious shit about your personal life and all that then you get the needle but all that stuff is just stupid and I find it funny. I don’t even think about it. I just get on with things. If those dicks want to write it then let them write it.
[the problem is many people believe them, and spread their hate... also, dogs was an unhappy subject to choose, as Liam did good things for the dogs... it's been chosen probably on purpose]
It was widely reported that Liam had been fallen out with The Stone Roses after a backstage altercation. Was that an accurate assessment?
LG: No. I’ll tell you all about that. Me and Andy were in Dubai and our families were there. We’d gone there and we were nowhere near the mixing desk. I wasn’t slung out of the gig and I’ve never spilt beer on anyone’s mixing desk; not even mine. It was Ian Brown’s birthday party and we’d gone back with him to the hotel and we’d had a fucking drink with him and we then we got off.
The only thing I can think of where this story came from is that The Stone Roses have a couple of dicks working for them that used to work for Oasis and that still work for Noel. I might have had a bit of a go at one of them and they might have just bullshitted some story. I know The Stone Roses well enough to know that they’re not two-faced cunts [like Noel] so if they did have a problem with me they’d ring me or they’d say it to my face. I’m not buying it; it’s just some bullshit. I just move on.
You’ve said of the album that, “If you’re into drugs you’ll like it. It’s pretty druggy.” What drugs are you thinking of?
LG: Well, I didn’t mean it like ‘druggy’. What I meant was that if you’re open-minded you can listen to it without drugs. But if you do like drugs then I’m sure it’s going to be pretty spectacular. There was a lot of weed getting smoked in the studio but none of the other stuff. It was pure weed.
I was going to ask you about that because Soon Come Tomorrow does sound like an instruction to smoke a joint [‘Smoke it, don’t drop it/ right to the end/ Breathe in, breathe out/ and then breathe in again…’].
A: [laughs] Yeah, it’s symbolic!
LG: That’s the vibe I got from it, an’ all! I don’t smoke it during the week; I only have it in the studio with this lot. I’m not a big weed head but I’m not anti-weed. I was brought up on it. I fucking love it but I just don’t do it as much any more.
So was the intention to make a psychedelic album?
LG: We didn’t set out to do it like that. We just went in there with a load of songs we thought were great, regardless of Dave Sitek, and they’re a bunch of good second album songs. It was only until we got Dave and he started doing his mad shit we thought, "fucking hell"! We’re onto something here! He just took it somewhere else, man! He opened the door and we went through, bowled in, took our shoes off and we fucking stayed for lunch. So maybe next time, we might fucking stay the night and have a sleepover and wake up in the morning in another fucking dimension. That’s basically it. We just went with the flow.
A: We haven’t really stopped. It may seem like we’ve had a lot of time off in between but we went from Oasis’ last album straight into the tour straight into the split then straight into the first Beady Eye album and then straight into the tour and then straight from that and into the writing for this. And now we’re going off on tour.
LG: We wouldn’t have been able to do this record with Oasis because towards the end it got very uptight. Fucking very uptight. This is very loose because Oasis was as stiff as a fucking diving board. It was very regimented and it was very fucking boring. When sleeves on jackets get rolled up like Eric Clapton then you know you’re in fucking trouble.
What made you return to the Oasis songs?
LG: The reason we decided to play them songs was because we were asked to do The Stone Roses gig [in Heaton Park] and there were a lot of kids in that crowd that like [Oasis] so we thought, we’ve finished the tour without playing them so we threw them in to add to the sense of the occasion. And then people liked it and then we did it again and we did it again. It’s not a biggie. We might play them again, we might not but we’re not doing it to get out of playing small shitholes and into arenas. We’re not doing for any other reason than, "why not?"
I fucking sung on them. I made them. I didn’t write them but they’re a part of my fucking life. I fucking brought them up and I’ve got every right to sing them. It’s not a biggie.
A: I’d never want anybody buying a ticket for a Beady Eye show purely to hear Oasis tunes because that would be wrong.
LG: Beady Eye is another fucking great British rock & roll band, simple as that. We’ve got a lot of experience. We write great music and that’s what we are.
A: We play well together, we’ve got good taste in music and I think we are listened to on our own merits, even without the great Noel Gallagher. And I don’t mean sarcastically about Noel.
Is Start Anew the sound of you offering Noel an olive branch?
LG: Not a fucking chance! If I wanted to offer him an olive branch then I’d fucking ring him up and apparently say sorry for what I didn’t do. Not a chance. It’s nothing to do with him. Don’t Brother Me has elements of him in it but ‘Start Anew’ has fuck all to do with Noely G. He’s doing his thing and I’m doing mine and it’s all good, man. My mam’s not crying into her fucking cup of tea and lemon meringue. She don’t give a fuck. She’s hard; she goes, "you’re a dick, he’s a dick. Who shall I go and see this week?"
What are you listening to these days?
A: Loads of stuff, really.
LG: There’s this guy who auditioned to play bass for us but it didn’t work out and they’re called The Matadors. I’ve only heard one song but they sound promising.
A: Yeah, they’re shit hot. They’ve only got about five followers on Mixcloud but we’re on to them! They’re great, like a Scouse Beefheart.
LG: Like a pop version of Beefheart, if there is such a thing. There’s this one geezer that Dave played in the studio called Eddie Harris and a track called I Don’t Want Nobody. He’s a guy who plays this fucking saxophone but he sings through it and it’s fucked up, man! And Dave’s going, "this is the kind of shit we should be doing man!" It goes on for about eight minutes and we’re like [mimes being slack-jawed in astonishment] as if we’re having a fucking nervous breakdown and then it just goes off and you’re like, fucking hell, man! Check it out! I played it to Bobby Gillespie and went, "check this shit out!" and he went, "fuck me, man; that’s too fucking weird!" Yeah man, I fucked up Bobby Gillespie!
About the producer:
“Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys was interested,” reveals Gem. “We sent him some tunes and he really liked them. He said, ‘the only thing is, you’ll have to come to Nashville’ and we were like, ‘fucking great!’ Me and Andy went to meet him at the Reading Festival and we had a bit of a chat about how we do things and how to do things. We were meant to go in November and we had things arranged and the crew were trying to organise shit and then, right in the middle of his tour, he had his own record to do. So that was that.”
“There was Nick Launey who was in the middle of a film,” continues Archer “and we kept waiting for him and then it was like, ‘can you guys wait until January?’ and we were, ‘no, man.’ And then Dave’s name came up.”
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