Noel Gallagher
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 19 July 2015
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the musician, Noel Gallagher.
He was the principal songwriter of the band Oasis - his younger brother, Liam was the lead singer. Born to Irish parents, as a child he spent his summers visiting his mother's family in rural County Mayo, in sharp contrast to the Manchester council estate where they lived. He taught himself to play the guitar and loved music: he was road manager for the Inspiral Carpets before joining Liam in Oasis.
Their debut album in 1994 marked the beginning of the band's rise to fame as part of the Britpop movement. In 1996 they played in front of 250,000 fans over two consecutive nights at Knebworth and following the Labour landslide in 1997, Noel attended what became known as the Cool Britannia party held in Downing Street by Tony Blair. Oasis won six BRIT Awards and two Ivor Novello Awards before disbanding in August 2009.
He's since formed his own band - Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds.
Producer: Cathy Drysdale.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:06.0 | For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast. |
| 0:10.0 | For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk. |
| 0:17.0 | Radio 4. My My castaway this week is Noel Gallagher, songwriter singer and guitarist. |
| 0:39.3 | He was the creative engine of the massively successful era defining band Oasis and has built a highly regarded career in the six years since their infamous split. |
| 0:50.0 | Oasis had multi-million album sales and record-breaking concert appearances and won piles of awards, |
| 0:56.3 | six Brits and two Ivor Novellos among them. So far, so rock star. But in truth, |
| 1:01.6 | his explosive relationship with his brother Liam, the band's lead singer, |
| 1:05.3 | generated nearly as much interest as the music they made together. |
| 1:09.2 | They grew up in Manchester in difficult circumstances. |
| 1:11.8 | Their father was violent and money was short. Their mother |
| 1:15.2 | bought Noll's first guitar from a catalogue repaying the 30 quidic cost in weekly installments. |
| 1:20.8 | He says music is a thing that changes people's lives. It has the capacity to |
| 1:26.2 | make young people's lives better. You've got a duty to make music. If you can, you |
| 1:31.2 | shoot. So Noel Gallagher, when did that first occur to you? |
| 1:35.4 | This idea that music changes people's lives. |
| 1:37.2 | Was it when you were listening to it and it was changing yours |
| 1:39.4 | or when you were making it and it was changing other peoples? |
| 1:42.3 | I guess the latter, the statement that I made there was only made. it was |
| 1:45.0 | only made relatively recently and you know the songs that I play have been around for 20 years |
| 1:49.0 | and there's people that we were teenagers at my gigs who weren't even born when they were coming out and they sing these songs like their lives depend on it and you just think what an amazing thing to be able to be involved in that in some part whether playing it or writing it or performing it. |
| 2:06.0 | I still find it a magical thing. |
... |
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