Council Skies, Noel Gallagher’s fourth solo album and his best, will be released on June 2nd. In the cover story of ROLLING STONE 06/23, the songwriter talks about astrology and spring fever, sunken worlds and new hopes – and dismisses the question of an Oasis reunion. He sees “Council Skies” as a kind of new beginning, even if the title refers to the sky above the council houses in Manchester, where Noel grew up. An excerpt from the current interview.
Is it possible to celebrate one’s roots without falling into nostalgia?
I don’t like nostalgia. Of course, it’s easy to glorify the past. But I prefer to live in the moment. However, these songs are quite thoughtful because they were written during the pandemic. There wasn’t much else you could do but ponder and ponder! It also made me realize that we had never experienced a situation like this before. You couldn’t really see into the future because nobody knew what it was going to be like – which was really unsettling. You couldn’t write anything about the present either, because you just sat at home all damn day. So, as an artist, you could only go inward and see how you got to this point. So the pieces reflect that.
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In the title track you sing that life is unpredictable – and it doesn’t sound negative at all. You used to stress that you hated change. Did this change?
(laughs) It’s wonderful that life is unpredictable! Naturally! The next line is: “You could win or lose it all.” Life is a bit like a roulette table, not quite as brutal, of course, but it can easily happen that you make decisions that then determine years of our lives – and they can either be great or bloody disastrous. As I reflected on how unpredictable life is for this song, I also thought of two of my friends. Two young guys, one was with the Gorillaz, Jay Sharrock, the other, Jeff Wootton, also with Beady Eye. We go out together sometimes and I thought if someone had told us five years ago in our bar where we used to drink, there’s a pandemic coming up, the Queen is going to die and everything is going to change, the whole world will soon come to an end head, then we would have said: Fuck off! In the meantime, no one can really foresee where we will be at the end of this decade. These are the modern times. I think it used to be different, even if people were always unpredictable. The line between winning everything and losing everything has always been a fine one. And I like that.
But with a lot of things, like the pandemic, it’s not about your own decisions.
We were relatively powerless. Sure, but then it’s all about how to deal with it, right? When Covid happened, many people reacted very badly. There were also people around me who went crazy and have not recovered to this day. And then the fucking conspiracy theories, it all got on my nerves. I wish that time had never existed, I hated it. If I could turn back time and have to give up all the songs I wrote during the process, I would do it! Because life was better for me personally before.
You can read the entire interview in the current issue of ROLLING STONE, available from May 25, 2023.