Liam solo record

Liam Gallagher: I thought I was a has-been but new love helped me roll with it




Liam Gallagher feared he was a “has-been” and considered moving to Spain to escape TCOTU, the singer admitted today.

The Mancunian star and former Oasis frontman, 44, told of the pressure he faced in recent years dealing with battles over his divorce and child maintenance as well as the break-up of his band Beady Eye.

Speaking before the Manchester bombing, he told ES magazine he began “drinking too much” while living in Hampstead: “I’d open the door and get mithered to death straight away. People going, ‘Oasis, Oasis, Oasis’ in your face, and it’s like you’re in a bad trip.

“You’re this guy in Oasis, but you’re not doing anything any more. You start going, ‘Am I a f****** has-been? Is this it?’ And you’re sitting there going, ‘Well, maybe it is.’”

At the time he was trying to cope with his divorce from All Saints singer Nicole Appleton and a court fight over maintenance for Gemma, the child he fathered with New York journalist Liza Ghorbani in 2013.

“I was waiting for the divorce to kick in, to see what f****** pennies they’d throw back at me, and I was out of here. I was gonna go and live in Spain and just chill out, get fit, eat nice, bit of sun on me bones and just f****** live,” he said. Speaking about the court cases, he added: “I know it was all my own doing and that. But I was just living in ghoul world with f****** lawyers. Every day. If it wasn’t the divorce lawyer, it was the other lawyer. It was f****** grim. They just make it worse. They f****** strung it out, mate. They definitely know how long a piece of string is.” The divorce was finalised in 2014.

Gallagher said his saviour was girlfriend Debbie Gwyther, who is his manager and publicist and lives with him in a penthouse in Highgate “where it’s like 360-degree views over Ally Pally, so it was just pure light. And that helped my head a bit”.

After Beady Eye split in 2014 he admitted to a long period of “drinking too much and doing nothing: ruining Debbie’s vibe, going, ‘Come on, let’s go to the pub. F*** work, come and be a f****** dosser like me!’

“And then she’d go to work and I’d be sitting at home being Billy No Mates.”

Gallagher is preparing to release his debut solo record in October. He wrote some tracks and also brought in collaborators including Greg Kurstin, who co-wrote and produced Adele’s Hello, at the request of Gwyther. “It is what it is, mate,” said Gallagher. “I didn’t write Live Forever but as soon as I sang it, I made it my own. I class myself as a rock ’n’ roll singer who writes the odd tune now and again. And that is it. I’m not going out saying I’m Bob Dylan. Ideally, you want to do it yourself. But I can’t write those f****** big songs. I’m limited. My verses are up there, but I just can’t do that next bit.

“The main thing is getting a record done, getting back touring and doing what I do: singing and moving people, rather than sitting at home doing nothing, spouting off on Twitter.”

He plans to sing a number of Oasis songs in his gigs, and said: “Do I go on and play a load of new songs and everyone’s just standing there scratching their heads? No. When the lights go down, it’s party time.”

He declared he does not regret any of his comments about elder brother Noel: “No. Not at f****** all. I think he’s had it easy off me. It’s only sticks and stones, they won’t break his bones. Wait till I bump into the c***. Everything I say is the f****** truth. I’ve not even dug that deep yet.

“I don’t know what world he lives in, and I wouldn’t want to live in it, believe you me, because it seems very bland, naff and contrived and just... ‘What? He’s like the new Robbie Williams or something.’ It’s f******* weird.”

Gallagher is right to be excited because his new music is great. And it ought to be, given that as well as his iconic voice (which sounds as good as ever), it has, aside from a handful of songs he wrote himself (‘Greedy Soul’, ‘BOLD’), been written by serious, professional songwriters. Gallagher is upfront about the fact that he had nothing to do with these songs — the electric ‘Wall of Glass’; the Elton John-esque ‘Paper Crown’; ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’-sized ballad ‘For What it’s Worth’ — save for singing them and ‘changing a few words and melodies and phrases and stuff’.