Noel Gallagher is pretty black and white when it comes to things he does and doesn’t like.
Whether its hating on fellow Britpop icons Blur for years before becoming BFFs with Damon Albarn, or his ‘colourful’ comments on his own Oasis sibling, Gallagher Snr has never been backward about being forward.
The latest entity to feel the pointed end of the singer-guitarist’s sharp tongue is BBC Radio 1, the 46-year-old songwriter taking the legendary UK broadcasters to task for not playlisting newer bands, including his Aussie favourites, Sydney duo Jagwar Ma.
Gallagher has already been talking up the pair’s ARIA-nominated, UK-loved debut album Howlin‘ in the press as one of the year’s best, but in an interview with GQ Magazine (via NME), Gallagher laments that the band are one of a few that are being unfairly overlooked by British broadcasters.
“There’s great records coming out this year you’re not going to hear on the radio. [English psych rockers] Temples. Jagwar Ma. Great stuff, but it’s on a lower level. It’s not on the battleground. You have to be in that world to hear it,” says Gallagher.
The musician further describes BBC Radio 1 as his idea of hell; “[It’s] pretty fucking dreadful. The music is… I can’t get my head round pop music [right now]. It all sounds the same. It’s all on the same frequency. It all seems designed to aggravate my teeth. You know music that makes your teeth hurt?” says Gallagher.
The comments follow on from the powers that be at the BBC station saying Gallagher’s music was “more at home on Radio 2“, as NME reports, admitting that the former Oasis member was no longer part of their flagship station’s broadcast plans, while shifting the likes of Green Day and Robbie Williams to their older demographic.
“There’s a lack of… soul on Radio 1. I mean, what is going to be the future of chart music? I don’t understand it,” Gallgher bites back in the GQ chat.
“It’s when radio stations start focus groups. They literally go outside their building and ask people walking by, ‘If I played you this song, what would you think?’ and all that. Don’t ask the man on the street! He’s a cunt! That’s why he’s the man on the street, not the man in the expensive restaurant eating fucking mini sausages at four in the afternoon!”
In a final flourish, Gallagher criticises those clean-cut crusaders of commercial pop radio, One Direction, in the kind of language that only the grizzled Britpop survivor can spin.
What I think is: everybody’s winning out of it. One Direction aren’t working in the local fucking Costcutter, so they’re winning. The geezer who’s writing the fucking shit tunes – he’s winning. He doesn’t even have to leave the studio. He’s got fucking new houses coming out of his ear holes. The record company are winning – ‘cos they’re all getting their fucking bonuses at Christmas.
The young 12-year-old girls are winning because one day they might actually grow up to give one of them a blow job. They’re all winning. No one’s losing! The only people who are losing are idiots like me at 9.30 in the morning when you’re trying to get the kids out the door for school, and they’re fucking murdering one of Blondie’s songs.”
Once again, no one gives great quote like a Gallagher.
