Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds

artist bio

Noel Gallagher has a mantra: it's seen him through the best part of thirty years as one of the country's finest songwriters. And, just like the very best mantras, it's deceptively simple. "Let's stick to the plan!" he bellows. But when it comes to Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, the plan went out of the window some time ago. For a while these days Gallagher believes this path was almost certainly his destiny, that wasn't how he felt a decade ago: "I would never have chosen to be a solo artist," he says. "But as there was no other choice, it kinda made it easier for me." Ten years on, Noel Gallagher is looking back over his shoulder with the release of the High Flying Birds Best Of ‘Back The Way We Came: Vol 1 (2011-2021)’. "It seemed like the right time," says Gallagher, of why now. "It got to 10 years and then lockdown with nothing else going on, so it gave me something to focus on really." What that focus led to: an album whose tracks were entirely chosen and ordered by Gallagher, who pulled from his three solo records and recent EPs. He also came up with the title. "Best Of’s, the titles are always terrible," says Gallagher. "And it just came to me one afternoon, at the kitchen table. It's a saying isn't it: 'back the way we came'. I actually thought it was a great title. Which is why it's got vol 1. Because if there's another one, I'm not coming up with another title! It's great." So let's go back the way he came. It all began with Oasis splitting in 2009; for the next year, Gallagher did "virtually nothing" and got completely away from music, not even writing any songs ("I was just dealing with the fallout of that"). Then quite literally overnight, it all changed. "I went to bed one night not thinking about making a solo record and then woke up the next day in a different frame of mind. My missus had said to me, what are you going to do. I said: make a record, I suppose". That first album was in many respects a toe into the deeper waters that were to come for Gallagher; the very beginnings of his sonic adventures. "I didn't feel there was the need to tear it all down then," says Gallagher. "Part of me was a little bit reticent. I knew I'd have to go out on the road, be a frontman, and the people that are gonna come and see me are gonna be Oasis fans. And they're a unique bunch. There would be a struggle, inevitably. I probably thought let's push that back for a while, before we start with the jazz and the French girls". (More of them later). Gallagher had five songs for the first record already written ('Everybody's On The Run', 'If I Had A Gun…', 'The Death Of You And Me', '(Stranded On) The Wrong Beach', 'Dream On'). Songs that had been destined for the next Oasis album before everything went south; that he'd been playing in soundchecks with just the acoustic guitar. From there he took it "as I do: day by day, song by song" until he had a self-titled album ready to unleash on the world. Out in the wild, it flew (a whopping 55,000 copies in the first two days) and Gallagher and his touring band (Mikey Rowe, Jeremy Stacey, Russell Pritchard, Tim Smith) hit the road. First was a small Dublin club ("there must have been 500 people in there"), then arena after arena. But even as the architect of the biggest British band of his generation, feelings of doubt and even insecurity were bubbling up inside Gallagher. "I didn't expect to be playing the O2 so quick" he says. "That freaked me out a bit. I didn't like playing the O2, didn't like being on stage at the MEN. I felt that I wasn't worthy of it. I thought it was too soon. I thought, people aren't coming to hear this record, they were coming to see a bit of cabaret, to see me knocking out the old tunes." Since those early days, Gallagher has in one very specific respect been moving in reverse. "These were big gigs - big gigs for Oasis, never mind me. Since that point, I've been working backwards from that". A beat: "But looking back on it now, it sold an absolute tonne. It sold a million albums. So in hindsight, maybe I was being a bit tough on myself." It's a characteristically bang-on observation from Gallagher: with the debut going double platinum after just six months, and the small matter of 150 shows over fifteen months in 32 countries. Still, Gallagher admits that on the first album, "I was still stuck in a way of thinking: this is what I do". Yet when it came to the first single, he was determined to skewer anyone's expectations about his new output. And so he put out the New Orleans brass-powered ‘The Death Of You And Me’. "I deliberately chose the first single to pour cold water on it," Gallagher says. And then to his shock and considerable surprise "they went berserk! And I went, oh god, I'm gonna have to try and pull this off now." Next in the plan: Gallagher producing his own record, the second High Flying Birds album, ‘Chasing Yesterday’. It was admittedly traditional in parts, but also undoubtedly cinematic in its ambition. There was sax, there was psych-pop, there was space jazz. It was the sound of a songwriter loosening the chains. "It was definitely getting a bit far out with ‘Riverman’, ‘The Right Stuff’, ‘Ballad Of The Mighty I’," says Gallagher. It was also a necessary bridge between the first and third albums. "It gave me the confidence to just say, right we've done that now, now we've got to go somewhere else... there's no point doing another one." And he didn't. After ‘Chasing Yesterday’ came the true left-turn; the violent, violet sonic veer at the hands of legendary musician and producer David Holmes. The two men went for the same bottle at a festival and a collaboration began that blew up everything Gallagher thought he knew. "It would be very easy for a producer to say, 'You know that thing that you do, that's rubbish, you wanna do this'. He span it on its head and said, 'You know that thing that you do, it's great, but you don't want to keep doing it though do you?' And I'd never really thought of it and was like 'Err... no'." The spark: a simple idea from Holmes - suggested when the two were listening to records together - why didn't Gallagher make the music he actually listened to. What followed was an unorthodox, almost-radical process for Gallagher who normally sat at home with his ideas and his guitar. This album, Holmes said, would be made with no ideas. Gallagher would go to his studio every day and just...see what happened. It's what Gallagher now calls "one of the great periods of my life". It was, it's fair to say, a long process. Four years in the making - beginning while ‘Chasing Yesterday’ was only half finished - Gallagher would spend a week in Belfast, "noodling, fannying around and banging stuff", before going back to London to work on his second record in a more regimented way. Even doing the "most amount of work" he'd ever done, the album didn't take shape for two and a half of those years - until then it was "just snippets of music". But little by little, inch by inch, they became songs. And between the two of them, there was really nowhere they wouldn't go, musically. So they went to outer space and back. "It was very liberating - all the cliched sayings, they're cliched because they're true - you've got to go there to come back." And go there they did. The joyful wall-of-sound stomper, 'Holy Mountain' ("one of the best things I've ever created"); the ambient electronica of 'It's A Beautiful World' (with it’s French spoken word guest vocal from Charlotte Marionneau). It's a bold, blistering output fuelled by a fearlessness that can only come from complete and utter belief "and dragging everyone with you". After all, no one knows what they really want until you give it to them. "I always use the analogy: when I walked into the Oasis rehearsal room one day and started playing 'Cigarettes and Alcohol', I can assure you that the reaction from the band was the same. What?!" It's the same full-throated, full-hearted, faith that led Gallagher to break from the album release format and put out three genre-melting EPs between 2019 and 2020, featuring the stand-out disco-saturated singles 'Black Star Dancing' and 'Blue Moon Rising'. By now there were no chains to rattle; Gallagher was as creatively free as he'd ever been. "I'd say to everyone, whatever I come up with, we're going to see it through and put it out no matter what." Which could, to many songwriters, sound like a huge, bonkers risk. But not this one. "To be in that moment is really thrilling," says Gallagher. "And frightening! You've got to have total self-belief and the people with you, have got to be coming with you. That outweighs everything. It's like a drug." And that's where Gallagher gets his high these days. It's not about the size of the crowd or the units shifted, even though both of those things have exploded: a further nigh-on 200 shows around the globe, with an expanded touring band that's more akin to a collective; all three solo albums hitting number one, making a completely unprecedented ten consecutive number one studio albums in the UK. But for Gallagher, it's specifically… only about the songs. And trusting his instinct entirely. After all, it was this instinct that led him to exactly where he is today. Down this path. "I'm entrenched in that position now, where I'll do whatever I want. Now I take a song for what it is - and I don't think in terms of Oasis anymore or even High Flying Birds - it's just being a slave to the song. I've had enough success to last me a lifetime, I don't need any more glory." For Gallagher it's "a calling. A thing I was born with". God given, but controlled by man. A man, with a plan. ‘Back The Way We Came: Vol 1 [2011-2021]’ is available to pre order now on the following formats: Standard 2 CD Deluxe 3 CD Double heavyweight LP Formats Limited edition Deluxe Box Set including set of deluxe vinyl, etched 7” plus 12” coffee table photo book with deluxe CD set Online store exclusive - Double LP picture disc and cassette Limited edition numbered, hand pressed, coloured double LP with exclusive art print also released for Record Store Day on the 12th June Tracklisting: Disc 1 1. Everybody’s On The Run 2. The Death Of You And Me 3. AKA … What A Life! 4. If I Had A Gun … 5. In The Heat Of The Moment 6. Riverman 7. Lock All The Doors 8. The Dying Of The Light 9. Ballad Of The Mighty I 10. We’re On Our Way Now Disc 2 1. Black Star Dancing 2. Holy Mountain (Remastered) 3. A Dream Is All I Need To Get By 4. This Is The Place 5. It’s A Beautiful World 6. Blue Moon Rising 7. Dead In The Water (Live At RTÉ 2FM Studios, Dublin) 8. Flying On The Ground Bonus Disc 1. It’s A Beautiful World (Instrumental) 2. If I Had A Gun … (Acoustic Version) 3. Black Star Dancing (Skeleton Key Remix) 4. Black Star Dancing (12” Mix Instrumental) 5. The Man Who Built The Moon (Acoustic Version) 6. International Magic (Demo) 7. Blue Moon Rising (Sons Of The Desert Remix) 8. The Dying Of The Light (Acoustic Version) 9. This Is The Place (Skeleton Key Remix) 10. This Is The Place (Instrumental) 11. Black Star Dancing (The Reflex Revision) 12. Be Careful What You Wish For (Instrumental)