Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Songwriter, singer and guitarist who was the creative engine of the era-defining band Oasis.
On the island
Eight records
a guy with a peroxide skin head kind of hairdo and he had an exclamation mark sprayed on the back of his head. And I loved it because the music was great. And it's a great pop album. They changed everything.
my wife, the lovely Sarah, said to me this morning, you are going to play Let's Dance by David Bowie, aren't you? Don't go on Desert Island Discs and not play it.
I know every single word. I can sing it. The songwriting is so simple, and yet the story is so grandiose. I've probably ripped it off at least three times.
it was their first single and it's got a colour to it. They're so important to music in this country, particularly alternative music.
a track by a guy from Manchester called Gerald. Radio 4 listeners of a certain age might well want to go and put the kettle on because this ain't gonna make a great deal of sense to you.
The Joshua Tree album at the time was just another record. You listen to it now and it's honestly, easily one of the greatest batches of songs any band have ever written.
Be My BabyFavourite
I'm gonna say be my baby by the Ronettes because it would make me smile and clench my fists at the same time and think I still haven't forgiven her for that.
the greatest band of all time, the Beatles. That even all those people they know your name in advance is mind blowing to me from just like a lad from a council estate.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:32When did that first occur to you? This idea that music changes people's lives? Was it when you were listening to it and it was changing yours, or when you were making it and it was changing other people's?
I guess the latter, the statement that I made there was only made relatively recently. And you know, the songs that I play have been around for twenty years and there's people that who are 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.
Presenter asks
5:32How do you manage to still keep an enthusiasm and a sort of purity to that creative process that there was back in the beginning?
You just have to stay true to yourself. … There has to be a certain kind of truth in everything that you write. … And if it's true to you, then it's going to be true to somebody else, you know.
Presenter asks
8:25Your brother Paul once said of you that you are a person who doesn't encourage closeness. Do you agree with him?
Yeah.
The keepsakes
The book
Jack Kerouac
I've only read one novel, which is On the Road, by Jack Kerouac. And what I got from reading it was a greater understanding of Bob Dylan.
Presenter asks
10:03A poverty-stricken child is one thing. It's not the case that everybody's subject to significant amounts of violence from their dad. That's not the case. … How do you think it marked you?
I think I'm not sure it did. … I think it benefited me in the way that it made me withdraw into my own world and from that came the learning to play the guitar and from that sparked the whatever it was that made me persevere with it and persevere with it until, you know, I become who I am.
Presenter asks
21:47You have said previously that you can't really very clearly remember very much about that five-year period [1993-1998]. Is that a nice line, or is it true?
Genuinely enough, I close my eyes, I can't remember walking on stage at [Knebworth]. I know it took place because there's lots of people there.
Presenter asks
23:43When does it stop being fun? When's the point at which you think the joke's over and suddenly the things that seemed like a brilliant idea no longer feel like a brilliant idea?
I remember waking up one afternoon, going downstairs, going to the fridge. Just getting a beer out and a complete stranger walking through the kitchen. … I felt weak and burnt out. … I've got quite good willpower, and I thought I'm not doing it anymore. And I haven't since, you know, and it's one of the greatest things I've ever done.
“There is no golden rule, but there are kind of little signposts that you recognise. If a song comes quickly, it usually means it's good because it's just falling out of the sky.”
“I still believe there's just somebody up there and they're just dropping songs all over the place. And if I'm not ready to catch them, Chris Martin's getting them and Bonno's getting them and they've had enough, you know. There's no way they're getting them. So I do it every day. You know what I mean? I'm there every day fishing in the river for the songs, you know.”
“I will say that my childhood and upbringing and relationship with my dad was no different to any of my friends that I grew up with. That's just the way that it was in the seventies, in the 70s and 80s as well. They were gloomy, dark, fractured times, you know what I mean?”
“When we started that band, for two years we were we were rubbish, you know what I mean? The songs that I were writing weren't great until one day I wrote a song called Live Forever and it all changed.”
“The way it worked was when we're not slacking each other off, that's when we're telling each other that we love each other. Okay, that's enough. That's it.”