Noel and Liam | Radio legend Steve Lamacq on the most chaotic interview of his career | 4

In 1997, Steve Lamacq thought he was interviewing Noel Gallagher live on Radio 1. So he was delighted when Liam turned up too. He knew the brothers could be unpredictable, but he didn’t know that this interview would go down in Oasis history. Their alcohol-fulled, expletive-filled argument was both radio gold and every presenter’s nightmare. Steve takes Alice Levine and Matt Forde inside that day. Plus he tells us who really won the Battle of Britpop and weighs in on the band’s future. Listen to British Scandal on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting https://wondery.com/links/british-scandal/ now. Do you have a suggestion for a scandal you would like us to cover? Or perhaps you have a question you would like to ask our hosts? Email us at [email protected] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alice Levine?

  Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of British Scandal ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app.

• 0:20Matt Forde?

  From Wondery, I'm Matt Ford.

• 0:21Alice Levine?

  And I'm Alice Levine.

• 0:23Matt Forde?

  And this is British Scandal.

• 0:35Matt Forde?

  So Alice, we've made it through the talent, the emotions, the creative choice of language, and occasional physical violence of the Gallagher brothers. How are you feeling now that we're on the other side?

• 0:44Alice Levine?

  What a bunch of pride, aptitude and pent-up emotions we had there. Let's just say I will not be singing Wonderwall quite the same way at the top of my lungs at weddings anymore. Now I know the backstory, it's just so much deeper than that.

• 0:56Matt Forde?

  Yes, and it's a fact that still today, 99% of weddings will feature an Oasis song.

• 1:03Alice Levine?

  Is that based on historical research?

• 1:06Matt Forde?

  My wedding alone delivers that statistic.

• 1:10Alice Levine?

  No, that's 99% of your wedding was Oasis songs. That's different.

• 1:15Matt Forde?

  The brothers' relationship may not have stood the test of time, but their music has.

• 1:19Alice Levine?

  I'm joking, of course, I wasn't invited. The bit that I think is easy to forget when talking about Oasis is that their music was written in a context, and that was Britain in the 90s.

• 1:28Matt Forde?

  Yes, it was the greatest time ever, and it's the reason why today we're speaking to a man that has met Oasis numerous times and knows more about Britpop than almost anyone. He's a Six Music presenter, a music journalist and former Radio 1 DJ, Steve Lamack. Alice, you were at the BBC for a while, do you know him?

• 1:45Alice Levine?

  Do I know him? Have I eaten crisps next to him at Glastonbury? So no, I don't know him, but I have eaten crisps next to him at Glastonbury.

• 1:52Matt Forde?

  We'll hear from him after this.

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• 3:03Matt Forde?

  Steve, welcome to British Scandal.

• 3:04Speaker 04

  Thank you very much for having us.

• 3:06Matt Forde?

  Steve, on the 23rd of October 1997, Noel and Liam appeared on your Radio 1 evening session and the interview became quite legendary. Can you tell us the story of what happened in that interview?

• 3:17Speaker 04

  Quite legendary. It's the most bootlegged piece of radio that I've ever been involved with. I was in, I was in the States some years later and a guy said that he'd sent his brother in America a cassette of the interview, which he listened to in the shower every day to start his day because it was the most entertaining piece of radio he'd ever heard. But, I mean, the background to it was that post-nebworth and after be here now, Oasis went slightly quiet on us and we would phone up every couple of weeks saying, can we get an interview with Noel? And the radio promotions firm would say, no, they're not, they're not doing anything. They don't want to talk on the radio at the moment.

• 4:01Speaker 04

  And so you'd phone back a couple of weeks later and still nothing. And we got a call out of the blue saying Oasis are ready to talk, you can interview Noel. So we set up for that and it was an interesting point. I mean, where do Oasis go after the triumph of Nebworth? Also, the slight creative uncertainty of Be Here Now. Yeah, so they said, so Noel's gonna pop in. And there was so much excitement around the Radio 1 building and people turned up just to watch me interview Noel Gallagher. And it's not a great spectator sport doing radio interviews. Yeah, so we were all set up and it was going to be absolutely live. We would do the first half an hour of the

• 4:44Speaker 04

  programme as normal and then Noel would join us and co-host for ninety minutes of the programme. And we were all prepared for that. And then we'd been on air, maybe about ten minutes, when the producer came down and said Liam's here as well. Now, remember, those two hadn't been interviewed together for quite a long time because there was a certain amount of friction. I mean, you were creating quite a volatile interview situation, interview scenario, when you put the two brothers together. And then they come down and, you know, they're reasonably jolly. The thing is, what no one had told me was they'd been at the GQ Awards in the afternoon

• 5:24Speaker 04

  and maybe had had a drink or two. And it wasn't entirely obvious when they first arrived that this was the case. If you listen back to the interview now, it's so blindingly obvious that they've had a drink. But at the time, I don't think, I don't think I really, I don't think I really, you know, noticed that.

• 5:44Alice Levine?

  There was a lot to consider.

• 5:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, there was because all of a sudden, because obviously I'd prepped an interview which was really for Noel. But they both, they both came in. We had to prop the door open because Liam came in demanding to smoke. And there are, you know, fire sensors in those studios. So again, if you listen back to the interview, there are times where it sounds a bit hollow in the room. Well, that's because the door's open to try and waft some of the smoke out of the room, I think. And that's how it started.

• 6:16Alice Levine?

  Are there dual sort of thoughts going through your mind as a broadcaster in that moment? One must be, this is going to be electric, this is going to be incredible that I've got them both, as you say, after such a long period of them being separate. But is it also a concern that you're live on air? On the BBC with Liam and Noel Gallagher.

• 6:36Speaker 04

  Before we start, I don't think about us being live. I just think, well, this is, this is a proper moment now. When you're trying to do an interview with anyone, particularly someone really successful, you're always thinking, can I ask the questions that the listener is desperate to know the answers to? So I was trying to rearrange in my head how this interview would go and doing that on the hoof.

• 7:03Matt Forde?

  And with two chaotic individuals who are drunk. So at any point in that interview, did you start to feel like they were hard to handle? Did you worry it was getting out of control? Did you feel that sometimes maybe the fact that they were drunk was a little bit disrespectful?

• 7:17Speaker 04

  I didn't think it was disrespectful. No, that, maybe I should have done. I don't know. Never crossed my mind since then. Yeah, no, I mean, were they out of, were they out of control? Not in the sense that, you know, everything could go awfully, I was going to say awfully wrong. I mean, how much more wrong can it go than the use of various swear words repeated on a regular basis?

• 7:41Matt Forde?

  But how did it feel in the room? Because when we listen back to it, they sound drunk and groggy. But there might have been a bit more eye contact than we might presume when we listen back to it. Were they in a more playful mood?

• 7:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And the thing which I learnt from that interview, well, I learnt a lot about their relationship, I think. But I certainly learnt, I certainly came to understand that Liam is or was then slightly more insecure in a way. And you've got the impression that this has always been the case, that Noel, being the older one, got more attention. And if you break eye contact with Liam, you're going to lose him because he thinks you're ignoring him because you're talking to his older brother. And so there was a lot of looking Liam straight in the eye to make him understand that, you know, you are very much part of this. And I'd never considered that before.

• 8:36Speaker 04

  And how that has affected Liam's character, because I think Liam does things to get attention because he never got maybe the attention that Noel used to get. It's quite brittle.

• 8:48Alice Levine?

  The interview has sort of entered like radio lore, if you like. Are there some, I presume you listen back to it weekly anyway, but are there some moments that kind of jump out at you even now?

• 8:59Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. I mean, the, yes, I mean, the, I mean, Liam is as bullish as he's ever been, obviously. And, you know, he starts off by, you know, he calls out various members of the Rolling Stones for a punch up on Primrose Hill. I mean, you know, because there's been stories in the press where apparently the Stones have been slagging them off.

• 9:21Matt Forde?

  George Harrison, I think, gets mentioned.

• 9:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, George Harrison gets mentioned. I think there's a point where I'd say something about who's been a major influence, and he says, Jesus Christ. It will always come back to haunt us, this interview.

• 9:35Matt Forde?

  It was a fascinating time to interview them because you've set the context of Nebworth and their popularity, but you do get the sense that after Be Here Now, as you put it, Noel felt a bit lost. And it was strange because after Nebworth, people say, where did they go? Be Here Now becomes this mega album revered at the time, mocked quite quickly after. And what I find fascinating about the two of them is this is an album that Noel almost disowns, whereas Liam actually has a very different take on it. I think it is Liam's favourite Oasis album, and I have to declare an interest. It's my favourite Oasis album.

• 10:06Speaker 04

  Is it?

• 10:07Matt Forde?

  And every time I hear someone slag it off, it hurts because I think that album made me feel something. And when I listen back to it, it makes me feel the same thing. I love the fact that it's overblown, but you obviously are, you have a credible taste in music. Am I wrong to still love that album?

• 10:23Alice Levine?

  Bear in mind that it hurts him when somebody derides the album, so tread carefully, Steve.

• 10:27Speaker 04

  I was gonna say, just, am I gonna get offered out on, you know, Primrose Hill, Saturday at noon, if I say that this isn't their best album?

• 10:36Matt Forde?

  Absolutely not.

• 10:37Speaker 04

  I don't think it's, I don't think it's their best album.

• 10:41Alice Levine?

  You focused on the kind of fractious nature of their brotherly relationship, which I think is an understandable place that your eye is drawn. But there was also a sort of tenderness and an affection at that time as well, wasn't there?

• 10:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, there is a point in the interview, I think, where I ask, I can't remember who I asked. It might be Liam, um, who inspires you. No, it was to Noel and Noel's uh looked at Liam, turned around and said, well, it's it's him. You know, he inspires, he's the one who inspires me. And yeah, there was, there was quite a tenderness, you're right to it. Um, um, underneath, because underneath it all, I think they were still at that point really looking out for each other. Um, Noel particularly looking out for for Liam, I think. I think he still had an elderly, that elder brother responsibility to Liam at the time, yeah.

• 11:38Matt Forde?

  You've been playing Oasis on your radio show for years. Do you remember the first time you heard one of their songs?

• 11:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, it was Columbia.

• 11:46Matt Forde?

  Oh, brilliant.

• 11:47Speaker 04

  And um it was in the evening session office before. Might be the day before, I think we played it for the first time, but it was that twelve inch of Columbia was the the first time I heard them.

• 11:59Matt Forde?

  But do you think at that point, oh, my God, these guys really stand out? And there's loads of bands, the the music scene at that time was was far more vibrant than it is now. To your experienced ears, did they have something different?

• 12:12Speaker 04

  I don't think Columbia was the was the one that made me think that, but there was, then we got a cassette of some of the singles that were to follow. And it's at that point where you think, yeah. And then, of course, then when you see them and then you see Liam Gallagher in front of a microphone, doing nothing hardly. And yet absolutely owning the room. As soon as you understand the presence of Liam Gallagher on a stage and you look at the rest of the band. No disrespect to Noel, but with the wrong singer, that band wouldn't have been that band. His songs were obviously great and were going to resonate with a lot of people. But, you know, it needed Liam's delivery to make that band.

• 12:54Speaker 04

  And so the first time you see them, I mean, I'm always a very strong advocate of go and see the band live. Make sure they've got more than the two songs which they've sent you. But seeing them, that was the tell telltale sign of something going on.

• 13:13Speaker 05

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• 13:44Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Kenya Paris.

• 13:45Speaker 07

  And I'm Malcolm Gladwell. We're back for season two of our Audible original podcast, The Unusual Suspects.

• 13:51Speaker 06

  We'll sit down with extraordinary guests from the worlds of art, film, literature, comedy, and wellness to hear from their unexpected stories of success.

• 13:58Speaker 07

  And who do we have this season? Well, we'll talk with Grammy winning artist Anderson Paak, athlete Rich Roll, portrait artist Amy Sherald, Oscar winning director Ron Howard, legendary writer David Sedaris, and many more. These conversations are more intimate than last season, wouldn't you say?

• 14:15Speaker 06

  I would. Listen to season one of The Unusual Suspects wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for a free trial Audible to listen to season two in the Audible app or by subscribing to Apple Podcasts.

• 14:36Matt Forde?

  What was the music scene like before Britpop?

• 14:39Speaker 04

  I mean, it was quite a mixture of things, really. I left the New Musical Express in October 92. And at that point, there was a lot of sort of American alt-rock. There was some quite good British independent music. So, I mean, if you want to go back slightly further, really, if you go back to the end of the 80s, the only bands which, you know, played guitars or, you know, you would consider maybe sort of indie bands now that got in the charts was where the Mondays did, obviously, the Roses, I think. But up until 1990, Creation Records had never had a top 75 hit.

• 15:21Speaker 04

  And that's because this sort of music, outer of music, if you like, NME style music, never bothered the charts. Then Sub Pop comes along with Mud Honey and Tad and Nirvana. And so, so you've got grunge and then other bands coming out of Boston like Buffalo Tom and people like that. So there's quite a lot of American sort of plaid rock. And, you know, there's some interesting things going on elsewhere in sort of the UK indie thing. And then you've got shoegaze. You've got bands embracing what I suppose at the time was called indie dance, the biggest of them, I guess, being Primal Scream. There was some good stuff around.

• 16:02Speaker 04

  All this was a brilliant student radio or the indie night. These, these are great records for the indie night, but they weren't records that were going to capture the imagination of, you know, people who bought one single a week and watched Top of the Pops.

• 16:19Alice Levine?

  So what was it about the music scene at the time that made it fertile ground for Britpop to sort of hit in the way that it did, do you think?

• 16:26Speaker 04

  I think Nirvana were getting bigger and bigger, but more, more distant from us all and maybe, you know, maybe a bit too big. Some of the bands that followed them down via grunge weren't maybe as exciting. I mean, I certainly think in the media, the, the problem was you couldn't get an interview with Nirvana. You couldn't speak to a lot of these bands. So I think when some more homegrown bands came along, that you could actually hang out within the pub, then that became a lot easier. And so then we have the new wave of new wave with bands like Smash and These Animal Men. I think Elastica were roped into that. And these are, you know, these are kids bands or bands for, you know, for kids, really

• 17:08Speaker 04

  energetic, perfect for all the journalists and anyone who was really into, who's rediscovered the music of punk rock and new wave. Um, and so that was a kind of, so new wave and new wave was kind of prototype for what Britpop would become, which was all of a sudden, you know, skinny t-shirts with V-necks and stuff. That was, it all came out of that sort of new wave and new wave thing. There was just more of an appetite suddenly for, for British music. It all changes in April 94 when Kurt Cobain dies and there's nothing, the whole grunge tower collapses at that point. There's no one who can lead that movement, there's no

• 17:52Speaker 04

  one to aspire to in that movement and everyone suddenly goes, there's a massive gap to be filled and that gap is Britpop.

• 18:01Alice Levine?

  So you really were there for all of these pivotal moments in your Radio 1 role. You covered the Blur Oasis battle. The battle was so much more than about music, it felt like. It felt like it was actually a reflection of Britain at the time and about conversations and moods that were swirling. How do you reflect back on that?

• 18:24Speaker 04

  Early on, I think Liam thought I was part of the enemy camp. Jo Wiley was actually at that gig remarkably.

• 18:34Alice Levine?

  For the purposes of the tape, we must say she wasn't wielding any guitars, she wasn't throwing any punches.

• 18:40Speaker 04

  She wasn't the catalyst, no. But, so she'd covered Oasis on that, which was one of their early tours where a lot of people had seen them. And I'd covered the first night of the Parklife tour when I saw Blur in Nottingham at Rock City. So we'd sort of split ourselves off slightly and because I come from, you know, around Colchester Way, and I remember walking into the Oasis dressing room at the Royal Albert Hall when Creation did that big gig, that big acoustic gig. And I was trying to get an interview and we walked, we'd sort of pre-arranged an interview. But I walked into the dressing room and Liam's withering

• 19:22Speaker 04

  look, like looking around at everyone else going, basically who let him in? He's one of the other lot. He's the other side of this. But Noel spoke to us. But, so it was, so it's strange. So I, and I did feel, I did feel part, probably, well, I felt more part of the Blur story because I'd done the first interview for the enemy and because they were our local boys and everything. So, but, put those, putting those factors aside, on the week of the chart battle, I bought one of each just to make sure, you know, that was balanced, way down to HMV.

• 20:02Alice Levine?

  Which went through the till first?

• 20:06Speaker 04

  Do you know what, I couldn't tell you, I couldn't tell you if I wanted to. But I always make this point, here's the thing, and it's exactly what you were saying about, it's, you know, the conversation of the country. So you have a listen to the, the lyrics of Damon Albarn and Noel Gallagher at that point. And Noel uses the words you and I and us and we.

• 20:34Speaker 04

  Damon Albarn uses him and her and them and those people, all the people. So on the one hand, you've got Noel writing from the terrace, essentially. Noel writing from the crowd, in the thick of the crowd, about this kind of community of people. He's the communal voice of everyone, he's us. So if you, you know, if you put him in the crowd, Damon Albarn is much more the man in the commentary box. He's looking more broadly at, you know, the landscape of society and caricatures of people. So they both had a different voice. And I think that's the important thing.

• 21:15Speaker 04

  It's not that one's from the south and one's from the north, you know, and one's working class and one's middle class. It's the actual vocabulary they use and how they were writing about society. They were completely different, we needed them both.

• 21:30Matt Forde?

  Wasn't there something about Blur that particularly wound Oasis up? Was that, it was almost like they were pretending to be working class. You know, if you look at the Park Live video, they're on a terrace street, they're in tracksuit tops. Was there a sense that Blur weren't being honest about who they were? And that seemed to annoy Liam and Noel.

• 21:48Speaker 04

  If you read some of Damon's interviews, or better still, you know, you watch some of Damon's TV interviews at the time. I mean, I guess you could find him, you know, reasonably annoying, certainly if you were Liam.

• 22:01Alice Levine?

  There was certainly an obnoxiousness that ran through all of the key players in the Britpop scene, wasn't there? Different flavours of obnoxiousness.

• 22:10Speaker 04

  I suppose that, I mean, I suppose that is true in a, in a way, but I think.

• 22:17Speaker 04

  Were they entitled, I suppose the question is, were they entitled to their arrogance? Probably they were. If you think about it, and again, we have to contextualise this, that at that point, I think everyone who was in a rock and roll band had read the Rock and Roll Handbook. They knew all the videos, they understood the history of the Stones and the Beatles, and then the Sex Pistols and the Who and all this. You know, because even for Noel, it would have been a long time coming, you know, he'd roadied for the Inspiral carpets and stuff, but, you know, he'd been writing songs for ages, and that had been a long time coming. Blur, of course, have, you know, they have success reasonably quickly after they get signed.

• 23:03Speaker 04

  And then it all goes terribly wrong for them. And they hit a low point when they go to the States and they run out of money and the States, everyone in the States doesn't like them. So they have to come back out fighting, I think, in their own, in their own way. So they both sort of earned the arrogance and they understood the attitude of previous rock and roll bands who were on a pedestal. And they all had a confidence bordering on arrogance that these bands were going to inherit or impersonate in some way. And, I mean, they grew into the role very well, I think it's fair to say.

• 23:42Matt Forde?

  Where were you on the fourteenth of August nineteen ninety five for the Big Chart Showdown?

• 23:47Speaker 04

  Uh, where was I? Well, I was at home. I know that because I have Mark Goodyear's chart rundown on a cassette player. Uh, yeah, I recorded it off the radio.

• 24:01Matt Forde?

  The whole top forty or just the top ten?

• 24:03Speaker 04

  Uh, oh, no, just the, yeah, no, just the rundown, just for posterity. I got the, yeah, I got the rundown. Then after, it must have been just after seven, I guess, I got a phone call saying there's a Blur celebration at Soho House. If you fancy coming along, we're inviting a few, few people from, who've written about them and stuff. So I went to Soho House and it was, it was horrible.

• 24:30Matt Forde?

  In what way?

• 24:31Speaker 04

  Well, I mean.

• 24:34Speaker 04

  What if they, what if they won, I mean, there's part, partly it's, it's, it is a success, you know, we, we, we've won this battle. But I don't think anyone, I don't know if they really enjoyed the fact that they'd won it. I mean, okay, they've, they've, they've won the bragging rights for a bit. We're, we're number one and they're not. But I don't know, it was the night Graham Coxon tried to climb out of a second floor window and had to be, had to be restrained by Alex James. Because I think in a way, they sort of lost track of who they were and become embroiled in something which wasn't artistically what, certainly what Graham wanted. It was just a weird old night, really.

• 25:16Speaker 04

  I don't even know by that point whether they thought there's a war still to rage and this is just the first battle.

• 25:23Matt Forde?

  Bit like Boris Johnson and Michael Go's face when the Brexit result is announced. They don't really feel like winners. So Blur win the battle of Britpop, but who do you think will go down in history as the winner of the war?

• 25:36Speaker 04

  Oasis will, because those songs are about, are more about our inner soul, I think, or more about us than those songs translated. But I mean, you could not walk into a pub without an Oasis song coming on the jukebox. And those songs become the anthems of the time. They, they're far more, I think, in a way, the soundtrack to the time. Well, you have something like, I mean, Park Life itself by Blur sort of does that job. But there is something about Oasis and the nature of their songs, I think you have to give it to Oasis.

• 26:19Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Kenya Barris.

• 26:20Speaker 07

  And I'm Malcolm Gladwell. We're back for season two of our Audible original podcast, The Unusual Suspects.

• 26:26Speaker 06

  We're bringing you fresh, new conversations from guests like Anderson Paak, David Zedars, Ryan Howard, Richell, Amy Sheldon, and many more.

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• 27:46Alice Levine?

  And in your mind, Steve, when did you start to think that Britpop was on its way out?

• 27:51Speaker 04

  When I had a conversation with the man who was the promoter at Sheffield Leadmill. This would be, I think, either late 97 or 98. I was on the phone to him about a local band in Sheffield and he said, by the way, Echo Belly haven't sold a single ticket for their gig. But he was like, all the Britpop bands were going off a cliff in terms of ticket sales. And the bubble had burst. I mean, even before you have an artistic debate about where those bands were. It had just, that was, that was it.

• 28:28Alice Levine?

  There was a commercial indicator, the appetite was...

• 28:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's the appetite, it's exactly that. Yeah, the appetite had just begun to... Dwindle, really.

• 28:37Alice Levine?

  And why do you think that was? What was the, what had changed?

• 28:41Speaker 04

  A lot of music scenes, they have three years and I think that one ties in quite nicely with the idea that particularly the audience that buys, bought records at that point that led the sort of record buying public and went to a lot of gigs. You go to, you know, a lot of people did that thing where they went to university in the September of ninety four as Britpop starting to happen. They leave university in ninety seven and at that point, people sort of gave up on pop music a little bit. It's not, I don't think that's so common now. So a lot of music scenes have a sort of three year cycle. But also, you know, a lot of the bands had just run out of steam, I think. And there was too much repetition.

• 29:26Speaker 04

  And there were too many second rate bands had been signed by the major labels who were looking to try and you know, just squeeze some more money out of, out of an audience that seemed like they liked fizzy guitar, you know, fizzy three minute guitar songs with big choruses and not, but not everyone could do it really well. And the longer bands are away, longer the, the blurs and Oasis and bands like that were away. The music industry wanted to fill up that space with other bands and some of the bands they filled it up with obviously just weren't as good and didn't have so much about them. And I think people just got to the point where they were slightly bored of the incessant cheeriness of, of all these songs that they were being sold.

• 30:10Speaker 04

  You know, hence why we all turned to a reinvigorated and slightly more glum Radiohead.

• 30:15Matt Forde?

  But for some people, it's Robbie Williams, isn't it? There's this armchair view that Angels is the song that killed Oasis, that someone else had wrestled that anthemic crowd from them. That that became the euphoric end of the night song that people were singing instead of Don't Look Back in Anger at closing time.

• 30:30Speaker 04

  Hmm, I hadn't thought about that. Well, so Robbie Williams and Guy Chambers, they're the people who dig Britpop's grave.

• 30:38Matt Forde?

  Well, in a way, and then he does Nebworth for three nights, you know, he sort of, he then takes on and conquers their legacy in some way.

• 30:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, I suppose. Was that why he was hanging out with Oasis for, or attempting to at Glastonbury and wherever else? Yeah, exactly, exactly that. Was he, was, was he making notes? Maybe that was, maybe that was why he was there.

• 30:59Alice Levine?

  Nebworth, okay, noted, thank you, thank you.

• 31:02Matt Forde?

  He was rolling up notes, but that's.

• 31:04Alice Levine?

  Nebworth feels like a turning point though, doesn't it? It feels like, is it a peak? Is it a kind of, is there a peak after that? Is that, is that the, the moment that you think of when you think of Britpop?

• 31:16Speaker 04

  No, it can't, no, for me it's not. But then I didn't go to Nebworth. For me, it was just, it was too big, I think. And I sort of knew what it was going to be like. And when people came back, I mean, even Alan McGee, who couldn't get into his own backstage tent, was saying, you know, how nuts the, the whole day was and how, how it was, by that point, it was just out of control. It got too big. I think that was why in the interview Noel didn't want to do another Nebworth, because they'd, they'd done that and experienced it. They just couldn't go any further, I don't think practically. If that's their spike island, then they've achieved everything that some of their heroes, like the Stone Roses, have done.

• 32:00Speaker 04

  So, and I think that's why Noel felt so lost after it. I mean, it's an amazing moment, I'm sure, for, you know, everyone who's in the crowd there. And part of me wishes maybe I should have gone and had a, had a look. But part of me thinks, I don't think I wouldn't like to.

• 32:18Alice Levine?

  I love in summary, Steve Lamacq, Nebworth, bit big.

• 32:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, too, too big, too big for me, Nebworth. Two nights, two nights as well, too big.

• 32:29Alice Levine?

  Bit much.

• 32:30Speaker 04

  Too many, just too many people. I mean, it would have been hard to get out of the car park.

• 32:34Matt Forde?

  Yeah.

• 32:34Speaker 04

  I mean, don't you think?

• 32:35Alice Levine?

  Oh, that's what you're thinking about before you get there, isn't it? You're like, it's gonna be a bloody nightmare.

• 32:38Speaker 04

  I mean, and I'm too far away. I don't like gigs where I'm too far away from the band.

• 32:43Alice Levine?

  Agree.

• 32:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, so.

• 32:45Alice Levine?

  Even your camera phone zoom can't do it, can it? And I know you've always got it out.

• 32:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, I'm always the annoying one with the camera out. Yeah, that's, that's me.

• 32:55Matt Forde?

  Do you think we'll ever have a band like Oasis again? Not just a band that captures people's hearts in terms of the music they like, but a band with that sort of personality. They're so unusual in the sense that the two brothers, both very funny, but with their distinct senses of humour, that rivalry at the heart of it. It's hard to imagine another band like that happening.

• 33:15Speaker 04

  I mean, it is, but I mean, you can never say never, can you? I mean, we do, I mean, even now, we we don't know who's rehearsing, you know, in a garage somewhere in in Britain now, who might have that spark. You know, maybe they're the ones who've read the rule book, but in this case, they've read all the books about Oasis and they're readying themselves to be that type of band. I mean, it's much harder now because, yeah, when during during Britpop, there was an app, there was a centre to the media, which we don't have now, you know, there were, you know, a couple of music papers, The Evening Session and Top of the Pops.

• 33:54Speaker 04

  And if you could get on those, then you're already in a lot of people's minds, you know, and you have a credible backing. And we don't, we don't have the music papers that everyone goes to. We have five thousand blog sites or, you know, websites where you get your music news from, all to smaller audiences. So it's much harder to find a sort of consensus. So if the great band who are in the garage put out their first record, it's much harder for them to be heard by, you know, a massive amount of people. It might not be that the band aren't there, it's just they can't gain the sort of momentum that Oasis and Blur, you know, managed to achieve.

• 34:39Alice Levine?

  This feels perhaps like a naive question, but will there ever be a moment, do you think, where Noel and Liam managed to repair that relationship just to be sort of close brothers again? But of course, people want to know to work together again.

• 34:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, again, it's never say never, isn't it? I imagine every year an offer comes in and every year that offer of money is bigger, I mean, more obscenely bigger than it was a year ago. I just don't know. I mean, at one point I thought they'd never would, but I don't know. I mean, it really depends on, what does it, what does it depend on? Does it depend on, what do they need for that to happen? I'm sure there is something, there will be something that brings them back together, whether it's, whether it's the money or something, you know, personal happens to them.

• 35:36Speaker 04

  There'll be something which reunites them somewhere along the line.

• 35:40Matt Forde?

  And if they do get back together? And they do Nebworth again.

• 35:44Speaker 04

  Still not going.

• 35:45Matt Forde?

  Well, what if there are caveats here, Steve? What if you're guaranteed a ticket down the front? And a VIP car park pass, which means you get a fast exit from the venue.

• 35:56Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 35:57Alice Levine?

  Oof, that is, that is quite an offer.

• 35:59Speaker 04

  I mean, I mean, it is.

• 36:01Matt Forde?

  Free beer?

• 36:01Speaker 04

  Um, no, shit, that's... So I can get my own beer. Well, actually, Japan's how packed are the bars?

• 36:08Alice Levine?

  Well, exactly. You don't have to queue. We'll send someone to get you the beer.

• 36:10Speaker 04

  What's the queue like? I still don't, yeah, I still don't know. I mean, you kind of would think, oh, you gotta go and see it one more time, haven't you? I think probably I'd want to go less now because it's not the original moment in time. Because that original moment in time is the bit. If, if you gave me all those caveats and said, and a time machine and sent us back to 97, then I might be interested.

• 36:35Alice Levine?

  Doesn't ask for much, does he?

• 36:36Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 36:37Matt Forde?

  There's only one problem. The gig was in 96.

• 36:39Speaker 04

  Oh, 96, sorry. Um, it'd take us back to 90, take us back to 96, then I might. You've really put me on the spot there.

• 36:48Alice Levine?

  You'd be devastated if we'd worked out how to time travel and then he missed it by a year. You'd be absolutely furious.

• 36:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, stood in an empty field going, oh, I thought there was some, oh, it's 96. 96 before Britpop went belly up. Oh, there you go.

• 37:04Matt Forde?

  Echo belly up.

• 37:05Speaker 04

  I used to be the king of indie. Now look at me.

• 37:08Alice Levine?

  I feel like when that gig happens, Steve may well be seeing somebody in their garage play and, and he'll be in the right place. He'll be saying, seeing the next big thing.

• 37:17Matt Forde?

  I'll be at Nebworth because I didn't go the first time.

• 37:19Alice Levine?

  Front row.

• 37:19Matt Forde?

  Front row.

• 37:20Speaker 04

  And do you regret not being there? Could you have gone?

• 37:25Matt Forde?

  No, really. I was too young and I didn't have an older brother or anything like that. So it wasn't really on the cards. But in retrospect, I wish I'd have been more animated or asked my mum and pushed a bit. But I'd have been terrified. My first gig, I went to see Eternal. So to do that and then Nebworth would have been a bit of a culture shock. So maybe not.

• 37:43Speaker 04

  And do you feel you're missing out on the performance or the moment, the being there or the actual, what it felt like, you know, watching those songs live in that moment?

• 37:53Matt Forde?

  Absolutely that, because I saw them later on, I saw them a few times, but it's like wanting to be at Wembley in sixty-six or even at Wembley in ninety-six, you know, these are big moments that I was alive for and to be there, even at the back, I bet at the time people had a nightmare at that gig, but in retrospect, their experience of it gets better every year and I would love that feeling.

• 38:13Speaker 04

  I think that's why, you know, if you're asking, would you go now if, if they reformed? Um, I'm not, I'm not piling in on that guest list because it's more about, you know, taking part in something then. I don't even know what I was doing that weekend, but I was probably, as you say, I was probably watching, I don't know, Bog Spanner at the Frog and Whip It or something and, um, you know, hoping that that would be the next big thing. And obviously they weren't.

• 38:42Alice Levine?

  Big up the Bog Spanner fans who are listening.

• 38:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:43Matt Forde?

  That's our next series, actually.

• 38:45Alice Levine?

  Steve Blomberg, thank you so much.

• 38:46Speaker 04

  Thank you for having us on.

• 38:51Matt Forde?

  Well, that was a lot of fun. It was so brilliant to look back on that series, Alice.

• 38:55Alice Levine?

  Yes, I'd forgotten how good The Gallaghers are by Matt Ford.

• 38:59Matt Forde?

  So where are we going next?

• 39:01Alice Levine?

  Okay, we've done Anne Boleyn recently. This is another series about a woman whose name begins with the letter A.

• 39:08Matt Forde?

  Oh my God. It's you, isn't it? I knew you had skeletons in the closet. Finally, we're going to get to the bottom of why you're always late and so shifty about it, why you're quite mean to me, and I've always wanted to know why you carry the gun.

• 39:21Alice Levine?

  Okay, we don't really have time for this, Matt, but in order, because I have a second family and I have to go see them, you deserve it and the gun is a family heirloom. But no, it's not about me. The next series is about an absolute trailblazer. In nineteen sixty, she was only the second ever Brit to undergo gender reassignment surgery and she went on to become a successful model for the likes of Vogue.

• 39:42Matt Forde?

  This is so good because it is a nice change for us to do a success story for once.

• 39:48Alice Levine?

  Yeah, hold your horses on that. She was a huge success story, yes, until the British scandal archetypes we know and hate got involved. Your aristocratic wrongons, your snobby divorce lawyers, your drowsy High Court judges.

• 40:01Matt Forde?

  Ah.

• 40:02Alice Levine?

  Her sensational divorce defined trans rights in Britain in ways that feel especially relevant today. So join us next time for the extraordinary story of April Ashley.

• 40:12Matt Forde?

  British Scandal is hosted by me, Matt Ford.

• 40:14Alice Levine?

  And me, Alice Levine.

• 40:16Matt Forde?

  British Scandal is a production of Wondery and Samistat Audio. For Samistat, our producer is Chica Ayers. Our senior producer is Joe Sykes. For Wondery, our series producer is Theodora LaLudis, and our managing producer is Rachel Sibley. Executive producers for Wondery are Estelle Doyle, Jessica Radburn, and Marshall Levine.

• 40:44Speaker 09

  In the summer of 1881, US Army Lieutenant Adolphus Greeley and 24 other men embarked on an ambitious scientific mission to the northernmost reaches of the Arctic. But despite several triumphs of discovery, the men would soon face tragedy. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of the podcast American History Tellers. We take you to the events, times, and people that shaped America and Americans, our values, our struggles, and our dreams. In our latest series, after Adolphus Greeley and his men arrive at their destination more than 1,000 miles above the Arctic Circle, they get to work collecting scientific data and exploring the frigid landscape. But when resupply ships fail to reach them two summers in a row, they're forced to set out on a desperate search for rescue, and not all

• 41:29Speaker 09

  of them will make it home. Follow American History Tellers wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of American History Tellers' Greeley Arctic Expedition early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.

• 41:45Speaker 10

  Hey, I'm Cassie DePecce. The host of Against the Odds from Audible Originals. In each episode, we share thrilling true stories of survival, putting you in the shoes of the people who lived to tell the tale. In our latest series, we track the story of Hugh Glass, the real-life revenant that inspired the 2015 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. In 1823, Glass was brutally mauled by a grizzly bear in present-day South Dakota and left for dead. His survival depended on trekking through 350 miles of wilderness alone with grave injuries, but he was driven by his thirst for revenge. Follow Against the Odds wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of Against the Odds early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.