The combative brothers in English rock band Oasis have buried the hatchet long enough to survive the first two shows of their North American tour, guitarist Noel Gallagher said Monday.
Oasis are co-headlining the road trip with the Black Crowes, an American band also fronted by two squabbling siblings, and the package has been slyly dubbed “The Tour of Brotherly Love.”
Noel Gallagher and his younger brother, vocalist Liam, are famous for their public spats, with Noel walking off the group’s European tour last year. A few years ago, the group cut short an American tour because of internal strife. However, things are now relatively calm, he told Reuters.
“The first gig (in Las Vegas on Friday) was really good, the second one in Santa Barbara (on Saturday) was fantastic, so it’s been really, really good so far. Not surprisingly to anyone, it’s really good,” Gallagher said.
“We’re not going, ‘Wow! This is actually going to work.’ We knew it was going to work in the first place.”
As Chris and Rich Robinson of the Black Crowes have done, Gallagher shrugged off the tour’s “Brotherly Love” handle as a marketing ploy.
“We’re just brothers in bands that have good days and bad days and that’s as simple as that. We do argue with the drummers as well. It’s not just with each other.”
While Oasis are huge virtually everywhere except the United States, which few British bands have cracked in recent years, Gallagher denied the tour was designed to piggyback on the Black Crowes’ local success.
“We’re just doing it because we’ve got nothing better to do back in England, really… We like them as people, they like us. We like them as a band and they like our band. We’re just going to go on the road and have some fun.”
Oasis have recorded eight backing tracks for a new studio album, and Gallagher said it would probably come out early next year, perhaps preceded by a single this year. The band is producing the unnamed effort itself, and would step back from the experimental nature of its previous studio album, “Standing on the Shoulder of Giants,” which received lukewarm reviews upon its release in 2000.
Gallagher, who writes most of the songs, said the new album was more collaborative. Liam and guitarist Gem have each written a song, while bass player Andy Bell has written a couple, he said.