treasure box

I met Noel through a mutual friend of my husband. He put us in touch directly and in our online exchanges Noel was perfectly charming and accommodating. Not unlike the Eddie Vedder shoot there was no publicist or manager involved so organising the shoot took on the uncanny feeling of texting a mate.

We met at Noel's brand new studio in London. To my surprise, the first thing he told me was, he was a massive fan of From Genesis to Revelation, particulary the song "The Conqueror". I never had Noel down as a Genesis fan!

The studio was perfect for photographing. Noel's very into feng shui and the studio had a vermilion psychedelic feel, but I ended up settling on an office room with natural daylight. Out of everyone I photographed for this book, no one else had been able to hold his eye open without blinking for as long or as effortlessly as Noel did. When I mentioned this to him he joked that it must have been all the drugs he took in the Nineties.

— Eye-D: Portraits by Anna Gabriel, 2022

— annamariegabrielphotography on inst 09/2020

"He was great, very funny," she said. "My husband came along and we went to his studio in London and it was a great time - He was making jokes, showing us around, very relaxed. "He was telling about his sunglasses, he loves them, and likes to buy expensive ones so I had to shoot him with his sunglasses on but I like that shot."

they did! circa 2000. it's a tricky and ephemeral bit of lore to concretely track down, i don't believe the actual dates are even known. this is the only quote i have to hand about it at the moment:

NG (recounting a conversation with Liam): Shouldn't it be baby?

No no no, NO! It shouldn't be baby, you know.

Maybe? That sounds fucking stupid.

I'm like right, well I'm not writing any tunes baby in it, baby.

LG: It's actually one of me favorites, don't know what it means to me.

so it turns out that this ^ encounter with tommy gallagher in 1996 was not actually after loch lomond! it was on the 23rd of march, just after a gig in dublin: see here and here.

this is, of course, very interesting in light of the "i'll fight you if you promise not to kiss me" moment, because tommy can't possibly have been mocking liam about the loch lomond kiss four whole months before it happened. which opens up two main possibilities:

the extract on the right, in which tommy narrates the event himself, was published on the 25th of august 1996, a matter of weeks after loch lomond. so, it's possible that he didn't actually make that joke to liam's face, but then chose, a few months on, after seeing the loch lomond photos, to lie and insert it into his narrative. why? who knows. but he is certainly a very practiced liar, so this is somewhat plausible.

tommy did, in fact, make that joke to liam's face, but he was alluding to something completely different. to what exactly? well i'm not actually sure i want to know. to be honest.

from the way tommy tells this story, it seems as if it was the kissing comment in particular that really set liam off and got him shouting and threatening to break his legs.

of course, tommy's description of liam's reaction should be taken with a pinch of salt (as with absolutely everything tommy says, frankly) because all other accounts of the incident say that liam was angry, loud and ready to fight from the get-go.

what it does tell us, though, is that even if, in reality, liam didn't react to the kissing joke in any notable way, (or even if tommy was lying and never actually made the joke to liam's face!) he must have thought that it meant/would mean something to liam, because it is this moment that he chose to emphasise as the moment liam got violent. he must have thought it was significant in some way. so the possibilities are:

he invented this exchange, but he believed that the loch lomond kiss was a sensitive topic for liam.

he invented this exchange, but it wasn't about the loch lomond kiss; he still believed, however, that joking about kissing him would get a rise out of liam.

he really did say that, and it wasn't about loch lomond; he believed that joking about kissing him would get a rise out of liam.

he really did say that, and joking about kissing him really did get a rise out of liam.

all of which are really very troubling.

anyways if anybody has any insights at all into This Whole Thing please do add on............

— 23/02/1999 London

Liam: No such thing as happily married. If you wanna see the opposite sex sprout four heads, then exchange a couple of rings. You walk to the altar with a woman with one head and you walk back up with a fucking monster. I'd much rather live with someone and have them as a girlfriend.

Did you both have problems with commitment?

Noel: Marriage is a ridiculous concept. I hate people who say, Oh I've found my soulmate. That's bullshit. There's only one soulmate and that's the man upstairs. I don't even know why I bothered getting married in the first place - a moment of fucking weakness, as well as an amazing tax fiddle. You can save loads of money from the taxman, but you end up paying it back in spades at the other end of the marriage.

Liam: I was forced into it. No, it wasn't an arranged marriage [to Kensit] more a deranged marriage.

So is your relationship as brothers better now?

Liam: We had to touch the bottom for it to get better. It had to be fucking totally shit first. Plus, we had to give you lot something to write about or you'd be stuck with Travis and Coldplay and people who want a long prosperous career by being nice. That ain't real. Fighting and arguing and fucking people off is real.

Noel: I can handle Liam now cos I'm more tolerant. I used to think, I'm the boss, so fuck off. Also, I do really mean it when I say he'll be the best songwriter in this country in five years time. People thought I was being ironic. I wasn't, his new songs are great.

So how close did you come to splitting?

Noel: We didn't. We sat down and I said, "Listen, I love you and you love me, what's the most important thing? One: the music. Two: the singer. Three: the cunt who writes the songs." So we got rid of the fucking entourage of 450 cunts hanging around us, he cut down on his drinking and wrote some fantastic songs, we got working with two great musicians and here we are.

— 06/02/2001 NME Awards