Noel Gallagher says the last six months of Oasis were “awful” and he and Liam even had a “massive fistfight” before their final world tour had started.
The 'Don't Look Back In Anger' hitmaker quit the band in August 2009 after a backstage bust-up with his younger brother at a festival in Paris which ended with Liam swinging a guitar at Noel's head like an “axe”.
Now, Noel has opened up on just how strained the siblings' relationship was and has revealed they had come to blows before they even started touring final album 'Dig Out Your Soul' - an incident which proved to be a key moment in the breakdown of their bond.
In an interview with the new issue of Esquire magazine, he said: “The last six months were f***ing awful, it was excruciating. Me and Liam had a massive, massive, massive fistfight three weeks before the world tour started, and fights like that in the past would always be easy to rectify but for some reason I wasn't going to let it go this time. I was just like, 'F**k this ****.' And there was an atmosphere all the way around the world.”
Noel admits things were so strained between him and the frontman as they travelled the globe he made the decision to fly separately from the rest of his bandmates.
During the final run of shows, the 48-year-old guitarist felt Oasis had lost sight of what they were, had nothing left to achieve and he was particularly dismayed at Liam's desire to use their stadium shows as opportunities to plug his clothing line Pretty Green.
He said: “By that stage I was flying separately to the rest of the band, which I have to tell you was f***ing great. And Liam was sacking tour managers because he didn't like their shoes. Then he starts his own clothing label and starts dedicating songs to it on stage and I'm like, 'Really, is this what it's come to?' He's modelling parkas on stage which you could buy on his website. And it's just like, 'This is not for me.' All that being said, we had two gigs left and I reckon if I'd had got to the end of that tour and I'd had six months off I would have just forgotten about it, got on with it. But the straw that broke the camel's back was the night in Paris and that was a fight. There's no hidden darkness. It was just a fight about f***ing nonsense, just him being p***ed. He'd cancelled the gig at the V Festival and we were getting loads of s**t for it ... Liam's convinced I'm some kind of puppet-master, and he blames it all on me. And then it just escalated. It blew up. And that was it. I sat in the car and thought, “You know what, I've done enough now. F**k it, I'm going to leave ... If I'd thought there was anything left to achieve I wouldn't have left Oasis ... You name it, we did it all.”
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