Noel Gallagher Denies Oasis Reunion

Noel Gallagher fears his former band Oasis committed festival suicide at one of their biggest ever shows by playing a bunch of new songs the audience had never heard.

The band headlined Britain's Glastonbury festival in 1995 at the height of their fame, but the set was muted when they delivered six tracks from (What's the Story) Morning Glory? which hadn't yet been released.

Although the record was hailed as a classic upon its release three months later in October, 1995, the songs were unknown at the time, and Gallagher regrets opting to perform them at the prestigious festival.

"Oasis never really had their Glastonbury moment. We never really got on with it. I couldn't tell you why. Lord knows we had the tunes but the times that we did it when we should have been great was the first year we headlined it and we got sidetracked," he said.

"We'd just come out of the studio making Morning Glory and we decided, which was suicide, to play six tracks off Morning Glory which no one had heard, one of them being Champagne Supernova which goes on for about half an hour.

"It was the only time we've played Don't Look Back in Angerto silence. And by the time we played (Glastonbury) a second time (in 2004), our moment had passed. So I'd be up for doing it again."

However, Gallagher was quick to play down any suggestion he would reunite with Oasis for the event, insisting he only wants to perform at Glastonbury as a solo star at the request of festival boss Michael Eavis.

The musician, who has announced the release of a new album and single, said his old band "never really gone on with" the event despite playing it several times.

Speaking to fans at Facebook's London office, he said: "I'd be up for doing it, I'm going regardless."

Earlier this year, his brother Liam sparked rumours the band were getting back together with a series of cryptic tweets that led one bookmaker to suspend betting on the band playing the Somerset festival.

Oasis, who split in 2009 when Noel walked out, had dozens of hits includingWonderwall and Little by Little in a career lasting more than a decade.

Noel's new album, Chasing Yesterday, will be released in March with the first single, In the Heat of the Moment, out next month.

The star revealed one of the tracks, Lock All the Doors, had taken him 23 years to write.

He said: "I gave a bit of it away to the Chemical Brothers in the nineties when we did Setting Sun and I always meant to finish it off.

"I kept the chorus but I could never find a way of getting the verse to tie in with this chorus and one afternoon I was coming out of the Tesco Metro where I live in Maida Vale and I don't know what it was it just hit me coming round the corner."

NZ Herald