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“So tell me, what are the chances of an Oasis reunion with your brother Liam?”
Bloody hell, it always wraps back around to this shite, Noel thought as he dragged a hand along his face. “None. No chance, mate. Never.”
“You seem so sure about that.”
Noel looked off to the side with his face resting in a neutral expression. “I don’t want to work with Liam. I left Oasis fourteen years ago because I could not work with him and I don’t intend to go back.”
The interviewer wore a fake smile that pissed Noel off. “I’m an Oasis fan, I would love to see Oasis in concert. I didn’t get the chance to in the nineties.”
“Right then, maybe you should go call up Liam and get the band back together and have that Oasis reunion. You can play guitar and stand next to him on stage and deal with all his bullshit, not me, I got out.” Noel wasn’t being very nice but then again, the interviewer wasn’t being nice either. He was here to promote his solo work, not speak on his godforsaken little brother.
Noel’s coldness threw the interviewer for a loop before he regained composure and smiled cheekily. “No no, Oasis isn’t Oasis without Noel and Liam. It would have to be you who calls Liam.”
“Right, because Liam won’t fucking call me.” Noel folded his arms over his chest. “He can want an Oasis reunion as much as he claims to on Twitter, but he won’t do it because he doesn’t have it in him to call me.”
“So you really can’t work with Liam ever again?”
“No, I don’t want to. We don’t like each other.”
“Has it always been like that?” The interviewer asked.
Noel sighed long and deep. Just a few more Oasis questions before they could go back to talking about the High Flying Birds. “Ye, even way back in the nineties I couldn’t stand the twat. He was getting pissed every night, showed up late for rehearsals, not an ounce of professionalism in that boy’s body. I couldn’t fucking stand it.”
“I thought you two were closer in the nineties?”
“The tabloids wrote whatever they wanted to write, mate, the truth is simple: me and Liam couldn’t stand each other.”
A cheeky smile crossed the interviewer’s face and Noel noticed two cameras panning to the interviewer’s desk. “Are you sure about that?” Confusion passed through Noel’s system because this was obviously going somewhere and he had no idea what to expect. “If that’s the case, then do you care to explain this?”
Noel’s jaw fell open as the interviewer pulled out a photo from 1996, Loch Lomond. He and Liam were kissing on stage in such a way that Noel couldn’t just lie and say it was a brotherly peck. Noel had his tongue down Liam’s throat in the photo for fuck’s sake.
Noel ran a hand through his grey hair and closed his eyes to spare himself from looking at the photo. “We were coked up, drunk as fuck, too. I thought it would make good press. Honestly, I don’t even remember it.”
“What about this one?” To Noel’s horror the interviewer pulled another photo from behind the Loch Lomond one. This one seemed to be captured from a video of him and Liam, but Noel couldn’t place the time or date of this one.
“I don’t know, mate, I don’t remember any of these. I was on far too many drugs to have been in my right mind,” Noel said, exasperated. Then more coldly he continued, “I don’t see how any of it’s relevant to now, seeing as me and Our Kid don’t speak to each other and we’re not getting the band back together. Don’t know why anyone would want that if the band is remembered for…” Noel gestured vaguely at the photos the interviewer was holding. “That.”
The interviewer’s smile remained and on the screen next to him played a short montage of suspiciously close moments between Noel and Liam throughout the years. Most of them, Noel could make up an excuse for or play off. Then photos taken for his and Liam appearance on the cover of Vox Magazine in 1994 came on and Noel truly wondered to himself why the fuck he and Liam thought it’d be a good promotional image to have Noel hold a blue rope around Liam’s neck like a leash.
“I don’t know what the bloody hell I’m looking at, mate.” Noel pursed his lips and sat with his arms folded and legs crossed. He wanted to stand up and leave, fucking crash out and have a fit because this wasn’t really an interview anymore, rather it seemed to be some sort of humiliation stunt. But something in Noel tethered him to seat and refused to let his frustration show.
“I just think you and Liam were once close, yeah?” The interviewer asked.
“Yeah, way fucking closer than anyone should be,” Noel scoffed back after the screen turned to black. “I’m not fucking going back. Those photos are cursed as shite and I’m way happier now that there’s miles of distance between us.”
“Right, well, speaking of distance, the High Flying Birds are touring across the UK next year, right? Tell us about the set list.”