Live4ever’s Interview With Rock’s Greatest Frontman ‘Liam Gallagher’

‘I’m not in it for a career, I’m here to touch people.’

Being delayed for half an hour by US immigration officials at JFK airport and spending the next day throwing up in his hotel room was not exactly what Liam Gallagher had in mind for his recent trip to New York City. Although his bout with food poisoning forced Liam to cancel high profile promotional appearances including a segment on the Jimmy Fallon show, you shouldn’t necessarily feel bad for him. In February Liam accepted, on the behalf of Oasis, the Brit Award for best album of the last 30 years for the band’s 1994 record (What’s the Story) Morning Glory, and just as he was arriving in New York, Q Magazine announced that its readers had voted Liam the greatest frontman of all time (beating out such rock luminaries as John Lennon, Freddie Mercury and Bono!).

While fans anxiously await to savor the fruits of Liam’s post-Oasis musical endeavors (new single hitting the shelves this fall!), the rock megastar is not content to limit himself simply to rock n’ roll. Having conquered the musical world, Liam has branched out , launching his own clothing line Pretty Green in the summer of 2009. Nevertheless, although Liam was in New York to promote the redesign of Prettygreen.com and US online store launch, music is never far from his mind.

In another Live4ever exclusive, we sat down with Liam in a posh midtown Manhattan hotel. Clad in a Pretty Green camouflaged parka, perched on an antique Victorian armchair and surrounded by tea-sipping, elderly matrons, the ‘Rock n’ Roll Star’ dished candidly about the clothing line, the spoils of the Internet, the big Apple, his newest band member, being deemed the greatest front man in history and the current void of inspiring music and true rock stars.

Live4ever: OK Liam, So how are you today, good?

Liam: Feel a lot better than I was yesterday. Yesterday I looked and I felt like I was a vampire man. Wasn’t too well. Throwing up a lot. Still a little bit dodgy but other than that I feel good man.

I hope it wasn’t a hot dog from JFK. I heard they gave you a bit of trouble out there, an extra wait of some kind when you flew in?

Nah Nah, I signed a wrong piece of paper.

A wrong piece of paper?

I’ve got a visa to come here. I don’t know…what was it Steve?

(Pretty Green’s CEO Steve Allen explains that it was just an immigrations officer doing his job and that they had to fill out a form again.)

(Grins) Considering I can’t write it took me a long time to fill it out – it took me all day.

Well I hope they treated you OK? They can get a bit uptight sometimes?

Nah, they were good, it was alright.

So you’re in New York to promote Pretty Green? As of today US residents can purchase your items using US currency in your online store, right?

(Steve jumps in and explains that all items are priced in US Dollars with no Import Taxes. The Items are distributed from the UK and delivery normally will take around 3 days.)

Did you talk to any New York department stores about carrying your line of clothing?

Our people back in the UK have been doing that and there is a store in New York, ‘Any Old Iron’, who will be the first store to sell our line starting in the fall.

Where you not interested in one of the bigger stores such as Barneys?

Oh yeah, I like Barneys but I heard it’s not so good at the moment. I’m easy I’ll put it anywhere. I’m not that precious about where it goes, you know what I mean? The main thing is to try to get our own little store, our own little shop out here at some point, if all goes well.

You already have your own stores planned elsewhere though?

We’re looking at a place in London – and Tokyo would be a good place because we have a bit of a fan base out there as a lot of people are buying from out there. Definitely New York, if you do one out there you got to do one in New York, yeah?

Absolutely.

So as you’ve said before you are not trying to reinvent the wheel here with your line. It’s a priority for you that this is a top quality product.

Top quality yeah.

I feel when people can get past the ‘Liam Gallagher’s clothing label’ they’ll realize it’s top top gear, you know what I mean?

Obviously a lot of Oasis fans are buying it – and it’s just normal people who are buying it, it’s good gear man.

Would you consider releasing a sub line of clothing that is less expensive and would be available in cheaper clothing and department stores such as Target or H&M for example?

We’re doing a green label, but I don’t want to do a whole collection of cheap, not so good gear.

Your either doing good gear or not so good gear.There’s no point in having a split personality, you know what I mean? I don’t expect everyone to be able to afford it but you get what you pay for, you know what I mean? But we are definitely doing a cheaper version of still very good gear.

Can you recall the first time you had the idea to manufacture your own clothes? What item did you think of producing first?

Basically all this Pretty Green stuff started over desert boots and shoes. I’ve got a load of desert boots at home that are on their last legs and we were sitting around thinking about making our own shoes one day,

So the shoe came first?

Yeah , like a desert boot. We brought a guy in to sort of make a couple of samples and they weren’t quite right so we binned that for a bit and started the Tshirts and Jackets and stuff, that’s how it fell into the clothes. Now we’re doing everything.

You have a deal going with Clarks, right?

(Liam gets up from his chair and points at his shoes) This is them yeah, Clarks.

Very nice. We’ve been following your shoe line in our newsroom, yeah.

It’s always good to be working with Clarks cause they are the Godfathers of shoes as far as I’m concerned so hopefully that will be good.

Are you really going to be making women’s handbags?

Not Yet, Bullshit. Some girl asked me if I was making handbags so I said yeah.

Right?

“Knickers and thongs and all sorts of fucking vibrators (laughs) Pretty Green fuckin’ soldier boy – Do I look like I make fuckin’ handbags?”

Bikinis perhaps? What about Pretty Green Furniture?

The thing is if we do our own shop, we’ll have furniture in there you can only get from Pretty Green. But we’re not gonna start like DFS, you know what I mean? We wanna do everything but one thing at a time man.

Well we for one are looking forward to your first shop opening in NYC.

If all goes well mate. Something small, nothin’ big something cute and cool man.

Maybe down in Soho.

Yeah, yeah.

So can we switch gears a bit Liam and talk music?

Yeah mate.

As you know, Live4ever has been reporting all about you since 2002 and we recently launched another site to cover the Brit Rock scene .

Excellent, yeah.

You’re not too happy with the current music scene in general are you? Except for maybe with Kasabian?

Yeah Kasabian. I don’t like scenes anyway. Scenes kill music coz all these other dicks get on board because they think it’s cool and then they take over the scene and before you know it, the band that was cool is getting surrounded by 20 idiots and they’re just doin’it coz they think it’s a cool thing.

Kasabian are the best band in England at the moment. Until my new band comes out … and that’s the fucking end of that.

Do you know what I mean? Because that’s the way it is because they are the only ones who look cool, they are good live.

You like their album too?

Yeah I like ’em both live and the album, I think Kasabian are great, There’s enough shit you know – I say enough about bands. They are good band, a top band.

Anyone here in the States we can talk about, you used to be into the Strokes and BRMC I recall?

Yeah they’re alright, they’re alright but they’re not writing fucking proper tunes, they’re not writing classics – anything that can stand the test of time like the Beatles or the Stones. The only people that were doing that was us and we will continue to do that in different ways but ehh the scene in England, there isn’t one man. They’re all fucking into careers man, they’re all just like fast food, havin’ one hit.

On the cover of NME one week and the next….

Yeah, and then they’re gone. They go and have one fucking hit and the next week they’re in fucking rehab. ‘My Fucking Drug Problem’, by Tom Chaplin or somethin’.

Throughout your time with Oasis you seemed to have a love / hate relationship with the Internet?

Too right.

You and Noel. One would read quotes like: ‘Kids should turn off their computers and pick up a guitar’.

Yeah, I think so, without a doubt.

You still think the same today?

Yeah, completely without a doubt. Computers are good for getting in touch with people around the world but as for living your life on your computer you got to be insane. Where’s that going to end up? You’re gonna end up derranged.

So what about Twitter and musician blogs?

Musician blogs are ridiculous. They’re giving too much away.

Twitter? I only use my twitter as a weapon or to say thanks to people or if people are gettin’ a bit fresh if you know what I mean.

Instead of waiting 6 months to do an interview to put them in to place do it on twitter. All that – I went for a poo the other day or I just had a beer or I’m scratching my ass watching neighbors or..
this is ridiculous. Who wants to know all the ins and outs of everything?

I believe Tom from Kasabian was quoted as saying that the Internet killed the myth behind the rock-star.

Yeah?

Is too much available about stars on the Internet?

No, well I don’t know about that.

No? Don’t agree?

Nah, well I mean, I know what he’s saying. But there is no myth.

There are no rock stars in England anyway.

And if you’re cool and you know what you’re doing it doesn’t really matter if other people are exposed to it or not. I think that’s just a blag that. A Myth? Nah.

Imagine the Internet we have today would have existed at the height of, let’s say, Led Zeppelin’s career. We all heard the so called rock n roll stories that have been told from those days….

Yeah but people do behave in that way. I live my life in a pretty rock n roll kind of way and I’m sure that people who are working normal jobs have a rock n roll life style on the weekend or whatever but there are always gonna be people who live a certain way. Just because the Internet is involved doesn’t mean you have to stop and if you do then it’s silly init?

Let’s Switch to the subject of Tabloids, they suck everywhere. But do they really suck the most in the UK?

Yeah they do. I mean, but that’s everywhere init? But that’s what they do isn’t it, you know, they write crap about you but I don’t even read them so I don’t care what they write about me. No, not at all. I pretty much agree with half of this they write about me.

LAUGHTER.

Basically any kind of publicity is good publicity?

Nah, nah whatever. I know exactly who I am, I know I can be a knob-head at times but at least I’m a proper knob-head when I am one.

There you go.

And I know I can be a c#nt sometimes and all that stuff and again I can be the biggest c#nt in the world if I want to be but a lot of times I’m an alright guy so, it doesn’t really matter what the press say about me. The people who I know they know me, they know what I’m like and they’re all I need to impress, not impress but those are the people who I need to look up to, the people who I like and care about. I don’t care what that person over there thinks about me, or that geezer over there, I’m not interested. You’d go mad wouldn’t you? Thinking about what everyone thinks about you?

Have you ever heard of Perez Hilton out in LA? He’s got a celebrity tabloid website and makes a ton of cash with it.

Who?

He’s a bit chubby and has blue or pink hair. Do you think he’d look hot in Pretty Green?

I think everyone would look cool in Pretty Green. (He points at an elderly lady, your stereotypical grandma, walking by.) Even she’d look good in Pretty Green!

Yeah?

Well you give it a go , and if you don’t then… everyone will look good in Pretty Green.

No doubt.

Click here for Part II