Keith Richards once asked Noel Gallagher who is worse out of Sir Mick Jagger and Liam Gallagher.
The former Oasis guitarist has recalled bumping into The Rolling Stones rocker, 77, in the Bahamas on New Year’s Eve one year, and him quizzing the ‘Supersonic’ hitmaker, 54, on whether his rival sibling and the Britpop group’s ex-frontman, 48, is the “biggest ****” or the Stones bandleader, 77.
And Noel chose his arch-nemesis brother – who he’s been at loggerheads with ever since Oasis split in 2009 following a backstage bust-up between the pair – over the ‘Satisfaction’ hitmaker in a veiled-swipe at Liam, who only a wrote a handful of songs from his band’s back catalogue, as he praised Jagger for writing “some of the greatest lyrics of all time”.
Speaking to Hometime presenters Andy Bush and Richie Firth on Absolute Radio, Noel recalled: “So I go up to the bar and there is Keith Richards, looking exactly as you would imagine, scarf and a hat, and his son is a friend of mine Marlon, said ‘Dad’ and he suddenly turns around and says, ‘ah your still around are you’, but he said a great thing, you’ll have to bleep it out but it is a brilliant line. His second line was, he said, ‘one thing I’ve always wanted to ask you, who is the bigger ****, your singer or mine’ and I said well as your singer wrote some of the greatest lyrics of all time I’m going to say mine. And he was like your band you were quite interesting there for a while, and I was like I could actually say the same to you. But he was great and such a dude. It kinda reaffirms your faith in all your heroes when you meet Keith because he is the man.”
Elsewhere, Noel quipped that Oasis should have been named The Sex Beatles because they were so heavily influenced by The Sex Pistols and The Beatles.
He said: “When we started Oasis we wanted to be a cross between The Pistols and The Beatles, we should have been called The Sex Beatles, I mean that would have been a great name wouldn’t it.”
Noel’s Through The Decades playlist can be heard on Absolute Radio Noel until midnight on the 18th June. Find the station on absoluteradio.co.uk, your smart-speaker or in the Absolute Radio app.