Noel Gallagher has blamed ‘Friends’ for helping destroy music sales.
The High Flying Birds frontman, 55, who is currently promoting his latest solo album ‘Council Skies’, added the explosion in expensive coffee houses has also contributed to the collapse of culture as it leads to people talking rubbish and spending money on massively inflated food and drink they could be using to support artists.
He was quoted by the Daily Star saying: “It is sitting around in sweaters drinking overpriced coffee and talking about nonsense.
“Since the rise of the coffee shop, culture has disappeared. People are horrified that they have to pay for music!
“But $20 for two coffees, oh, absolutely. I haven’t got the brain capacity to process this.”
In 2018, he ranted to NPR: “Since the rise of the coffee shop, culture has disappeared, don’t you think? People are horrified that they have to pay for music. Music! But $20 for two coffees, ‘Oh, absolutely’.
“I feel like the resistance to pay for music came after people got used to that. Maybe it’s that they got used to spending a lot on commodities that feel like culture – like coffee – and then changed their financial priorities. Or maybe it’s that, all of a sudden, music was free.”
Asked what he thought embodied the spirit of rock ’n’ roll, Noel added in the 2018 chat: “To me, it’s freedom of thought. Freedom of expression. It’s not about the leather jacket and the Jack Daniels, though that always helps.
“Rock and roll to me was about Led Zeppelin and The Beatles and the Stones and the Sex Pistols.
“Somewhere in the middle of the ’90s, people started mass-producing Rolling Stones 1971 tour t-shirts and MC5 T-shirts.
“People would say, ‘That’s so rock and roll, innit?’ and it lost its thing.”