Noel Gallagher on working with Robert Smith and his love of The Cure
Noel Gallagher has spoken to NME about his love of The Cure, and how Robert Smith came to remix his recent single ‘Pretty Boy’.
Back in March, Gallagher shared Smith’s “spacey remix” of the Johnny Marr-featuring single, taken from his acclaimed new album with The High Flying Birds, ‘Council Skies‘. Now in a new interview with NME’s In Conversation series, the former Oasis guitarist and songwriter has discussed how they came to collaborate.
Gallagher explained: “Because the song [‘Pretty Boy’] sounds like The Cure I was like, ‘Does Robert Smith do remixes?’ I got hold of his email, the first line was, ‘Hi Robert, it’s Noel Gallagher’. I thought at that point he’d go, ‘Fuck that c**t’. He emailed back with ‘Send me the track’. I did and fuck me – if I thought it sounded like The Cure when it went, it certainly did when it came back!
“It wasn’t until I played it to a few people when someone said, ‘That’s one of Oasis, one of The Smiths and one of The Cure on the same fucking track’ and I was like, ‘That’s far out! What a mad idea!’ I’d never met him but I’ve been such an admirer of his tunes since ‘Boys Don’t Cry’.”
It wasn’t until long after receiving the remix that Gallagher and Smith came to meet, with the former revealing his fandom of The Cure.
“When I eventually met him, I told him I remember buying their singles album ‘Standing On The Beach, Staring At The Sea’ at HMV in Manchester,” Gallagher told NME. “When I told people they were like, ‘You like The Cure?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, just because you like The Cure doesn’t mean you have to fucking wear lipstick!’ Do you know what I mean? But I have subsequently met him and he’s a very funny man. He’s very funny on email too, actually.”
Gallagher added: “He sends all his emails in shouty capitals and when I got the first one I was like, ‘Oh wow’. I didn’t have my glasses on at the time – sorry to break your hearts girls, but I do wear glasses – and I thought he was telling me to fuck off. I could just see shouty capitals and I was like, ‘Oh I didn’t realise he was that vehemently against the idea’.”
This comes after Paul Weller called Smith a “fucking fat c**t” last year when a journalist told him that one of Gallagher’s new tracks had a resemblance to The Cure.
“I can’t fucking stand them,” said Weller of the band. “Fucking fat c**t, with his lipstick and all that bollocks. He is my age as well, isn’t he?”
Gallagher was recently photographed backstage with The Cure on their ongoing US tour and seen watching the band side of stage. Fans are hoping that they will soon announce release details of the long overdue ‘Songs Of A Lost World’ – the group’s first new album since 2008’s ‘4:13 Dream’.
Having long teased the album – after telling us that two new records were on the way at the NME Awards 2020 – Smith revealed to NME last year that one of them would be “real very soon” and would be called ‘Songs Of A Lost World’. Discussing the themes and character of the long-awaited album, Smith said that it “doesn’t have very much light on it” and that it sounds “more like ‘Disintegration’ than ‘Head On The Door’”.
The new interview with NME also saw Gallagher discuss the making of his new album, the flaws on every record he has ever made both with Oasis and as a solo artist, the AI-generated Oasis album, Britpop reunions, Brexit Britain and his thoughts on modern rock and The 1975.
Gallagher’s ‘Council Skies’ is currently neck and neck with Foo Fighters’ ‘But Here We Are’ in the race for this week’s UK Number One Album. He is currently on tour in the US with Garbage and Metric before returning for a run of UK and European dates and a headline tour in the winter. Visit here for tickets and more information.
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Andrew Trendell
NME
