We’ve all felt worse for wear the next day after a boozy night out on the town, but for Noel Gallagher, god-like genius and Brit Pop icon, the world really did start spinning when he was caught up in an earthquake in Mexico during an interview for a local newspaper.
“We were involved in a proper earthquake,” he told The Sun. “I was doing an interview and they asked me if I would say ‘come to Mexico on holiday’ because they have all these problems with people getting their heads cut off by gangs and loads of crime.”
“I was trying to wriggle out of it and the lamps they brought into the room started swaying. I had been out the night before and just brushed it off thinking it was a bit weird. You know … we had been enjoying ourselves a bit.”
“The cameraman just stopped and said really calmly, ‘We better go, there is an earthquake’. It was like being on a ship. We had to do a runner. The buildings were swaying.”
The earthquake wasn’t a small one either, measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale. “We were all over the place walking out to the car park. I was stood there thinking, ‘This is brilliant’, as the whole place wobbled about. The locals were really laid back about it, sparking up fags and talking. But it was pretty hairy.”
Gallagher is currently touring North America, with his backing band The High Flying Birds in tow. It’s the first time he’s toured to continent without his former bandmates in Oasis who split acrimoniously a few years back.
Since then there have been murmurs of a reunion but the brothers, who have a long history of being at each others throats, have shown no sign that the bad blood between them has mended.
In fact the only thing that stopped the two from taking their sibling rivalry all the way to a British courtroom was when their mother Peggy stepped in.
After his ‘hair of the dog raising experience’ in Mexico, Gallagher continued on his tour, travelling to Coachella in the Californian desert over the weekend where he played a headline set to thousands of fans.
But he very nearly didn’t get through festival security, who searched through his gear and discovered his sleeping pills.
“We got body-searched coming in. It was like an airport. It is me, I suppose, so they might know the history. They pulled out my sleeping tablets and asked me to explain them. There were about 30 little yellow and white tablets.”
“I said, ‘In all seriousness Chuck, or whatever your name is, do you not think these would at least be down my sock? They are sleeping tablets. What do you want me to do? Take one before I go on stage to prove what they are?'”
Gallagher gave an interview shortly after his set over the weekend, opining about a range of topics such as the festival scene, playing solo versus in a band, and of course the problem with the record industry today – all in his trademark no bullshit style.
You can watch the interview below.
