Preview - Hurricane Festival 2005

Eleven years after their first gig in their native Manchester, eight years after Definitely Maybe, their first album, got a generation who had all but given up on rock and roll buying music again, five years after the media madness of the mid-nineties started to subside, there is no mystery why millions still love Oasis: honesty. The men are honest, the music is honest. We trust Oasis - always have done. We've known the Gallagher brothers were for real, ever since we heard that first album. That is why, one Saturday morning this winter, when 120,000 tickets went on sale for the bands two summer shows at Finsbury Park, London, Noel Gallagher was able to take a call from his manager by lunchtime to say that nothing had changed, that all the tickets had sold, that his band were still the biggest thing in British rock. "That´s without them hearing any of the new stuff," says Noel, shaking his head in admiration. "For all the fans knew, we could have made a reggae album."

They have not made a reggae album. What they have made is Heathen Chemistry: explosive, yes; experimental, no. It' i another, great, Oasis album; the fifth they have done in the studio and the best, says Gallagher, since their second, What is the Story Morning Glory, became the best-selling British album ever. (In 1996, Oasis sold 18 million albums.) "We have moved on a wee bit," says Noel. "But to re-invent ourselves completely we wouldd have to be contrived and we are not capable of that. I could not take on an alter ego and I know Liam could not because I would be stood behind him going “you look like a twat”. I do not think I would look good in leather trousers anyway. Our favourite bands are still The Beatles and the Sex Pistols. We do Oasis music and that is it." Honesty again. Similarly, there is nothing too deep and meaningful about the album' title. It came from a t-shirt Noel bought in Ibiza.

"I love this record," says Noel. "But I would say that wouldnt I?" With any other pop idol, of course youd share his cynicism. Coming from a man so ruthlessly self-critical as to virtually disown the band´s third album, a man who says that even their excellent last album Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, contained only three or four great songs, a man who is scathingly dismissive of the marketing hype that threatens to engulf his industry, you pay attention when he says: "Its a better collection of songs than the last two or three. It boils down to that: the songs are better. It does get more difficult. I throw more stuff away now. You can´t just write Raspberry Fields Forever."  "I dont know if Im a better songwriter," he says. "But there is something in the air around the band that breeds better songs." He is reluctant to analyse it further, but admits that Liam contributing three songs and new members Gem Archer and Andy Bell one each might well have forced him to raise his game. "Maybe it´s a competitive thing, I dont know. Keith Richards said “you dont go after the songs, the songs find you."

"The best songs," he says, "pour out of you. You sit there with a guitar and a piece of paper and a pen, get the first line right, the rest of it comes immediately." That happened to him several times last summer. "I was living in a hotel near Buckingham Palace. Warm day, fuck all on the telly, in love with my girlfriend. I wrote She is Love in ten minutes. Live Forever was like that. They´re the songs that mean something to other people. You write it, put the kettle on, come back, sing it into a tape recorder, play it back and go: `thats finished.´ Fast forward six months and theres 60,000 people in a field singing it to you. What the fucks that about?" Noel conjured up Stop Crying Your Heart Out in similar fashion. "That song found me," he says. "Its about getting up and getting on with your own life, making a better life for yourself, not trying to change destiny." Buskers be advised to learn it quickly: this track will be the Wonderwall of its time. "It has the potential to be a massive worldwide hit," says Noel matter-of-factly.

If She is Love is about Noels new girlfriend, many will assume that Force of Nature is about his ex-wife. But theyd be wrong. "Ill have to answer this a million times," he says wearily. "I wrote it for a film with Jude Law and Jonny Lee Miller a year before I got divorced and I've got the video to prove it. There you go. I´m going to bring the video to all my interviews for this album." It´s no surprise that Noel still has what it takes - but now it turns out that his brother has too. "When I heard Born on a Different Cloud," says Noel, "I didn´t think Liam had written it. I thought he was lying. But he always said, with everything has been through, if he hasn´t got it in him to write songs like that he'd be a waste of space. It was gonna come out one day." Now it has. Liam' big brother glowed with "massive relief and pride".

If it sounds like they´re getting on well, that´s because they are. The brothers have put early flights home from tours and threatening splits behind them. Oasis are settling in for the long-haul. "I've grown to love that boy so much," says Noel. "He is real. People say he plays up to his image but has always been like that: lippy, loudmouthed, funny. Now he understands that when you're working you can´t go on acting like youre sixteen when youre thirty. As soon as he started writing songs, he stopped being a pisshead." Thanks to that change, and - Noel is keen to stress - the calming influence and expert musicianship of Gem and Andy, the recording of Heathen Chemistry was sober and relaxed, unmarked by tantrums or walk-outs. The energy and attitude that have always been the bands strengths went into the music, not the myth-making, and it shows. "Were not a flash in the pan any more," says Noel, his familiar attitude showing through.

"Weve been doing this over ten years. Weve been to the top of the mountain, had a look at the view and it was beautiful. Weve been the lowest - band members leaving, drugs, drink, writs. Dont tell us what to do any more, we know what were doing. Weve been doing it. Weve been the smallest, weve been the biggest, weve been the best." And, once the world has heard Heathen Chemistry, the world will say that Oasis are the best once again.