Quotes of the Day

Noel Gallagher is in the dressing room at Knebworth House in Hertfordshire, England. It's Aug. 11, 1996, and he and his band Oasis have just played the second of two 125,000-capacity concerts — events that would prove to be the high-water mark for British rock music in both the '90s and subsequent decade. Like the fans out front and the crew backstage, Gallagher's wondering what the band can do to top this when he's approached by a recording executive.

"I distinctly remember somebody sidling up to me," he recalls, "saying, 'It's time for the solo record now.' "

Fast-forward to 2011, and Gallagher is finally acting on that unnamed executive's counsel as he prepares to release his first solo album, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, this month. Given that, in the intervening 15 years, Oasis repeatedly tried and failed to live up to its staggering artistic and commercial achievements of the mid-'90s, does he ever wish he had made a solo record earlier in his career?

"Well," he reflects, sipping cappuccino in the Mirror Bar of London's Landmark Hotel, "I always said I wouldn't do it if the band was together."

That Gallagher is at this stage, with one solo album nearing release and a follow-up already recorded, reflects how the band is now anything but together. Oasis' split was as messy as anything in its volatile 18-year career, the band finally imploding during a furious row between Noel Gallagher and his younger front-man brother, Liam, backstage at France's Rock en Seine festival in August 2009. The reason for the split varies according to which brother you listen to — Noel's version of events even prompted legal action from the younger Gallagher. But both seem to agree that the split is permanent, despite their lengthy track record of fights and reconciliations.

"Liam's already said that the thought of getting back together makes him want to vomit," says Noel, tersely. "And I've got nothing to add to that."

If Noel is grateful to his little brother for one thing, however, it's surely that Liam rushed out his own post-Oasis project, the retro rock 'n' roll of Beady Eye, while Gallagher senior was still holed up in the studio. Noel defends the commercial (under)achievement of Beady Eye's Different Gear, Still Speeding album ("They've sold 10,000 less than the Arctic Monkeys — that's only one hit single"), but it surely takes the pressure off when it comes to his own solo debut.

"I can't decide how many it sells," he shrugs. "If you like what I do, there's lots on there for you to like, but also some stuff that you wouldn't expect. And if you don't like what I do, believe you me there's enough on there for you to hate."

In fact, High Flying Birds is good enough to even turn the heads of Oasis' many detractors. The accusation that Noel Gallagher was stockpiling his best songs for a solo project seems now to carry some weight, at least in the sense that "Everybody's on the Run," "If I Had a Gun," "AKA ... What a Life" are streets ahead of anything on Oasis' last studio album, 2008's Dig Out Your Soul. Crucially, casting off the yoke of Oasis' stadium rock also means Gallagher is free to try his hand at everything from subtle dance grooves to gravelly blues stomps alongside the expected singer-songwriter guitar anthems, making for his most satisfying set of songs since 1995's all-conquering (What's the Story) Morning Glory?

Phil Alexander, editor in chief of U.K. music magazine Mojo, expects the album's combination of "supercatchy songs with elements of experimentation" to add up to a commercial success. "Oasis fans will be very much into what he's doing," says Alexander. "He carries a great deal of goodwill — everyone knows that Liam's going to say things that make people go, 'Ooh,' but Noel's the man who carries the music with him. It's quite telling that there's a second album coming soon. He seems liberated and it's going to be very interesting to see where he goes next."

That second album (originally intended be the first of the two albums to see release until Gallagher decided it "would f — people's heads up too much") is a musically ambitious project with electronic producers Amorphous Androgynous, a.k.a. Future Sound of London. Four of the songs on High Flying Birds were meant for the Amorphous Androgynous collaboration, but after hearing how the electronic duo treated "If I Had a Gun" — "not destroyed it, but demolished it and put it back together again" — Gallagher decided to produce the tracks in a more conventional fashion. The four now appear on both albums; but on the Amorphous Androgynous venture, they are supplemented by 10 fresh ones better suited for the experimental project.

Such prolific output paints a picture of a man going through a creative purple patch after years of artistic stagnation. And yet there's no chance of measuring up commercially against his former band — the group that defined the Britpop era. After all, Oasis shifted a staggering 663,000 U.K. copies of 1997's Be Here Now in just three days — a record that, thanks to shrinking album sales, 
 will almost certainly never be broken. And rarely again will a British rock musician be so culturally influential as to be invited for drinks at 10 Downing Street, as Gallagher was by Tony Blair in 1997. It leaves him as the rock equivalent of the last man on the moon, a rare human being who has scaled heights that few had experienced before and none have since.

"We don't live in an era where indie rock bands sell 60 million albums," Gallagher concurs. "Oasis were the last great, traditional rock-'n'-roll band. We came along before the Internet so, if you wanted to see us, you had to be there. It makes me feel like a righteous old man."

But then, it's not just Oasis that never matched its own early achievements — nobody else has either, from Radiohead to the Arctic Monkeys. So, with people still desperate for the next big guitar crossover record, could Gallagher's own solo album actually be what everyone's been waiting for?

"I have to say I'd be absolutely f — ing disgusted if a 44-year-old father of three came along to save British guitar music," he laughs as he finishes his coffee. "I'd have to go on the news and tell the kids that they'd failed."

• Mark Sutherland