So it’s not just me then

As if you needed another reason not to buy The Sun, it managed to vicariously troll me last week with the headline you see to the left.

“Nears” 60? WTAF?! Gallagher only turned 56 at the end of May - and I will do the same in November. Speaking on our joint behalf, we are not near 60 at all. Just not as near 50 as either of us, I’m sure, would prefer.

That said, Gallagher has previously spoken about ageing in a manner that resonated alarmingly readily with me. He told DJ Ken Bruce last year that his 50s had been “one thing after another”, healthwise: “The slightest knock stays with you for ages. And then once that’s cleared up it’s something else, and then once that’s cleared up it’s something else. I can’t wait to get my mobility scooter if I’m being honest.”

With one or two health-related aggravations I can empathise with Gallagher’s kvetching. Two years ago I was hospitalised by a foot blister that nearly led to me losing a toe, I’m now ultra-paranoid: a simple insect bite on holiday had me thinking I’d developed a leg ulcer; mild indigestion will have my thumb hovering over the number 9 on my phone. Hypochondria, maybe, but the odds are stacked against me. I may be only 55, and not 85, but “the march of time”, as Gallagher recently described it, shows itself far too easily. 

Talking to Matt Morgan on his Patreon podcast, Gallagher revealed that he’s beginning to forget words to his own songs on the current High Flying Birds tour. “I’ve found myself on this tour consciously thinking ‘What’s the next line to this song?’,” Gallagher told Morgan. “It’s like, you’ve just got to think about it.” 

When asked if he needed to use a teleprompter he said that: “I’m sure, eventually, I’ll need one”. He wouldn’t be alone if he did: Bruce Springsteen (73) now uses one as does Sir Elton John (76). Three years ago Sir Paul McCartney - now 81 and still performing songs first recorded by The Beatles almost 60 years ago - confessed to using a prompter, blaming age for his distractible mind: “Sometimes I’ll be doing a song, like Eleanor Rigby or something, and I’m on autopilot. And I’m starting to think, ‘Oh, what am I gonna have for dinner?’ Then I go, ‘Stop!’ because I’m singing Eleanor Rigby! I’ve separated myself not only from Paul and fame, but a couple of bits in my head are going in different places.“

Noel Gallagher might be renown for his dry humour but there’s a fair chance his admission is genuine. And it would be a relief, too. I’m only four months Gallagher’s junior, and like him, I’m increasingly experiencing complete blanks, mostly when trying to remember names. It’s an increasing source of frustration, especially given that my head is - or at least used to be - crammed full of useless trivia. 

Bands, albums, films, TV shows, actors and other inconsequential cultural obscurities. Some things do remain hardwired - I can still reel off lyrics from 1971 Genesis songs (Return Of The Giant Hogweed, anyone?), but occasionally struggle to remember the name of someone I’ve been recently introduced to. Thank God for the Internet: an actor’s name is only a few IMDB clicks away, an album title retrievable from Wikipedia. I do, though, worry that I’m simply not using my brain enough, and given in to the iPad I seem to nurse throughout any evening spent in front of the TV. 

For some part, I’ve accepted all of this as a normal part of ageing, that my head is so full of stuff there’s no more space for any more. Some degree of memory decline is a normal part of getting older. For the most part it’s just forgetfulness - walking into a room and then asking what you’re dong there, or misplacing reading glasses (another symbol of age). Even momentarily forgetting a name. 

Medical professionals will reassure you that such events are not unusual - the brain undergoes numerous structural changes over time, with even certain regions of the organ shrinking. This can affect communication between brain cells, leading to slower information processing and memory recall. Hormonal changes, too, play a crucial role in memory and cognitive function, so that as hormone levels evolve with age, so too can memory processes. Another factor is changes to neurotransmitters, the chemicals that transmit signals between nerve cells, which can also affect memory formation and retrieval.

However, the unavoidable elephant in the room, if I can apply a metaphor citing an animal with a reputation for a solid memory: dementia. My father had Alzheimer’s (he died from it four years ago tomorrow at the age of 90) and my grandfather had it too. You’ll understand my inherent sense of dread at being condemned to the same fate, especially as I also have Type 2 diabetes, which has been suggested as an accelerant, along with other forms of cardiovascular impairment.

Experts strive to make clear distinction between normal age-related memory changes and such severe cognitive disorders as Alzheimer’s and dementia, and the vascular factors that can lead to such conditions. Mitigating these factors means being as active - mentally and physically as possible. Reading, doing puzzles, learning new skills will help, as well regular exercise (my biggest downfall). Since I was diagnosed with diabetes, my diet has improved out of all recognition, but that still means I need to consume plenty of antioxidants, omega-3 fatty acids and nutrients like vitamin E can contribute to brain health. And exercise is still a challenge.

Less obvious measures include maintaining strong social connections, which have been linked to better cognitive outcomes in older adults, as well as applying stress management techniques. Arguably, though, one of the hardest mitigations is getting a good, quality night’s sleep, which is essential for memory consolidation and overall brain function.

The bottom line is that, as we journey through life, our bodies and minds inevitably undergo changes. Some - like putting on weight - can be somewhat self-inflicted. Some of it is down to genetics. But much is simply down to the very march of time Noel Gallagher invoked. If only all that entailed was hair sprouting from places that didn’t previously host it.

Noel Gallagher - with strings attached

If I was Noel Gallagher, I’d probably be happy to get through any media interaction without the subject of Oasis being brought up. It probably doesn’t help that his own brother doesn’t let the issue of the band reforming lie. Barely a week goes by without Liam firing off some salvo about his sibling via Twitter. Last week the elder Gallagher branded his junior a “coward” for not picking up the phone (rumours have been circling that the brothers are warming to the idea of getting together for, possibly, a one-off gig, perhaps symbolically at Knebworth to mark the 30th anniversary of Definitely Maybe next year).

This week, The Sun reported a further exchange of salvos in the spat, with Noel insisting that he’s too busy, and that “anyway, Liam is full of shit”, adding “He knows as well as I do that he doesn’t want it either - what he does like doing is making me look a cunt.” The bottom line, he insists, is that his phone has remained silent and nobody has been in contact about a reunion. So that is that.

For those desperate to recreate their ’90s youth, Blur’s reformation may provide an acute stimulation to the brothers. The key here is nostalgia, with such exercises serving the mutual needs of artist and audience alike: one party gets to exploit a lucrative trip down memory lane (viz reformations of the likes of Cream and The Police), while the other revisits their own a time gone by they might cherish. 

For the Gallaghers, however, to a greater or lesser degree, there really isn’t any need for either to recreate a past that was of its moment, either in musical terms or the publicity it generated. At least that has seemed to be the position of the elder sibling, whose new album with his High Flying Birds, Council Skies, is out today. It’s Noel’s fourth record in the 12 years since he acrimoniously left ‘his brother’s band’, and while Liam has largely stuck with the Oasis formula with his subsequent releases (the Lennonish vocals, choppy Indie-light guitars, slavish adhesion to Scally casualwear) Gallagher Snr. has always appeared more progressive.

Quite how Council Skies is more progressive than its predecessors, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Chasing Yesterday and Who Built The Moon?, plus the bumper Record Store Day compilation Back The Way We Came, which included new material, is not easy to ascertain. That is not a criticism, by the way. Gallagher has a gift for edgy melodicism that makes his newest material seem familiar at the same time as requiring a keen listening ear to distinguish what’s different.

It’s that subtlety that makes Council Skies so utterly enjoyable, from start to finish. While it’s title (and title track) - inspired by a book by illustrator Pete McKee - might suggest a sombre sketch of northern despondency, like Richard Hawley’s Sheffield-inspired Standing At The Sky’s Edge, there is a reflective wistfulness to the 11 songs. Perhaps that’s due to the fact that string arrangements appear on at least half the tracks, giving them the inevitable cinematic expanse that orchestration does, accompanied more by acoustic guitars than Gallagher’s trademark electric chug of yore. That said, there are occasional bursts of amplification, such as the sumptuous radio hit Easy Now - a classic arm-waving, festival-friendly piece of singalong-a-Noel, which includes a brief “soaring” guitar solo that conjures up an image of Slash or Richie Sambora on a mountain top.

The title track - which has also benefited from decent radio airplay this year - is another string-soaked classic - and one whose arrangements underline the quality of co-producer Paul Stacey’s brilliance. Stacey has worked with Gallagher since Oasis’s Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants album, and has regularly given his client the room to expand his sound beyond the T-Rex-lite that established his former band.

Council Skies has an understated swagger about it, a confidence ultimately reflective of its creator’s own notable self-confidence (Noel remains one of the industry’s most entertaining interviewees). Open The Door, See What You Find is a good example of this, mixing tempos with chorused vocals that hook themselves into the brain. More follows on There She Blows!, with its Beatley chug and vocal harmonies that transport the listener back to the ’60s (with, dare I say it, a slight nod towards the Wall Of Sound).

Picture: Sharon Latham/noelgallagher.com

For many, Champagne Supernova will always be the gold standard of Gallagher’s sense of the epic. It’s something he seems capable of producing without even thinking about it. Trying To Find, here, goes down a similar path, but of all the tracks on the album most redolent of northern gloom, it is this one. My one complaint is that, at just over three minutes, it’s too short. There is more in this string-infused vein with We’re Gonna Get There In The End and Trying To Find A World That's Been And Gone, both tracks that appeared last year in what felt like demo form as direction of travel to this new collection. Other gems include Think Of A Number (not, to my knowledge, a hat-tip to Johnny Ball), and the soulful I’m Not Giving Up Tonight.

Arguably, though, the drop-dead highlight of this album is Dead To The World. Appearing early on in the running list, it builds from a slowburn opening on a bed of - yes - more strings - to give a woozy, Bacharach-like feel. It even prompted brother Liam to tweet: “How can such a mean spirited little man write such a beautiful song?”. Hardly a sign of a thaw in their relationship, but equally, a glimmer of light that the love between two brothers may not have been lost completely.

Vinyl demand - again

It’s hard to comprehend that, over the last year or so, I’ve only been inside a record shop twice. I say “in” as I’ve done plenty of record shopping, it’s just that it’s been mostly via a browser. The two occasions in which I have crossed a physical threshold have been, respectively, for a private, rule-of-six-compliant gathering (when it was legal to do so), the other for a proper splurge, during last September’s Record Store Day ‘drop’, at the splendid Creekside Vinyl in Faversham. On that occasion, it was a blessed reminder of the pleasure of rummaging through the racks of a well-curated music shop. 

Nothing wrong with Amazon, of course (and without mail order, life would have been extremely dull over the last 15 months), but there is, really, nothing to beat the admittedly fetishistic tactility of bringing home fresh vinyl. Traditionally it’s been depicted as the preserve of punters of a certain gender and, indeed, age group: when I lived in Paris I regularly spent Saturday afternoons in Gibert Joseph on Boulevard Saint-Michel, gorging on new vinyl releases amid a predominantly male, middle-aged clientele. But according to figures released this week, ahead of the first of two Record Store Day drops this summer, record buyers - and I mean of the mostly black, 12-inch variety - are getting significantly younger. 

A Record Store Day survey of more than 140 participating independent record shops recently revealed a “considerable rise” in the number of younger people buying vinyl. This doesn’t come as a great surprise: for the last two Christmases, both my step-daughters - 20 and 16 respectively - have asked for vinyl - a right old mix including The Vaccines, The Smiths, Rex Orange County, The 1975, Royal Blood, Arctic Monkeys and Lana Del Rey. Their age is one thing, their gender is another - 60% of record store owners reported in the survey a growing number of women coming in to buy vinyl. 

“Record shops have had a history of being fairly male dominated spaces,” said Ashlie Green from David’s Music in Letchworth. “But the High Fidelity-esque days are definitely over as more and more women are enjoying vinyl. Not only are there more women behind the counter but the spaces themselves are much more welcoming to all people of all ages.” Green sees Record Store Day is a great way to open up shops to a more diverse clientele. “That list of releases is so eclectic and brings in music lovers from every background for what is normally a big party!”.

Jack LeFeuvre of Dundee’s Le Freak Records has also noted the trend towards younger vinyl buyers. “Nearly every artist will release a special vinyl edition as part of their album campaign and that is something that many music fans don’t want to miss out on.” LeFeuvre even thinks that younger consumers are driving a digital backlash: “If you love an artist there’s nothing more exciting than being able to hold the artwork, read the liner notes and enjoy the experience of listening to an album from start to finish. When we first opened we were always asked if it was a fad but it’s popularity has only continued to rise and proved the naysayers wrong”.

There’s no escaping the fact that streaming and digital music formats are here to stay, but the figures show that vinyl continues to grow, year on year. When then first Record Store Day took place in 2007, the UK was selling only 75,000 vinyl albums. Last year that number stood at more than five million, representing over £110 million in value. It’s something this year’s Record Store Day ‘ambassador’ Noel Gallager wants to see continue, and not just for his own sales (well, a bit): “I think if we can keep record shops open for as long as possible, we owe it to the young people of this country,” he says, plugging a compilation (Back The Way We Came: Vol 1) of his solo career so far, which is amongst today’s releases. “I’ll be getting involved,” Gallager says. “I’ve got something unique coming out. Hopefully the fans will like it and they’ll keep the flame burning for your local record shop.”

Record Store Day may be a momentary occasion - even if spread over the first drop today and a second on 17 July - but there’s no doubt that they stimulate interest in shopping for music in a traditional record shop (and, in these COVID-impacted times, locally, too). The challenge will be, as last year, getting the footfall amid continuing social distancing requirements. In pre-pandemic times, Record Store Day would be marked by packed shops and queues snaking around the block from dawn. 

Picture: Twitter/Banquet Records

This year’s drops will require shops to be somewhat limited, despite ‘general’ retailing being allowed to open up, but not everyone will be able to even do that. My local shop, Banquet Records in Kingston-upon-Thames, has reluctantly reverted to last year’s online model due to our borough having a surge of coronavirus infections (and, indeed, the highest infection rate in London). It’s not ideal, and last year’s online experience was fraught by technical issues caused by high demand for releases - great for business, but like trying to book an Ocado slot during the first weeks of lockdown last year. 

Once inside a shop - whether physically or virtually - this year’s drops offer something for everyone, with 340 special editions in the first one, including releases from Fontaines D.C., the Beastie Boys, Lady Gaga and Wolf Alice, and a further 200 in July, including the likes of Small Faces, The Clash and St. Vincent. The full list of releases for both drops can be found here. As for me, I’ve got my eye on a green vinyl 12-inch single of Ian Dury & The Blockheads’ Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick, Steven Wilson’s 40th anniversary remix of Ultravox’s Vienna, new coloured pressings of Marc Bolan & T. Rex’s Star King and Mark Lanegan’s Here Comes That Weird Chill, and a couple of live albums by The Police. 

If, however, push comes to shove, and I can have only one album from this first round, it’ll be The Truth by Prince. Originally only available as part of the Crystal Ball CD box-set, Record Store Day sees the first ever vinyl release of what has generally been described as one of the Purple One’s lost gems. Much of his work has been defined by relentless funk with a rock and pop edge, but on this recording Prince applied his bluesier instincts, with a more organic, acoustic sound that many felt, when it originally appeared in 1998, provided a fascinating insight into the late genius’s songwriting skills. 

The Truth also whets the appetite for the release, at the end of July, of Welcome 2 America, an apparently “lost” studio album recorded in 2010 and then shelved. Five years after Prince’s death, it will be a point of curiosity, especially amongst fans, but also from sceptics who feel that such posthumous releases were held back to begin with for a good reason. We shall see. Certainly won’t stop me buying it, however. Because that’s how we record buyers roll.

Paul Weller's meaning of life

A few - no, make it several - albums ago, journalists were writing about the purple patch Paul Weller was going through, as if the venerable mod god was spewing out material due the affliction of some terrible, terminal disorder, and that he had things to say before his Bass Weejun clogs were popped. Thankfully, nothing of the sort was going on, but that hasn't stopped the extraordinary production line that has delivered 14 studio albums over the last 26 years.

And they keep coming, with today's release of True Meanings. After the delicious, summery soul of last year's A Kind Revolution, Weller turns reflectively autumnal with perhaps his most intimate album to date.

It's impossible, too, not to cite the Modfather turning 60 in May as the trigger, if not the root, of this mellower, bucolic collection of acoustic guitar-dominated songs. This is nothing new: go back Wild Wood or even earlier to The Jam's sublime English Rose and you'll find plenty of proof that Weller hasn't always been about angry stomps. The Cranes Are Back on his last outing is probably the loveliest song he's ever committed to tape. It's just that Weller himself has drifted from style-to-style with each passing album, either deliberately (or accidentally) determining each one according to the mood he's in. Comparisons with the equally prolific Neil Young aren't unwarranted.

Here, on True Meanings, his choice of collaborators plays a part: The Zombies' Rod Argent playing Hammond organ on the deeply thoughtful The Soul Searchers and the single Movin' On, and Noel Gallagher can be found elsewhere on the album; John Martyn's partner in crime Danny Thompson on Come Along (as well as Thompson's Pentangle bandmate Martin Carthy), another reflective number recalling a long-forgotten one-night stand. On three songs Weller calls in the lyric-writing skills of Scottish folkie Erland Cooper, while on The Soul Searchers Conor O'Brien of Dublin's Villagers lends a pen to the reflection. Tracks like Glide, Mayfly and Old Castles present wistful glances in the rear-view mirror, while Bowie - written in tribute to the late star - acts as a medium to ponder on change. All this builds to the wonderful closing track, White Horses, a song deep in thought and not without a nod to Nick Drake in the process.

After the long hot summer we've had in the UK, the gentler, seasonal tone of True Meanings provides blessed relief. It may not be the most adventurous album in Weller's canon, but that doesn't matter. There is still more going on with these 14 tracks than in most, if not anyone else, in Weller's peer group. Others of his New Wave era may labour over new material or, simply, not bother at all, but the music seems to come out effortlessly from Weller, with soul, with heart, with top-of-its-game instrumentation and arrangements. At this rate, we should be expecting the next one any time soon.

Brother beyond: why Oasis aren't reforming anytime soon

In a week of political rancour, from Helsinki to Westminster, from Brussels to Washington, one tweet yesterday bucked the trend with an apparent gesture of reconciliation: “Earth to noel ... I forgive you now let’s get the BIG O back together.” No, this wasn’t Boris presenting an olive branch to Theresa but Liam Gallagher reaching out to his estranged brother Noel, apparently genuinely interested in reforming Oasis. “I’m not desperate just think it’d be a nice thing to do,” the younger Gallagher added.

So far the brotherly love has not been reciprocated by Noel, and it’s unlikely that it will any time soon. Seeing him and his High Flying Birds recently in the wonderful setting of Greenwich's Old Naval College, Gallagher seemed perfectly at home in his solo skin, drawing on his three HFB albums and a smattering of crowd-pleasing Oasis standards, including Don’t Look Back In Anger, Wonderwall and Little By Little. He walked out on Oasis in August 2009 saying that he “simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer” and that has been the situation since. Indeed, Noel has said relatively little about either his younger brother or Oasis, whereas Liam has maintained a constant stream of invective towards his sibling, mostly via Twitter, including the somewhat comical barb of “Potato”. That said, he also wished his brother a happy Christmas in December last year, raising the prospect of a thaw in their relationship. However, the tweet was later dismissed as a “wind-up”.  And so the tweets have continued.

There’s every chance that yesterday’s supposed peace gesture is another joke by Liam, even if he has said in recent months: “I don’t want to be solo. I don’t want to do it on my own – I’m not a guitar player or a prolific songwriter.” The Gallagher brothers released two of 2017's strongest records in Liam’s As You Were and Noel’s Who Built The Moon?, arguably better albums than anything Oasis produced towards the end of the period with both Gallaghers as members. If - and it’s a big ‘if’ - Noel was to accept Liam’s offer and reform “the Big O”, they would certainly be putting together one of the biggest and most lucrative reunions since Sean Connery agreed to play Bond again in Never Say Never Again.

Simon Poulter © 2018

"He’s rude, arrogant, intimidating and lazy. He’s the angriest man you’ll ever meet. He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup," Noel told Q magazine in April 2009, four months before their bust up at the Rock en Seine festival near Paris, in which Liam is alleged to have thrown a bowl of plums at his brother (“A plum from a plum”, quipped Noel later).

The issue is, perhaps, more deep-seated than typical inter-band creative tensions. Last year Noel revealed that the brothers’ feuding began when they were teenagers, still living at home, and when the senior sibling returned, drunk, from a night out and urinated on his brother’s brand new music centre. Though Oasis were, technically, Liam’s band to begin with, Noel’s joining set them on the path to become one of the biggest British rock bands in history, a trajectory that came with the Gallaghers' headline grabbing antics, from public fights to stage walkoffs and concert no-shows.

For the most part, this was all grist to the mill, generating unprecedented publicity and the resultant record and ticket sales. Post-Oasis, the feuding has, at times, become decidedly nasty. For Liam, in particular, there’s been no let up (”Lots of people say I need to chill out about Noel. Not until they stop Twitter,” he said in one memorable interview.) And so it has gone on.

Noel, for his part, has adopted a position of relative silence as the better part of valour. A resumption of hostilities over Noel’s absence from the concert for victims of the Manchester Arena bombing prompted Liam to comment on an apparently tearful Noel: “NG broke down in tears cmon,” he said in yet another tweet. “You seriously ain't buying that he doesn’t give a f**k. Don't buy into his PR stunt he doesn't give a f**k if the same thing had have gone of [sic] in Edinburgh he'd been up there like a shot ahem.” Noel responded a month later: “He needs to see a psychiatrist. I don’t say that as a joke. Because young Mancunians, young music fans, were slaughtered, and he, twice, takes it somewhere to be about him. He needs to see somebody.” Liam hit back: “As for seeing somebody I bet you and the mrs have got a few on the go you pair of chameleons.”

Frankly it has become tedious, even if occasionally quite entertaining. Liam, with blatant disregard for syntax, grammar or the use of a spellchecker, has made Twitter his medium for assaults on his brother. “I guess it was about him staying relevant,” commented Noel after Liam started the first of his “potato” taunts. “If you’re him, what else is there to tweet about?”. While Noel has recognised that the publicity garnered by the feud has been a boon to business (“As long as he keeps promoting my record, there’s a good boy”), he drew the line in a BBC Radio 4 Front Row interview in which he said “maybe [Liam] should stop tweeting [about me]” for the “ugly” things he’s said about Gallagher’s wife and children. “People come after them, and … it’s not very nice,” said Noel. “It only heightens my resolve that I’ll never walk the stage with that band again for that reason.” That, I believe, is your answer.

2017: that was the (music) year that was

So here it is - a shiny new year. We’ve rung out the old and are already getting on with the new. But to allow one last coquettish glance over the shoulder at 2017, there are a couple of reflections to note: because this was a year that commenced with the hangover of the prior annus horribilis and its morbid stream of departures, from Bowie to Prince to George Michael. We switched, then, from 2016's somewhat grim procession to 2017's irritating insanity, chiefly due to an elderly playboy with candy floss hair arriving at the White House in January and then on a daily - if not hourly - basis displaying all the characteristics of a petulant child in whatever first came to his mind while, clearly, carrying out his morning ablutions.

Thankfully, music intervened to provide a certain feelgood factor. In short, 2017 was a superb year for new music and live performances. Just cast your mind back to an unseasonally sunny June and Glastonbury: 12 months on from the Brexit referendum, a month after both the Manchester Arena bomb and a stuttering British government stuttering further with one of the most pointless general elections in history, three weeks after the London Bridge attack and two weeks after the Grenfell fire, music did its bit to perk up the nation, with Nile Rogers/Chic and the-now ‘Sir’ Barry Gibb cranking out guilty pleasures in the heritage slots, headliners Radiohead and Foo Fighters delivering unabashed crowd-pleasing enormity, and relative newcomers like The xx and Royal Blood proving that engaging live performances on a grand stage are far from over.

Further back, in April, there was a bonanza of consumption as Record Store Day generated treasures such as The The's first new music in an age (and an Elbow cover of one of their older songs), as well as sumptuous vinyl releases from the likes of Prince and T-Rex to make the brutally early start to queuing worthwhile. Throughout the year live music was equally as rich and rewarding for me personally, kicking off with Michele Stoddart in early January performing her beautiful Pieces album in its entirety at Camberwell’s Slaughtered Lamb. Later that month I made acquaintance with the brilliant Peter Bruntnell (and discovered that he's from both my home town and school); I saw Robert Howard, Matt Deighton and Chris Difford deliver a masterclass in songwriting and experienced Squeeze on their home patch for a communion of arguably the UK’s most prolific pop-rock band since The Beatles. And in the summer I celebrated the pure pop joy of Nick Heyward, not once but twice. Indeed, this year has been more about pop than rock for me…though thankfully without succumbing to the Faustian horror of Ed Sheeran and his guitar-looped wallpaper-drivel.

Sheeran, inevitably, features heavily in figures released yesterday by the BPI of how music was consumed in the UK during 2017. The numbers reveal that a total of 135.1 million albums were either streamed, purchased in a physical format, or downloaded - a 9.5% year-on-year rise and the third year of consecutive volume growth. Of significance is that streaming now accounts for over half of the UK's music consumption, with 68.1 billion audio streams served last year through Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and other services, a 51.5% rise on the previous year.

That said, my acquisition of mostly vinyl albums last year maintained a steady pace, to the extent that I actually ended the year with a pile of unlistened-to records more than a pile of those I had played. Clearly I have personally contributed to the growth of vinyl over the last decade: according to the BPI 4.1 million LPs were bought last year - an increase of 26.8% on 2016. That said, it does remain a niche (and, some might say an expensive one, too) with just one in 10 of all physical purchases made in 2017 being vinyl copies. Even the ageing CD represented just under a third of all formats.

Streaming, however, continues to attract converts. In a New Year blog post, my friend Steven Wilson - whose fifth solo album To The Bone was one of the brightest highlights of the year - wrote about his own, somewhat reluctant adoption of streaming formats: "For years I resisted non-physical distribution of music, I just couldn’t relate to music if it didn’t come as a physical piece of art that I could hold in my hands." He acknowledges, however, that streaming services do act as a 'try-before-you-buy' gateway, pointing out that his own album has been streamed eight million times in the four months since it was released. "While those numbers aren’t going to trouble the likes of Kendrick Lamar," he adds, "they are an indication that there are a lot of people out there beginning to discover and hear my music for the first time", pointing out that they might then go on to buy from his back catalogue, or come and see his live shows.

When it was released, To The Bone made it to number three in the album charts. Not bad for an artist many still have never heard of, and even more impressive when you consider that he was pipped to No.2 by someone called Elvis Presley by a relative handful of copies of a greatest hits package. Ed Sheeran - inevitably - remained at No.1 that week by selling a further 15,000 copies of Divide, a relentless achievement helped in part by grannies buying it at supermarket and petrol station checkouts.

I shouldn't be too critical of Sheeran (though his bland, universal appeal does stagger me...meaning that I will). Thank God for more interesting British pop acts, from Rag’n’Bone Man and Stormzy to Paloma Faith, all making for a very good year. It would be impossible to critique everything that passed through my ears in 2017, but particular mention should be given to the following:

Liam Gallagher - As You Were: Liam's reinvention as the macrobiotic, Hampstead Heath-jogging renaissance man (albeit one still hilariously lobbing Twitter grenades at Frère Noel) coincided with him producing the feelgood album of the year. Yes, it was full of Oasis-like stadium stormers, but wasn't that exactly what we wanted? And even if he had help, As You Were also demonstrated that the songwriting genes in the Gallagher family weren't entirely monopolised by his elder sibling. Speaking of whom...

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - Who Built The Moon?: News of a "psychedelic" third solo album from Gallagher proved unfounded. In fact, it took several listens to get any handle on what Who Built The Moon? actually was about. There were traces of Roxy/Sweet/Bolan glam, trademark NG irony, a scissor-playing French vocalist, a flirtation with the sort of Chemical Brothers sound Gallagher had experimented with earlier in his career, and some Britpop whimsy that harked back to prime Oasis. Collectively, and after several listens to be sure, Who Built The Moon? is up there with Liam's product as one of the best of 2017.

LCD Soundsystem - Anerican Dream: James Murphy's declaration that LCD Soundsystem had reached the end in 2011 seemed like a long goodbye when the sumptuous, five-LP live album of that description - The Long Goodbye: LCD Soundsystem Live At Madison Square Garden - made its appearance some years later (and was instantly added to my collection of the greatest live albums ever). So the appearance in 2017 of brand new material from Murphy and his collective, with its conscious and unconscious nods towards Bowie (who'd invited Murphy to work on the Blackstar album but declined citing a lack of worthiness), not to mention Talking Heads, was a surprise. And a welcome one, too. American Dream is a curious cocktail of the obscure and the enlightening, going beyond simply fan pleasing, although fans will be inevitably pleased by the sheer depth of what is dished up. Magnificent.
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Thundercat - Drunk: I’m a lazy music connoisseur: I should have my finger pressed more tightly on the pulse of what’s going on. Indeed, if it wasn’t for a late night visit to the BBC Radio 6 Music Festival in March I might never have come across the splendidly batshit-mad funk of Stephen Bruner - Thundercat - and his mesmerising six-string bass guitar prowess. Drunk pulled all that together into a 23-track album of the weird mixed with the conventional, of Stanley Clark-style jazz funk blended with traces of hip-hop and even FM radio soft rock, courtesy of guest appearances by Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald.

Father John Misty - Pure Comedy: Much is made of Josh Tillman’s wry takes on modern life and his somewhat capricious nature towards fans, rivals and indeed anyone who chooses to take him on, but there is no denying that if, like me, you’re a fan of ‘classic era’ Elton John (Tumbleweed Connection, Madman Across The Water, Honky Chateau et al), FJM’s unmistakably Elton-like vocal delivery is as comforting as a box of Quality Street comprised entirely of the green triangles. And that’s before you come to appreciate the smart lyrics that traverse between bittersweet and humour, while remaining smarter than most others out there. A masterpiece.

Portico Quartet - Art In The Age Of Automation: If every record went on its library classification, Portico Quartet’s four studio albums - including this one - would be hard to file. To some, it’s ambient noodling, to others jazz (“…just a series of mistakes without the 'oops’”, to quote Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnell), and to those more appreciative, clever, engaging electronica which thankfully stays clear of a suburban wine bar’s looped collection of Café del Mar compilations. Art In The Age Of Automation extensively explores over 11 tracks a variety of landscapes and textures, tinkering with the sparse grooves of trip-hop while applying varying thicknesses of layers with an orchestral approach that knows when to be sparing and when to be full on. This was my go-to record in 2017 for commuting or, simply, needing to come down after a more raucous night out on the tiles.

PP Arnold - The Turning Tide: Initiatives like Record Store Day deliver plenty of re-release treasures, but never something which has lain recorded but unreleased for close to half a century. PP Arnold - a former vocalist in the Ike & Tina Turner band and hit maker in her own right (First Cut Is The Deepest and Angel Of The Morning) - dusted off this hidden treasure, which had originally benefitted greatly from the significant involvement of Barry Gibb and the entertainment mogul Robert Stigwood, as well as Eric Clapton, members of his Delaney And Bonnie outfit, Steve Howe (of Yes) and others. The Turning Tide is a fascinating time capsule opened up, representing some of the best freewheeling pop-soul-rock of the late 1960s, including covers of material by Steve Winwood, Van Morrison, and the Glimmer Twins - Jagger and Richards. Bureaucracy, sadly, kept the recordings under lock and key, until Arnold and her manager, Sally Cradock (wife of Ocean Colour Scene/Paul Weller guitarist Steve) started picking at the strands of publishing complexity with an aim of finally getting the recordings released. With further mixing by Cradock's husband at Weller's Black Barn Studio, the resulting album sounds both fresh and a stunning snapshot of the time it was originally recorded, capped by the voice of one of the finest and under-appreciated soul singers ever.

Squeeze - The Knowledge: While not likely to win any prizes for sonic innovation, Squeeze's best album in more than two decades reinforced why, almost 40 years ago, we liked them to begin with: Chris Difford's lyrics, Glenn Tilbrook's uncannily accessible melodies. Wrapped up in an album loosely about the London they love (with specific reference to the south-east London of their youth - and my current dwelling), Squeeze produced a delightful compendium of observations about modern British life, from the state of the NHS to the ageing population, even including an edgy account of child abuse in youth football. National treasures, with a back catalogue - not just the singles - deserving of serious re-indulgence.

Paul Weller - A Kind Revolution: Arguably competing only with Neil Young for the shere rapidity of his output, Weller's umpteenth solo album since 1990 also set the tone for the summer of 2017. A Kind Revolution is chock-full of solid Weller ear-pleasers, although The Cranes Are Back must rank up there with You Do Something To Me for sheer soulful delightfulness.

Nick Heyward - Woodland Echoes: Weller's album may have set the tone for last summer, but the August release of Nick Heyward's first album in 18 years and only his seventh solo effort, proved to be one of the sunniest moments of the year, being a collection of pure bottled delight. That was, of course, the schtick of Haircut 100, back in the early 80s, but the precedents were good when, in the spring, Gary Crowley started playing the double-A side single Baby Blue Sky/Mountaintop, hinting at some breezy latent Britop to come, such as Perfect Sunday Sun, Beautiful Morning and Love Is The Key By The Sea. I saw Heyward live twice last year and on both occasions was left wondering how long it would be before he would be offered one of the feelgood spots at Glastonbury, such was the utterly infectious good time his canon delivers.

Elbow - Little Fictions: The release, just before Christmas, of Elbow's Best Of compilation, featuring their gorgeous cover of The Beatles' Golden Slumbers, gave timely reminder of the Mancunian quartet's status as arguably Britain’s favourite band. And with good reason: for all the festival singalong/wavealong favourites like One Day Like This and Mirrorball, Elbow have successfully retained enough indie credibility to save them from persecution by those curmudgeons who eschew such popular fare. In that respect, Elbow are like few other acts with such popularity (yes, you Sheeran), in producing vivid, layered (some might even say 'prog') rock, with instrumental curiosity and the genuine warmth of Guy Garvey's persona. Little Fictions is the album (their seventh) where you felt that Elbow were fully comfortable in their skins, kicking off with a sense of wellbeing as Magnificent (She Says) struck a resonant keynote of upbeat goodness, along with the lovely Gentle Storm, with its understated chords and unashamed, plaintive refrain "Fall in love with me - every day". From almost anyone else this might be schmaltz, but it sits amongst a collection embracing themes as varied as relationships, post-Brexit national isolation and Fleet Street's vampiric tendencies. As I wrote on Little Fictions' release, it's easy to declare a band's latest album their best, until you play it back in comparison with the previous work. And even though its six predecessors are mostly excellent, it was hard not to consider this Elbow's best yet.

50, not out

“At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the guns fell silent”. 11 minutes - and 49 years - later the silence was broken at 26 Groveland Way, New Malden. I had arrived. Now, 12 months shy of the centenary of the Armistice that ended the war supposed to end all wars, I’m 50. Which is, apparently, the new 40, though I wasn’t particularly comfortable with that number, to be honest.

Still, as optimists and age-deniers will cheerfully tell you, it is just a number, that age is merely relative. Despite (probably) being a middle-aged man since my mid-20s, I don’t actually feel all that old. And while I’m hardly in tip-top condition, I’d like to think my outlook is quite youthful. Still, though, 50 is 50. Half a century. My fiftieth spin around the sun. Bloody hell.

My memory is hazy, which isn’t a great portent for later years. I recently met a pal for a coffee and we both realised that, post-40 (he’s 56) we can’t any more hold conversations about music, films and telly without reaching for our iPhones to fill in gaps about names and trivia. Our brains, we concluded, are like computers with gradually disintegrating hard drives, retaining stuff you never expected to keep, and selectively losing vital pieces of information deep in the cracks, never to be brought up again.

What early memories I do have start to become doubts. My earliest recollection is one I can’t authenticate: I think I watched the moon landings on our black and white TV, but seeing as I would have been just 20 months old when Neil Armstrong made his giant leap, I doubt my noggin - even when it comes to telly consumption - is that good. Thanks to repetitive screenings of that, or Geoff Hurst’s winning World Cup goal in ’66, you start to think that, like Forrest Gump, you may have actually been there, or at least, witnessed it.

At least I can attest to have been alive when Armstrong jumped off the bottom rung of the Eagle's step ladder. And alive, just, when The Beatles were inventing rock music, when British and French ingenuity produced the never-bettered marvel that was Concorde; alive in 1970s Britain (which seemed to be mostly grey) and the start of colour television; alive during the rise of Margaret Thatcher, for which I have never forgiven British voters, and alive when the Cold War was at both its most intriguing and its most frightening; alive for Bowie, disco and punk, Reagan and Gorbachev, the Troubles and terror in the Middle East, recessions and economic booms, the mobile phone and the Internet, 9/11, Brexit and Trump (for, both, I will not forgive their respective voters, either).

In these 50 years I’ve been schooled and taken the path of employment, first in journalism, latterly in corporate PR. I have lived abroad, in the Netherlands, California and Paris. I have interviewed pop stars, film stars and TV stars, driven around Moscow with Jon Bon Jovi, witnessed the disaster of all live TV interviews with Ozzy Osborne in Red Square, hung out with Hulk Hogan and got to be there on the day Sky TV launched and changed the global - yes, global - media landscape forever.

These are, though, just snapshots, and I certainly won’t trouble you with the finer details of childhood holidays in Wales, teenage snogs or the other minutiae of these last 49 summers. Because, although I seem to be naturally disposed to nostalgia, and 50 years is a bloody long time, I should be looking forward, not back. 

But indulge me one delve back in time: the day I was actually born - 11 November, 1967. The big news of that day in Britain was that investigators were trying find out what had made a British European Airways Comet airliner (the UK’s first home-grown passenger jet) explode over the Mediterranean; Bill Simpson of the radio soap opera Doctor Finlay’s Casebook had left his wife for Edward Fox’s ex; football league referees were threatening to boycott Millwall matches due to hooliganism; engineers at Leyland had developed the first jet-powered lorry, which would be on the road commercially by 1969; and a Lanarkshire toddler had swallowed her pet goldfish, but thanks to the administering of a glass of salted water, threw it up and returned it to its bowl. The big stories, as they appeared. 


In the wider world, the Vietnam War was hotting up, notably on the propaganda side, with the office of General William Westmoreland, the US commander in Vietnam, claiming that US action had successfully reduced the number of communist forces (a CIA operative would, in 1975, admit that this was, in fact false, and that the enemy strength had been double that claimed. On November 11, 1967, three American PoWs - held captive for four years - were released by the Viet Cong.

On the day that my family was welcoming its third child, British television - the industry which provided my father with employment - was still a somewhat rarified affair, comprising of just three channels (including BBC2, which became in the previous July Europe’s first channel to broadcast regularly in colour). That Saturday afternoon, BBC1 offered Grandstand (including ‘Fight of the Week’ which, I presume, was boxing, a preview of the afternoon’s football fixtures, horse racing, “moto-cross”, rugby and the footy results. Over on ITV there was World Of Sport with Eammon Andrews presenting a mix of “international hockey”, “international table tennis”, more horse racing, and the-then jewel in ITV’s sporting canon, wrestling). 

Early evening on BBC1 offered Dr. Who (opening episode of The Ice Warriors), Simon Dee’s Dee Time, Dixon Of Dock Green, the news read by Michael Aspel and The Val Doonican Show with guests Les Dawson and Wayne Newton. Next door on BBC2 that evening was a production of Wuthering Heights featuring Ian McShane as Heathcliff, followed by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais’ sitcom Further Adventures Of Lucky Jim, starring John Le Mesurier. ITV’s Saturday evening line-up included Hughie Green’s talent show Opportunity Knocks!, Bob Monkouse’s legendary game show The Golden Shot, Man In A Suitcase - a detective series that I shamelessly borrowed the title from for my first regular magazine column, and after the news, The Des O’Connor Show. Quality.

That afternoon, and no doubt featured on Match Of The Day that night, Chelsea (then in their 1960s pomp and attracting the likes of Raquel Welch to Stamford Bridge) had beaten Sheffield Wednesday 3-0, with goals from John Hollins, Peter Osgood (‘The King of Stamford Bridge’) and John Boyle, in a side that also included Peter Bonetti, Eddie McCreadie, Marvin Hinton, Joe Kirkup, Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris, the mercurial Scottish winger Charlie Cooke, Tommy Baldwin and Joe Fascione, another Scot, albeit one with an Italian name (the first of many of Italian extraction to grace West London’s finest). I mention all of this for no other reason than I would become a Chelsea fan, and it’s pleasing to see that within a few hours of my arrival, they won a game. That may or may not have been an omen.

Just as Chelsea became one of my lifelong associations so, too, did music. On the day I popped out, the No.1 pop song in the UK was Baby, Now That I've Found You, the first single from the groundbreaking mixed-race British soul band, The Foundations, and which had benefitted from extensive airplay on the BBC’s new radio station, Radio 1, which had only been launched a couple of months before. Also in the Top 10 that week was the Bee Gees’ Massachusetts and the Troggs’ Love Is All Around, making its first assault on the ‘hit parade’ 27 years before Wet Wet Wet would make us suffer with their version. 

Over in the albums section that weekend, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band continued be on top (that it was the birth of both the concept album and progressive rock fills me with deep pleasure). The Jimi Hendrix Experience were a few places lower with Are You Experienced?, another debut album and the one which put Hendrix firmly on the map, Let’s, though, gloss over the fact that people were also buying the Sound Of Music and Dr. Zhivago soundtracks as well as - in a worrying forward echo of Ed Sheeran today - two from The Dubliners. Thankfully there was more interesting stuff going on in the chart’s lower reaches, with Scott Walker’s Scott, John Mayall’s Crusade and Otis Redding and Carla Thomas’ King And Queen. However, this one week’s charts don’t really do 1967 justice. 

It was another year of music landmarks in what was already an extraordinary period of musical development, as early rock and roll started to evolve into pop and rock. 1967 saw the ‘Summer of Love’ and its peace, love and psychedelia, too, and both Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour released that year, The Beatles seemed to be single-handedly transforming popular music, even laying the foundations for prog rock and concept-based albums. Elsewhere The Small Faces took a trip through Itchycoo Park, The Doors released their eponymous debut and Pink Floyd made their first appearance on record with The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker as Cream got heavy with Disraeli Gears, the Rolling Stones brought out Their Satanic Majesties Request, while The ‘Orrible ‘Oo released The Who Sell Out and The Velvet Underground (with Nico) gave us The Velvet Underground. Oh, and a certain David Bowie released his debut album, David Bowie, which largely sank without trace (though it does contain gems like Love You Till Tuesday and Silly Boy Blue).

Alright, so that’s the history lesson. Turning 50 means some reflection. I’m trying to avoid it. What’s done is done. Successes and failures, mistakes and misdemeanours, they’re all in the past. It’s time to face the future, but not without a thought of my age peers. Every year gives birth to people of note, but it’s always interesting to see who you’re keeping up with. Turning 50 with me this year are former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, the Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, Noel Gallagher, Paul Gascoigne, Matt LeBlanc, Pamela Anderson, Julia Roberts, Davina McCall, former Chelsea player 'Super' Dan Petrescu, the comedian Tim Vine, my rock star friend Steven Wilson, the Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan, Letitia Dean - EastEnders' Sharon "Princess" Watts, the film director Judd Appatow, Will Ferrell, Jamie Foxx, Vin Diesel, Nicole Kidman and Sharleen Spiterri of Texas. Kurt Cobain and Philip Seymour Hoffman would have been 50. Given all of their achievements, I wonder how they’re facing up to 50?

As for me, I’m facing up to it “quite” well. Those around me will know why and because of whom. In fact my 50th birthday is a wonderful opportunity to draw a line under the previous half century, to forget the didn’t-happens and what-could-have-been and celebrate the what-happens-next, with family, friends and those closest to me. Bring it on, 50.

Definitely not Ed Sheeran: Liam Gallagher's As You Were

Let's establish the facts, as they stand: Oasis were good, Noel Gallagher's post-Oasis output has been good, Liam Gallagher's post-Oasis output less good/awful/should stick to selling menswear, and that the chances of an Oasis reunion are of a cold-day-in-Hell magnitude, based on Gallagher Junior's near-daily tirade of Twitter jibes about Gallagher Senior.

In spite of the often vituperative and mostly inventive barbs aimed at his brother, Liam has cut a relatively more avuncular figure in recent months, launching a charm offensive in preparation for today's release of his debut solo album, As You Were. This, arguably, began last year with an interview with Q magazine's Ted Kessler - conducted mostly in a north London pub over two August days - which I will put before the court as being one of the funniest, most engaging and open interviews I've read with a rock star, let alone one renown for being profane, playground bully-thuggish and generally hostile. Of the interview's many revelations, it was the fact that the previously Olympic-level caner was now getting up at 5am each morning to go for runs on Hampstead Heath and while not exactly now a paragon of lactose-free milk-drinking clean living, was - as he was entering his 44th year - a different character. Contemplative, even.

With both of his previous bands declared dead, and the odds of a fraternal Gallagher reconciliation zero, Gallagher revealed to Kessler that he'd picked up a guitar and was engaging in songwriting. To the uninitiated, this may have come as either a surprise or a worry. After all, wasn't Noel responsible for writing all of Oasis' songs, or at least the good ones? Well, no. Both Beady Eye albums - while not good - gave Liam the opportunity to develop his writing chops. And if you wanted an example of how good his writing could be, just listen to the final Oasis album, Dig Out Your Soul, and the Liam-written track I'm Outta Time, a track his brother branded "deceptively brilliant". I branded it a Bond-theme-in-waiting, and certainly better than Jack White and Alicia Keys' execrable Another Way To Die released the same year for Quantum Of Solace.

In the Q interview, however, Gallagher seemed reluctant to brand the new songs he'd been writing as the launch of a new direction. "I am not embarking on a solo 'career'. Everyone should know that," he told Kessler. "There are just 10, 11 songs I've written that are eligible to be recorded. They've got flair, attitude, the melodies are sick and the words are fucking funny. We'll record them this year and release it next year. It'll shock people. It's a record written by me, that's got all the right ingredients and sounds well tasty."

And it is. Very much so. OK, much of it is in the Oasis vein - a lot of guitar-based swagger topped by Gallagher's Lennonesque nasal vocal - but rather than simply being derivative, As You Were is a glorious continuation of what that outfit did best. Ask most people what they would like out of most of their favourite bands and they'll say "more of the same, please". It should be pointed out that the album isn't entirely Gallagher's own work: American producer and multi-instrumentalist Greg Kurtin is amongst a number of collaborators keeping As You Were on solid ground (and he brings to the party experience of working with Adele, Foo Fighters and others). But this assistance comes in terms of flourish. Thus, a track like Paper Crown (in which Gallagher sounds more like Cast's John Power) stands out, not only for its melodic strength but also for its open sound, something the tremendous single Wall Of Glass also benefits from, with its soulful, funky treatment. Likewise, Chinatown, with its Feeling Groovy guitar motif, finds Gallagher losening his trademark snarl, and delivering a dreamy, psychedelic wooze-out that stands apart from anything he's produced before, both melodically as well as in terms of his songwriting maturity.

As I'm Outta Time proved, Liam has a knack for the grandiose, stadium-swelling ballad. It's a gift that, if he was feeling generous, Noel would recognise he shares with his younger sibling. For What It's Worth fits this capability. Yes, you could probably sing All Around The World over it, but then such mashups were possible with much of the Oasis canon. Really, it doesn't matter, when the songs are this pleasing and this singalongable. I've already made one Beatles reference and it is, inevitably, impossible not to find another: When I'm In Need has Beatley choral elements, but is also slap-bang in the midst of what pop music should always be - big, bold and attitudinal, with the sort of melodic hook that won't leave you alone. What Oasis did to perfection.

I'm not surprised that As You Were is good, but I was surprised that across its 12 tracks it delivers consistently and delivers well. Whatever your view of Liam - git, enfant terrible, etc, etc - he has produced one of the stand-out entertaining albums of the year. Yes, with his brother's next album coming out next month we can expect more of the Gallagher rough-and-tumble; but with Noel also writing some of the best British pop-rock of our time, rather than wishing, pitifully, for an Oasis reunion, we should revel in the fact that we have two members of the same family capable of producing huge, epic records that stand the test of repeat listening, and which translate effortlessly to memorable live performance. For anyone despairing about the inexplicable dominance of Ed Sheeran on the charts, with his bland, indistinguishable autopop, it is genuinely heartwarming that someone is capable of producing a rock-based record of such enjoyability as Liam Gallagher has done with As You Were.

We're getting the band back together

One of pop's near certaintities is that as soon as a band splits or a member leaves, they will spend the rest of their days answering questions about a reunion. Even now, 46 years after The Beatles broke up, 36 years after John Lennon was murdered and 15 years after George Harrison passed away, Paul McCartney still - I don't hesitate to expect - gets asked if he'll ever reform the band with just Ringo. After all, their contemporaries The Who managed to lose both Keith Moon and John Entwhistle and still carried on, so why not the surviving Fabs?

Pink Floyd effectively came to an operational end when Roger Waters accrimoniously walked away after original Wall tour, threatening to take the band's name with him. David Gilmour, Rick Wright and Nick Mason soldiered on, but the Floyd really had run its course creatively. That, though, hasn't stopped Gilmour playing their songs on his solo tours (which, until his death from cancer in 2008, included Wright on keyboards). To some, this is milking the canon, but to others it's keeping the flame alive. There would, no doubt, be a combination of the two should Led Zeppelin ever reform. That, however, is currently unlikely. Robert Plant maintains a somewhat icy distance from overtures from both Jimmy Page and promoters offering lucrative sums to get getting Zeppelin back on the road. "I'm not part of a jukebox," Plant frostily declared to Rolling Stone in 2014, preferring to stick to his own course, which has, for the last few years, involved touring with his Sensational Shape Shifters band, playing some Zeppelin songs, albeit with a world music twist.

Unless there's unfinished business - and there rarely is - the only reason for these old bands to reform would be to fleece mugs like me out of their hard-earned. And here, one must absorb the fact that we're no longer just talking about rock's pioneers getting back together. The '90s are catching up, too. The Spice Girls (and I clearly don't need to point out that this is not in the same oeuvre as the mighty Led Zeppelin...) have returned to the studio, though minus Sporty and Posh, and thus wish to be known as "Spice Girls GEM" (Geri, Emma and Mel - geddit?). "There's a lot to be said for bowing out on a high note," Mel Chisholm has said, and she is probably the only Spice Girl who could actually hit a high note. At least she regognises, to borrow from ABC, that was then and this is now. They had their moment, why try and recreate it?

Which brings me to Oasis. Last night's premiere of Supersonic, the warts-and-all documentary about the band that arguably were Britpop, provided a platform for Liam Gallagher to opine that his band (the one that effectively broke up via a basket of fruit being flung across a Paris dressing room, leading to Noel describing the incident as "a plum from a plum") should reform - and should never have split to begin with.

"If it happens tomorrow, I'm ready, my bags are packed. If it happens in a year, I'm still ready, if it happens in 10 years, I'm still ready," he told Sky News, but adding that he would not be begging Noel to make it happen. "There'll be no cap in the hand and no banjo, you know what I mean? If it happens, it happens, if it doesn't, it fucking doesn't, we move on."

Given that the brothers G have engaged in fraternal skirmishes via the media (and, in the case of Liam, Twitter) since the 2009 split, with the barbs as cruel and as harsh as they are, actually, quite funny (the junior Gallagher has taken to calling the elder "Potato" in tweets), it would be hard to imagine them coming together. Noel was notably absent from the twin Supersonic premieres in London and Manchester, despite being a co-executive producer with his brother. "He won't be here," explained Liam acidly. "He's in one of his really, really, really, big houses, probably eating tofu, while having a fucking face peel. Ain't that right, man of the people?".

Beneath the acrimony, there might be a glimmer of brotherly love, but not much. "For someone to ruin my Oasis career to further his own, we have got to get past that a little bit," he told Sky. In a wildly entertaining interview in the October issue of Q, Gallagher went further: "If the guy doesn't want me back in our band then I don't want to either. I don't want to be in a band with someone who doesn't want me."

The conundrum, then, is what if Oasis did reform? Arguably, their albums since Be Here Now in 1996 delivered ever-decreasing rates of return on originality and, it should be said, quality. Noel's High Flying Birds project has produced two very good albums, whereas Liam's Beedy Eye outfit patently didn't. Shortly before their split there was something of a return to form by Oasis with Dig Out Your Soul, but the truth of the matter was that they were constantly retreading old ground. Definitely Maybe and What's The Story, Morning Glory? were genuinely era-defining: the whole schtick of a band of Mancunian scallies fronted by two cocky, lary and amusing brothers (you can find a guide to some of Liam's greatest pearls on my former blog), playing simple, self-written guitar-songs was a tremendous reminder that, as Simon Cowell and his evil empire pervaded the charts, Britain could still produce memorable headlining guitar bands.

But is any of this enough to warrant a reunion? Seeing the Stone Roses three years ago at the quaint Le Cigale theatre in Paris was a reminder of the good and the bad of revisting the bands who made your younger self. While it was fun to pogo amongst an audience of similarly adidas-clad fortysomething Brits, nothing could recreate the energy of the Roses the first time around.

The danger of an Oasis reforming would be the same. There would have to be something new. Something good. Very good, in fact. Noel and, surprisingly perhaps, Liam are both good songwriters, but if - and this is an epic, planet-sized 'if' - they were persuaded to get back together, it couldn't be to become a latterday Status Quo. Noel gave ample demonstration of his ability to find a new writing voice for both his High Flying Birds albums, but any return by Oasis would have to tap into what they were good at in their '90s prime, and radically jettison all that diminished their musical credibility in the albums that followed.

Supersonic, a collection of home movies, live footage archive and new interviews, will resurrect that original period, charting the brothers' rapid rise from Burnage council house to the landmark Knebworth show in 1996. Directed by Mat Whitecross, who was responsibe for the Ian Dury documentary Sex & Drugs & Rock And Roll, Supersonic is also backed by the production talent behind the Senna and Amy biopics, including Asif Kapadia who directed both (here as an executive producer). As with those productions, the audience gets to make its own mind up about the underlying characters of the Gallaghers itself, rather than ensure a narrative about the wider contemporary context of Britpop, Cool Brittania or the pre-Iraq Blair era. The film picks at the fraternal chemstry, and the wild early days of Oasis fuelled by booze and drugs and a rock'n'roll hedonism not seen since the period of music history they've been accused of copying so faithfully.

Being released in this, the week I've returned to Britain, having left in 1999, Supersonic revives memories of a period when the country appeared to be enjoying itself, with a hitherto creatively moribund music industry dusting off the verve - if you can excuse the pun - that made it a world leader in the mid-60s. The irony was that Oasis were the Stones to Blur's Beatles, despite their obvious obsession with the Fab Four. The emphasis here is on "were". While neither Gallagher has given an outright refusal to get the band back together, they're a long distance apart for now. And maybe, that's the way it should be left.

Defending the indefensible: Phil Collins - what's he done to you?

"No wonder people were annoyed with me! And I do apologise!” So said Phil Collins in a 2014 Daily Mail interview in which he was asked to atone for near-ubiquity in the mid-eighties and early nineties that subsequently led him to being charged in Britain with a number of alleged offences, such as:

• Getting married often (true)
• Getting divorced often and writing songs about it (true)
• Divorcing by fax (not true)
• Being a Tory (not true and flatly denied)
• Being mates with Prince Charles (true - he was a trustee of the Prince's Trust).
• 'Going Hollywood' (true)
• Being respected by US hip-hop artists (true)
• Footballer Steven Gerrard being a Collins fan, thus "dragging the game back into the Dark Ages" (partly true)
• Leaving the UK after Tony Blair became prime minister (true - he married a Swiss national)
• Divorcing for a third time...and now, apparently, moving back in with her (true)

Let's face it, not even Gary Glitter and his odious proclivities has been slammed as badly. So, on the occasion of Collins' 65th birthday, it's time to give the man a break because, frankly, all this hatin' is undeserved.

For a start, Collins was, to begin with, a reluctant pop star. This makes his subsequent superstardom (joining Macca and Jacko as the only performers to have sold over 100 million albums as solo artists and as band members) something of a paradox. That's not to say Collins regrets his success, but that his success has only really been a problem in his country of origin.

Despite being a child actor (including the Artful Dodger in the West End production of Oliver! and blink-and-you-miss appearances in Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang and A Hard Day's Night), being part of a touted late 1960s band, Flaming Youth, who went nowhere, and then joining Genesis in 1970, the Phil Collins most people know about only came to be at the beginning of the 1980s. 

When Peter Gabriel left Genesis in 1975, Collins was the last resort to replace him as lead singer. He would have been happy to have remained on the drum stool, applying a God-given drumming talent that had seen him play percussion on sessions for George Harrison's All Things Must Pass, would later see him farmed out to play on Brian Eno's acclaimed Another Green World, as well as starting his fusion side project, Brand X.

Joining Genesis to begin with had been an act of professional curiosity. Having seen them as one of those bands that were always appearing in Melody Maker's gig pages, Collins had figured that they would be a good source of regular work when he was offered to audition at Gabriel's parents' house in Chobham, Surrey. While he paddled around in the swimming pool, as you do, listening to the other auditioneers, he absorbed the material, subsequently nailing the job.

Collins wasn't a particular fan of prog rock. His music was soul, R&B and jazz. But with the obscure time signatures and meandering fantasy songs of the early Genesis, Collins' drumming style evolved with intricate, jazz-like flourishes and melodic fills, taking the power of peers like John Bonham and Keith Moon (whom he could have replaced in The Who) and adding a musical 'voice' to the drums.

His contribution to Genesis wasn't, however, merely percussive. With Steve Hackett joining in 1971, the two grammar school-educated West Londoners provided a grounded buttress to the rarified environment created by Gabriel, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford, who'd formed Genesis at Charterhouse, the public school better known for turning out prime ministers, archbishops and captains of industry than hairy rock stars.

As Collins has often remarked, band politics were often an extension of school politics, and arguments over pencil cases and protractors, long forgotten, easily erupted again over guitar tunings and piano solos and other petty musical disagreements. Collins, with his stage school self-assurance and considerably greater streetwisery, was the perfect pin with which to puncture the air when things became too overwrought.

But with a new album to record in the autumn of 1975, and no lead singer emerging from 100s of applicants, Collins - who had been coaching the auditions - was clearly better at singing the new material than those trying out for the job.

And so, on February 2, 1976, three days after Collins' 25th birthday, the first post-Gabriel Genesis album, A Trick Of The Tail, was released. Fans had heard Collins' voice before - perfectly complementing Gabriel on stage, as well as providing lead vocals on album tracks like Nursery Cryme's For Absent Friends and More Fool Me on Selling England By The Pound. But with the new album Genesis started to assume a new persona, with Collins its focal point.

With Gabriel out of the picture, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford took on more of the songwriting. A Trick Of The Tail retained much of the whimsy that Gabriel and his Lewis Carroll-like wordplay had laid over complex musical arrangements, and with Dance On A Volcano and Squonk the band's association with fantasy - rather than poppy romance -continued. But in Ripples and Entangled, in particular, Collins' vocals brought Genesis closer to Crosby, Stills and Nash, and the band started to become a little more accessible. Robbery, Assault & Battery also added some levity. No surprise, then, that it was co-written by Collins.

Live, Collins' precocious sense of fun provided a different dynamic. Gabriel had been a relatively shy individual, gauchely telling obscure stories between songs and dressing up in costumes to help illustrate the meandering music. Collins, at a glance, brought another energy and the cheeky-chappiness of an end-of-pier comedian (while not abandoning drumming duties - joining touring drummers like King Crimson's Bill Bruford and long-standing stickman Chester Thompson on the instrumental parts of the so-called "long songs").

When Steve Hackett left the band after the release of Seconds Out - still the best live album ever - Genesis contracted into a trio. Banks, in particular, and Rutherford were still the core of the band's songwriting, but Collins had emerged as the band's personality, and with it had some influence. The irony of this is that the next album, ...And Then There Were Three produced a hit single, Follow You, Follow Me, a love song that introduced the band to a female audience for the first time. And it was, in fact, written by Rutherford.

If A Trick Of The Tail "launched" Phil Collins, to some extent, the commercial success - and enormous US tours that followed - was the making of him. After the 1978 tour, Rutherford and Banks went off to do solo albums. Collins was struggling to save his four-year-old first marriage - arguably the victim of his workaholism - and he offered to move to Canada where his wife Andrea Bertorelli had moved to with their children. It didn't work out, so he withdrew to his now empty West Sussex cottage and started noodling around in a makeshift bedroom studio.

The outcome was only intended to provide catharsis for the divorce he was now going through, plaintive, heart-on-sleeve songs like If Leaving Me Is Easy, Please Don't Ask ('given' to Genesis for their Duke album) and, of course, In The Air Tonight - famously self-described as "not a happy song" about Bertorelli.

It's pioneering use of both drum machines and that now-familiar 'gated reverb' drum sound (created during Collins' contribution to Gabriel's third solo album) turned In The Air Tonight into a huge hit, taking the singer from reluctant front man to Top Of The Pops, famously appearing playing a keyboard on top of a Black & Decker Workmate with a paint pot on it, a dig at Bertorelli who'd apparently run off with the decorator.

This was two of Collins' most enduring qualities at work: firstly, his comic schtick and secondly, his lack of any typical English reserve. What you see is what you get, which is why Face Value's sleeve was dominated by Collins' full moon face on the front cover, and thinning hair on the back of his head on the rear.

The child actor-turned drummer from Hounslow was no longer the reluctant front man. In The Air Tonight would make Collins part of the 80s zeitgeist: Michael Mann included it in the pilot episode of Miami Vice - its hissing Roland CR78 drum machine and simple three-chord arrangement played on a Prophet 5 keyboard underlaying a pivotal scene featuring Crockett and Tubbs driving moodily down - appropriately - Collins Avenue in Miami Beach.

Face Value's follow-up, Hello, I Must Be Going! (a title quoting Groucho Marx) took Collins up another notch, its cover of The Supremes' You Can't Hurry Love - to some, a throwaway retread of an old soul number - becoming a global pop hit in 1982.

In 1983, and with another Genesis album behind him, Collins came to work for no less a figure than Robert Plant. Led Zeppelin had broken up following John Bonham's death, and Plant turned to Collins to kick start his solo career. "I was graced by my first two solo records, Pictures at Eleven and The Principle of Moments," Plant has said more recently. "A drummer contacted me and said, 'I love Bonham so much I wanna sit behind you when you sing'. It was Phil Collins. His career was just kicking in and he was the most spirited and positive and really encouraging force, because you can't imagine what it was like, me trying to carve my own way after all that."

Having scored another global hit about divorce with the power ballad Against All Odds, the title song of Taylor Hackford's film of the same name, 1985 came around. He'd begun the year drumming on Band Aid's Do They Know Its Christmas?, but things took off spectacularly with the album No Jacket Required. Its lead-in single Sussudio was a bold, brassy hit of the age - all electronic drums and synths, though it bore great similarity to Prince's 1999 (Collins admits to have been a fan). Still, that didn't stop the album garnering more hits, including Take Me Home, the video for which featured Collins at various points on a world tour that seemed to just say "I'm now a global superstar".

And he was. On July 12, 1985, he managed to be at both the Wembley and Philadelphia ends of Live Aid. In his inimitable manner, Collins maintained that he was just trying to do the cause a favour: originally a number of the London performers were going to try and get over to Philadelphia on Concorde, but in the end it was only Collins. However, what seemed like a good idea turned out to be anything less as, along with doing another solo set, he was asked to drum for Led Zeppelin (who already had The Power Station's Tony Thompson on board). With Jimmy Page apparently "drooling in a corner", what should have been a magnanimous gesture ended up as an unrehearsed nightmare. Not that the crowd would have cared.

That year, Collins even made an acting appearance in Miami Vice, playing dodgy game show host "Phil the Shill". By 1986 - in which Genesis sold out Wembley Stadium for a record four nights - he was, literally, everywhere, even playing Great Train Robber Buster Edwards in a supposed romantic comedy that had largely been written with the singer in mind. Though Collins hadn't signed up for Buster purely to act in it, songs for the soundtrack were inevitable, and the old Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders song Groovy Kind Of Love gave him yet another hit.

At the same time, in Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho, we had Christian Bale's Patrick Bateman indulging hypothesising on Collins' career while entertaining a pair of hookers: "I also think Phil Collins works best within the confines of the group, than as a solo artist, and I stress the word artist", he suggests, having just instructed one of the girls to "eat it". Phil Collins was now an inextricable feature of the era.

Genesis, for much of the 1970s, had been a band that that the music press appreciated, but hadn't always raved about. There were cooler bands, quite frankly, but Genesis were regarded as merely "interesting". That, though, didn't hamper their inexorable rise. But with Collins becoming the band's breakout star on the back of his own solo work, when he returned to the group that had launched him, the trio found a camaraderie and creativity that only they could achieve together. Thus, via the albums Abacab, Genesis, Invisible Touch and We Can't Dance, they became darlings of the nascent MTV, their profoundly American-orientated videos for singles playing on both the band's sense of humour and, in particular, Collins' own love of hamming it up. 

Being everywhere via Genesis, his own solo music, and his myriad side projects created a monster that would always be at odds with the press back in the UK. Things reached their nadir with the NME's Steven 'Seething' Wells writing a vicious piece headlined "Ugly Bald Bastard Speaks (to Phil Collins)". By then, I had possibly been the last author of any review in the NME of a Collins gig. Quite why he'd agreed to speak to the paper baffles me still. The NME and its IPC stablemate Melody Maker had taken to baiting Collins, with the Maker's letters page even printing his home address as an attempt to close off a correspondence that Collins himself had persisted with, such was his anger at comments the paper had published.

With the release, in 1990, of But Seriously, Collins reached the zenith of his fame. An album featuring then-neighbour Eric Clapton, his ubiquity - both in the charts but also at the all-star charity gigs so in-vogue at the time - saw him achieving commercial success few other British solo artists had reached then and certainly not since.

However, the album's hit single, Another Day In Paradise, a song about the plight of the homeless, drew derision. How could a multi-millionaire rock star be claiming to trying to solve the problem of urban homelessness? Undeterred, the Collins machine rolled on, with another Genesis album, We Can't Dance in 1992, more hits and another mega tour.

But in 1993 the machine hit turbulence. With Genesis on hiatus (Collins was never to record an album with them again), he released his next solo album, Both Sides. Recorded mostly at home on his own, it sounded like a collection of bedroom demos. Face Value may have begun that way, but Both Sides was committed to release in that form. It appeared that the man with the golden touch of the previous decade was losing it. A live jazz album - A Hot Night in Paris - followed, featuring arrangements of Genesis and solo songs that, actually, wasn't bad.

Collins was far from over at this point, but even with the next album Dance Into The Light, it felt like Collins was coasting. Towards the end of the 1990s Disney invited him to write songs for the animated Tarzan film, producing an Oscar-winning smash hit in You'll Be In My Heart. This, though, just added to the British disease of sniffing at success, with Collins being regarded at the start of the new Millennium as having "gone Hollywood".

In marrying his third wife, Swiss translator Orianne Cevey, Collins moved to Switzerland, settling down in a small village near Lausanne. This, of course, became interpreted as "Tory Phil leaves UK" in the wake of the Blair government coming to power in 1997. The Sun also claimed that Collins had divorced second wife Jill Tavelman "by fax" (the truth of it was that certain documents had to be sent by fax but this wasn't allowed to get in the way of a good story). Of course, much of this was the doing of the media, a classic case of a Brit being built up and then knocked down. By comparison, the US didn't stop being a fan, though Collins' increasing invisibility while he enjoyed playing dad in Switzerland started to place him on "Where are they now?" lists.

With Genesis reforming for a limited, greatest hits-spinning tour in 2007, Collins was still not committing himself to a major return to the fore. By the tour's end, Collins was having to play drums with the sticks gaffer-taped to his hands, the result of a worsening back problem. More medical problems were to follow, with an infection causing hearing loss in one ear. Not long after the lame Motown covers album Going Back came out in 2010, Collins announced his retirement. By this stage, the music press didn't care. Even some fans were of the view that Collins was no longer the writing, drumming and performing force he had once been. Perhaps success had changed him.

It is, though, time to reassess the album that took Phil Collins from drummer and then singing-drummer with one of Britain's hardest-to-place bands, to becoming a solo star who, in many respects, was the 1980s.

With a hint that he might be reconsidering his retirement, Collins has this week re-released Face Value, adding previously unreleased tracks, and updating the iconic black and white cover shot with a new picture showing the considerably aged and somewhat gaunt Collins of today.

It requires listening to afresh. For an album that was supposed to be about a bitter divorce, once past the truly innovative In The Air Tonight and, later, the quite obvious If Leaving Me Is Easy, This Must Be Love and Thunder & Lightning joyfully celebrate moving on. The album ends with a stunning cover of The Beatles' Tomorrow Never Knows, embracing all that the studio had to offer the Fabs themselves on the original. Behind The Lines is a cover version of the Genesis song Collins co-wrote for their Duke album, and with the addition of Earth, Wind & Fire's Phenix Horns, it is a totally different song, and even better for it. Likewise, I Missed Again is a riotously uptempo song. The Roof Is Leaking, with its depression era theme and mournful banjo, captures Collins' sadness as well as an expected nod to other musical styles not previously in his oeuvre.

Face Value was, for Genesis fans, a shock, especially when the same horn section turned up on the next Genesis album, Abacab. Those still wedded to 20-minute epics like Suppers Ready and Cinema Show took a while to adjust to "their" lead singer pouring his emotions out in heart-on-sleeve ballads. Even In The Air Tonight, a song which has since found new life in hip-hop (the tribute album Urban Renewal featured artists like Ol' Dirty Bastard, Kelis and Montell Jordan doing Collins covers), sounded like nothing any of his previous outlets had ever produced. And even now, from the first hiss of the drum machine through to the now-famous tom-tom fill, it is a song to raise the hairs on the back of my neck. In the hairs tonight, if you will.

I won't pretend that I went off Collins' music as it lost its edge at the turn of the Noughties. But in Collins himself, his history as one of the greatest rock drummers of all time, the accessibility he brought to Genesis before they became music TV mainstays, and his work as a producer and collaborator with people like my musical hero John Martyn, warrants greater appreciation than the short cuts too many take to ignorantly dismiss him for his supposed politics, his personal life and the unashamedly populist end of his music.

You don't have to love him at all, or at least love the bits of his career you don't have to like, but if you like music and appreciate musicianship, there are parts of Phil Collins' musical history that deserve enormous credit. And I would start by listening to an album that was released 40 years ago next week, A Trick Of The Tail.