In a recent interview with the Daily Star, Noel Gallagher recalled the time he discovered he was banned from China for life.
According to the English newspaper Noel revealed:
“I only found out I was banned when Oasis got invited to go to China a good 20 years ago. We’d agreed to go and all the paperwork came and you had to send through a list of your songs and the Chinese government sent you back a list of songs that weren’t appropriate and we’d agreed to do all that.”
“About a month before we were about to leave I got a letter saying you lot can come but you can’t because of this thing you did for the Tibetan people. I’d forgot I’d even done it.”
He also said: “The reason that they didn’t want you there was in case you started spouting off some pro-Tibetan s**t. I was like, ‘Mate, I’m not even interested in Tibet, I’m not arsed just let me go.’”
“They we’re like, ‘No’.”
“I’ve got a letter somewhere from the Minister of The Interior saying, ‘You are an enemy of the people,’ or something like that.“The rest were invited with open arms.”
Noel also recalled that the only reason he played the concert was because none of his former bandmates, including his brother Liam could be bothered at the time.
“Oasis were on tour at the time and it was a day off and Oasis got asked to do it and no one else would do it so it was like I’ll do it.”
“All my equipment was in Ohio somewhere and I wasn’t into playing acoustics then, we never used to do Wonderwall with an acoustic the we used to do it electric.“They said, ‘Can you just do it?’ So I did it.”
Talking about the gig and how he immediately regretted it, he said:
“I walked out on stage in front of 50,000 people and as I walked out I thought, ‘Why have I agreed to do this? I’m not even the f***ing singer. I’ve got a Marshall stack and I’m going to do Wonderwall and Cast No Shadow.’”
“As I remember I only did about three or four songs but it felt like it was about four hours long. I was on in between Radiohead and U2, full bands.”
Source: Radio X
Photo: Getty