The year is 1998. The Gallagher brothers are continuing their coke quest around the world on the infamous Be Here Now-tour. The third Oasis album sparked a world wide inverted embargo that was exported to five continents for a total of 83 gigs. Nothing would ever, in the history of Oasis, come up to the same level of madness as the Be Here Now-tour. The album itself was made in haze of glory and if everything was super-sized on the album it was nothing compared to the tour.

The place is Melbourne, Australia. The British band first flew in to Perth from Hong Kong, a trip that caused younger brother Liam to be banned for life from airline Cathay Pacific. Liam’s rebuttal on never being able to fly with Cathay Pacific again was concise and clear; “I’d rather walk!”.

The band is drinking heavily during their Oceanic leg of the tour and one day Noel Gallagher wakes up hungover yet hungry for music. He goes for a stroll to find a good record store. The rest of the story is his to tell.

I went into this shop and picked out a load of records. I had a spectacular hangover but was in their for over an hour. These records were in fucking great nick, all vinyl. So I put them on the counter and this bloke said, “Can I have your name please?”. So I said it was Noel. And then he asked me for my last name and I said “Gallagher”. He punched it into a computer and I thought, “this is a bit fucking fascist!”. He then asked if I had an address, and I said, “Yeah, in England”. Then he told me my name wasn’t coming up on the computer and I said, “Why would my fucking name be coming up on your computer?”. Then he said, “Because this is a library”. I left all the records at the counter and went back to the pub where I should have stayed in the first place. 

Watch this interview for an insight in Noel Gallagher’s state of mind during his Australian spell in 1998.