חלק שני:
“Last week me voice was a bag o’shite, I had to have a word with meself. I want this to be a success, I want this to be great, I thought I’m going to have to tone it down a bit. Load of big fat lines, load of cigarettes, staying up late talking the same shit you talked the night before and the night before that, that’s not good for it [his voice]. It’s not a big deal. I’ve got willpower.” When his voice is good, he says, “no one can touch me”. (Many would agree.) “And when it’s bad, it’s a bit better than Pete Doherty’s.” When he does drink, he says, he might “do a bottle of tequila in a couple of hours, no problem. The good stuff, Patrón.” Doesn’t that make him ill? “No, I feel all right. Red wine I can’t handle, just want to batter everyone. On tequila, I’m Bob Monkhouse. I’m a good drinker, but it’s dominos, isn’t it? Get pissed, smoke, do the other…” I ask if he’s mellowed with age. “I can still go pound for pound with any clown at any time,” he says. “I’m not on about fighting, I can still have it drinking or whatever. But yeah, I’ve mellowed, but not in the sense of liking Radiohead or Coldplay. I don’t hate them. I don’t wish they had accidents. I think their fans are boring and ugly and they don’t look like they’re having a good time.” Liam doesn’t like any contemporary bands. “Not interested. I play the Beatles, the Stones, the Kinks, Neil Young, the Pistols. Maybe a bit of the Roses. Don’t like modern bands. Topman music, innit?” These days, he says, “Family’s the most important thing. The kids are just the bollocks, I enjoy their company more than some idiot in a band or some actor. That’s how I’ve changed. Years ago I was in the pub.” Did he always want to be a dad? “No, not really. Just wanted to get off me tits and do music, but once you get your missus pregnant, you’ve got to step up to the plate.” He has two boys, Lennon, almost 9, who lives with his mum, Liam’s ex-wife Patsy Kensit, and Gene, just 7, who lives with Liam and his second wife, Nicole Appleton of All Saints. The boys attend the same school. Private or state? “Private.” Was that an issue for him? “Not at all. Not a-fucking tall. They’ve got every right to be there as much as some banker’s son. When I pick me kid up, I feel amazing.” Liam left his own school, Catholic, all-boys, at 15. “Had no time for it. Got a job creosoting fences. Fifty quid a week.” I mention that when I had interviewed Noel, he said he worried he wasn’t a good dad to Anais, then 2, his daughter by Meg Mathews. “He shouldn’t get hung up about it,” says Uncle Liam. “She’s only 8. If any bad days have gone down you make it up to her, don’t you?” As for his own paternal ability: “I’m the bollocks at being a dad. I’m top. We have a lot of fun.” Who’s stricter, him or Nicole? “Me. I’m the bad cop, she’s the good cop. I’m not Hitler, but they’re getting older, they make a mess, they tidy it up.” What if they swear? “I give ’em a medal! Nah, they don’t swear.” He and his wife don’t go out much, he says. “Done all that, seen it, didn’t like it.” Did you get anything out of it? “Might have had a couple of lines out of it, couple of scraps, lot of earache.” If he and his wife do venture forth, they usually take Gene with them. “Go out at 6, out of there by 7.” Babysitters are not an issue. “Nicole’s mam is round the corner.” The Gallaghers do not employ a nanny. “Don’t need one.” Liam’s own mother is still in Burnage, the suburb of Manchester where the Gallaghers grew up. He phones her every day. “I enjoy speaking to her.” He offered to buy her a new house. “She said, ‘What would I move for? You can get us a new gate.’ Noel bought her a little cottage in Ireland. She goes there a bit.” Despite his Irish roots, Liam considers himself typically English. “I hate that plastic Paddy thing. I’m into the English thing, music, football, clothes.” The brothers’ estranged father lives in the house they grew up in. Liam was closer to his dad than were Noel or the eldest boy Paul (“He never beat me up, he beat the other two up”) but even so, he has no contact. “Not interested. Not angry, not sad, just nish.” Have his father’s shortcomings made him try harder as a dad himself? “Nah. I think you’ve got to do it right, not because he didn’t, but because they deserve it. I don’t dwell on it.” Liam and Nicole have a second home in Henley-on-Thames. “Try to get there every weekend. Watch TV, play with the kids, sit in the garden, get in the pool, get out of the pool, go for a run, normal stuff.” How have the good people of Henley reacted to his arrival? “This lady walked past, she said, ‘You’re the coolest person I’ve seen in Henley since George Harrison.’ They’re pretty much the same as us really, they get a bad rap.” His house in Henley has its own bar, but he only stocks it with booze for special occasions. I ask Liam if he still feels working class. He pauses. “I’m not one of them that harp on about it like Billy Bragg. I was born on a council estate, we had no money, me mam and dad split up. Now I live in a nice area, kids go to private school, few quid in me pocket, so what? I am what I am. I’m just me. I’m not a flash **** if that’s what you’re saying. And I’m not the other one, whatever that is.” Middle class? “Right. The kids are middle class though, I suppose.” I say when I asked Steven Gerrard the same question last year, about class, he got shirty. Liam’s interest picks up. “Oh aye, Gerrard got shirty, did he? Did I get shirty then?” Not especially, I reply, and, dropping another name, tell him how Paul Weller described resisting his partner’s attempts to lure him to middle-class dinner parties. “Well, he should have a working-class party, shouldn’t he?” says Liam. “Invite all of them, they won’t come again, will they? ’Cos apparently we’re scum.”
