Noel Gallagher has opened up about his unreleased collaboration with The Lemonheads frontman Evan Dando, which led to a feud between the two.
The former Oasis songwriter and High Flying Birds bandleader worked on a song with Dando around three decades ago, however the two reached an impasse over the track, leading to the song remaining unreleased and a feud bubbling.
Now, in a new interview, Gallagher has reflected on the incident and explained what happened to make the relationship between himself and Dando so “awkward”.
According to Gallagher, the song was called ‘Purple Parallelogram’ and was written with The Lemonheads singer during the peak of Oasis’ fame in the ’90s. Speaking on Matt Morgan’s Patreon podcast, he also said that the conflict emerged when Dando recorded the two messing about on their guitars and declared he was going to release it as a new song.
“We were in this festival circuit in 1994 and on every festival that year was Oasis and The Lemonheads,” the singer, songwriter and guitarist began. “Them, us, The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy and House Of Pain.”
“Evan always had a tape recorder and he was always like, ‘Hey, man, let’s record a song’,” Gallagher added. “Then he went and did it and recorded it and was like, ‘I’m going to put it out.’
“And it was a bit [like], ‘Hang on a minute – you can’t do that’… “I heard it and I didn’t like it and it was like, ‘No’. It was a bit awkward.”
NME first reported on the unreleased collaboration, writing that the song was never debuted because “Sony Music, the company who publishes Noel Gallagher’s songs objected to the release” (via MTV)
Dando also described the origins of the song at the time, stating: “I’d been saying this phrase which actually denotes a certain substance. It was prescribed to me, a legal drug, Eurythnol, ‘cos I’d had trouble sleeping and we’d been out in Amsterdam trying to score drugs all night and couldn’t find any.”
He continued: “Noel got up the next morning singing this song ‘Purple Parallelogram,’ ‘cos that’s what I called them, and we finished the song that night at the table at some hotel.”
At the time a source at Atlantic went on to clarify that the disagreement about the song was not a big deal, writing (via MTV): “Noel and Evan just decided that they didn’t really like the song that much and that they wanted to re-work it a little and not release it yet.”
In other Noel Gallagher news, earlier this year the singer-songwriter released ‘Council Skies’, his latest album with High Flying Birds. The album was given a four-star review by NME, describing it as having “the brightest, most listenable collection of songs he’s pieced together in some time”.
Additionally, earlier this week Gallagher reflected on his long-time friendship with Bono, and recalled the time that he and Bruce Springsteen jokingly aggravated him by sending him a selfie.
