Former Oasis frontmen Liam and Noel Gallagher cannot work together, and yet they cannot leave each other alone. Recently, Liam, 43, has been posting photos of his brother, 49, and calling him a “potato.” It began in May, and he’s still at it, sending three spud tweets just yesterday. There’s no reason, besides the obvious: The Gallaghers are duty-bound to scorn one another, even if it’s 6:05 in the morning.
Pouting Potato LG x pic.twitter.com/K8y3AOFeYQ
— Liam Gallagher (@liamgallagher) 29 juin 2016
Oasis fans know better than to pick sides, because each brother has spent a lifetime cultivating a specific kind of crude, contemptuous insult. For example: Liam recently withdrew a tweet that contained a homophobic slur. “If I’ve upset anybody with my tweets I apologise that includes you RKID as you were LG x,” he said. “RKID” is the catalog prefix on Oasis LPs, and “our kid” is Northern England slang for “brother.” If you aren’t looking it’ll go right past you, but Liam’s “apology” for a tasteless gay joke is in fact another, subtler gay joke about Noel.
The elder Gallagher is only a bit less savage: “Should he ever climb out of the ‘where are they now’ basket and grant you an interview, ask him,” he told a Toronto Star reporter who inquired about Liam, while simultaneously mocking the Kaiser Chiefs, Foo Fighters, Kasabian, and Coldplay’s Chris Martin. Back before Oasis broke up, Noel Gallagher’s Wikiquote page had an entire section dedicated to poorly attributed digs at “pompous arse” Damon Albarn, frontman to Oasis’ Britpop archrivals, Blur.
POTATO pic.twitter.com/C13BbKFyCH
— Liam Gallagher (@liamgallagher) 9 juillet 2016
Looking back now, plenty of the comments the Gallaghers have made over the years are unpleasant. They rarely have anything nice to say about women musicians or artists of color. Their words are full of casual incitements to violence and occasionally hint at a difficult childhood. Once in a while, an odd pop-philosophy gem creeps in, like this one from Noel: “Progression is going forwards. Going backwards is regression. Going sideways is just aggression.”
Liam, presumably, understands how it feels to go sideways. These days, his properly sourced Wikiquote page only serves to remind you how very few Oasis songs he wrote. His latest band, Beady Eye, is defunct, while Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds are currently in the midst of a well-received tour.
It’s not difficult to figure out the probable source of Liam’s jealousy: Noel has turned out to be both Oasis’ Lennon/McCartney and their Paul McCartney and Wings, and the Gallaghers have never, ever wanted anything as badly as they wanted to inherit the Beatles’ legacy. They haven’t by any stretch of the imagination, but if either starts to feel down about it, he knows he can always take a few cheap shots at his brother.
POTATO pic.twitter.com/yPPwh3BwNx
— Liam Gallagher (@liamgallagher) 9 juillet 2016
It’ll be okay, Liam. Hey, you wrote “Songbird,” and that’s not even close to being the worst Oasis song.
