OASIS had just announced new details of their world tour and the opening night was to be in Tokyo.
It was the year 2000 and the band were unveiling their eagerly anticipated Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants set in Asia after a hiatus following an insane period when they became Britain’s biggest band.
As The Sun’s then-Showbiz Editor, I hastily arranged a meeting with my boss and explained that I thought we should cover it.
He asked whether the band were paying for the trip and if I had arranged an interview.
I told him that it didn’t really work like that with Oasis.
You just had to put yourself in the right place at the right time and something would usually happen.
It was certainly a long way to go at considerable expense for what might end up being just a concert review but I told him I was confident I could deliver something more and that he should trust me.
The trip was then agreed and myself and man mountain photographer Dave Hogan were booked on business class flights to Tokyo, a city I had never visited.
I’d been fortunate enough to chronicle the band’s shows at Knebworth, Maine Road, Earl’s Court, supporting U2 in San Francisco, the European opening night of the Be Here Now tour in Oslo, then Exeter three years previously, and a slew of other brilliant performances, but this felt different.
I had put myself under incredible pressure to return with more than just a gig review and a hangover.
The trip was costing more than £7,000.
I rang some music industry contacts and asked where the band would most likely be based.
They all agreed on the capital city’s Hotel Okura.
John Lennon holidayed there with Yoko not long before his death and it was the rock stars’ hotel of choice.
If you’ve been to Japan you will know that the jet lag is particularly punishing, as brilliantly captured in the Bill Murray film Lost In Translation.
We flew in and got to the hotel at around 8pm, bleary eyed and knackered, but there was work to be done.
We dumped our bags and headed for the bar.
Liam, drummer Alan White and their entourage were all there in a corner, knocking back draught Guinness.
We discreetly approached the bar and ordered a couple of pints of the black stuff ourselves.
Within five minutes, I felt a poke in the back.
“What the fookin’ hell are you doing here, Mohan?” Liam snarled at me.
I told him we had flown in for the band’s opening night at the Yokohama Arena, to cover it for The Sun.
“What, you’ve come all the way over here just to see us?”
I explained that an Oasis tour is a big deal.
“Come and have a beer with us,” he said in a softer tone and we joined the gang.
I think he was delighted that the band still mattered to people after some criticism of their recent albums and was chuffed we had made the effort.
After a few minutes, Liam turned to me and said: “Do you want to do an interview? Have you got a tape recorder?”
I tried to play it cool and said that we were fine just having a drink and relaxing.
“I want to do an interview and I want to do it here, right now,” he bellowed.
I couldn’t believe my luck and the jet lag wore off immediately.
We sat on a sofa and talked for almost two hours.
Nothing was off limits.
Noel did most of the interviews — Liam had done them before, of course, but never for so long and so lucidly with a mainstream populist journalist like me.
He talked about his marriage to Patsy Kensit, drugs, fatherhood, his relationship with his step-son, his brothers, the Beckhams and, naturally, his music.
He had just become a dad to Lennon, now 24, and couldn’t stop talking about him.
He revealed he’d written a song about him called Born On A Different Cloud, which was news to me and appeared on their Heathen Chemistry album two years later.
He told me: “I realise I’m blessed.
“He’s alive, healthy and happy and smiles all the time.
“He sleeps with me in bed and I stay up all night just staring at him and realising how lucky I am.
“As long as I can sing and look after him I’m happy.”
This was a rare, softer side to Liam that, at this point, few had glimpsed.
There was less bravado about him.
It was a fantastic interview.
As the chat concluded and I had to go to bed, he asked: “Do you think you’ll run any of this?”
I assured him we would and within days the exclusive was splashed across the paper over several days.
I was desperate for the loo and he bizarrely followed me in, wielding his video camera, hurling a pint of Guinness in my direction and then scarpering with a manic laugh and a chorus of “Go let it out.”
The trip had certainly been worth the gamble and a bit of stout on my Evisu jeans, but is indicative of the complex nature of Liam’s personality.
You never know which Liam you’re going to get — whether he will hug you, pin you up against a wall, try to undress you or ask about the family.
We live near each other in North London and when I would bump into him alone with my baby sons on Hampstead High Street, he would be charm personified, playing with them and showing great interest and empathy.
Grimacing in pain, I explained I was trying to have a civilised conversation with one of my favourite singers and Liam scuttled off.
Dominic Mohan
After the birth of his son Lennon, he asked me to join him in a pub close to the hospital to wet the baby’s head and he gave another exclusive interview, saying: “Lennon’s a good-looking baby but not as good-looking as me.”
It made the front page.
But another time I’d see him it could be quite different.
Chatting politely backstage at the Royal Albert Hall to The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft after he had ably supported Oasis at a Teenage Cancer Trust show in 2002, I suddenly felt someone firmly grab my privates from behind.
Ashcroft looked mortified as Liam yelled over and over again: “Get your cck out. Get your fookin’ cck out now.”
Grimacing in pain, I explained I was trying to have a civilised conversation with one of my favourite singers and Liam scuttled off.
“Is it always like this between you two?” Richard enquired and I admitted it often was.
“That’s Liam,” he chuckled.
The most hedonistic event on the Nineties calendar was the Q Magazine Awards, where champagne was served at midday and we’d finish at 3am.
It certainly brought out the best — or worst, depending on how you look at it — in Liam and Noel.
Anyone who was anyone went to it in those days.
At one event, I witnessed Liam strutting back from the toilets smoking a cigarette.
As he passed Mick Jagger, who was angled with his back to him, he flicked ash on Mick’s head, who sat throughout the awards unaware that his hair had become a makeshift Gallagher ashtray.
I think that was the same day Liam attempted to remove my tie and trousers in front of the cameras and Noel slagged me off from the stage for being on one of the judging panels, but they all blur into one, to be honest. Happy days.
There’s an element of performance and pantomime villain with the younger brother in certain situations, and it feels as if he’s never really had to grow up.
Now 51, he has been in the public eye for 30 years.
But his interviews are as good as his singing — the Gallaghers are a journalist’s dream.
That’s why they’ve never really gone away and younger generations are still fascinated and embrace them.
You just don’t get that with Coldplay, Ed Sheeran and the lads from One Direction.
And that’s why their comeback tour will be a must-have ticket for all generations and why thousands will fly in from around the world to witness these historic shows.
Similarly, with his brother Noel I recall being at a Liverpool dockers’ benefit concert in the late Nineties at which he had performed with The Who’s Pete Townshend.
The one person who really irked Liam was former Take That star Robbie Williams.
Dominic Mohan
As we chatted after midnight in the London venue’s backstage bar, a very senior journalist with whom I worked approached me and asked if I would introduce him to the songwriter.
I explained that Noel was a little, er, refreshed and that it was late and not the best idea, but he insisted I did so and said he was a fan.
I made the introduction and asked Noel to treat him gently but he then proceeded to berate said journalist for his lack of knowledge of Manchester City’s promotion record and Oasis setlists, slapping him around the head and, even at one point, attempting to bite him.
This went on for several minutes after which Noel stormed off in a whirlwind.
It was carnage. I thought I might lose my job.
As my colleague dusted himself off, I explained that if he thought that was bad, he should meet Noel’s younger brother.
The one person who really irked Liam was former Take That star Robbie Williams, despite them hanging out together not long before at Glastonbury, but whom Noel once dubbed “the fat dancer from Take That”.
After the release of Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants, I came into The Sun’s offices one morning to find a huge funeral wreath of flowers, maybe £200-worth, on my desk with an envelope attached.
On the front was scrawled FAO Noel Gallagher c/o Dominic Mohan, Bizarre, The Sun.
I opened it up and the message inside read: “Dear Noel. R.I.P. Heard Your latest album. You have my deepest sympathy. Robbie Williams.”
Now then. If that was the genuine article I had an excellent scoop on my hands — and I was the conduit for the latest episode of the Gallagher-Williams feud.
I contacted Robbie’s representatives and they confirmed he had indeed sent the wreath, adding that he thought it would be a good bit of fun to do so.
When I asked Liam — who would, of course, go on to marry Robbie’s ex-fiancée, All Saints singer Nicole Appleton — about this during an interview, he flipped and growled: “He’ll regret that.
“I’ll get him somewhere quiet when he’s least expecting it.
“He won’t be sending wreaths when he’s in hospital.
“I’ll send him some diet pills and a fat Elvis costume though.”
It was never a dull moment covering Oasis — and that is certainly not about to change.
