Oasis was a pretty big success pretty quickly in their career: Their debut album, 1994’s Definitely Maybe, topped the UK charts, and they quickly became one of the country’s biggest bands. Liam Gallagher thought he’d do a nice thing with his newfound wealth and buy his mother a house, but as he tells it in a recent BBC Radio 6 interview, she wanted no part of that:
“The first thing I bought with [my first big paycheck] was a scooter, a 1954 Lambretta which I’ve still got, and that was on the cover of Definitely Maybe. And then we got a big [check] and I went and bought my mum a house. But she didn’t want it. She’s like, ‘I don’t want that.’ It was a lovely little cottage up in Heaton Moor [in Manchester, UK]. Beautiful.
So I give her the keys and she’s going, ‘What do I want this for?’ I was like, ‘Better than the one that you’re in, innit?’ And she goes, ‘No, I don’t want it.’ So anyway, I had to sell it back to the geezer. She didn’t want it, and she goes, ‘All I want is a brand new gate.’ Cheap date, mate, you know what I mean? ‘I tell you what, I can do better than that: I’ll buy you a fence and a gate.’ And that all she’s ever wanted. […] She’s still in the same house with the same fence and the same gate; she’s a legend.”
His mother might not want much from her sons, but it looks like she may have gotten the Christmas gift that every mom hopes for: Her boys getting along for once.
