Oasis legend Noel Gallagher was deemed an "enemy of the people" and has been banned from setting foot in China.
The 55-year-old singer has been banned from China after upsetting authorities in 1997 when he joined the likes of U2, Radiohead, Alanis Morissette, Foo Fighters and Beastie Boys for performing at a two-day Tibetan Freedom Concert in New York, reports femalefirst.co.uk. Noel only found out about his ban in 2009 when his then-band Oasis were due to tour Beijing and Shanghai and he was told he wouldn't be welcome as he was "unsuitable" to perform.
He is quoted by the Daily Star newspaper as saying: "I only found out I was banned when Oasis got invited to go to China a good 20 years ago. We'd agreed to go and all the paperwork came and you had to send through a list of your songs and the Chinese government sent you back a list of songs that weren't appropriate and we'd agreed to do all that. "About a month before we were about to leave I got a letter saying you lot can come but you can't because of this thing you did for the Tibetan people. I'd forgot I'd even done it.
"The reason that they didn't want you there was in case you started spouting off some pro-Tibetan s***. I was like, 'Mate, I'm not even interested in Tibet, I'm not a**** just let me go.' "They we're like no. I've got a letter somewhere from the Minister of The Interior saying, 'You are an enemy of the people' .or something like that. The rest were invited with open arms." To make matters worse, the 'Holy Mountain' hitmaker didn't even enjoy being part of the concert.
He said: "Oasis were on tour at the time and it was a day off and Oasis got asked to do it and no one else would do it so it was like I'll do it. All my equipment was in Ohio somewhere and I wasn't into playing acoustics then, we never used to do 'Wonderwall' with an acoustic the we used to do it electric. They said, 'Can you just do it?' So I did it. "I walked out on stage in front of 50,000 people and as I walked out I thought, 'Why have I agreed to do this? I'm not even the f***ing singer. I've got a Marshall stack and I'm going to do 'Wonderwall' and 'Cast No Shadow'. "As I remember I only did about three or four songs but it felt like it was about four hours long. I was on in between Radiohead and U2, full bands."
[With inputs from IANS]
