Noel Gallagher: 'TV And Videogames' Partially To Blame For London Riots

Everybody please quiet down. Noel Gallagher has something insightful to say.

The former-Oasis-guitarist-cum-solo-artist gave New Zealand's Bang Showbiz his take on why the London riots happened. He goes with a classic argument: TV and video games.

"I don't care what other people say: Brutal TV and brutal video games are a reason for this pointless violence as well. The people are immune to violence, they are used to it."

Gallagher also lets out a rant on how he feels about the rioters themselves, which borders on disgust at their ambiguous cause and tactics:

The people who are at these riots aren't poor. These are kids with fucking mobile phones and all sorts of shit. The police and government have to take drastic measures. These idiots destroy their own communities. In six weeks, when everything is forgotten, they will look stupid and realise that the houses are still destroyed, burned down or whatever. These people aren't demanding anything, they have no goals. They just destroy their own shit. How stupid can you be?

As for the problem of what to do with the rioters, he has an easy solution: build more prisons.

Gallagher's brother Liam's store, Pretty Green, was looted in the riots. According to the Daily Telegraph, an estimated 270,000 pounds of goods were taken from the shop.

As for what Noel's up to these days aside from letting off some steam, his solo album, somewhat self-titled Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, is set for release on Oct. 17. You can listen to what Oasis sounds like minus Liam here.

Now back to your regularly scheduled life.

Comments

[ClevelandLib]

06:13 PM on 08/16/2011

LOL...no wonder that whole 'we're the next Beatles' thing didn't come true for Oasis.

[dennissinned]

04:01 PM on 08/16/2011

Maybe his music made them do it.

[Malisa Helton Harling]

10:45 AM on 08/16/2011

I totally agree with him. I've said the very same things to my friends while discussing this type of behavior. What these young people don't realize is that real life does not have a reset button.

[Lou Pucci]

02:55 PM on 08/16/2011

HA!

[RobModest]

06:21 AM on 08/16/2011

Coming from a guy who has admitted that he sometimes doesn't know what his own lyrics mean. That's enough to make me wonder if he truly understands what's coming out of his mouth. Sounds like the situation in London is beyond his scope of comprehension.

[1 man]

06:02 AM on 08/16/2011

I don't know if games/TV is the whole problem but I do think we have a generation or two even of people who see or think little of anything other than themselves, their needs, their wants, their pleasure etc. To many kids other people seem to be nothing more than filler for the self-centered mini stage upon which they appear every day. Also, I suspect so many people of today's world think history began with their arrival on the scene. Thank you in advance for thoughtful non aggressive replies.

[Charlie Fox]

03:02 AM on 08/16/2011

I would imagine that an entire generation that feels betrayed by those that came before us has more to do with this than video games. Do they make a video game entitled "Your greed and stupidity ruined my planet?" Unless they do it's probably the first thing.

[1 man]

06:03 AM on 08/16/2011

Isn't this why you see all these syrupy music background commercials about saving everything?

[Dukedraven]

01:32 AM on 08/16/2011

Stick with your lame pop music. We don't conservate claptrap.

[Tulka2]

11:59 PM on 08/15/2011

Crowds without politics are mobs.  Not that the Powers-that-Be are ever going to tell us when a crowd has politics because that's a revolution and a big threat to the Haves. 


It's up to a crowd not to be a mob by getting their message out.   That said, i wonder if voices aren't being silenced.  No evidence expect the silence from any political voice in the crowd.  That's at odds with what crowds are doing everywhere else in the world are doing right now.  To whit, challenging established order.  To whit, revolution.

[SteveSFM]

09:26 PM on 08/15/2011

Noel?

Shut up.

[TheFabOne]

09:08 PM on 08/15/2011

Gee, Noel, I like your music and all, and Oasis is probably the closest thing to The Beatles talentwise, but.......what's to blame for all the riots in your house with your brother?

[WesStrikesBack]

09:01 PM on 08/15/2011

One-hit wonder(wall)s. Maybe they had two. But weren't they supposed to be the New Beatles?

Oh well, I'm sure most who peruse this site will have to Google them to figure out who they are.

VH1 'Where are they now?" fodder in 2 years max.

[Mister President]

09:24 PM on 08/15/2011

In the UK they had a ton (or is it tonne?) of hits and hold a lot of music sales records. I'd agree that they were completely overblown but nobody on the other side of the Atlantic would ever call them one hit wonders.

[whomod]

05:40 PM on 08/16/2011

As an Oasis fan AS WELL as a fan of UK music in general, i'm quite familiar with this guys mindset and attitude. From the advent of the grunge era and Nirvana, UK rock and electronic bands were almost completely shut out of the American music scene.

Oasis were fortunate as they were one of the few bands that managed to get ANY airplay in the 1st place. It seemed the radio programmers were content to allow only one UK band a year to cross over and usually they had to try to emulate the 'grunge' sound (as Bush did) or else, as in recent years, they had to emulate the other UK success, Coldplay and be boring balladeers (see snow patrol and Keane). And to call Oasis a '1 hit wonder' band is just flat out ignorant. But many UK bands get tagged that just based on the ignorance of the American music audience.

But yeah, I'd see this overt hostility to oasis, all usually founded on the fact that they were from the UK and were opinionated whenever they'd play any US music festivals. Suddenly you'd have all these drunken college guys yelling for them to 'go back to England'.

A shame since the U.S. missed out on some really great music because of this climate all throughout the 1990's. From Pulp to Stereophonics and in between.

[WesStrikesBack]

01:31 PM on 08/18/2011

I have a hard time enjoying music when it's performed by humans I can't respect.

Pete Townsend is my hero, though, so I suspect we can agree that he is and will always be a musical genius and the brain trust of the 60's rock generation.

[ocean2811]

03:59 PM on 08/19/2011

1990's Brit pop God awful Crap Music...

[Sol76]

08:26 PM on 08/15/2011

Noel jumped the shark with his ill-informed opinion about the effect of "brutal video games" on the youf. As a rocker he should know better than to think just like the people who would blame him for riots in the era when rock n roll was considered sinful. "Brutal" video games do not desensitise people to real-world violence. Maybe they desensitise players to violence on television but anyone witnessing a violent act in real-life would feel more or less the same way about it than someone who does not play such games.

[Dan Schell]

08:13 PM on 08/15/2011

He's probably just taking it personally that they ruined his fancy store.

[Mr Hoodoo]

08:04 PM on 08/15/2011

'Eh, ...

...the self-centered Gallagher brothers and their damned band were lame. So are their opinions about anything.

I don't know one person who owns ANY of their crappy "music".

[flossophy]

07:41 PM on 08/15/2011

No, Noel... it's Britain's bIoated welfare state. 

These are the kids of social democratic dependency.

[Mr Hoodoo]

08:06 PM on 08/15/2011

Hey, cluckhead.

Haven't you got some cole slaw to grate and chickens to pluck?

The Gallaghers and their band are lame. And so are you. All of you are birdbrained.

[Tulka2]

12:01 AM on 08/16/2011

Trots, so ineffectual.