Noel Gallagher, His Abusive Father & The Mind-Blowing Meaning Behind 'D'you Know What I Mean?'

do you know what i mean by oasis is a much misunderstood song many people write it off lyrically speaking as a load of nonsense phrases cobbled together by noel gallagher with no overarching meaning i would respectfully disagree i think some of noel gallagher's songs shaker maker being a good example are kind of nonsense songs in the same vein as i am the walrus but i don't think this is one of them i believe that this song just like don't look back in anger is a song that actually tells a real life story and that every line of the song is actually part of that story i've always felt that the lyrics to do you know what i mean were some of noel's most clearly written lyrics about his upbringing but to understand that you first need to know the story and specifically you need to know about his relationship with his dad so i'd like to share with you some first-hand accounts from this book written by paul gallagher noel's older brother who was there and saw everything so i'd like to start by reading from an interview with peggy gallagher who is paul nolan liam's mum and when she says tommy she's talking about their dad when paul was seven months old i got pregnant again with noel there wasn't really much violence when i had paul but before noel was born tommy got really out of hand one time there was a big row and he kicked and smashed and dragged and beat me it was terrible paul and noel grew up not really knowing their dad they were just scared of him if they cried he hit them if they stammered he hit them he'd hit them to try and get the stammer out of them instead of trying to coax it out he'd stuff food down their mouths if they said they didn't want it liam was born on the 21st of september 1972. tommy had no patience with liam at all liam wasn't well as a baby he was ill for over six months crying morning noon and night i had to take him to the doctor sometimes twice a week for almost a year i'd be standing at the bus stop in the cold with a young baby and tommy would drive right past me in his car and wouldn't give his own wife and sick child a lift to the doctors when liam was four years old i put in for a legal separation papers were served on him and he was told to vacate the premises he told the court officials he'd leave but as soon as they were gone he'd come back again he'd break the windows break the door i had to let him in the house if i didn't he'd wreck it i got an injunction out on him and he was told to get out of the house again he said he would but he still didn't go i couldn't ring the police one time when he came back in and i threatened to call the police he cut the phone line with the hedge clippers and said he'd kill me and then he pulled the phone out of the socket it carried on like that all the way through liam's childhood paul and noah would be out a lot of the time but they didn't escape their father's violence sometimes their father would go out at night and come back in the morning at quarter to eight he'd drive up the avenue cool as you like come in the house and all hell would break loose he'd tip the house from top to bottom round suck it then demand the boys get up out of bed he tipped the bed over so paul and noel would end up with it on top of them one night when i'd reached the end of my tether i took liam over to my sister helens the next thing tommy phoned and said if i didn't get back to the house he was going to set fire to it and paul and noel would go up with it i had to rush back home and i remember thinking jesus he'll set the house on fire and burn them all because i said i'd leave him when i got back home paul and noah were in bed and tommy had gone out he'd be in a mood come in smash the house smash the glass in the door and when he'd upset everyone get in his car and you wouldn't see him again for two or three days he'd come back in a fit of temper at all hours of the morning and pull noel out of the bed and kick him he was violent with all the kids fighting them punching them and battering them eventually we moved out in 1984 to the house i live in now and now i'm going to move on to the actual words of paul gallagher noel's older brother himself noel always hated our dad almost with a vengeance i felt bad for noah when he was the victim to all the roaring and shouting and different beatings from my dad noel was determined not to cow tower as often as i did as far as our father was concerned but it was a draining and dangerous game to play and only annoyed our dad more until it became a battle of wills my dad was earning a big wage and yet he never gave us any pocket money what was worse was that he left all his loose change lying out on the dresser in the bedroom lots of it i didn't know he counted every penny so i stole 50 pence when my dad found out he went absolutely ape [ __ ] punching me slapping me until i ended up on the floor to stop him kicking me in the face i curled up in a ball hoping he'd stop but he got frustrated and stamped on my head various members of the gallagher family have said that while tommy was abusive to everyone he was the most abusive physically to noah noel has never talked about it and never gone into detail but if that's what he did to paul then you can only imagine what he did to noah i'd like to continue the story with some of the interviews in this peggy says this i remember noel once saying if you don't get out of here mum and leave him i'm gonna kill him and i thought oh jesus you can't be doing time for the likes of him liam says i remember packing all the gear up and then leaving we had no money but it was just good my mom not getting a kicking and noel says my missus thinks my old fella beat the talent into me what a guy if i wanted to take revenge on my dad i put a [ __ ] baseball bat on his head and i'd also like to read to you from paulo hewitt's brilliant book getting high peggy gallagher says i'll always remember noble saying to me as soon as i can beat him mum i'm gonna kill him tommy had beaten noel very badly that night and it wasn't just a slap peggy reveals it was proper they'd get it in the face in the mouth he didn't care and he'd kick them with his walking boots and he wouldn't bat an eyelid and late at night as noel lay in bed listening in abject terror to his father raging downstairs waiting for his steps to be heard on the stairs the bedroom door would fly open and he would be dragged out of bed to be hit for absolutely no reason now the biggest reason that peggy didn't leave tommy sooner was the catholic church basically when noel told his mum that if she didn't leave tommy he was going to kill him at that point peggy had to make a choice the catholic church or her son and quite rightly she chose noel and my dad used to knock me mom about there was many times when like it got like that he never touched me i don't know why he didn't he used to kill the lord noah was the one that got it the most i remember noah once said if you don't get out of here mom and leave him he says i'm going to kill him and i thought oh jesus you can't be doing time for the likes of him yeah might i just beat living daylights army one night we got the courage to get out and i left him a knife and a fork and a spoon and i think i lifted too much you can't think about it too deeply because it would [ __ ] drive you mad so i think that is just about all the background you need before we go through the song line by line [Music] this line immediately and clearly shows noel gallagher's dislike of going back to the part of manchester where he grew up there's just too many bad memories about the place as you will see in the following lines nolan liam both actually moved out of manchester to london at the earliest available opportunity and i think this line along with the opening lines of half the world away the opening line of rock and roll star and many other songs show their desperation to escape that world they grew up in now i don't think noel hates or hated manchester he's still a passionate man city supporter and they did those massive gigs at main road but i think what this was was noel who was then living in london coming back not just to manchester but to his own home neighborhood the place where all the abuse happened i think in those days the only reason he went back there was to see his mum they had tried to move her into a bigger house and she didn't want to leave she wanted to stay in her council house and so this song kind of articulates a little bit of the bittersweet feeling and the dark memories that noel had to deal with going back the sun in the sky never rains tonight to me i think this is actually a reference to god in the religion that noel was raised in god is called the sun in loads of different places in the bible all over the place and in catholic liturgy i can't help but wonder what it must have been like for noel being raised irish catholic being raised to believe that god was there and just had nothing back but silence from the sky we will never know how many times noel prayed when his dad was attacking him and got no response but we do know that the catholic church are the reason that peggy his mum stayed with his dad blood on the tracks must be mine so picture the scene he's got off the train in his home neighborhood and he's visualizing blood on the train tracks he's not just going back to manchester he's gone back to an area where in his mind's eye he can see his own blood on the train tracks from the train he's just stepped out of he can see in his mind's eye from the moment he steps off the and i train fine don't look back cause you know what you might see now here in a kind of bizarre almost jarring way he inserts two beatles songs to fool on the hill and i feel fine it's almost like he interrupts the flow of bad memories by remembering the things that made him happy in those days listening to the beatles in his room yeah i mean once i discovered weed and guitars and he got into another world what would you want to go out for everything i ever wanted in life was coming out of the speakers [Music] and the next line kind of lines up with that don't look back because you know what you might see he's interrupting that flow of memories putting happy memories in place of the bad ones because he doesn't want to look back he knows what's there [Music] now we're coming to the next verse look into the wall of my mind's eye this isn't a meaningless line this is noel talking about the wall he has built in his mind against his dad i think when he talked about the wall in his mind's eye i think he was actually visualizing the cover from george harrison's wonderball music he had it on his wall at the time and he used it for the title of wonder war and to know that symbolized a barricade in his mind that he had been forced to build to protect him and his family from their dad i think i know but i don't know why the questions are the answers you might need at some point as a young lad noel had to ask himself some very very painful questions remember noel was the second child and by his own admission his elder brother paul was very passive and would basically just do whatever their dad wanted his mum was not willing to leave his dad because of the catholic church and god was clearly not answering noel's prayers so noel had to ask himself a pretty serious set of questions he had to ask himself is my older brother going to get me out of these beatings no is my mum gonna get me out of these beatings no is god gonna get me out of these beatings no what's the answer then he had to do it himself and that theme of thinking your way out of a difficult situation runs right the way through this song that theme of putting the pieces together and coming up with the answer up here it's very known [Music] this is pretty self-explanatory in the context of this song he's come back to his home neighborhood in manchester and he's remembering the mess of his childhood and contrasting it to himself now at the top of the rock and roll world the life he grew up in and the life he was living at the time of writing that song could not have been more different i think this is a little bit of a reference to liam liam was once again by paul's admission the favorite child peggy seemed to put him first tommy never actually hit liam and paul says that liam received preferential treatment right across the board and so i think this is noel kind of saying i'm not as pretty as liam but i'm still your kid i think that's actually a really heartbreaking line and again another insight into noel gallagher's childhood no one can give me the air that's [Music] this line is brilliant this line says god isn't going to help me the catholic church isn't going to help me my mum's not going to help me my dad's not going to help me my older brother's not going to help me but my life is my own i'm in charge of my own destiny and there's nothing anyone can do about it i met my maker i made him cry the next line says i met my maker i made him cry now noel openly states in many places that he does not believe in god and that's not surprising considering what he went through so who's he talking about here from an atheistic perspective he can only be talking about one of two people his mum or his dad and he says i met my maker i made him cry he's talking about his dad at this point oasis were one of the biggest bands in the world and noel and liam's dad had been trying to get back in touch with nolan liam pretty much from the moment they became rich interestingly not with paul the older brother who was not rich man about that time it was a story every couple of [ __ ] months poor old [ __ ] dad's trying to get in touch with his famous sons but they don't want anything to do with him all that bollocks he had no intentions of making up with them that was his last thought but of course he got paid from the news of the world and then of course was all over the papers the next day shot i don't know but i wonder if this song is kind of giving us the hint that noel actually did meet up with his dad and tell him how things were even meeting between noel and tommy really happened whether in person or just metaphorically it just goes to show how the tables had turned now that nola and liam were on top of the world tommy gallagher was begging to be let back in and noah made him cry obviously by telling him where to go [Music] so noel's dad was in tears and asking why his people won't fly through the storm so let's take tommy gallagher who were his people that's his family isn't it so tommy was in tears talking to noel asking why his family won't fly through the storm i think that means go through the struggle of having to face seeing him again after all those years of abuse [Music] i think this is where noah said to tommy you are dead to us i think noel did have this conversation with tommy and tommy asked to be let back in i think noah in a calm collected way laid it out for him and said no you abused us for years you neglected us you are dead to us i was trying to take the dignified approach [ __ ] him do you not mean this mean anything to me anymore we were better than that so when you look at the bridge in that light it's amazing it's saying so much more than so many people realize but then we come to the chorus all my people right here right now to know what i mean so we've just had the dad tommy gallagher saying to noel why won't my people talk to me anymore and noel says they're not your people anymore they're my people now remember it was noah who got peggy to leave tommy peggy didn't do it of her own volition she was too tied up by the teaching of the catholic church paul the older brother he didn't initiate it because he had coped with his dad's abuse by just keeping his head down and so noel as the second child had to step up and become the leader of the family peggy openly says it was noel who instigated her leaving tommy in the end and in this book paul even says in some ways noah was more like an older brother so in a sense this chorus is just noah talking to his family and saying are you with me are you behind me now we come to my favorite part of the song the third verse because at this point noel stops talking about his own past specifically and he starts talking to you i don't really care for what you believe we start off with a very typical noel statement i don't really care for what you believe again he's referencing religion it's a warning don't get caught up in religion it trapped him in a situation where he was constantly being abused and it trapped his mum in a situation where she believed she had to stay in an abusive marriage or she would be denied communion and effectively condemned to burn in hell so as in many of noel's songs this is a warning against religion the next line however is such a brilliant insight into who noel is and how he ticks open up your fist so you won't receive the thoughts and the words of every man you'll need [Music] just as in noel's experience you don't escape an abusive situation by using your fists you escape using thoughts and words exactly as noel did noel didn't punch fight stab his way out he used his mind just as he's always done in conflict situations and it worked someone turned around and said the old fella's over there with a journalist trying to get something going and i was about to kill him no we're saying to him do not react he's at one end and all the limb and the other and liam's gonna [ __ ] kill him to give no his due credit he contained liam because liam would have gone for him and now protected his brother got him out of there get up off the floor and believe in life no one's ever gonna ever ask you twice in the second half of the third verse he's still talking to anyone out there who might be in a similar abusive situation to the one he was in he says get up believe in yourself and he says no one's ever going to ask you twice meaning do it now because you might not have another opportunity do it now get on the bus and bring it on home to me [Applause] [Music] and the last line is one of the best get on the bus and bring it on home to me it looks like oasis nonsense but it's not he's saying get out of your hometown if you are being abused there noah escaped manchester and went to london to build a new life and he's saying to anyone who is in an abusive situation like he was get off the floor believe in yourself take the first bus out of there and come join me in the outside world isn't it incredible how someone like noah who was so beaten down managed to battle his way out and literally claw his way to the top of the world and what did he do from that position in typical slightly gruff macho noel style he put out a coded message to anyone else in the situation he was once in he says get out of there don't use your fist use thoughts words and run for it if you need to get on the bus and get out of there for so long i thought this song was just a bundle of meaningless phrases but try listening back to it now with a deeper understanding of what these words could mean it is really [ __ ] moving when you know what noel could have had in mind when writing these lyrics it makes the song so kind of loaded and emotional and powerful and i'll be honest it makes me love the song even more noel gallagher has always had a side to him that is a bit of a ruthless bastard but he definitely has a kind-hearted side as well a side to him that wants to reach out to people who are in a similar situation to where he was and to give them a hand up it may be in code it may be buried beneath multiple layers of northern working class attitude but it is there and the more i learn about the gallagher brothers upbringing the more respect i actually have for noel it takes a huge amount of character to be in that downtrodden position and to rise up with nothing other than your own self-belief and battle your way right to the top of the world