Noel Gallagher Thinks These Book Are Staggering

Noel Gallagher has picked the five books that blew his mind, for the current issue of Mojo. In the 16-page MOJO exclusive Will Hodgkinson speaks to the former Oasis songwriter about his return to recording, his new album, the end of his old band, that fateful night in Paris and the essential films, books and music that define the man.

ELVIS AND THE MEMPHIS MAFIA
Allana Nash, Billy Smith, Marty Laker and Lamar Fike

"This is a product of Elvis's childhood friends sitting around and reminiscing on everything from high school in Memphis to Elvis traveling around the fairgrounds and doing the hayrides, through to Vegas and up to his death. He had a pet chimp. They trained it to look up girl' skirts. Then Elvis got bored of the chimp and they put him outside in a cage. The chimp froze to death".

AGENT ZIGZAG
Ben Macintrye

"Eddie Chapman is a low-level crook in 30s London he goes to Jersey to rob a hotel, is caught, and gets put in nick just as the Nazis invade. The Nazis discover this guy is an explosives expert , so they train him up and out on a mission to blow up a factory in England. In the end he becomes a double agent and goes back to Germany, dining at the top table with the Nazis, and this is just a shitkicker from South London. I love books about that period. It was only 50, 60 years ago that there was a proper war on".

LIFE
Keith Richards

"I never bought into the myth of Keith Richards. All right, he's done a bit of gear and written a few tunes. That's what we do, we're f**king rock stars. But I've got to say, after reading this, what an absolute dude. His take on music is incredible. How he's got all his faculties together to remember half the shit is beyond me but he went right up in my estimations. I don't like the way he's always having a go at Mick Jagger though. People do have a pop at Jagger and I don't know why, because he's great. Look at the words to 'Sympathy For The Devil'. That is heavy shit".

ONE MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT
MICHAEL DOBBS

"This is an hour-by-hour account of the 48 hours leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it's staggering. At midnight, nuclear war was going to start. Kennedy woke up the next morning and realised that there were good people on the Russian side as well. The army were pushing Kennedy towards war, and likewise with Khrushchev, and it very nearly happened".

SHAKEY
Jimmy McDonough

"There's a quote in it that changed my life, he's asked why he's been in Buffalo Springfield, Crazy Horse and all these other bands and he replies, "No one band is big enough to hold what I've got." At the time of reading it, I felt like that. In the last few years of Oasis I was only writing half the album, so I put out 15 songs in 10 years. I must have written 60 a year. I kept going back to that quote. Here's this guy that does whatever he wants. No one will ever be like Neil Young.