Oasis planned to issue an unreleased archive collection featuring Beatles and George Harrison covers

Oasis's musical output from the 2000s may be overshadowed by their '90s majesty for many but there's some great music to be found there – and Noel Gallagher agrees. He's revealed the band had plans for a retrospective greatest hits rounding it up, including a collection of previously unreleased material including a 'punk' version of the Beatles' Eleanor Rigby.

Noel revealed to Record Collector magazine: “You know that Don’t Stop demo we put up? We had planned to do an Oasis best of the 2000s because it’s a period of Oasis that the masses are not interested in but for the actual fans there’s some great tunes.

“With Don’t Stop it was like, ‘Well people are f****** floundering, put that out, the fans will love it’, Noel continued. Well, we did this best of and the bonus disc was gonna be all these unreleased songs.

“But, ha, unfortunately we couldn’t agree on something and it got dropped by the wayside.”

Noel went on to detail some of archive material that nearly surfaced. 

“There was this box in the cupboard under the stairs with all these blank CDs in.

“I went, ‘Right, today I’m going to f****** take that’. I’m putting on these CDs and I found a load of old Oasis stuff, like songs I’d never recorded but demoed. I’m going, ‘No f****** way’.

“There’s a great version of Eleanor Rigby, a punk version, and an amazing version of 'It’s All Too Much' we did on the day George died. Johnny Marr’s on it. I’d forgotten all about it. It was just the backing track. Liam hadn’t gotten round to doing the vocals.”

The only version of Oasis ever playing Eleanor Rigby to surface is a very rough soundcheck you can see above, likely to be from promotional activities circa Heathen Chemistry 2002-2003.

With an oasis collection shelved for now, Noel has turned his attention back to his High Flying Bird solo career with the retrospective record Back The Way We Came: Vol 1 (2011-2021) marking its ten year anniversary. 

That record will feature two new songs – including current single, We're On Our Way Now. 

Noel's also been reminiscing about the early days of Oasis in his interviews promoting the release – specifically how they couldn't even change their own guitar strings back then.  

"What’s going to happen here if he snapped a bass string, he’s f***ed!," Noel joked as he appeared on new Sky Arts show, The Live Revival.

"Still to this day, I’m f****** grossly under-qualified to be a technician of any kind," Noel joked 

"Can’t drive, can’t f****** swim. I’m s**t at most things apart from smoking weed and talking about Man City."

The Live Revival is a three-part docuseries promoting the 550 small music venues across the UK which are in danger of closing down due to the lockdown imposed to halt the COVID-19 pandemic.

Noel criticised the UK government's approach to the musical business during the pandemic.

 "There has been no sign of anybody saying anything about the f****** music business," Noel railed. "It’s all about f****** sport, or hanging out in parks ... What about the f****** music? Music is of the upmost importance – people live and breathe it."