Liam Gallagher's Sweet Revenge

After coping with a divorce and the demise of Oasis, the frontman is finally back – and ready for a fight

- Brian Hiatt

IT MIGHT NOT HAVE SEEMED LIKE IT during the champagne-and-cocaine supernova of his Brit-pop Nineties – back when a given night might find him detained by police on a ferry to Amsterdam, tossed out of Abbey Road Studios midsession, or skipping an Oasis gig to go house-shopping – but Liam Gallagher was always thinking long-term. Or at least he was always thinking. Take his habitual onstage pose: arms clasped behind his back, every part of him immobile save for his lips. “I knew for a fact I was gonna live forever,” he says now, having made it to a lean, fiery 45.

He ran about seven miles through Central Park this morning, but he’s still pacing the carpet of a New York hotel room. He’s wearing a zipped-up blue jacket and running shorts, as if his top and bottom halves exist in different climates. “So I thought to myself, ‘When I get to about 80, there ain’t no fucking chance I’m doing fucking dance moves like Mick Jagger.’ ” He throws his hands behind him and leans forward to an imaginary microphone. “So all I have to do is just fucking stand still. Jagger’s still gotta jump up and down!”