By Rollo Ross
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Former Oasis songwriter Noel Gallagher embarked on a new kind of creative journey with his latest album "Who Built the Moon?" with his High Flying Birds band.
The British musician worked with Northern Irish producer David Holmes, who told Gallagher not to bring any pre-written songs to their sessions.
"Every time it started to sound a bit like Oasis, he (Holmes) would stop me what I was doing and say 'You've done all that before. Try something different,'" Gallagher, 50, told Reuters Television.
"I would try all the things I'd learned down the years on the guitar or whatever I was playing... It was only when I'd switch off and I was just playing that the magic would happen," he said.
The result is a mix of different styles and genres. "Who Built the Moon?" is released on Friday.
Seven years after 1990s rockers Oasis broke up in bitterness between Gallagher and his younger brother Liam, Gallagher claims all the credit for the band's enduring legacy.
"I wrote those songs. Nobody else wrote them... I wrote them, I produced them, I came up with all the parts."
He ruled out any prospect of reconciling with Liam, adding, "It's a one-way thing. He's (Liam) got a problem with me. There's nothing going back the other way."
Despite the well-publicized fights with his brother, the wild parties and the blaring newspaper headlines, Gallagher says he has no regrets.
"If I had to go back and do it all again tomorrow, I would make all the same mistakes because the mistakes were great. The drug years were... unbelievable and they were only unbelievable because I was smart enough to get to point and go 'That's it now,' you know."
"No regrets. You can't have any. They're useless anyway. They drive you mad," he said.
Nevertheless, Gallagher says it is "preposterous" that he has never had a number one U.S. album nor been Grammy nominated, despite the huge success of Oasis in Britain.
"That's out of my hands but there's nothing I can do to change that. There are people that I'd like to work with, but I won't be getting on the phone and calling them," he said.