Noughties chart topper Noel Gallagher has revealed that he has been deemed an “an enemy of the people” and barred from China due to a performance he gave in 1997.
“I’ve got a letter somewhere from the Minister of The Interior saying, ‘You are an enemy of the people,’ or something like that.
“The rest [of the band] were invited with open arms,” he said.
The correspondence came about after he had appeared at the Tibetan Freedom benefit concert in New York, in the middle of Oasis Be Here Now tour.
Explaining how he became involved in the show he intimated that the entire band were asked but it was a day off and no one else would partake.
“So it was like I’ll do it,’ he said. “I walked out on stage in front of 50,000 people and as I walked out, I thought, ‘Why have I agreed to do this? I’m not even the f****** singer,’” he told the Daily Star.
Although Noel sung on a couple of the band’s hits such as Don’t Look Back In Anger, The Masterplan, and Little By Little younger brother Liam was the official vocalist for the group.
The High Flying Birds frontman didn’t even realise that he was blacklisted until Oasis were invited to play the country some years later.
He claims that they had already agreed a set of appropriate songs to perform in one of the strictest censorship regimes in the world.
However, he was denied entry to the country just months before the agreed visit.
The 56-year-old confessed that he received the letter because officials were worried by the prospect of him saying “some pro-Tibetan s***”.
Tibet is located on the northern side of the Himalayas and has been governed as an autonomous region of China since the now-superpower invaded it in 1959.
The 1997 concert took place in Randall’s Island Park in New York over the weekend on June 7-8.
Noel joined a star-studded line-up that included Beastie Boys, Foo Fighters, Alanis Morrissette, Patti Smith, De La Soul, Pearl Jam and fellow Britpop stars Blur.