Oasis’ Noel Gallagher Is Banned From China for Life for Being an ‘Enemy of the People’

In 2009, Noel Gallagher learned he could not join the rest of Oasis for a concert in China. This initially came as a surprise, as he couldn’t recall the reason the country would ban him. He shared how he became an “enemy of the people” over a decade earlier.

Noel Gallagher cannot go to China

In 1997, musical acts including the Foo Fighters, the Beastie Boys, U2, Radiohead, Bjork, Alanis Morissette, and Blur performed in a Tibetan Freedom Concert in New York. Oasis received the invite, but Gallagher was the only one who agreed to perform.

“Oasis were on tour at the time, and it was a day off, and Oasis got asked to do it and no one else would do it, so it was like I’ll do it,” he said.

Years later, Oasis planned to perform a concert in China. While the rest of the band was welcome to go, he could not.

“We’d agreed to go and all the paperwork came and you had to send through a list of your songs and the Chinese government sent you back a list of songs that weren’t appropriate and we’d agreed to do all that,” Gallagher said, per the Mirror. “About a month before we were about to leave I got a letter saying you lot can come but you can’t because of this thing you did for the Tibetan people. I’d forgot I’d even done it.”

He said that the country described him as an enemy of the people.

“I’ve got a letter somewhere from the Minister of the Interior saying, ‘You are an enemy of the people,’ or something like that,” he said. “The rest were invited with open arms.”