BE CLEAN NOW

Oasis’ Noel Gallagher is talking publicly for the first time about quitting drugs. But typically, the songwriter-guitarist isn’t taking the usual post-rehab celebrity stance. In fact, he didn’t even do rehab.

“[I] didn’t go into rehab like all me mates did--[expletive] lightweights!,” he said in a recent interview about his decision to stop taking drugs last spring. “I just wasn’t going to do it anymore. . . . I thought, ‘If this carries on I’ll be dead by Christmas.’ So I packed it in.”

Gallagher now blames the lackluster feel of the band’s last album, “Be Here Now,” on his drug use, saying that his focus and creativity went “down the drug dealer’s [expletive] front room.”

Now he’s got it back, he says.

“I’ve written 13 songs since June, all pretty much straight. And you know, I’ve found I’ve started writing about things now, rather than abstract [stuff]. I’ve enjoyed it, to tell you the truth.”