The record boss who gave Oasis their big break almost didn’t sign them up – because he believed they were Nazis.
Alan McGee was put off the band after seeing a Union Jack in their rehearsal room. He thought it meant they were far-right thugs.
When a pal jokingly confirmed they were fascists, the Creation Records chief was ready to snub them.
But the 1993 misunderstanding was cleared up – and the Britpop band went on to sell more than 75 million records, including hits such as Wonderwall and Cigarettes and Alcohol.
Alan, 59, said in an interview for a new book that, before he’d met Oasis, he went to Manchester to see a friend called Debbie at her band’s rehearsal room.
“I was looking around and I saw this Union Jack painted on the wall. I said, ‘Who’s this?’,” said Alan.
“Debbie said, ‘oh, it’s a band, Oasis, we share with’. I was like, ‘Oh, are they fascist?’ Debbie’s a f*****g little rat sometimes and went, ‘yeah’.”
But Noel didn’t laugh.
He said: “McGee thought the Union Jack was ‘National Front’.
"To us it was The Jam and The Who, a pop art Mod thing.”
It’s not the first time Noel, 53, has been wrongly been branded a fascist.
He said people called him a “Nazi” after he blasted Remoaners over Brexit.
And in 1997 Noel thought it was a ‘Reich laugh’ to scrawl a Hitler tache on a Margaret Thatcher photo at a Tony Blair bash in Downing Street.
