Noel Gallagher has opened up about his shock split from wife Sarah McDonald after 12 years of marriage.
The 55-year-old ex-Oasis frontman revealed the pair were “tired of each other”, which he says is not unusual for couples in their 50s.
Speaking to Ireland Hot press magazinethe publication reports that Sarah, 51, with whom she shares sons Donovan, 15, and Sonny, 12, was left furious by her husband’s partying.
In the candid interview, Noel said: “It’s not uncommon for people to get to their fifties and go, well, you know…”
He also seemed to hint at his heavy touring schedule and “four years on the road” also contributing to the split.
Noel confirmed that the relationship fell apart during the isolation – his suffering was compounded by contracting Covid TWICE as he fell apart.
He first told how he caught the virus during the same six-month period last year after he said he refused to wear face masks to protect himself at the peak of the pandemic.
He said: “I didn’t get Covid until it was gone – and then I got it twice! I was like, ‘I’ve got great fucking antibodies running through my veins’, I went to Glastonbury last summer where there was a wave of them, I caught them and got them again just before Christmas.
“I felt pretty sick both times, but luckily there were no complications.”
He stated in 2020 that he thought the Covid pandemic was a bunch of “f*****gb*****ks” and said he refused to wear masks on public transport and in shops – calling it part of an affront to “civil liberties”.
And in 2021, he said he only got his first Covid shot after his doctor told him he’d be a “fool” not to get the shot.
Noel’s new album High Flying Birds Council Skies – which is heading for No1 in the UK album charts – was created as his marriage was falling apart and contains lyrics about love.
But the singer once said the upside of being locked inside while his relationship crumbled around him was that he could finish the songs on the record.
He added in a new interview with Ireland’s Hot Press magazine: “Even though I hated the hell out of being stuck, I had to finish all these songs I had half-written and write a lot of new ones.
“The silver lining to a very dark cloud is that I actually had some free time during Covid.”
Noel also admitted that Council Skies’ ballad Dead To The World is about him trying to save his relationship with Sarah.
It features the poignant refrain “And if you say so, I’ll bend over for love,” and Noel said when asked if it was about Sarah: “Yeah, it was written during a break-up.”
The rocker also said he could produce a full-length breakup album like Bob Dylan’s searingly bitter Blood On The Tracks if it spilled out of him by accident.
He said, when asked if it was in him to use an entire record to cathartically vent his feelings about breaking up with Sarah: “I don’t know. If I did, it would be by accident. It’s like (Dead To The World) – when I hit the chorus, it suggested a vibe and came out.
And Noel said he entertained his sons with Sarah, as well as his daughter Anais, 23, with ex-wife Meg Matthews, 57, by taking them to concerts, including one of Bono’s.
Gallagher met his second wife, a Scottish publicist, at the Space nightclub in Ibiza in 2000, a year before divorcing his first wife Meg Matthews – the mother of his eldest child.
The former couple were known for their hard-partying lifestyle during the height of Brit Pop in the mid-1990s, living it up during rowdy nights with the infamous north London Primrose Hill set, which included supermodel Kate Moss and actress Sadie Frost .
But after their split, it was reported that Gallagher had an affair with Macdonald during his first marriage – an allegation they both denied.
The couple married in 2011 at the Lime Wood Hotel in the New Forest in a £60,000 ceremony with guests including Russell Brand, but younger brother and former bandmate Liam said he was not invited.
“He goes on about how he wasn’t invited to my wedding. No one was at my wedding except Nick’s mom (ex-wife Nicole Appleton) and my mom. Get over it my friend. I wasn’t invited to his wedding,” Liam told the Chicago Sun Times.
Liam is known not to get on well with McDonald and has had many public spats with the PR contractor in the past.
He even hinted that she was the reason the Oasis reunion didn’t happen, with Gallagher furious at Liam’s relentless public criticism of his wife.
The brothers themselves have had little contact over the past ten years since Gallagher left the group in 2009.