news ‘We beat Radiohead at football 25-4’: Ride’s Andy Bell | pop and rock

Have you ever pretended to be the Erasure frontman to get a better table in a restaurant? TeeDubyaBeeNo, but Andy and I have a brilliant little friendship that's developed over

Twitter after people started tagging the wrong one. I'd tweet funny replies, like “I wish I had a little respect …” A couple of years ago I reached out to him for something

which unfortunately he wasn't able to do, but he said he'd be up for something and we are talking about working together. You read it here first.In a 1997 interview with Japanese

magazine Crossbeat, you were asked what Ride meant to you. You asked them to ask you 10 years later. Do you have the answer now? nomorewaterRide means an awful lot to me. When I

started, I was the most myself I've ever been apart from now, and I like to touch base with that person. We formed just after leaving school, it was a really exciting time and I'm

so grateful that we keep being allowed to do it. Ride is the portal to who I am.Ride: (lr) Andy Bell, Laurence Colbert, Mark Gardener and Steve Queralt, photographed in Oxford in

1990. Photograph: Joe Dilworth/Avalon/Getty ImagesRumor has it that the Creation Records HQ in Hackney was some kind of crazy blend of student bedsit/messy

office/bar/nightclub/crack den. Did you wonder what you were letting yourself in for? TimwthorntonWhen we signed they were in Bethnal Green, in what Alan [McGee, the founder]

called the bunker, accessible via a sort of sweatshop where women with sewing machines were making clothes. Otherwise it was pretty much as described: studenty, messy, walls

covered in record sleeves and musicians hanging around. One of the first times I went in there was a party going on and someone from Primal Scream phoned to say that [producer]

Andrew Weatherall wanted them to play to a click track, and they went: “What's a click track?” It must have worked because the results were Loaded and Screamadelica. We'd

signed after six gigs so I was like a kid, watching this show. Magic times.Did you find the term shoegaze offensive? stoneinatincanI didn't like it at the time because it was of

the way it was used in the music press along with other snotty terms. It must have been the same to be German, in a band labeled Krautrock. A few years later I was touring the US

with Oasis and people would come up and say, “I love shoegaze.” So I've grown to accept it. It's just a label now.Liam Gallagher and Andy Bell on stage at an Oasis gig in 2007.

Photograph: Diana Scrimgeour/RedfernsWhat was the first pinch-yourself moment while playing live with Oasis? JesseAndrewsWaiting to go on stage at Wembley. You're hearing the