THERE is little chance of Noel and Liam Gallagher taking to the stage together again - according to the man who discovered Oasis.

Alan McGee was at the Hay Festival last night talking about independent music labels with writer Richard King.

McGee, who co-formed Oasis' Creation Records and also managed The Jesus and Mary Chain and Primal Scream, said he had spoken to Noel during a recent tour of Japan.

“Noel was about to play at the Budokan and I went in to his dressing room to see him before his gig,” McGee said.

“He just seemed so so happy - and I don’t mean to see me - he was just so happy generally that I don’t know whether he’ll ever get back with Liam as he’s in a good place right now.”

Oasis were the biggest commercial success of McGee’s long career within the music trade - but the rock ‘n’ roll lifestlye left him in rehab.

The anarchic and drug-filled environments of 1980s indie record labels are prominent within King’s book How Soon is Now?

But both King and McGee say that the high price of London rents and the shrinking of the welfare state mean the times when day-dreaming wannabe music stars wandered the capital have gone - and that this has removed some of the creativity from today’s music scene.

“Back in the 1980s you had the KLF living in a squat in Stockwell and others living off the dole in London,” explained King.

McGee said the dole played such an important part in giving musicians freedom that he even had to stop Bobby Gillespie and the other members of Primal Scream from signing on just days before they appeared on Top of the Pops.

The other great concern for today’s rock stars, according to King and McGee, was the importance of image. Nowadays, King claimed, bands need to know how to look at the BBC festival cameraman and gave the example of The Horrors’ bass player who was a former stylist.

But both men did say there was some hope on the horizon when it came to the battle with the major labels - thanks to the rise of the internet and music piracy.

“I think the day is coming when major music companies think ‘is there any point in this any more?’ as there really will be no way to make huge sums of money from music in the future,” McGee said.

The irony of the lawlessness of the internet stopping the march of corporate record labels would not be lost on these two.