Stop The Clocks lyrics in STC album booklet

In May 2003 a set of lyrics purporting to be from the demo of 'Stop The Clocks' were posted onto an unofficial Oasis forum. They went as follows:

Stop the clocks and turn your love around
Let your love lay me down
And when the night is over there'll be no sound

Lock the box and leave it all behind
On the backseat of my mind
And when the night is over where will I rise?
And what if I'm already dead, how will I know?
How will I know?

Lost inside my head behind the wall
Do they hear me when I call?
And when the night is over where will I fall?
Where will I fall?

But if I'm already dead
How will I know?
How will I know?

And now my fight is over there'll be no sound...

Although these matched the theme that Gallagher had spoken about in the Japanese radio interview in 2002, the appearance of the lyrics were nevertheless greeted with some sceptisism and cynicism by some fans. The only hint that they could have been the real thing came in an NME review of the May 2003 live performance of the song, which included the line "Stop the clocks and leave it all behind".

Confirmation of the legitimacy of these lyrics seems to come in a page of the booklet included with copies of the "Stop The Clocks" album. The page has a distorted, warped, circular image of a variation of the main artwork of the album, with the following lines wrapped round it:

Noel Q&A at Lord Don't Slow Me Down premiere, New York

at the Q&A, Noel was asked about the song and why it wasn't on the album of the same name. Here is his answer.

BBC Radio 1, Zane Lowe
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Zane Lowe announced that an Oasis greatest hits album would be out in November. The title of the record was later confirmed by Oasisinet to be 'Stop The Clocks' and it will be out on 20 November 2006. The press release didn't mention anything about the song being on the record, and it was later confirmed that the song wouldn't be included on the album.

99.3FM The Fox, Vancouver, Canada
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Noel: "There's actually that many versions of it now, there's about 8, and we still can't decide which is the best one, so I don't what's going to happen with that."

NME Interview

Noel: "There are so many versions of that song now we could put it out as an EP on its own!"

XFM, London, England
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Noel: "...We've got about 20 versions of that and it's still never really sat in the pocket for me...got to the end of mixing the album and it just seemed from a different time... I don't know what I'm going to do with the song to be honest....it's a great tune, all the versions we've done are great but not one of them are the definitive thing really."

Gem: "I prefer the first one, the demo."

Oasisinet.com webcast
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Noel: "It was written whilst Liam was doing vocals for Stop Crying Your Heart Out... the album was based round that song, it's a kind of long Champagne Supernova-thing... it's got fantastic lyrics and a great vibe... we've got six or seven versions of it 'cos none of them quite 'sat in the pocket'... originally the album was going to be called Stop The Clocks... it'll come out eventually."

Daily Star / Q Magazine

A brief track-by-track description of the album, by Noel, for the May 2005 edition of Q Magazine, was published in the Daily Star. Stop The Clocks was on it as track 7, in between The Meaning Of Soul and Part Of The Queue.

Noel: "A song that's been around for a long, long time but it might not make it. There's a bit of a debate going on at the moment."

BBC3, Glastonbury Festival, UK
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Noel: "Stop The Clocks probably will never be performed live because it's seven minutes long and it's just me and an acoustic guitar and lots of backwards stuff and it's something to be listened to when one is very high".

Zanzibar Club, Liverpool, UK

As part of a short acoustic set, along with Gem, Noel plays the track in Liverpool.



From the 14th May edition of the NME:
"NME's spy described 'Stop The Clocks', written at the end of the Heathen Chemistry sessions, as a cross between 'The Hindu Times' and 'Wonderwall', similar to late George Harrison-penned Beatles. It features the lyric 'Stop the clocks and leave it all behind/On the backseat of my mind'.


Angryape.com review:
"New track 'Stop The Clocks' leaves the crowd divided and unsure, it's a fairly melancholic affair crossing 'Fade In-Out' with 'Who Feels Love'. It's classic Oasis but with more soul, fairly mature and well structured as opposed to 3 chord catchy pop songs.

NME.com news story
Oasisinet news story

'Arena', Austria
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Noel: "...I think is the best song I've ever written because of the words and the music... it doesn't sound like anything we've done before or anything I've ever written..in it's lyrical content it's quite near to The Masterplan... it's only an acoustic demo at the minute."

Channel 4 Teletext (Planet Sound), UK

Noel: "It's called Stop The Clocks and people are saying it's the best song I've ever written," he enthuses. "And that's from mates outside the band who were: 'Aye, that's OK,' when I played them Wonderwall to them for the first time. "I've got so bored waiting for The La's to come back that it sounds like how I'd want them to if they did return."

Today FM, Dublin, Ireland
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Noel: "I wrote it quite recently and to me I think it's the best song I've ever written, and the few people that have heard it really like it."

BBC Radio 2, UK
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Noel: "I have written four songs for the album, one is called Stop The Clocks, which is one of the best songs I've ever written".

'Fast Forward', Germany
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Noel: "I have a song called Stop The Clocks, which at the moment is acoustic, but could be massive".

J Wave Radio, Tokyo, Japan
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Noel: "It's about a dream I had one night. It's wondering about if you were dead, how would you know you were actually dead? How would you know you were actually alive? When you go to bed and dream dreams, if you never woke up, how would you know?"