‘Sir Paul has just written manure for years’

He also branded the Rolling Stones as a "mess" and the later songs of George Harrison and John Lennon as "rubbish", in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel.

Gallagher, 35 - very middle-aged in rock terms - was talking about his own beliefs that there was a "limited reservoir" for a songwriter to tap into.

"There is a limited supply of excellent songs, but I am not the only one. Paul McCartney, one of the best songwriters of all time, has only produced manure for the past 25 years. Rock musicians over 30 only produce unimportant material.

"The Rolling Stones today are rubbish and, also, John Lennon and George Harrison only delivered rubbish when they were over 30.

"But I know it’s not only about success but about the joy that a musician has for his work. Perhaps a painter paints only two great works in his lifetime or a novelist writes only two great bestsellers.

"Nevertheless, he keeps going."

Sir Paul has said that Oasis’s best music was derivative of the Beatles - and Gallagher agrees. He has said in the past that the Beatles were to Oasis "the be-all, end-all, where it starts and where it finishes, everything we do is inspired by the Beatles and our ambition is to go where we want to go as a band".

Gallagher has performed with Sir Paul in the Smokin’ Mojo Filters supergroup, put together by Paul Weller and assembled to record the Beatles’ Come Together for the Help! charity album in 1995.

But Gallagher no longer puts Sir Paul on a pedestal. He said recently that he would go to see the former Beatle in concert if they were in the same city, but: "I wouldn’t go out of my way to see him".

Gallagher says of Sir Paul: "He’s just not my kind of pop star. Lennon is. This is no diss to Paul McCartney ... He’s a top man, but there’s an element of professionalism."

When asked about Sir Paul’s recent work in another interview, Gallagher replied: "I don’t know, I think he’s just going senile, isn’t he?"

Gallagher’s brother, Liam, has also been scathing about the other former Beatles, once referring to George Harrison as a "nipple" after Harrison told an interviewer that nobody would remember Oasis in 30 years’ time.

Despite his dwindling musical offerings, Gallagher said in yesterday’s interview with Der Spiegel that he still got a "lot of fun" out of rock ’n’ roll. He admitted that his millionaire lifestyle was a long way from his working-class roots in Manchester.

"I write my songs not from an aged perspective but from looking back to when I was 16 on a working-class estate in Manchester.

"I know I am rich now but I was for eight years always unemployed and broke. One doesn’t forget that too quickly. Now, whenever I go into the pub, I go without a bodyguard.

"A problem will be explaining to my daughter, Anas, where she comes from, that a generation of Gallaghers came from poverty."

He said that he would shock his daughter about drugs with pictures of himself when he was drunk or drugged.

"Not only the first two albums were produced under the influence of drugs," he said. "When I first started writing, I was jobless and couldn’t afford cocaine. I was drunk most of the time."

He said time has mellowed him and that he doesn’t now want to "burn all the houses of the rich in England to the ground".

Show Goes on: The Who kick off US tour in honour of John Entwistle

LEGENDARY rock group The Who began their US tour yesterday, despite the death of bassist John Entwistle.

Original band members Roger Daltrey and Peter Townshend decided the show must go on following Entwistle’s death on Thursday, after consultations with his family. The 57-year-old bassist was found dead in a Las Vegas hotel room the day before the tour was due to start.

But the first two gigs - in Las Vegas and Irvine, California - were postponed and The Who kicked off their tour at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles last night instead.

It has been reported that Entwistle was entertaining a stripper in his room at the Hard Rock Hotel hours before he was found dead.

According to the Las Vegas Review Journal columnist Norm Clark, Entwistle partied the night away with the stripper while his bandmates slept in their rooms.

Entwistle’s son, Christopher, said of the decision to tour: "He lived for music and will always live within The Who’s music. This is what he would have wished and our love goes out to the remaining band members and the entourage that makes up The Who family."

Daltrey and Townshend said in a statement that they view the three-month tour as "a tribute to John Entwistle". Pino Palladino, a British session player who has worked on Townshend’s solo projects, will take Entwistle’s place. Zak Starkey, son of Ringo Starr, is playing the drums on the tour.

The band intends to complete the tour, which takes in various states including Ohio, New York, Indiana and Colorado, and will reschedule the two dates that were postponed after Entwistle’s death.

The results of a post-mortem examination are yet to be made public, but it is thought that Entwistle died of a heart attack. Tributes have poured in for the guitarist, who was affectionately known as The Ox and who also toured with a band of his own, The John Entwistle Band.

Bill Wyman, of the Rolling Stones, said: "He was a great friend for many years - the quietest man in private but the loudest man on stage. He was unique and irreplaceable, and I am shocked and devastated."

Original band member, drummer Keith Moon, died from a drug overdose in 1978.