On any given day, I have a handful of “shocking” quotes from one or both of the Gallagher brothers that I could post, but most of them are just the good ol’ Oasis boys winding people up. Today, for example, Noel’s making the rounds for admitting that he “spent £1m on drugs” as of 1998, adding, “I look at [Coldplay’s] Chris Martin who says he has never taken drugs in his life and I think he is an idiot.” But since music piracy will be the topic du jour for the next year at least, you may find Noel’s recent comments to MTV Brazil’s Mari Moon a bit more interesting than your everyday Gallagher echo chamber.

Though Gallagher admitted he’s “the only person in England who doesn’t own a computer,” he could relate to the younger generation that can’t buy records from stores any longer, thus forcing them to go online. “You have to be legally, you know, money in the bank, credit cards, and all that kind of stuff,” he said. “But it also means that it’s just taking music away from poor people. And that’s why people download music for free, where they can really get it from.”

Then things get more interesting: “If I was 16 and I’d left school and I didn’t have a job, but I had a computer and I could get an Oasis album for free somewhere, you’re gonna do it aren’t you? I mean lucky for me I’m not in that situation, but if I was I know I wouldn’t be paying for it. But it’s the record company’s fault. They made music too expensive in the first place. [A] CD costs £2 to make and £15 to buy.”

To come full circle, I guess you could say that Noel thinks your money would be better spent on drugs than music, but now I’m just feeding The Sun their next headline.

Coroner Duane Northrup has announced the cause of death of ex-Wilco member Jay Bennett and it seems his recent hip surgery was likely related to the tragedy. Billboard reports (via The Daily Swarm) that Bennett overdosed on Fentanyl, a painkiller commonly prescribed following surgery and for chronic pain. His death is believed to be an accident at this point.

In Bennett’s final blog post on MySpace, he discussed his struggle with chronic pain and joint problems after he tore his ACL stage diving at a Titanic Love Affair gig. Despite insurance troubles, Bennett had scheduled the surgery and, according to unconfirmed sources, the surgery was performed in the weeks prior to his death.

This is very sad news, but also a testament to the fact that Bennett literally may have died as a result of rocking as hard as he could.

Reports have been filing in about a press conference held by Jack White and Jimmy Page in promotion of the documentary It Might Get Loud (watch trailer) at the LA Film Festival last weekend and I’m wishing I had made the jaunt. The pair dissed Guitar Hero, bromanced a bit, and made some strange comparisons between their guitars and women.

The Guitar Hero bit was probably the best. Jack White said it’s “sad” and “depressing” that kids require a video game to get interested in music. Page, however, completely dismissed the game as a training tool, NME reports, citing John Bonham’s drum parts in “Good Times Bad Times” and adding, “How many drummers in the world can play that part, let alone on Christmas morning?”

In one exchange transcribed by LA Weekly, Page and White compare their guitars to women: “I’ve said that it’s shaped like a woman, you know,” Page said. “You can touch it and caress it. The thing I haven’t said, that I’ll tell you now is: it doesn’t ask you for alimony!”

Jack’s response is pretty funny because it kind of gives you a window into how his intense energy plays out in his personal life: “I think if you picked up a girl as much as you picked up a guitar every day, they might get annoyed. The guitar doesn’t say, hey, get off of me, ya know?”

I realize that laptops are a staple of the rock star gig bag nowadays (save for Jack White’s), but aren’t they a bit too precarious to be sitting around next to musicians and their supermodel girlfriends? The Mirror reports that Jamie Hince recorded six new Kills songs on his laptop and amid a fight with his girlfriend, Kate Moss, she did to his laptop what Naomi Campbell does to cell phones.

“Kate grabbed his bag and hurled it into the pool,” a source says. “Unfortunately it contained his laptop, BlackBerry and personal diary.” Hince tried to resuscitate the hard drive, but the songs and his Blackberry were lost in the row. Only the diary was saved, which is good to hear because he’ll have a lot to write about! Here’s a suggestion for his first entry: If I record on a 400-pound Studer A80, it is much harder to throw in a pool than a MacBook.

Also, Moss performed an impromptu vocal with Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour on Friday at a benefit concert and these pictures of the performance definitely confirm one audience member’s comment that she “really got into it.”

If Elijah Wood can actually pull off playing Iggy Pop, just give him an Oscar, I say, because I honestly can’t see it happening. I do admire him for trying, but this isn’t Heath Ledger as the Joker territory (or even Hayden Christensen as Bob Dylan, etc). We’re talking about the Godfather of Punk here and even the man himself is opposed to the project. “They can wait for me to be dead,” Pop said in later March. “F*ck you, I won’t do your biopic promo.”

Though Wood is perhaps unfazed by Pop’s objections, he is not unafraid: “I think that the [Iggy Pop biopic] project will see the light of day,” Wood told Nylon. “I’m really excited about it, it just scares the sh*t out of me.”

Trust me, Frodo, we’re all a bit scared about this one.

Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry Potter in the films of the same name, opines that Radiohead could be an unlikely fit for the soundtracks to the H.P. films.

“If you asked people what band they associated with Harry Potter, Radiohead wouldn’t be the first that sprang to mind, but funnily enough Radiohead’s albums could soundtrack the films,” says Radcliffe, via Scotland’s Daily Record. “Harry’s darkness is a very specific type of darkness and it’s Radiohead’s OK Computer or Amnesiac, and it’s Manic Street Preachers’ The Holy Bible and Hope of the States, The Lost Riots and it’s stuff like that.”

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is in U.S. theatres July 15 and no, it will not feature Jonny Greenwood’s follow-up to There Will Be Blood.

Producer Nigel Godrich has been doing some rare interviews of late promoting his From The Basement live sessions and lots of interesting bits are showing up about his work with Radiohead, Beck, and many more top artists. In a talk with Drowned In Sound’s Rob Webb, Godrich answered some questions from messageboard users, including his opinion on auto-tune, his favorite producers, and the story behind the aborted sessions for The Strokes’ second album.

The Strokes enlisted Godrich to work on the follow-up to their breakthrough debut Is This It back in 2002, but they parted ways very early in the process, with the band calling the sessions “soulless.” Godrich elaborated on the scrapped project with DIS, saying there were just too many cooks in the kitchen. “You know, the problem there was that me and Julian [Casablancas] are just too similar, we’re both control freaks,” he said. “He wanted to do it his way, I wanted to do it my way, and obviously that’s the point of me being there. And I’m saying ‘Well, why am I here if you’re not prepared to try and do it the way I want to do it?’” Godrich goes on to praise the band’s first two albums, adding, “my ambition was for them to change, so that they would remain that force, and I felt like if they didn’t then they’d have nowhere to go. I think it kind of happened, but not really.”

So he liked Room on Fire, but on their last album, First Impressions of Earth, Godrich sounds off: “I didn’t like it. Nobody liked it! It was a reaction, and that was exactly my point. The second record you could be bold and do what the fuck you want, you could do anything, and by the time it got to the third record it felt a little bit apologetic, like they were trying to make themselves into something they weren’t, trying to regain that ground.”

Sure, Queen’s Brian May says Katy Perry makes him “think of Freddie [Mercury],” but Gossip frontwoman and outspoken LGBT supporter Beth Ditto has been much more critical of Perry, especially of “I Kissed a Girl,” of late. Ditto is promoting her new Rick Rubin-produced record, Music For Men, so that could explain some of the headline-making comments, but she’s made very good points/jabs so far and now the feud is on.

As previously reported, Ditto called Perry’s hit single an “anthem for straight girls who like to turn guys on by making out or faking gay” adding, “I hate Katy Perry! I’m so offended. She’s just riding on the backs of our culture, without having to pay any of the dues and not being actually lesbian or anything at all.”

Then Perry struck back: “I heard that she said something about me,” she said. “I don’t want to get into a slanging war with anybody so I don’t want to say anything bad about her. But I’m not impressed. I’ve learned in the past year that one artist should never insult another artist’s music — it’s tacky.”

Ditto has now reacted by bringing the feud into a broader discussion of gay rights. Here’s what she told Spinner: “To [Katy Perry], it’s just this party song. But as a gay person, it’s like, ‘Oh, of course this straight person singing about kissing a girl goes straight to Top 40 and people buy this record. Who can give a f—- about real gay people?’ That’s what’s really painful about the whole thing. That’s what makes me laugh about ‘I’m not impressed.’ It’s like, ‘Oh, that’s what you think? Of course, because you never thought about what a real gay person feels, and the impact that a song like that has on the gay world in a time of crucial civil rights.’ That’s just one of the examples of what the mainstream is thinking about queer culture, when actually, we are completely fighting for our rights right now.”

There’s more from Ditto here, but you can see where this is headed. So long as Carrie Prejean doesn’t get involved, this could be a fun summer feud. Meanwhile, Perry’s got fashion designers to sue.