Noel Gallagher has revealed that he only started playing lead guitar because his other band members in Oasis were "useless". 

In a new interview with MTV, the star explained that his role in the iconic group just "fell" to him and despite wanting to concentrate on his songwriting skills he had to persist as a lead guitarist to hold everything together:

"I played lead guitar in the band because everybody else, in the early days, was useless, so that kind of fell to me."

"It's not something I ever thought I would put myself up there with John Squire or Johnny Marr or all those great British guitarists, that's not my thing. My thing was songwriting."

Talking specifically about his new project with the High Flying Birds, Noel added that it's a great opportunity to exercise his songwriting skills: 

"I guess when guitarists make solo records, there's usually a lot of showing off. But I've been trying to convince for 20 years that I'm not a guitarist, I'm a songwriter."

Watch a recent interview with Noel, in which he talks about his solo career, below: