Noel Gallagher On Detroit Hospital Visit: 'What Kind Of Country Am I In?'

By Christy Strawser

DETROIT (CBS Detroit) Leading up to his Royal Oak Music Theatre performance May 31, former Oasis frontman Noel Gallagher told a tale of Detroit that must be jaw-dropping in merry old England.

In the latest issue of Rolling Stone, Gallagher reveals that while on tour in Detroit and using drugs in his Britpop heyday, he thought he was dying.

And that's not the best part of the story.

After a question about drug use, Gallagher said, "There was once in Detroit in 1994. I'd been up for a couple of days and I thought I was having a (expletive) stroke. I was worried enough to call an ambulance."

The ambulance arrived, and he said he couldn't believe the next sight that greeted him.

"I remember being taken to a hospital in Detroit and there is nothing...in the world...whilst you're thinking you're having a stroke...like walking into a hospital and someone saying, "If you'd just like to go through the metal detectors, sir." And you're just like, "Aww." "Do you have any weapons on you?" "I think I'm going to die." "OK, but you need to go through the metal detectors first." What kind of (expletive) country am I in?"

He was in Detroit, where emergency personnel applaud the addition of metal detectors as a life saver.

He doesn't elaborate which hospital in Detroit he was visiting, but a 2010 report by Nash UNC Health Care said  in the first six months of the metal detector screening operation at Henry Ford Hospital, 33 handguns, 1,324 knives, and 97 Mace sprays were confiscated.