Getting High

by Paolo Hewitt

  Peggy reluctantly arrived in England in 1961. She was eighteen, nervous and frightened, with tears that were always bubbling under her eyelids. She spent her first night at Teresa MacIntyre’s flat and when the lights went out and everyone had said goodnight, she buried her face in the pillow and cried her eyes out. The next night, too. In fact, she cried for what seemed like an eternity, until one day she woke up and found that a feeling, something inside, had been lost. Now there was just day-to-day life to get on with. So get on with it.

  Teresa was married, ironically to a Thomas Gallagher. They had a daughter, Patricia, who was near Peggy’s age and it was she who took Peggy out and showed her around. The first priority was to get Peggy a job and somewhere to live, as the Macintyre place was too small for her to stay there long.

  By Central Station there was a block of flats. It was here that Peggy was first housed due to her employment at the train station as a waitress-cum-cleaner. She was paid three pounds a week.

  ‘And I’d put a pound in an envelope and send it home,’ she says, ‘because me mum would be waiting for the pound to come over.’

  Peggy spent a year at Central Station. In that time, she located an old school friend of hers in Manchester, Mary, and they started hanging out together.

  Once Peggy made a happy trip back to Ireland to visit her family and on her return to Manchester, her sister Kathleen accompanied her. Together, with Mary, they moved into the Plymouth Grove area.

  A new job came along, this time at a cardboard factory where the hours were better than those at the Central Station.

  But just as Peggy was adjusting to a new life, some serious and alarming news broke: her mother was seriously ill and was back in hospital. Peggy instantly quit her job and went back to Ireland, where she took over the family, making sure that her younger brothers and sisters (all aged ten years and under) were properly tended to. A lot of the time her brothers would skip school and Peggy would tell them off. But she understood their disinterest. Who wouldn’t?

  After dropping off the children at school, Peggy would walk over to a seminary where she was employed washing, cooking and cleaning for the five priests who lived there. One day, 22 November 1963, Peggy heard a commotion in the TV room.

  Intrigued, she went in to find out that the US President John Kennedy had been assassinated. Peggy couldn’t believe it. Kennedy represented hope to her generation. He was going to change the world, make a better future. And he was of Irish stock.

  And to kill a President? It was unheard of. Incomprehensible. It signalled something so evil and so dark that it frightened Peggy to her very soul. As she walked home that night, she truly believed that the world was about to end. In reality, the world was changing at an enormous pace.

  The dull 1950s were over and so was the idea of a society administered by men of unimpeachable reputation. The Profumo affair the same year, in which a minister of the Crown lied to Parliament and brought down the Tory prime minister Harold Macmillan, signalled the end of the supposed sanctity of public figures. Only the Royal Family remained sacrosanct and even they, in time, would be exposed. The white heat of the 1960s was spreading quickly.

  After nearly twelve months in hospital, Margaret came out to resume her familial duties and Peggy returned to Manchester. She soon found a new job, carrying out light clerical work for a mail-order business located in the centre of Manchester.

  At night-time she rarely ventured out. She preferred to stay indoors, either watching TV or writing letters to her family back home. Again, all three of these occupations allowed her to lose herself.

  Of course, going to a club and getting blitzed on booze was another way of losing yourself, but then Peggy would rather have died than indulge in alcohol or dancing.

  Yet around her a thriving club scene had opened up in Manchester. It was just as well. Over the following years, Manchester would lose many manufacturing jobs and the city’s focus would slowly switch to the musicians, the club runners, the hustlers and the footballers.

  Noel Gallagher would one day tell an interviewer, ‘In Manchester you either became a musician, a footballer, a drugs dealer or work in a factory. And there aren’t a lot of factories left, y’know.’

  In London, during the late 1950s, there had been a skiffle craze. Its centre was a club on old Compton Street in London’s Soho area, called The Two I’s, where later on, more sophisticated British pop acts, such as Adam Faith and Tommy Steele, took over from the Lonnie Donegans of this world and attracted a younger audience.

  The atmosphere was smoky, the drink was coffee. In nearby Notting Hill Gate, a more alluring form of night-clubbing could be experienced with the blues parties that the West Indians were secretly holding. Christine Keeler, the call-girl involved in the Profumo scandal, favoured such affairs.

  In Manchester on 15 July 1960 Jack Johnson, the owner of the Mogambo Coffee Bar, and John Collier, a local builder, opened up The Two J’s. The star attraction on the opening night was Ray Ellington, supported by Dave Wilson and his Original Dixieland Band.

  The club, situated in Lloyd Street, was formerly a textile warehouse and its musical policy only extended to jazz. But in August of that year, Jackson decided to use local pop acts to attract a bigger clientele. His first pop booking was Johnny Martin And The Paiges, who made their debut on 4 October 1960.

  A few days later Jackson put on the club’s first all-nighter. For those youngsters who were looking to jive the night away, this was a godsend. The night was hugely successful and it put the writing on the wall.

  Still operating as a jazz venue, the club now put on weekend afternoon jiving sessions to cater for the demand, but soon rock ‘n’ roll had taken over. It was a musical slaying that had occurred all over Great Britain; thousands of teenagers dropped skiffle and trad jazz to give their souls to rock ‘n’ roll.

  The Two J’s was then bought by three businessmen, John Orr, Rick Dixon and Hugh Goodwin. They closed the club down, undertook major renovations and re-opened for business on 4 November 1961.

  Goodwin had recently been to London. Sitting in the Beachcomber restaurant in Mayfair, with its South Seas setting, the palm trees depicted on the wall gave him an idea for the club’s name. He put forward the idea to his partners. They agreed.

  Which is how The Oasis, ‘Manchester’s Most Fab Club For Young People’, opened for business. Just three months later, Friday 2 February 1962, The Beatles made their Manchester debut there. The Oasis, The Beatles. It was the first known linking of the two names.

  Nineteen sixty-two was a significant year for The Beatles. It was the year they were turned down by Decca and signed by EMI, the year that the tailor, Beno Dorn of Birkenhead, was asked to supply four brushed-tweed suits to replace the group’s leather jackets, jeans and plimsolls, and the year that they would have their first Top Twenty hit with ‘Love Me Do/P.S. I Love You’. It was a year for laying the seeds of success.

  Within twelve months The Beatles would become the biggest group in the world. Thousands of teenage girls would scream and faint when they heard their records or saw them play. But Peggy Sweeney had no idea what was going on.

  She was totally bemused by pop hysteria of this kind. What were these girls playing at? she would think to herself. She never understood it. It all seemed so... silly, to be throwing yourself around in public like that.

  That said, Peggy liked watching Top Of The Pops. She had an instinctive love of music and pop music was busy inventing itself. How could she not be attracted to the show that had started transmission on 1 January 1964 from a church in Manchester? The acts featured that day included The Rolling Stones, The Hollies and Dusty Springfield. All great acts. Yes, Top Of The Pops, she liked the show. And to think that it was being made just down the road.

  The reason for the show’s original Manchester location was simple; the majority of groups enjoying chart success hailed from the North. Liverpool had The Beatles, The Searchers, Gerry And The Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer, the Merseybe
at sound. Manchester was home to The Hollies, Freddie And The Dreamers, Herman’s Hermits, Wayne Fontana And The Mindbenders, the last three names going on to score spectacular success in the US a year later.

  But if Peggy was honest, when she wanted a night out, she much preferred to see one of the Irish bands play the Saturday night slot at the Astoria club.

  And it was there in January 1964 that Peggy, sitting quietly at her table, was introduced to a quiet, unassuming young man. He didn’t drink, didn’t say much.

  He was a builder, but to Peggy he seemed exactly like her:

  quiet and contained. He told her his name was Thomas, Thomas Gallagher, and that his family hailed from County Meath. It was much nearer to Dublin than Mayo. He had left home when he was seventeen, leaving behind a family of five brothers and one sister. He was now twenty years old. For the next nine months they courted. And then on 27 March 1965 at the Holy Name Church in Chorlton on Medlock, Peggy Sweeney married Thomas Gallagher.

  The Beatles were just about to release their first single of the year, ‘Ticket To Ride’, which the second son that Peggy would bear would one day nominate as the greatest single ever released.

  That day, the sun briefly shone and later on Peggy and Thomas held a reception party at the Plymouth Hotel in Plymouth Grove.

  Three weeks later Peggy realised she had made the biggest mistake of her life.

  Two

  Somehow, Sunday 1 October 1995 became the first day of Oasis’s week-long British tour in support of their second album, (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? True, there was no gig to play – that would occur the next night in Blackpool – and true, the band weren’t even all in the same town, as Guigsy and Bonehead were in Manchester, with Noel, Liam and Alan White in London.

  But there was a party to launch the album. And it was here, at the Pavilion, a swank gentlemen’s club in Knightsbridge, that Alan White and the Gallagher brothers, not to mention their record company, publishers and immediate friends, got seriously into tour mode.

  The party, which had been organised by Meg Matthews, Noel’s girlfriend of the past year and a half, was due to start at midday, but she had arrived early at the venue, by nine that morning in fact, anxious to make sure that everything was in place.

  Meg wanted the party to be special. Not only for Noel and the band but to show her new employers, Creation Records, that they had been right to take her on.

  She knew when she accepted Creation’s job offer that people would bitch behind her back; they would say that she had only come in on the back of Noel. That kind of backbiting was inevitable. Meg accepted that. But, understandably, she wanted to prove her detractors wrong.

  Noel arrived just after noon. He walked into the spacious hall and was guided upstairs to the party. He was wearing a dark brown suede jacket, jeans and trainers. The first thing he saw when he walked in the room was a huge ice block that spelt the band’s name.

  In the adjoining room there was a big buffet and a four-piece string quartet playing classical versions of the new album. All the rooms had tasteful paintings on the walls. The chairs were chintzy, there were long sofas and everywhere was painted pastel. The waiters spoke with public-school accents, and there were Sunday’s newspapers strewn everywhere. It was a strange setting for Oasis. You didn’t associate them with such a rarefied and polite environment.

  Creation Records had spared no expense on the bash, but then they had heard the new album and, well, no one wanted to tempt fate but it was pretty obvious to all that they had something really special on their hands. Morning Glory had outstripped all their expectations. The word ‘classic’, kept springing to mind.

  If Oasis didn’t fuck it up, if everyone concerned in selling this album kept their nerves steady, there was a real chance that it was going to beat sales of Definitely Maybe, the band’s debut album which had now sold three million copies worldwide. There was a real sense of expectation in the air. Everyone smelt glamour, success and money. These seemed permanently to be attached to the band, despite the relatively bad summer they had experienced, a time which had seen them receive a couple of unexpected dents to their armour.

  The first such occasion was their summer appearance at the Glastonbury festival.

  Oasis had been invited to headline on the Friday night. It was the festival’s twenty-fifth anniversary and something special was required.

  But the gig didn’t really take off. A combination of sound problems and fraught nerves frustrated the band.

  At one point, Liam offered the open-air crowd a fight. He also invited Robbie Williams, then a member of the UK teenybop sensation Take That, on-stage for a minute or so. Within two weeks of that appearance, Robbie would leave Take That.

  The second incident occurred two months later when Oasis found themselves embroiled in their historic fight with Blur for the number-one spot in the singles chart.

  Blur won. They pulled out all the stops, outmarketed and outmanoeuvred Oasis, giving them a smack to the chin the band wouldn’t easily forget.

  Oasis instantly retaliated by announcing two shows at Earls Court. They would be the biggest indoor gigs ever seen in Europe. Tickets for both shows had sold out in hours.

  Earls Court acted as a real booster for the band. It kicked Blur, but it also reminded the music press of the band’s huge popularity. For the press, too, had stung the band. The overall tone of the reviews for Morning Glory hadn’t been encouraging, especially when all concerned had actually looked forward to the reviews. Words such as ‘lazy’ or ‘tired’ had been used by some writers.

  It was the first time press and band had failed to see eye to eye. The press saw Oasis as The Sex Pistols. Noel didn’t. That was just one element of the band, and that’s why he had moved away from the first album’s dominant mood.

  Many of the new songs had been written using acoustic guitar. Some he had even dared to fully orchestrate. Others, such as ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’, were classics as far as he was concerned; and that wasn’t being arrogant, that was stating facts.

  The critics disagreed, especially when they heard lines such as, ‘And please don’t put your life in the hands / Of a rock’n’roll band / Throw it all away’. That really was heresy. That kind of talk totally demolished rock mythology. Band and press now dramatically differed over what Oasis should sound like and stand for.

  ‘Would sir care for a drink?’ The waiter looked at Noel.

  ‘Nah mate,’ he replied, ‘I know exactly what’s going to happen here. I need to line my stomach first.’

  He made his way to the buffet and started spooning cereal and milk down his neck. Shortly afterwards, Liam arrived. He wore shades and an immaculate white three-quarter-length mac. With him was the singer Lisa M. Yet despite even Liam’s boisterous presence, the atmosphere remained sedate.

  The talk was polite, the level of conversation never higher than the sober and gentle sound of ‘Wonderwall’, ‘Cast No Shadow’, ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’, and other songs from Morning Glory that the four-piece quartet played.

  The free booze was still only being sipped at and the toilets were, at this stage, being used for their designated purpose.

  By one o’clock, the party had started to fill up. The band’s manager Marcus Russell arrived with his then girlfriend, Dinny. Alan White, the band’s drummer, showed with Kass, his longtime and now ex-girlfriend. Tim and Chris Abbot, former Creation employees and the men behind Better Records (they had signed Smaller, a band fronted by Digsy, who had been immortalised on the song ‘Digsy’s Dinner’ from the first Oasis album) showed up, as did the Melody Maker writer Paul Mathur, an early champion of Oasis. He and Tim Abbot would both publish books on the band.

  Also present was Creation boss Alan McGee, who had signed the group just two years previously; the band’s press officer, Johnny Hopkins; and with other Creation personnel, including Jane, the company’s accountant who is depicted on the sleeve of ‘Cigarettes And Alcohol’.

  There were
Sony people, and the photographer, Tom Sheehan, to take happy snaps of the occasion. But there was also one surprise guest. Peggy Gallagher, Noel and Liam’s mother had been invited.

  Meg had secretly arranged for her to be there. It was Peggy’s first-ever visit to London. Later on that day, Meg and Lisa M. would take her sightseeing.

  The first time Noel saw her, walking through the crowd, he thought to himself, God, that looks like my mum. The next minute he was hugging her, proudly introducing her to all his friends. Throughout the whole party, he and Liam would linger protectively by her side.

  Two hours after Peggy’s arrival, the party finally got into full swing. The champagne was starting to hit home and the waiters were getting busier. Then people started to gather around the four-piece string quartet. Half-pissed, now they wanted to hear more music.

  ‘Here, go on,’ Liam shouted, ‘Give us, “Champagne Supernova”.’

  ‘“Eleanor Rigby”,’ shouted another guest.

  ‘“Live Forever”,’ said another.

  Unable to play any song without the sheet music in front of them, the four-piece started to put a bit more effort into their playing, as if they too had been at the booze. The more the guests encouraged them, the harder they played. There were shouts of encouragement, request after request and good-natured banter all the way.

  ‘Let’s get them right at it,’ Liam said to no one in particular.

  ‘What do you think of them?’ Meg asked Noel, above the din. It had been her idea to have them there.

  ‘Fucking top,’ he enthusiastically replied, as Liam started singing ‘Wonderwall’. ‘I’ve told Marcus we should get them recorded, put out an instrumental version of the album. That’d be ace.’

  At three the party finished, and taxis arrived to take everyone to a bar in Camden’s Parkway. Sky TV were showing an important football match, Manchester United versus Liverpool, Eric Cantona’s comeback game since his infamous Kung-Fu kick on a Crystal Palace supporter.