Getting High

by Paolo Hewitt

He kicks up the ringing chords to ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’. Again, he changes the words: ‘Take me to Maine Road / Where the Blues play,’ he sings, a line of deliberate provocation. There are many United supporters and some players here tonight.

  The crowd miss the reference. They’re too busy in their own rapture to notice.

  ‘I Am The Walrus’ is next but the horn section have missed their cue, they’re late coming on-stage.

  As Maggie desperately runs to locate them, Noel has to improvise. ‘See City are doing well,’ he tells the crowd. There are some cheers but many jeers. ‘So are United,’ he concedes. He looks behind him as the horn players finally arrive.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for you lot,’ he half shouts. ‘Where the fuck you been?’

  In compensation, they play their hearts out as Oasis deliver a gigantic version of ‘Walrus’. Bolstered by the horns, the band’s playing here is manic, mesmerising and relentless.

  As on the opener, ‘Swamp Song’, Noel attacks his guitar, wrenching out all kinds of feedback and howling distortion to counteract the rhythm section’s circular dynamics.

  Liam stalks the stage. Noel goes and kneels by his amp, lost in music once more. At its fiery conclusion, Manchester stands in appreciation, their noise reverberating around the arena. The enthusiasm is such you believe the applause will never stop.

  Oasis rarely encore. But tonight they clear the stage of the horn players and then the five of them tear into ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’, the song that, according to its writer, says everything he ever wanted to say in a song. And, of course, Liam gets to sing the word ‘Suun-shii-ine’ again. The gig ends now, with Liam sauntering off-stage and being spat at by United fans. He should care. There are 20,000 people here and the music has swept them away, allowed them to taste freedom.

  Freedom. This decade is about freedom. Freedom to take drugs, hold raves, protect the environment. Freedom to think differently from those before and those above, freedom to live how you see fit. Freedom is in short supply these days. But not at Oasis concerts. Their words are about freedom, their music breathes it.

  An exhausted Noel Gallagher sits once more in the production office. ‘I’ve escaped,’ he says.

  Five

  It had to happen. Just had to.

  In truth, there could be no other way. For the last few years, the Gallagher boys had remonstrated with their mother. Leave him, they’d say. He’s no good to you or to us. Fuck it, let’s go, come on. Of course, Peggy wanted to leave but one thing held her in check: her Catholic religion.

  For Peggy to divorce or leave her husband would mean excommunication from the Church and, ultimately, that would lead her into hell. It was unthinkable for her to even consider placing her very soul in peril.

  But Ma, the boys would argue, what kind of church is it that allows this to happen? I can’t do it, she would reply, and for evermore the Gallagher boys would despise the church, and music would become their religion. Placed in this impossible situation, Peggy often tried to remonstrate with her husband.

  ‘Why do you do such terrible things?’ she would desperately ask of her husband.

  ‘Because everyone else does,’ he would chillingly reply.

  ‘I don’t care what everybody else is doing,’ she would sadly say. But her words were no use. Now, only action was the answer.

  She went to the council and she begged them to move her and her sons. She would sit in grey offices, tears streaming down her face, pleading for a new house so that the family could escape. Finally, the council relented.

  Typically, Liam was against moving house. They should throw Dad out. Why should they have their lives disrupted? He was the one who should move. Why should they have to start from scratch again?

  The stress got to Liam. Peggy recalls watching him in the dinner queue at school, nervous, biting his nails, so unhappy.

  But move they did. One night, with Thomas out, Peggy Gallagher and her sons packed their bags and moved to a new council house in Burnage.

  On the night they arrived, the boys chose their bedrooms – Liam and Noel sharing, Paul in another room – and then they finally slept.

  In the early hours of the morning Peggy, who now weighed just seven and a half stone, sat down in the empty sitting-room and looked at the bare walls and uncarpeted floor. Then she asked herself, How on earth will this family survive? They had nothing to their name except the clothes on their backs. There was little money coming in. What on earth were they to do?

  It was then that the uncontrollable tears burst through and Peggy wept like she had never wept before. Yet even in the midst of her weeping, she was careful not to wake her sons. It would never do for her boys to see her like this. For them she would always be strong.

  Of course, Peggy’s family pitched in. Her brothers and sisters gave her items to help make the house liveable. Soon, Thomas tracked them down. But he wouldn’t come in. He’d stand at the front-door shouting, but that was the extent of it. No longer could he beat them. Noel was now the head of the family.

  A few weeks after moving in, the local priest came to visit Peggy. He had heard what had happened. Peggy invited him in and gave him a cup of tea.

  But when the priest started insinuating that she should perhaps consider returning to her husband, Peggy put down her cup and firmly told him to leave.

  ‘Which is one of the reasons why I love her so much,’ Noel proudly says.

  Noel’s violent side also manifested itself outside the home. The main example was at football matches. He never instigated fights and, as is so often the case, there was a lot of shouting and running down streets with very few punches thrown. But if it did kick off, Noel could more than handle himself. Guigsy remembers him once battering someone in a Nottingham pub, ‘giving him a proper seeing-to’.

  Noel actively enjoyed travelling away to matches. There would be hundreds of them and their sheer number precluded the police enforcing the law in any kind of meaningful way. Noel and all his mates, defiant to the last, would be shepherded on to trains, for which they never bought a ticket. They would openly take drugs, get drunk, and then Noel and a few others would get off a stop early, walk into town and shoplift whatever they could.

  The fights they had, Noel says, were usually sparked off by the opposing fans. Even when languishing in the Second Division, Manchester City still commanded a formidable following. The City fans’ massive presence alone always ensured that there was immediate tension upon their arrival.

  ‘We called ourselves the Young Guvnors,’ Noel recalls, ‘and then it got changed to the Cool Cats which was a really stupid name because we weren’t cool and we certainly weren’t cats. It was mainly two years spent just running up and down the streets. It was like those scenes from Quadrophenia. You’d go up a street and then the cops would come.

  ‘Someone would launch a brick through a window and then they would chase us. It was a good laugh, but then I started getting more into music and that was the end of it.’

  The music Noel refers to centred mainly around The Smiths. If anything, he has played down a little their appeal for him.

  The band’s melodic instincts, hewn from Johnny Marr’s love of 1960s girl groups and quality pop, the fact that a major British band now hailed from Manchester (so starting a line that exists to this day with the later arrival of The Stone Roses and then Oasis), Morrissey’s undoubted skill as a lyricist (especially in his song titles), all struck a major chord with Noel.

  Later on, when working with The Inspiral Carpets, Noel sported a quiff in honour of Johnny Marr whose guitar playing and songwriting he so admired.

  The haircut made his hirsute eyebrows even more prominent and the Inspirals were quick to nickname him Monobrow. They also nicknamed their manager, Antony Bodgiano, Binsy Smith after a character in a children’s TV show, and on the spine of the sleeve for their single ‘Find Out Why’ they wrote ‘Binsy Smith meets Monobrow’.

  Another major influence on Noel was U2, especially
, says Graham Lambert, The Inspiral Carpets’ guitarist who Noel would roadie for, the album Achtung Baby, which Noel repeatedly listened to while on tour.

  At home, Liam also recalls some Billy Bragg records in Noel’s collection. Certainly, his older brother had a distinct penchant for guitar music, although it was somewhat after the event, Liam asserts, that Noel fell for The Jam.

  This passion for music not only started to shape Noel’s future, but it began to alienate him from his hooligan friends. They simply weren’t interested in music. But for Noel, with anything that interested him he fully committed himself to it, a direct result of his Irish blood and a Catholic upbringing which demands full and utter dedication.

  Music was now a major passion and, as ever, it was all or nothing.

  Take Noel’s twenty-first birthday, one of the few significant birthdays in any person’s life.

  ‘What are you doing?’ his mates asked.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t mind going to see The Stone Roses and James at the International Two.’

  ‘Ah, fuck off mate. Let’s go down the pub.’

  But Noel didn’t want to go down to the pub. He wanted to go to the gig. Noel loved gigs. You could get into places like the Boardwalk or the Hacienda cheaply, the drinks were very reasonable and you could see two or three bands in one night. Even if they were shit, you could still have a good laugh and maybe, just maybe, pull a woman.

  ‘It was one of the great things about The Smiths’ gigs,’ Noel recalls. ‘You’d go there and it would be full of blonde women. I’d say to my mates, “You should come down, the place is full of women.” But, of course, they’d never come.’

  On 29 May 1988 Noel was standing upstairs in the International Two waiting to see The Stone Roses. He had a spoonful of speed up his nose and a huge packet of it lying in his pocket. He knew full well that the next day he would have to be up early, working for Kennedy’s, laying pipes for British Gas, and all with the hangover from hell. But you know what? He didn’t give a fuck. Tonight he was out to party.

  Anyway, Noel reasoned, someone like Tommy Coyle, the old geezer who worked with him, would help him through the downer with his biting humour alone.

  Tommy acted like a dad to Noel. He would often take Noel aside and say in all seriousness, ‘Now listen, son, take my advice. Don’t marry a woman, marry a man. A man you can go to the pub with, you can go to football with, you can pull birds with, you can even go down to the bookies and spunk all your money away and still you won’t have any arguments. I really wish I’d married a bloke.’

  Just the other day one of the gang had announced they were now a born-again Christian. Quick as a flash Tommy looked up and said, ‘How did you manage to climb back inside your mum’s fanny then?’

  But work was tomorrow. Tonight was now. Noel strolled over to the toilets, went inside and locked himself into a cubicle. He racked out a huge line of speed and, taking a crumpled £5 note, snorted it up his nose. Then he strolled back into the crowd and within two minutes he felt invincible.

  The Stone Roses appeared on-stage. Fucking great band, Noel thought to himself. And, for a second, he tried to imagine what it would be like to stand up there in front of all these people, playing music. It must be incredible, he decided. And one day it’ll be me there.

  Then he noticed, to the left of him, a kid with a tape recorder, sneakily recording the gig. He didn’t recognise the kid but they had in fact met before.

  Graham Lambert was now a guitarist, but a year ago he had DJed at the Boardwalk at a Jack Rubies gig.

  Noel had been in the crowd that night and he had cheekily gone up to the booth to ask Graham if he had a spare copy of The Pastels’ single he had just played. Graham had taken the piss right out of him for that.

  Noel looked at the kid again and then decided to approach him. The speed had kicked in nicely now. All of Noel’s shyness had disappeared. Fuck it. Noel went over to Graham, asked him what he was doing.

  Instantly Graham panicked, thinking that Noel worked for the band or the club, but Noel explained he didn’t and would it be possible to get a copy of the tape when it was done?

  Relieved that he hadn’t been caught, the lads got talking about music. Noel told him he had just bought an Inspiral Carpets’ record called ‘Planecrash’.

  Graham smiled at this news. ‘I’m the guitarist,’ he said.

  By the end of the night they had swopped numbers and they stayed in touch. But, more importantly, this gig laid the seeds for what was to come. Liam was downstairs absolutely riveted by The Stone Roses and their singer, Ian Brown. Mark Coyle and Phil Smith were there working for the Roses. It would be as important a gig for Oasis as Spike Island, The Stone Roses’ 1989 gig, would be for heralding the arrival of the 1990s British pop movement.

  Noel, meanwhile, was getting very serious about his songwriting. Peggy remembers cleaning his room once and making the mistake of tidying up all the scraps of paper he had been writing lyrics on and then, when Noel saw what she had done he went mad, and she said, ‘Well, if you kept your room tidy then I wouldn’t have to go in there,’ and Noel shouted back at her, and it was all such a palaver.

  But Noel kept on writing lyrics, putting together chords. He even replied to an advert in the Manchester Evening News. It read ‘Musician wanted for co-songwriting, must be into The Smiths.’

  ‘That’s me, Noel thought, and he got on the phone and, without telling a soul, went to meet this guy who was about the same age. Noel put down on tape what he thinks were about four of his songs. But this guy was a right student, as so many Smiths’ fans were, so Noel never returned. But he had committed his first songs to tape. It was something.

  Noel spent a lot of his time going to see local groups, such as The Happy Mondays or the Roses, and of course, he was always present at most Manchester City games. Then, one day, while talking to Graham, Noel discovered that the Inspirals had just sacked their lead singer, Stephen Holt. Noel saw his chance.

  ‘I’ll audition for you,’ he offered. Graham thought it a great idea. If it worked out he would have a good mate in the band.

  On 21 December 1988, with Christmas approaching, Noel told Peggy he was going to audition for a band.

  ‘It’s funny,’ Peggy says, ‘but as he was leaving the house I thought to myself, “This is really what Noel wants to do”.’

  Noel arrived at the Mill Studio in South Street, Ashton-under-Lyne. He was slightly nervous but, of course, like his brother, he never betrayed a fraction of what was inside of him.

  He stood in front of a microphone and sang an Inspirals’ song, ‘Butterfly’, and then a version of The Rolling Stones’ ‘Gimme Shelter’.

  When he was finished he came home to find that a plane flying over Lockerbie in Scotland had exploded in mid-air. The news was shocking, but the verdict from the band on his vocal performance was disappointing.

  ‘We felt his voice just wasn’t strong enough,’ Graham says. Noel agrees. ‘I was shouting my bollocks off,’ he recalls. ‘I couldn’t sing then, so I didn’t get the job.’

  If Noel was disappointed by the outcome he certainly never showed it. He had learnt not to express himself in front of others, feeling it was a sign of weakness to do so. He worked after all with a tough gang of pipe-layers for whom displays of emotion reflected badly on your masculinity. Girls cry, boys don’t.

  Around the April of 1989 Noel broke his foot. He was at work when a heavy pipe crashed down on him. He was taken to hospital and put in plaster. The worst part of the injury for Noel was being immobile. It meant he would have to stay at home day after day. Noel hated being bored. It really was the worst thing. All his life he would struggle to evade boredom. One day he phoned Graham and told him of his plight.

  ‘I remember him calling us up on the mobile phone,’ Graham says, ‘and he said, “You know, I wouldn’t mind roadie-ing for you”, because he now needed a job.’

  Given his physical condition, Noel may well have been joking. He would after all be
a ‘one-legged’ roadie. But Graham was keen to help his friend out who was so obviously bored out of his mind.

  So in May 1989 Noel travelled with The Inspiral Carpets to their gig at the Duchess of York pub in Leeds, a venue that would later play host to a very famous incident in the Oasis story.

  ‘Noel was on crutches,’ Graham recalls, ‘and I remember we had to help him up this fire escape.’

  When the leg healed, Noel jacked in his job with Kennedy’s (he had been moved to the storehouse where Liam would later work) and was taken on as a guitar roadie by the Inspirals. Not long after, the band employed another roadie called Jeff Scallon, and Noel was then made responsible for the band’s guitars, keyboards and drums.

  Soon after starting his roadie career Noel had learnt how all three instruments operated, quickly learning how to play drums and understand a keyboard. In footballing terms, he became an all-rounder.

  There was also a sound-monitor man working for the band by the name of Mark Coyle. Mark and Noel shared many similarities. Like Noel, whatever Coyle chose to do, he did so with an all-or-nothing attitude. He too was Irish Catholic.

  At the age of fourteen, Mark’s ambition was to produce and engineer. He played guitar with a Manchester group called The Wild Strawberries in the early 1980s and later on worked as a sound engineer for The Stone Roses. Between their gigs he was employed by the Inspirals, where he and Noel quickly developed a major friendship that lasts to this day.

  ‘Music and football is what brought us together,’ Noel explains. ‘He was really into The Beatles and he’s also a full-on United fan, the dick. We had loads of arguments about City and United. Still do to this day. He’s also a brilliant guitarist. He never plays in front of anyone now but let me tell you, he’s top.’

  Coyle could also play drums. Many times the two of them would arrive at venues, set up the equipment and then, either before or after the band soundchecked, Noel would get on guitar, Coyle on drums, and they would run through Noel’s songs. Unbeknown to them, they were both preparing for what was to come.