Getting High

by Paolo Hewitt

  If Coyley (as he is known) was Noel’s closest male friend, then, apart from Peggy, the woman closest to him at this point was Louise Jones. Noel had seen her around in various clubs, mainly the Hacienda, and they had eventually got chatting.

  Noel was still living at home, and Peggy, who got on well with Louise, remembers her corning round most nights to the house and sitting with Noel in his bedroom.

  Soon, they decided to live together. Louise was manager at a Benetton shop in town and she had put her name down for a flat in India House, a large building situated in the city-centre.

  Meanwhile, a friend of hers was moving out, so Louise and Noel took the apartment, effectively squatting. A year later, Louise’s initial application came through and they moved upstairs to a larger flat.

  But by now Manchester had found itself a new name: Madchester.

  In late 1987, London DJs such as Paul Oakenfold, Nicky Holloway and Danny Rampling were about to change the course of club culture. It needed a shot in the arm. Dance music, at this time, was neatly divided. Rap over there, house over here. Many of London’s clubs were elitist also. You had to dress a certain way to gain entry.

  By travelling to Ibiza and witnessing an across-the-board musical policy that appealed to many, these DJs returned to London and started playing in a similar style. For instance, at Paul Oakenfold’ slate-night club in South London, he would play U2 and other rock sounds as well as house music. The introduction of Ecstasy pills into this scene then provoked the biggest youth movement since punk.

  Ecstasy pills, first used in 1912 by German psychologists to help their emotionally-stunted patients express themselves, were at this time incredibly powerful.

  Within twenty minutes of taking them users had lost all their inhibitions and felt an enormous well-being towards themselves and others. Suddenly white kids who rarely danced were leaping on to tables to gyrate the night away.

  Clubs such as Schoom, the Trip and Spectrum were witnessing amazing scenes of public abandonment as a new culture quickly took shape. Nineteen eighty-eight was officially christened the Summer of Love.

  The Hacienda in Manchester had been playing house music on a regular basis, well before London took note, although the clothes and the drugs were absent from the scene. It took, as Sarah Champion noted in her book And God Created Manchester, Shaun Ryder and Bez from The Happy Mondays travelling down to London, checking out the clubs and then returning home with the formula, for Manchester to emulate the whole scene.

  Once it did, the town went crazy. It certainly had needed an injection of pure excitement. Economically, Manchester was still in serious decline. Manufacturing jobs had all but disappeared, unemployment was staggeringly high and a black-market economy based around stolen goods and drugs was about the only service industry showing any kind of growth.

  Gangs, such as the Quality Street Gang, who had once ruled and operated Manchester in the same way as the Krays had in London, had lost their power, taken over by a breed of new young drug dealers who mainly congregated in Manchester’s Moss Side area.

  This new breed of drug dealers were young (both Mark Coyle and Guigsy have witnessed or been threatened by eleven-year olds holding small automatic pistols), unprincipled, fearless and determined.

  They soon took over Manchester’s house scene and made a killing selling Ecstasy for enormous profits. Later on, they would flood Manchester with heroin and cocaine.

  Noel initially resisted the house scene. His love was guitar music. He couldn’t dance and he wasn’t particularly conversant in any kind of black music. It was only when he moved down to London that he would be exposed to the likes of Lee Dorsey, Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye et al.

  At his first visit to a Hacienda house night, Noel watched the crowd with a real detachment. He didn’t understand the music, didn’t understand why everyone was going mental on the dance floor. The next time he went, he took an Ecstasy pill and suddenly everything made sense.

  This was easily the most powerful drug he had ever taken. As with his previous excursions with mushrooms or glue, the drug killed his guilt and shyness. But Ecstasy also attacked his anger. It made him far more open to people, less fearful or cynical about them.

  Soon, he was dancing to the beat, albeit at the back of the club. By contrast, Liam hated the scene. All these kids dancing strangely with their bulging eyes and declarations of friendship (‘you’re my best mate, you are’) sickened him.

  But Noel was unstoppable. He went to raves such as Live The Dream and Joy. He would travel down to London to attend sessions at the Spectrum club and he would see people such as Alan McGee or Jeff Barrett, The Happy Mondays press officer there.

  Noel even put aside his guitar for a while as he totally immersed himself in house’s primal beat and its anthemic choruses which, when heard while on Ecstasy, made you feel as though you were really fulfilling heaven’s promise of love eternal. (Another facet of this music was the large productions most of these records displayed. One of Noel’s favourite tracks from this period was ‘The 900 Number’ by Mark The 45 King, a blistering mix of hip-hop beats and a wailing saxophone.)

  For a few months, apart from isolated writing in the music press, this scene went unnoticed until the Sun ran a front-page expose in August 1988 warning the nation of their children’s exposure to chemicals. There were calls for the police to take action.

  ‘We got arrested in Leeds,’ Noel recalls. ‘There were about four of us in this car and we bowled up to this rave in Leeds. But the police had put up this roadblock and because we were off our tits, we didn’t care. So we bowl up in this car, pot smoke everywhere, Es and cocaine in the car, and this copper puts his head through the window and says, “You’re all under arrest.”

  ‘So we were taken and put on this coach with all the rest of the people from Manchester. Everyone was emptying their pockets on the floor. There’s Es all on the floor, Rizla papers, people eating dope. Then they took us up to this nick in Leeds. But that was full up, so they put us in the basement of the town hall, locked us in the corridor and handcuffed us to the radiators.

  ‘Mike Pickering [founder of the group M People] was there, Graeme Park [a name DJ], some of the Mondays, and we all spent the night in this corridor, laughing, tripping, stoned.

  ‘Next day we all appeared in front of the judge with the worst fucking hangovers going, and some people were actually put in jail for dealing and are still there now.’

  Noel was given a fine and returned home. Undeterred, he kept going to the Hacienda, dropping Es and having a wild time. One night he and Louise returned home to India House, with Noel buzzing away.

  ‘You had to use these zip cards to get in,’ Noel explains. ‘We opened the door and there’s this big black guy standing there and loads of people in the corridor and on the stairs dancing away to this music. The guy goes to us, “Five quid to get in mate.”

  ‘It was mad. But for me the real Manchester scene was three years before when you used to go down to the Boardwalk and see The Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses and a couple of other bands for two quid, and it would be a pound a pint at the bar.

  ‘But once that shit was in the papers, Mancunian phrases in the Daily Mirror like, “top one means well-done old bean”, and the students moved in and all the clubs started to be run by gangs, that was it for me.’

  Soon the music of The Beatles and The Jam and The Smiths would return to centre-stage in Noel’s life but he was also enormously taken by records from The Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses and another new group, The La’s. Their single ‘There She Goes’, which was released three times before becoming a major hit, preceded an album that had taken years to record but which, on its release, made the band’s leader, Lee Mavers, a force to be reckoned with by his contemporaries.

  Even so, The La’s remained something of an underground phenomenon. When their album, The La’s, was finally released, Mavers, ever the maverick perfectionist, told every interviewer that the album was shit and that people
shouldn’t buy it. Most people complied with his request.

  Mavers’ reputation quickly spread. Stories of him insisting on 1960s dust being brought into the studio quickly circulated and only served to strengthen Noel’s admiration for him. Noel was also pleased to learn that Mavers also rated a favoured LP of his, the Pink Floyd album The Wall.

  While accepting that The Wall isn’t a consistently good album, tracks such as ‘Nobody Home’ are classics in Noel’s eyes.

  But what Noel really admired about The La’s album was how it was ahead of its time. First recorded in 1987, it signalled a return to classic pop songwriting and would exert a major influence on many up-and-coming groups such as Oasis, The Real People and Ocean Colour Scene.

  When Noel finally did meet Lee Mavers, on 17December1994 at the Royal Court in Liverpool, Noel introduced himself saying, ‘It’s a real honour to meet you.’

  ‘I bet it is,’ Mavers replied. To this day, Oasis still hold him in the highest esteem.

  As the house scene turned predictable and the Ecstasy pills lost their potency, Noel moved back towards guitar-based pop music, propelled there by the work of artists such as Mavers and John Squire.

  But he never forgot how those glorious, transcendental house choruses, so reminiscent of Irish music and football-terrace songs, had made him feel. Soon he started incorporating them into his own music to devastating effect.

  Noel had already made strides towards incorporating house into his repertoire with the music he now started making with Mark Coyle. Mark often invited Noel over to use his recording equipment, and co-write some songs.

  ‘What’s the address again, Coyley?’ Noel asked.

  ‘It’s 388 Mauldeth Road West,’ Mark replied.

  I know that place, Noel thought. Now where the fuck from?

  Arriving there, Noel realised the house was opposite the fields he had played Gaelic football on. He told Coyle this and Mark replied that he too had played the game as a young kid.

  The boys worked out that they had actually played against each other at one time. It seemed indicative of the nature of their deep friendship that they should have already crossed paths.

  The boys set up their tape recorders, got out their guitars and started putting melodies and ideas over sampled drums. One song they recor.ded used a sample of Buffalo Springfield’s ‘For What It’s Worth’. A few years later, the group Oui 3 employed the same idea and scored a major hit single.

  There were other songs as well, but a lot of the time the boys got so out of it that they often forgot to press ‘record’, or put in the wrong tape.

  ‘I’d go home to Louise, stoned out of my head after three days of being round Coyley’s, and say, “You should hear this song we did, it was ace, only you can’t hear it because we taped over it because we were so stoned”.’

  All those who did hear these tapes, Liam for one, would testify, that the ideas and songs ‘were great’. But Noel or Mark never approached a record company with them.

  As for Noel’s relationship with Louise, someone like Bonehead found it hard to fathom out. By the time Noel had joined Oasis, a lot of the money that he earned as a roadie, and by all accounts he had received good wages, went on either enjoyment or equipment. It was left to Louise to cover the rent and bring in the shopping.

  ‘You’d go round there,’ Bonehead recalls, ‘and Noel, who would be something like four grand behind with the rent, would have all his mates round to watch football. They’d be drinking beer, shouting, and meanwhile Louise would be in bed trying to get some kip to go to work the next day so that she could pay the rent. But you’d never hear her complain or anything.’

  Naturally, Noel was away a lot of the time with the Inspirals.

  He soon found out that he loved travelling. Touring has often been likened to living in a bubble and Noel enjoyed life there. He and Coyle, who shared rooms, would get up, roll the first spliff of the day, maybe take a line, amble into soundcheck, unload as little of the gear as possible, play their songs and then wait for the gig.

  ‘We knew nothing about amps,’ Noel recalls. ‘We’d put them up and if they didn’t work, we’d kick them like you do your TV when it’s not working. If that didn’t work, we’d turn them off, put them back on and if they still didn’t work tell the band to get some new gear in.’

  During gigs the boys, who rated the Inspirals as so-so, would smoke copious amounts of spliff and check out the girls in the audience.

  ‘Once, me and Coyley were behind the amps when the band were playing,’ Noel remembers, ‘and we were so fucking stoned that the band came off, came back on and we didn’t even know about it.’

  Marijuana may have calmed Noel down, but travelling definitely appealed to his nomadic instincts. Like all serious artists, he hated being tied down and although everyone considered him a lager lad, he was sensitive enough to appreciate many of the different cultures that he was exposed to.

  He fulfilled an ambition, first ignited as a kid by all those US cop shows such as Kojak, Starsky and Hutch and Police Woman, by going to America. Later on there would be trips to Japan, Estonia and South America.

  But it was while he was in America that Noel found out through Peggy that Liam’s group, Oasis, were playing a gig at the Boardwalk on 18 August 1991. There was no way in the world that he would not be there.

  In the meantime, he had made perhaps the most important discovery of his life. One day at home, Noel had been playing Exile On Main Street, one of his favourite Rolling Stones’ albums, ‘for about the 300th time’.

  It was while listening to the track ‘Shine On Me’ that Noel thought he heard Mick Jagger sing the word ‘Maybe’. God knows why but the word stuck in Noel’s head; he picked up his guitar and strummed some chords repeating the word time after time.

  Then he found that if he left a gap between two chords and inserted the word ‘maybe’ into the space between, he was on to something.

  Which is how Noel Gallagher wrote his first classic song, ‘Live Forever’, and how he discovered that not only was he a songwriter of undisputed talent but that he could now truly take himself seriously. In all his early songwriting attempts, he was smart enough to know that he hadn’t arrived at the kind of standard that he expected and looked for in all things. With ‘Live Forever’ under his belt, he now knew for certain that he had a future. It was a strange feeling. Noel Gallagher had never felt anything like it before in his life.

  Six

  Everyone was asked to be in Kings Cross by twelve that day for the journey to Whitley Bay and Oasis’s 232nd gig. By ten past, only one person was missing. Liam. Of course. Tour manager Maggie got on her mobile and tracked him down.

  ‘He’s just got up,’ she announced, ‘he’ll be here in an hour.’

  ‘Right,’ Noel said, ‘Scran it is.’ Across the street was a cafe that the local cabbies used. Guigsy, Alan White, Noel, the new security guys, Kevin and Terry, Maggie and her assistant Melissa, ventured to. Here they ordered breakfast, talked about football and the press.

  ‘Did you see the Daily Mail?’ Noel asked Alan as they tore into sausages, eggs, beans and bread, washed down by pale cups of tea. ‘They had this report about those pre-Brit Awards that I went to. They said I got out of the car looking like a window-cleaner with a hangover.’ Noel grinned. ‘Fucking top.’

  Because the band had been in America, they had missed the TV programme on The Beatles, Anthology, that had recently been shown. Videos of the programme were now available on the coach. They all settled down as Liam finally got on. He looked totally wasted.

  ‘What you watching?’ he asked, the tiredness apparent in his voice – huge sunglasses covered his eyes.

  ‘That Beatles thing,’ Noel replied.

  ‘Oh.’

  Then Liam turned around, got into one of the bunks and slept the whole of the journey.

  Noel, Guigsy and Alan White watched Anthology. They made no comment until footage of the band playing to thousands of screaming girls
came on-screen. Noel screwed up his face in total disgust.

  ‘Fucking screamers. Shut the fuck up. They get right on my tits, all that screaming.’

  ‘Too right,’ Guigsy replied.

  At about five that afternoon, the coach pulled up outside the Windsor Hotel and everyone made for their rooms. Three hours later, after freshening up, Noel came down and was advised to go to the Bikini Bar, just around the corner. Liam stayed sleeping in his room.

  The bar was aptly named. The barmaids all wore bikinis, while raised on a rostrum in the corner a DJ worked in the old-fashioned way, constantly addressing the crowd over his records.

  ‘Right, it’s Michelle’s birthday today. Come on Michelle, get on the bar and give us a twirl. Come on everyone give her a round of applause.’

  Michelle was helped on to the bar and started drunkenly gyrating to the music.

  ‘Come on, Michelle,’ the DJ cried, ‘you can do better than that. Let’s be seeing you. Do a strip.’

  The crowd cheered her but not in a leering, nasty way. This was Friday-night funtime. Whitley Bay was on the piss but all they wanted was to laugh, to party.

  Similarly, the majority of the crowd recognised Noel. But there was no tension, just a stream of people coming up with best wishes. The boys said, ‘Top fucking band,’ and the girls said, ‘Oh you’re lovely, you are. I love that song of yours, that “Wonderwall”.’

  Noel stood there smiling. He was among his own. And they bought him drinks and they cuddled him and then they gave him his space. Afterwards, the manager kept the bar open for an extra hour, and Noel went back to the hotel, drunk but appreciative.

  ‘If that’s what 200 people are like,’ he said, ‘imagine what the gig will be like tomorrow. And, best of all, Liam is going to be gutted that we all went out and he wasn’t involved.’

  The call-up time was for three-thirty the next afternoon. At three o’clock, the band were in the bar. Liam, refreshed, was standing by the bar and flirting with the pretty bargirl.

  ‘Here Tracey, Tracey, I’m not getting on your nerves, am I? Tracey? I’m not, am I? ‘Cos I’ll stop talking to you. I will, Tracey. I promise. Scout’s honour. I’m not getting on your nerves, am I?’