Getting High

by Paolo Hewitt

  Jill Furmanovsky, Oasis’s main photographer, was also present.

  She had brought over pictures from their recent American tour and the band pored over them for at least half an hour. Noel rarely chose one of them smiling.

  Later on, most of the band watched the Manics set from the side of the stage and then, five minutes before they were due on, they sat listening to a tape of the new song they had played at sound check.

  ‘That’s fucking top,’ Liam enthused.

  ‘I’ve got a great melody to go over it,’ Noel said to no one in particular.

  ‘You should bring the drums in here,’ Liam said.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ Noel said, exasperated. ‘I haven’t even written the song yet and he’s telling me how to play it.’

  Again, the gig was a huge celebration, a true meeting of band and audience in which everyone present lost themselves in the music and the occasion, only to come back to reality as ‘I Am The Walrus’ faded from the speakers.

  Backstage, Bono, singer with U2, came to greet the band and invite them back to his huge house. The band declined the offer, and sat exhausted in the dressing-room as people swirled all around them.

  Eventually, Guigsy went over to U2’s club with Ruth, Mouse from catering and a few others. Much to his annoyance, Hutchence was there and Guigsy sat there staring him out.

  ‘One move and I’ll chin him,’ he snarled. ‘He doesn’t talk to my mate like that,’ Guigsy said, referring to the incident with Liam the night before.

  Someone from the club came over and invited Guigsy and his party to the closed-off section, and thus trouble was averted. At two in the morning Guigsy, Ruth, Maggie and Melissa walked back to the hotel.

  Most people had gone to bed but in the sitting-room area Liam sat on a chair saying, ‘I’m going to have the cunt, I’m fucking going to have him. I don’t care who he’s with, I’ll chin the cunt.’ Terry and Bonehead sat by him, trying to calm him down.

  ‘No, Liam, leave it,’ Terry said in his thick London accent. ‘Let him have his drink and just fucking ignore him.’

  ‘He’s right,’ said Bonehead, ‘ignore the cunt. That’s what will get to him. He wants you to go over there and do something.’

  ‘Well, I fucking will,’ Liam asserted.

  The two women closest to Liam weren’t at the hotel. Peggy was staying in another hotel with her sisters and Patsy was now in London. She had flown back that morning.

  Meanwhile, Thomas Gallagher, allegedly paid by the News Of The World to book into the same hotel, sat in the same bar as his youngest son and looked over and waited.

  ‘What’s he fucking doing here?’ Liam demanded. And then he was up and away, making his way straight towards the father he hadn’t seen in years.

  Terry gave chase and just as Liam got to his dad’s table, he swiftly blocked him off.

  ‘You fucking cunt, I’ll break your legs,’ Liam shouted trying to get round Terry.

  ‘You couldn’t break Albert Tatlock’s legs,’ Thomas sneered.

  ‘You cunt, I’ll have you.’

  Liam went to punch him but every time he moved, Terry expertly moved with him. Liam threw his arms-up in disgust and walked away, back to his seat. He looked hurt, devastated.

  Suddenly, Noel entered the room, walked past his father, and went straight to Liam.

  ‘Liam, come with me.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’

  ‘Liam! You come with me right now.’ Noel was in no mood to argue, his voice made that patently clear.

  Liam stood up and Noel took him by the arm and guided him to the far side of the room. They disappeared behind some curtains.

  Bonehead watched them disappear and said, ‘It had to happen. We’ve been waiting years for this. We knew it had to come sometime. And now it has.’

  Kevin came over to where Bonehead was.

  ‘I think we should clear the bar. He’s gone now.’

  ‘I think that’s exactly what should happen,’ Bonehead said in total agreement.

  The bar swiftly emptied to leave Noel Gallagher and his brother alone, speaking words that no one could hear.

  Finally, Noel went back to his room.

  As he came in, Meg woke up and Noel told her what had just gone down.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she cried, ‘are you all right?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ Noel said. And then he couldn’t resist it. ‘Fucking hell Meg, you’re meant to be my wonderwall, and you were fast asleep when it all went off. What kind of wonderwall are you?’

  The next day a security guard was placed outside both Noel and Liam’s rooms. Thomas had already left. Noel ordered up a bottle of Jack Daniels and a bottle of coke, and he and Meg partied all day and all night. Close your eyes, the monster has gone.

  Liam surfaced mid-afternoon and went downstairs to the bar. He seemed happy and relaxed. The thing they had dreaded ever since fame came knocking on their door had taken place. The storm was over, spent. Now they could relax in the sunshine. Maybe.

  A waitress came over and Liam ordered some sandwiches.

  ‘What room have you got?’ she sweetly asked.

  ‘I haven’t got a room,’ he said.

  The waitress laughed. ‘Course you have,’ she said.

  ‘Nah,’ he said, warming up. ‘I haven’t got a room.’

  ‘But you’re staying here.’

  ‘I am,’ he confirmed, ‘but I haven’t got a room because the TV is on the floor, the mattress is in the bath, the bed is upside-down, and I don’t call that a room.’

  Both he and the waitress laughed.

  Sitting with him were Tim and Chris Abbot plus their parents. They too ordered sandwiches and just as they arrived the fans outside started singing ‘Wonderwall’.

  ‘I think your fans want you,’ Tim said.

  Liam picked up his place, stood up and went and pulled back the curtains to gaze down at them. The fans looked up and screamed. Liam pretend to offer them a sandwich. They screamed even louder. He pulled back the curtains and returned to the table.

  ‘Now that,’ he announced, ‘is fucking fame for you. Screams when you’re having your sarnie.’ He shook his head.

  Behind him, on another table, lay copies of that day’s tabloid newspapers who all carried pictures of Liam and Patsy. The main story alleged that Patsy was pregnant by Liam.

  Liam took a bite of his sandwich and said, ‘How mad is this?’

  He said it to the Abbots. Really he was saying it to himself.

  PART THREE

  Fourteen

  Well before he signed to Creation, Noel Gallagher was playing his career like the best poker-player in town. He knew that he held all the aces in his hand. He had no idea why he had been handed these cards. That would puzzle him for the rest of his life.

  But facts were facts. He held them, and now it was a matter of timing, when to show, when to hide, when to bluff.

  ‘Live Forever’ was the first ace he laid on the table. If the first two Oasis singles had suggested that something special might be happening, ‘Live Forever’ was the irrefutable proof that something was. It’s a classic record.

  Noel knew that once he had placed it on the table, his reputation would rocket sky-high. It came coupled with an acoustic version of ‘Up In The Sky’ (the title adapted from Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Up From The Skies’), ‘Cloudburst’, and a live version of ‘Supersonic’, and was released the day before Noel’s forehead was gashed open in Newcastle.

  Unlike the preceding two singles, ‘Live Forever’ was lyrically direct and musically ecstatic. It began with a hip-hop-like drumbeat and ended in a squall of musical chaos and Liam insisting that we would all ‘live forever’.

  This life-affirming record worked on two levels. First, it reached out to people by using the classic Us Versus Them sentiment (‘We see things they’ll never see’), and secondly, the music was so uplifting that it gave you every reason to believe that even death could be beaten.

  Liam said ‘I wanted
a band that could make music which would make you high without having to take a pill,’ and this was it.

  It was the song that made everyone who wasn’t yet quite convinced by the band, hold up their hands and say, ‘All yours, boys’, just as Noel knew it would. He knew also that it would be the first Oasis single to penetrate the club fraternity, those not bothered by indie music or pop sensations. They would hear it blasting out of radios and say, ‘Who’s that record by again?’ This was because the song’s sentiments mirrored the euphoric feeling that Ecstasy gives to its users.

  In the perfect world it would have shot in at number one but it went in at number ten and reached no higher. It should also have been NME’s Single Of The Week (it was undoubtedly, most people’s Single Of The Year), but instead, John Mulvey called it ‘a terrific record’, and added, ‘It TOTALLY gives off the impression that the Gallaghers believe they can make the world dance around their little fingers just when they like, which they can nowadays, more or less.’

  Noel Gallagher winked, having cashed in the first of many chips. On 11 August it was the Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton again, and then on the 13th, Sweden for the Hultsfred Festival. One performance and the country was theirs.

  ‘They came on,’ Andres Lokko, founder of the influential Pop magazine, recalls, ‘about six-thirty in the evening which is always a good time to play. They were on the second stage and you know that feeling when you discover a band and go, “Yes, this is my band.” Well, that’s what happened to 20,000 Swedes.’

  In triumphant mood, Oasis returned to their hotel where they met up with The Verve, Primal Scream, and a very unfortunate barman who had the thankless job of informing them that there would be no more drinks that night. Wrong.

  After various threats, the bands rethought the situation and put Plan B into action. Okay mate, off you go to bed, we’ll just sit and talk here for a little while. We’ll be fine. See ya later. Goodnight.

  Then the screwdrivers came out, the bar was dismantled and then thoroughly ransacked.

  Three hours later Bobby Gillespie was banging on an acoustic guitar, him and Liam screaming the Stones’ ‘Satisfaction’ at each other, until Malloy, the Primal’s head of security came over, picked Bobby up and carted him away.

  ‘Liam!’ Bobby shouted over Malloy’s shoulders, ‘We’re gonna live forever.’

  When the booze ran out the two groups then contemplated their next move. One of them then came up with a suggestion. Wasn’t that a church they saw on the way coming in? And what do churches use at masses? Wine. Lovely, red wine. C’mon!

  The boys left the hotel, found the church and then broke in. They searched everywhere, the vestry, the altar. Reluctantly, they went back empty-handed to the hotel. As they walked back to the bar they had just vacated, a sizeable amount of policeman, alerted by a horrified guest in the hotel, were now heading their way. The police arrived at six, surrounded the hotel and the bands were led out to their coaches, like convicts on a chain gang.

  Next day, Oasis were front-page news in Sweden. Do we need this filth? the paper asked.

  Two days later, 15 August, Oasis played the Rock City in Nottingham and began three rollercoaster days that contained two triumphant shows in London. The Forum on the 16th (where Paul Weller came backstage and Noel finally managed to start chatting), a Top Of The Pops appearance on the 17th for ‘Live Forever’, and then the Astoria on the 18th, when Donna from the group Elastica sat in Liam’s dressing-room after the gig and complained about the NME ignoring loads of great unsigned bands.

  ‘The NME?,’ Liam shot back, ‘the fucking NME. Listen, we spent three years slogging our guts out and none of those fuckers wrote about us. But we did it. We made it and we did it without the NME. Don’t worry about those wankers.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said.

  ‘Damn, fucking right I am,’ he said, pacing up and down the tiny room. Afterwards, there was a party at the Leisure Lounge in Holborn. There were queues round the block while inside envious young musicians stood at the bar dreaming of the day that this would all be theirs. Oasis were the hippest band in the world, and the drug dealers made a killing.

  In a newsagents nearby, Oasis stared out from the cover of the NME (again), Melody Maker and the Face. The latter magazine asked if the brother’s tempestuous relationship would split them apart, failing to note that at the photo shoot, Hopkins stepped in to wrap things up quickly as he could sense trouble rising between Liam and Noel.

  The Face tagged Oasis as the Sex Beatles, and Noel thought, ‘Fuck, why didn’t I think of that name.’

  Later, when Richard Ashcroft left The Verve, Noel remembered the name and suggested that he use it for his new outfit.

  ‘No, I’ve got a better name,’ Ashcroft replied, ‘The Heat.’

  ‘Fuck,’ Noel said, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ mentally kicking himself again.

  Even the newspapers were now smelling a story they could get their teeth into. London’s Evening Standard gave over a page to the band on 11 August, with Noel adding more fuel to the fire.

  ‘Liam’s the star,’ he told Sam Taylor. ‘He’s the singer, and singers have always been conceited tossers; look at Morrissey, Mick Jagger, Roger Daltrey... Liam’s a genius frontman but he’d be nothing without me.’

  The next day, the Guardian ran a piece and on Sunday it was the Observer Review, plus a patronising Sunday Times article that compared Oasis with Suede, concluding, ‘If they don’t want to go the way of Suede, they had better put that mirror aside.’ As if.

  On Tuesday it was the Independent with Noel vowing, ‘People stop proving themselves, which is something I will never let happen to this band.’

  On Monday 22 August they finally appeared in a paper they read. The Daily Mirror ran a piece about the Newcastle show. This is when you know for sure that any lingering doubts about your popularity are mistaken, when the tabloids move in.

  Of course, Oasis were prime material. Sex and drugs. This one would run and run and run and run and...

  The fans were starting to have their say now. ‘Seeing Oasis from the front at the T In The Park was worth every bruise, and whoever writes their set-lists can’t spell the word “Alcohol”. Tiny bit ironic, that,’ Liam’s Next Groupie From Glasgow wrote in the NME. Other letters severely caned the guy who wrecked the Newcastle gig.

  ‘I’d like to buy him tickets for Blur, Suede and Ride gigs,’ wrote Tom Bradshaw from Solihull.

  In the same issue, these letter-writers and thousands of other readers read a glowing review of the debut Oasis album. ‘Of course, as Liam Gallagher himself advises,’ NME’s Keith Cameron concluded after pulling out all the superlatives, ‘in the spiralling mantric conclusion to “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star”, “It’s just rock ‘n’ roll.” Quite so, young man. That’s all Definitely Maybe is. But when it’s this brilliant, it’s enough.’

  Over at Melody Maker, Paul Lester was telling his readers, ‘Just buy this record before tomorrow and if you don’t agree it offers a dozen opportunities to believe 1994 is the best year ever for pop/rock music, then you’re... wrong.’

  Noel basked in such praise, but a part of him would also have taken issue with that last line. 1966 had a little bit more going for it than Suede, Blur, Gene, et al.

  On 28 August the band made it to Holland without the usual fracas and played the Lowlands Festival. Even Dando from The Lemonheads was there that night. His group had had a hit in the UK with their version of Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Mrs. Robinson’, and they were receiving a lot of respectful press. Dando hooked himself up to the band that night, and in the early morning hours, he and Noel wrote a song together, entitled ‘Purple Parallelogram’.

  ‘I can’t even remember writing it with him,’ Noel later confessed. ‘I have no idea what the song sounds like.’ Two years later, Noel probably had a better idea of its content; his publishers swiftly blocked the song being placed on the new Lemonheads album, Car Button Cloth.

  But Dando,
like most people who came into contact with Oasis, had obviously been smitten by the band. He travelled back to Britain with them to see Definitely Maybe showcased in shop windows and record racks everywhere. Way-hey!

  The band were on their way to an in-store signing at the Virgin Megastore in London’s Oxford Street. At least 1,000 fans gathered outside the shop, but only 200 were allowed in to witness them playing a seven-song acoustic set with Dando onstage in the background, clapping his hands and occasionally banging a tambourine behind a seated Liam, Noel and Bonehead.

  It was here that the trio (Guigsy and McCarroll watched from the sidelines) ran through ‘Sad Song’, ‘Slide Away’, their first three singles, and then a live premiere of ‘Whatever’.

  Oasis then sat down and signed autographs for something like two and a half hours, the part of the job Liam especially hates. Pens, paper, writing, it reminds him too much of school.

  ‘We wanted to do it for them,’ Noel said about the hundreds of people left outside as they played, ‘because without them we’re nothing.’

  Outside, the fans talked about how Oasis had taken music away from the rave scene and used words like ‘best’, ‘fresh’, ‘unique’, ‘confident’, and amazing’. The people know, they always do.

  This was all said for the benefit of Granada’s TV cameras who were shooting a twenty-five-minute documentary on the band that would be screened two months later. The TV crew, along with Dando, accompanied the band to the next show, Tivoli in Buckley, Wales. At the soundcheck, they interviewed Noel and Liam. But separately.

  ‘The reason,’ Liam stated, ‘that we’re in every paper is because there’s something to write about. We’re playing the game, we mean it, we’re honest, we’ve got the best songs and that’s why we’re in everybody’s face.’

  He analysed their music as being poppy with a hard edge. Then Noel spoke. He said that if his band put people on to The Beatles or the Stones, then that was worth everything. Even losing Louise.