Getting High

by Paolo Hewitt

  Pop music was big business again. In the early 1990s, the industry had hit a slump. Only the introduction of CDs into the market, allowing companies to re-sell their back catalogue, had managed to disguise the impending crisis. Most pundits pointed to the rapid growth of computer games as proof positive that pop no longer swayed the young.

  Sega over songs, Gameboy over gigs. But it was a bad call. By 1995 the UK music industry wasn’t only reporting their best domestic figures ever, but the success of Oasis, Bush and perennial artists such as The Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton, gave the business over £1.25 billion in overseas sales. If nothing else, it was desirable once more to be in a band. Music really mattered again.

  ‘That’s all I want from this,’ Noel recently commented. ‘If Oasis means that five years after we’ve finished there’s 1,000 new bands out there, then we’ve done our job.’

  On 17 June 1995 the NME ran an interview with Noel. In it, he foresaw a limited future for the band.

  ‘I don’t see this going on forever, I see it as three albums and that’s it,’ he told journalist Ted Kessler. ‘I don’t think I can do any more with Oasis after that. There’s only so many anthems you can write. I don’t know for sure, but I’d say the next album will be the last.’

  Provocative stuff, although Noel was quick to play the quote down, saying he had been misunderstood. Oasis would continue, he insisted, but the music had to change. Had to. He couldn’t keep writing in this vein for much longer. In many ways, he was preparing people for Morning Glory, which deviated strongly from their debut album. No doubt he was nudging Liam, too.

  ‘I think the sound of Definitely Maybe was a bit one-dimensional,’ Noel continued. ‘Everything was the same tone and whack it up to ten and off we go. There are a few songs on the new one that could’ve gone on Definitely Maybe, but overall I think there’s a lot more variety in the songs and a lot more going on generally.’

  The real test for Oasis at this point was their headlining appearance at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Glastonbury Festival. It was planned to be Alan White’s live debut with the group. As it turned out the band inserted a warm-up show at Bath Pavilion the night before. A relieved Alan White made his first appearance in front of hundreds of people rather than thousands. The last band to have played the venue was The Jam, some thirteen years previous.

  After the show, which opened with ‘Swamp Song’, and included in the set about a quarter of the new album, the band returned to the Holiday Inn in Bristol where Liam and Brian Cannon partied longer than everybody else, staying up till nine to greet a bemused breakfast crowd.

  At four the next afternoon they travelled to the site.

  It wasn’t a great show. The immense size of the crowd threw Oasis. They’d never played to an audience that big before. Then Liam invited Robbie Williams on-stage, and Noel hunched his shoulders up and pointedly turned away. Someone threw something at the stage and Liam offered everyone there a fight.

  And so it went on, the kind of gig that would pick up pace and then inexplicably stall. The sound didn’t help either, the wind scattering it to the skies. Only a rallying finale hinted at what could have been.

  If Noel learnt anything from the gig, he later commented, it was that he would have to be much more careful with the set-list. They had played five new songs and that, he believed, had derailed the crowd’s expectations of riotous behaviour to the songs they knew and cherished.

  The only one to emerge with any real credit was Alan White. Back in the studio, Noel and Owen pieced together ‘Swamp Song’ by adding the drums from his Glastonbury performance to the final mix. They were beat perfect.

  The band returned to the festival site the following day. Thanks to the Creation offer, all of their singles were now in the top forty. Liam arrived with the singer Lisa M., one of the very few girls to claim a serious relationship with him.

  To play around with the tabloid’s curiosity about his turbulent love life, Liam also had his photograph taken with Meg’s friend Fran Cutler and told the reporter they were to be married. This story, much to everyone’s amusement (with the exception of Fran’s boyfriend), duly appeared the next day.

  Noel spent a lot of his time at Glastonbury in a white mini-bus parked backstage and it was here that he first met Sean Rowley, who was swiftly dubbed Travis Bickle after Robert de Niro’s psychopathic character in the film Taxi Driver.

  Rowley fully endeared himself to Noel that afternoon when he agreed to be filmed for Channel Four’s My Glastonbury spot. Asked how the festival was for him, Rowley answered by whipping out a small bottle of amyl nitrate and deeply inhaling before walking away.

  ‘That,’ Noel said, falling about with laughter, ‘is the best bit of TV I have ever seen.’

  When it was time to photograph the Morning Glory album cover, Noel insisted that Sean be used. In the resulting picture, shot at five in the morning in London’s Berwick Street, Rowley walks towards the camera whilst Brian Cannon passes him by.

  ‘I love people who don’t give a fuck,’ Noel said. Incidentally, Brian Cannon’s Glastonbury had not gone too well. He was arrested by the police on the Sunday and spent the night in the cells.

  Tim Abbot’s Glastonbury was more productive. Having now left Creation Records to set up his own Better Records label (Digsy’s group, Smaller one of his first signings), Abbot saw which way the wind was blowing for Take That’s Robbie Williams. His public presence at Glastonbury and open cavorting with the ‘bad boys of rock’ was bound to dirty his carefully manufactured squeaky-clean image.

  Soon after Glastonbury, Williams announced his departure from Take That. Not long after, Abbot started managing him.

  A week after Glastonbury, Oasis began a series of appearances at European festivals that would also include two shows in a tent, the biggest ever to be erected in Britain, on Irvine Beach in Scotland. For Oasis now, everything had to be the biggest and the best.

  The first show was at the Rosskilde Festival in Denmark, a performance that Noel rates as one of the best ever from the band.

  Prior to the gig, Liam was asked by MTV about Noel’s quote concerning Oasis splitting up after the next album. He said, ‘I’m not up for splitting up. If he splits it up, he’ll get loads of grief off the fans, so he can do it. All the fans can burn his house down, so let him do it.’

  Liam went on to say that Noel had loads of albums inside of him and that ‘maybe a good slap around the jaw might change his mind’.

  That night Liam took to the stage wrapped in a Union Jack flag, and the press reported that he had ‘cavorted’ with model Helena Christensen.

  On 3 July Oasis played Milan, and on 5 July Lyon in France. On the 7th it was Switzerland, on the 8th back to France before travelling overnight to Germany, and then home to prepare for the Irvine Beach show.

  They played two nights here, Friday 14 July and Saturday the 15th. At the latter, Cast, who had been formed by ex-La’s member John Power, played one of their earliest gigs and Liam told their manager they wouldn’t be using them again as they were far too good. Ocean Colour Scene also played the bill.

  Oasis themselves delivered two blistering sets that had the next week’s papers salivating. The most pertinent review was that of Taylor Parkes in Melody Maker. A self-confessed cynic of the band’s merits, he admitted his intention to bury the band. Instead, he declared praise.

  ‘On Saturday,’ he wrote, ‘they played what I’m close to accepting was the most exciting live rock ‘n’ roll show I have ever seen in my life.’

  In the following week, Noel and Owen finished mixing the album, completing the work on 25 July. It was then announced to the press that the album would be preceded by a new single, ‘Roll With It’.

  The date of release was 14 August 1995. The next thing they knew, Blur announced that they too were releasing a new single, ‘Country House’, from their The Great Escape album. The date? 14 August 1995.

  Oasis shrugged their shoulders and carried on touring. The
y played Madrid on the 18th and Zeebrugge’s Beach Festival in Belgium on the 21st. Then they flew over to Ireland to play an ecstatic show at Dublin’s Slaine Castle.

  ‘There were so many people going mad at the front,’ Noel recalled, ‘and they were all squashed up and everything. The gig had been getting better and better but by the time we got to “Live Forever” I thought, play this and people will die.’

  And some kids did. During the festival, three people dived into the moat that separated the band and audience, and drowned.

  On their coach pulling out of the festival Noel and Liam fell into a serious fight and punches were exchanged. The next day another punch to the solar plexus, but this time from an unexpected source.

  Mark Coyle quit his position as sound engineer.

  Coyley was experiencing severe problems with his hearing and would need time off to recuperate. Though he never showed it, the news hurt Noel. Coyley had been there from the start and Noel considered him one of the very few close friends he had. With his departure, another familiar face had now disappeared.

  As it turned out, Coyley’s hearing recovered sufficiently for him to produce the Smaller album the following year. And Noel made a guest appearance on it.

  Oasis took a bit of a breather as preparations for the release of their second album got underway. Noel took time out to stand on-stage with Paul Weller at his headlining slot at the T In The Park festival, hammering through a version of ‘I Walk On Gilded Splinters’ and a fiery ‘Swamp Song’.

  On 26 July Oasis regrouped at a King’s Cross studio and, under the direction of John Klein, shot a video for ‘Roll With It’. The audience was made up of fans who had successfully secured tickets from a phone-in competition, and the band later played a full gig for them.

  Oasis then announced five gigs to take place in September, and the release of a live video, shot at their Southend show entitled Live By The Sea, the original working-title for ‘It’s Good To Be Free’.

  Meanwhile, the media hype surrounding the release of both the Blur and Oasis singles was building to unmanageable proportions. It began in the music press, moved into the tabloids and ended up as a major news item on ITV’s News At Ten, The Channel Four News and the BBC’s Nine O’Clock News. Pointed references were made about The Beatles and The Rolling Stones in the 1960s, when each group would inform the other of upcoming releases.

  This time, such an arrangement was impossible. Both bands stood stubborn, each side claiming that the other had started it. A slanging match now erupted, most of the venom emanating from the Oasis camp.

  One example. Press officer Johnny Hopkin’s quote, ‘Oasis versus Blur? More like Oasis versus Chas and Dave.’

  Or Noel, on discovering that the Blur single contained the phrase ‘Morning Glory’. ‘Blur can steal our lines but it would be impossible for us to do it as I can’t think what would go with “bag of shite”.’

  The hype introduced the word ‘Britpop’ to a nation, and as Noel shrewdly observed, ‘The only ones who will really benefit in the end will be the record companies and the record shops.’

  Much as Oasis didn’t want this showdown the war of words continued. And it was just that. To put this public squabble into perspective, in America, where war had broken out between West and East coast in the rap community, Tha Dogg Pound, an LA group, shot a video in New York and were forced to run for cover when somebody opened fire on them.

  Noel was quick to turn the charade into class-war, stating that Blur were middle-class twats who shouldn’t mix it with working-class lads.

  In the meantime Oasis had put out feelers to discover how they had become embroiled in a fight they never wanted to be in. It soon became apparent that it had been of Blur’s making. Their single, as reported in the NME 8 July edition, had originally been slated for a 28 August release.

  To add further insult, Oasis heard Damon Albarn being interviewed by Chris Evans on Radio One. Evans played the Oasis single to him and as it ran, Albarn started singing, ‘And I like it, I like it,’ to the tune of ‘Rockin’ All Over The World’ by Status Quo.

  That infuriated everyone in the Oasis camp. ‘They’re taking the piss now,’ Noel stated, before ordering a series of T-shirts that had ‘Quoasis’ emblazoned across them. He then wore it on the day of a Loaded magazine photo-shoot and for the benefit of the MTV cameras.

  ‘It should be about music but it’s not,’ he said. ‘It’s about who’s the biggest. But everyone knows we’ve got the best songs.’

  On 9 August, Noel and Meg left a Britain that was experiencing its hottest summer in years and took off for a week’s holiday in Sorrento, Italy. Noel spent his time hiding from the sun and refusing all food except hot dogs or steak and chips.

  While there, he wandered into a scooter shop called Auto Motors and bought five Velocifero scooters in different colours for himself and the band. It cost him £5,000.

  ‘The guy who served me,’ spins Noel, ‘was saying, “Mamma mia, thank you Lord, thank you.”’ He wasn’t, of course. But it sounded good.

  Noel arrived back in London on Wednesday the 16th, two days after the release of both Blur and Oasis singles. Straightaway he was given some bad news. Creation had let their marketing manager go due to a pay squabble. In the ensuing confusion, thousands of Oasis singles hadn’t been given proper barcodes. It spelled disaster. And probable defeat.

  When someone buys a record in a chart-return shop the assistant logs the sale by placing the barcode into a computer which then relates the sale to the chart compiler’s headquarters. If the barcode is failing to work then the assistant will sell the record without registering it. Potentially, thousands of Oasis singles would be bought and never registered.

  ‘The biggest week in pop history,’ Noel screamed, ‘and my record company isn’t up to it.’

  In comparison, EMI were a model of marketing technique. They issued two formats of Blur’s single. One contained three previously unavailable live tracks. The other contained a brand new song, plus a duet between Damon and French vocalist • Francoise Hardy on the Blur song ‘To The End’.

  Their video, directed by the controversial artist Damien Hirst, also stuck out in comparison to Oasis’s, who had plumped for a straight-ahead and not particularly interesting live performance.

  In front of Noel on his kitchen table, as he assimilated all this bad news that Black Wednesday, were the music press reviews.

  Melody Maker’s David Stubbs reviewed both singles together. He pointed out that neither single was the band’s best work, but asked readers to, ‘Check the way Noel’s guitar dips its shoulders and slips inside your defence mechanism after the first few bars, sending you tumbling towards the chorus – Oasis are never as “straight”, as their detractors would have you believe.’

  At the NME, Mark Sutherland was unequivocal in his judgement. Blur’s was ‘nothing short of a classic pop single’, while Oasis’s ‘ludicrously intensive campaign suggests the prolific work rate is finally taking its toll on Noel Gallagher’s once seemingly bottomless well of cracking choons’.

  Noel tossed away the paper in disgust. He was 60% sure now that Oasis would lose. Then Marcus called. Blur had again upped the odds. They had just announced their decision to play in Bournemouth on the same night as Oasis. This was going too far now. Any more of this and fuck the niceties. We’ll have him, Burnage style. (Oasis subsequently grabbed the higher moral ground by moving their show to the following night, explaining that they didn’t want their fans to be embroiled in any trouble.)

  That night, Noel caught a cab over to the Kensington Hilton and met Paul Weller. They had a few drinks at the bar and then the two musicians returned to Noel’s Camden flat and spent the night getting wasted. So wasted in fact that when Marcus arrived at midday to pick Noel up and take him to Top Of The Pops, Noel was, in Weller’s memorable phrase, ‘frothing at the mouth’.

  At the TV studio, Noel and Liam decided to swap roles. Liam played the guitar while Noel swayed danger
ously by the microphone singing the song. The BBC only realised, one tabloid reported, because, ‘Noel stuck his tongue out when he should have been singing.’ After the show, Noel went home and collapsed.

  The following Saturday, Oasis flew out of the country to start a Japanese tour. On Sunday, at seven that night, Radio One announced the winners of the singles battle. Blur, straight in at number one.

  ‘Roll With It’ c I w ‘It’s Better People’, Rockin’ Chair’, and a live version of ‘Live Forever’, taken from Glastonbury, number two.

  In the week that some 1.8 million singles were sold, ‘Country House’ claimed 274,000 sales, ‘Roll With It’ 216,000. Now Oasis really knew what it was like to lose at Wembley in a Cup Final.

  Noel moved quickly to shrug off the defeat. He pointed back to February 1967 when Englebert Humperdinck’s ‘Please Release Me’ kept the best-ever Beatles’ single, ‘Strawberry Fields’ c/w ‘Penny Lane’, off the top of the charts.

  It was a hasty excuse that couldn’t disguise the horrible taste that Oasis felt in their mouths. The next interview Noel undertook was with Miranda Sawyer for a major Observer profile of the band. In it, he told her about Blur, ‘the bass player and the singer – I hope the pair of them catch AIDS and die because I fucking hate them two.’

  Sawyer is herself from Manchester and wasn’t surprised to hear Noel using such language.

  ‘It’s the kind of thing people around Manchester say,’ she claims.

  ‘People say, I hope so and so dies. When Noel said it, I thought he was a bit of a prick but I also thought it was quite funny. I certainly didn’t expect it to be blown up like it did.’

  Nor, would it seem, did her editors. In the published piece, the Observer didn’t flag the comment in any way and left it buried somewhere on the second page.

  Yet it was undoubtedly an intemperate remark whose insensitivity was highlighted a few weeks later when a woman whose boyfriend had just died from being an HIV carrier related that he had requested Oasis records to be played at his funeral.