by Paolo Hewitt
The only thing Noel had to look forward to now was the two massive open-air shows at Manchester City’s Maine Road ground.
The day after they began a three-month break.
Liam finally gave in and moved out of Manchester to stay with Patsy in London. He was still wary of the capital, but he couldn’t take a step in Manchester without someone being upon him. Reluctantly, he packed his bags and moved out of his mum’s house where just about everybody knew the address.
‘Sometimes,’ Peggy would say, ‘I’d see him just sitting there on his own, thinking away. I’d say, “Liam, what are you doing?” And he’d say, “I’m getting my head together, Mam. This is the only place I can do it.”
‘Now he wanted to spend as much time as he could with the girl that was now dominating his mind. That summer he and Patsy would holiday in privacy in the Caribbean and fall further in love. The relationship was a new experience for Liam, he’d never felt this way for anybody in his whole life.
In his first week in London, he and Noel went to see the first of two Ocean Colour Scene gigs at London’s Electric Ballroom. The band’s album Moseley Shoals had now been released and was outselling Morning Glory, which was still a top-ten album.
‘You fuckers,’ Noel told the band in their dressing-room, ‘Help you out all these years and now you’re selling more records than me.’
After the show, he and Liam went to a Creation party organised by meg to launch The Super Furry Animals album Fuzzy Logic.
The pair of them then turned up again at the Ballroom the next night and played a short acoustic set for the audience. They came back on later to join Ocean Colour Scene for their encore, delivering a blistering version of ‘Ticket To Ride’.
On 24 May Noel arrived at the Hit Factory Studio to visit Paul Weller, who was busy recording his new single ‘Peacock Suit’.
The next day he and Meg took off for a month’s holiday on the island of Mustique. Kate Moss and Johnny Depp joined the couple, as did Fran and Jess.
Two weeks into the holiday, part of which was spent at Mick Jagger’s house (they blew his stereo’s speakers), Owen Morris arrived. On the first night, Noel threatened to send him home when he expressed his doubts about the Ocean Colour Scene album. The next day they began recording demos for the next Oasis album, provisionally entitled Be Here Now.
On his return home, Noel would play the tape to trusted friends and the like although he rarely mentioned the existence of another tape he had also cut with Owen. This featured seven more songs, written in the earlier part of the year, that he claimed were the best he had ever come up with. He would deposit them in his songwriting account for future use.
He and Meg had moved from Albert Street and were now residing in St. John’s Wood. The papers soon got hold of the new address and started turning up at all hours of the day and night, looking for pictures and a story.
The fans also cottoned on. One day Noel plugged in his electric guitar and played it for about forty-five minutes, working out various ideas. When he finished, he received a round of applause from the fans listening outside.
This fame game was seriously getting to him now. It wasn’t so much the constant attention, although that was bad enough, it was the fact that the sheer volume of publicity was now detracting from the music.
Oasis weren’t a serious musical force to many newspaper readers, they were a band known for everything but that.
Of course, sometimes this did have its uses. One Sunday he and Meg went to Ronnie Scott’s to see Paul Weller deliver a surprise support slot for the singer Gabrielle.
After the show, along with Simon Halfon, Keren and Sarah from Bananarama and Brendan Lynch, they headed back to Halfon’s flat in St. John’s Wood.
Halfon and Lynch managed to wave a taxi down but as there were too many to fit in the car, the others let them go. Standing on Tottenham Court Road, a dustcart pulled up, the drivers instantly recognising Noel.
‘Give us a lift to St. John’s Wood, mate’ Noel asked.
‘Sure thing, jump in.’
As Simon and Brendan got out of their taxi, they were amazed to see a dustcart pull up behind them and deposit their celebrated friends. Halfon then invited the dustmen up to his flat where they stayed for an hour, drinking and grabbing pictures and autographs.
‘You better send us the pictures,’ one of them said as they went back to work, ‘no cunt will ever believe this.’
On 27 June, Noel sat on a stool on the stage of the Royal Festival Hall, and with Burt Bacharach at the piano, he sang the song that had inspired and affected him so much, ‘This Guy’s In Love With You’.
Of course, he had invited Coyley and Phil Smith down to stay at his house and finally meet the man whose records meant so much to them all.
Liam and Guigsy were also in the audience, the latter in the process of buying a new house and starting work on a book about a footballer called Robin Friday, an extremely talented player from the 1970s whose predilection for the good life had sadly curtailed both his career and his life.
‘He could have been in Oasis,’ Guigsy once remarked.
Bonehead, Kate and Lucy had finally moved out of the Definitely Maybe flat and into much larger premises.
Bonehead spent his summer having his teeth fixed and spending as much time as he could with his family.
Alan White had also moved to new premises with his new girlfriend, and took a month’s holiday in Thailand. But brother Steve was still on his case. ‘Look at your beer gut,’ he’d say. So now Alan went running.
And then in late July they began rehearsals at Birmingham’s NEC complex for six huge festival dates. Two in Loch Lomond on 3 and 4 August, two in Knebworth Park, on the 10th and 11th, for which a staggering two million ticket applications had been made, and two in Cork the following week.
Tragedy struck at the Loch Lomond festival when a worker was accidentally crushed to death the night before the first show. Tragedy had also struck The Charlatans who were scheduled to support, when their keyboard player Rob Collins was killed in a car accident while the band recorded at the Rockfield Studio in Wales. At the Knebworth Festival Meg organised a raffle for a scooter that was placed by the Creation tent and thousands of pounds were raised for Rob’s family.
The bill for each day was changed and mirrored Noel’s passion for British music in 1996. Ocean Colour Scene, Kula Shaker, The Charlatans, The Prodigy and Manic Street Preachers were some of the bands featured.
Oasis’s first night at Knebworth was fine but as usual with these events, the band always took time acclimatising themselves. By the second night, they were ready.
Noel walked on-stage, grabbed the mike and shouted to the 125,000 strong crowd, ‘This is history.’
Liam then butted in. ‘No it’s not,’ he said, ‘it’s Knebworth.’
It was the kind of thinking that Noel loved about his brother. ‘No one else in the world,’ he would later say, ‘could come out with that. No one.’
Oasis that night, in front of a much louder crowd, worked the set with an evident energy and passion. They began with the song that had first introduced them to a nation, ‘Columbia’; inserted two new songs, ‘Me and My Big Mouth’ and ‘It’s Getting Better, Man’; played ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ and ‘The Masterplan’ back-to-back; and finished with the final track from Morning Glory, ‘Champagne Supernova’, with John Squire, who had now left The Stone Roses, the band that had so inspired Noel and Liam back in Manchester, coming on both nights to play guitar.
After the show, as their friends partied backstage and the demos for the next album blasted into the night air, Noel and Marcus stood outside and wondered where on earth they could now take Oasis. And keep it interesting. And keep it vibrant.
It was the biggest problem facing the band. And Liam, of course, would be the first to display it publicly.
This is what the third Oasis album might have been. The cover portrays them standing on rostrums in tracksuits, their heads are bowe
d but their right arms are raised high in the sky, giving the two-finger salute.
Possible track listing: ‘Listen Up’, ‘(It’s Good) To Be Free’, ‘Take Me Away’, ‘Headshrinker’, ‘D’Yer Wanna Be A Spaceman’, ‘Cloudburst’, ‘Up In The Sky (Acoustic)’, ‘Half The World Away’, ‘Fade Away (original version)’, ‘Talk Tonight’, ‘Acquiesce’, ‘Round Are Way’, ‘It’s Better People’, ‘Swamp Song’, ‘Rockin’ Chair’ and ‘The Masterplan’.
Title?
B-Side Ourselves.
After the shows in Cork, the band, under the tightest security, went into rehearsals for a special MTV Unplugged show.
During that week, Noel and Liam came to blows, and the result was the singer refusing to take part in the show at London’s Royal Festival Hall.
On the Thursday, Noel rehearsed the band and sang all the songs himself. Liam sat in the front row, a pint of Guinness in hand, mock applauding and making various loud comments.
He did leap up on-stage to sing ‘Round Are Way’, but that was all. Noel studiously avoided him. The next night, after keeping the audience waiting outside for at least an hour and a half, the doors finally opened and the crowd were seated.
Oasis, minus Liam walked on-stage, Noel briefly explaining that his brother had ‘a sore throat’. In the boxes to his right, Liam watched as Noel led the band through a selection of songs, including a welcome airing of ‘Listen Up’, that Noel introduced ‘as a brand new song’.
At the end, with the crowd asking for more, Liam descended from the box, went into the auditorium and walked across the stage toward the dressing-room.
The word from the aggrieved MTV was that the show was likely to be broadcast in Europe but that American transmission looked doubtful.
On 27 August the band arrived at Heathrow airport to set out once more for a three-week American tour. Ten minutes before they were due to fly, Liam suddenly ordered his bags to be taken off the plane and, as the band took off without him, he explained to reporters that he needed to sort out his housing arrangements, and then headed back home to St. John’s Wood.
In the Oasis scheme of things this was business as usual, but now the eyes of the world were upon them the following day’s avalanche of publicity blew the incident up into an orgy of speculation as to the band’s future.
As reporters and TV cameras waited outside Patsy’s house, the band began their US tour in Chicago, Noel handling the vocals. He also agreed to be interviewed by Carlton’s breakfast show GMTV.
‘I suppose,’ the reporter asked, ‘you’ll be giving your brother a slap around the head when you see him.’
Whatever Noel’s feelings, he was quick to defuse the situation – and defend Liam. He said that his brother obviously needed to get himself together and threats weren’t going to help him do so. Liam obviously needed some space to put himself right and when he did that, then they’d be more than happy to see him back on-stage. But Liam’s mind was obviously elsewhere. He emerged from his house on the Friday, fiercely defending his actions by saying that he couldn’t let his fans run his life.
He wore a smart black reefer coat with epaulettes on the shoulders, and when the interviewer asked him about Patsy being the Yoko Ono of the band, he replied, ‘She can’t be, Yoko’s this tall,’ he explained raising his hand, ‘and Patsy is taller.’
Then he got in a car to take him to the airport. When he landed in America, he hurled a load of swearwords at waiting reporters and then hopped in a cab to meet the band.
The following week, at the MTV Awards in New York the band soundchecked with the lights off so that no one could film them. The organisers then interviewed every band who arrived to perform, bar Oasis. Liam reacted by spitting and swearing onstage.
At their Philadelphia show, one onlooker thought that Liam’s on-stage behaviour was now in danger of turning into a parody.
Friends of the support group Manic Street Preachers reported that at the two shows in Jones Beach, when he wasn’t singing, Liam either took the mickey out of the crowd or adopted a totally disinterested pose, ending the gig sitting on a riser, smoking a cigarette and swigging on a bottle like a bored workman in his lunch break.
The crunch came in Buffalo, when hours before the show Noel and Liam exchanged punches, cancelled the gig and then returned to their hotel for a serious talk.
The next day Noel returned to London on Thursday 12 September. This was the third time America had witnessed Oasis going to an edge that would destroy most other bands. But, as in Las Vegas, when Noel found himself previously in a time of trouble, The Beatles once again made an appearance.
Sitting right behind Noel as he flew home was none other than the head of Apple and the man they sometimes referred to as the fifth Beatle, Neil Aspinall.
He told Noel, ‘Listen mate, don’t worry about splitting Oasis up. At least you’re not the man who split The Beatles up.’
Thanks a lot, Noel thought, as he pondered on his and the band’s future.
The rest of the band arrived home the next morning.
Liam said nothing as he marched through the airport, only pausing to shout out, ‘Whitey!’ at his drummer before getting into a cab.
The cancellation of the tour made front-pages everywhere. While America readied itself to bomb Iraq, the Oasis story superseded even this conflict to become the lead item on most news stories.
It had taken just three years of their recording career to do so.
There was only one definite plan now. On 7 October, Oasis were booked to enter studio two in Abbey Road Studios to start recording their new album. This is the studio that The Beatles wrote and recorded a series of songs that would later embed themselves in the minds of Noel and Liam Gallagher, and inspire them to go out and shake the world.
The last song The Beatles recorded there before they split up was called ‘I Me Mine’.
Outro
Always at it. Always the pair of them. Noel and Liam, Liam and Noel. The Gallagher brothers. Will it ever stop, this struggle for control? Probably not. Probably never. Tonight, of course, is no exception.
It is 27 April 1996, and Oasis are on-stage at Maine Road. They have just started playing ‘Whatever’.
Liam is at the mike, hands, as usual, firmly clasped behind his back. He starts singing but the 40,000-strong crowd roar out the first lines so loudly that he backs away from the mike to allow them to continue.
But the crowd aren’t too sure of the next lines. Their singing quickly fades out and Liam is caught unawares. He quickly leans forward to sing but the music is in front of him now. So he simply walks off-stage, kicking a tambourine in frustration. The band grind to a halt. Noel says, ‘Thanks bruv,’ and then he starts the song up again and sings it himself. Oasis finish to great applause, and as it splashes all over them in great sheets of sound, Noel looks around at the place he finds himself in.
To the right of him is the Kippax Stand where he stood all those years ago with his dad, watching Manchester City. Noel has cut all ties with his father now and in doing so has sworn himself to surpass Thomas Gallagher in everything.
Tonight it is he, Noel, who stands on the hallowed turf, the crowd roaring out his name. It took years to achieve, but as a friend once told him, revenge is a dish best served cold.
Now his gaze goes up to the box above the stand where his mother Peggy and Meg stand watching him, pure love in their eyes, the two women in the world that he has allowed beyond the barriers in his heart.
Present in that box also is Alan McGee, the man who stumbled across him and recognised instantly the talent raging before him.
Watching too is Marcus, the man who has helped him so carefully to plot the amazing path that Oasis have travelled.
Surrounding the stage are the road crew he has journeyed the world with. Maggie, Jason, Jacko, Pie, and in front of him the lighting and sound men, Hugh, Frank, and somewhere too, he can’t see where, stand his close friends Coyley, who helped to start it all, and Phil Smith.
And there, lurking in the wings, stands his brother, the man he will be tied to forever. If Oasis was just Liam, they would never have been signed, they would have threatened to self destruct. If Oasis was just Noel, they would never have reached the heights they have. That is the truth they have arrived at, that is the truth that keeps them battling for the soul of this thing called, Oasis.
Bound by love and hate, trust and admiration, they will see this through together. Let no one stand in their way.
‘This is called “Masterplan”,’ Noel announces, and he strums a chord that then rises high above the crowd and floats across Manchester, the town that helped shape him, the town he had to leave.
As Noel sings, ‘Take some time to make some sense of what you want to say / And cast your words’, the chord continues its journey, over Liverpool where they first recorded, and then high above the Irish sea, floating softly over the waves until Ireland is beneath.
It travels South, heading towards a little girl who sits by a river in County Mayo gazing into the water, searching for signs of her future. The chord reaches her and momentarily hangs above her head before descending and enveloping her body. The little girl gives a slight shiver and then looks up to the sky, knowing she has been touched.
Then she stands and walks away, whistling her song into the cool evening air, heading towards a future that nobody ever knows.
Acknowledgements
First and foremost my eternal thanks and praise go to Noel Gallagher, Liam Gallagher, Paul McGuigan, Paul Arthurs and Alan White. These are the members of Oasis who kindly invited me into their homes to talk about their past and present. They proved to be exactly the kind of people that their records said they would be. And then more.
I’d just like to add that many years ago I demonstrated to Noel a Roberto Baggio free kick using the last beer can in his house. The can swerved round a post, smashed against a wall and then spilt itself all over his carpet. Many thanks then for passing this ball back to me a year ago.
