Oasis: The Truth

by Tony McCarroll

  I laughed and thought that once again the Kid had struck. Peter Hook was wearing the look he was wont to adopt for List abuse. Hooky then told Liam he wouldn’t be welcome in the Hacienda if he carried on like that.

  ‘Give a fuck, mate. It’s shit anyway,’ came the offhand reply.

  His first ever broadcastable sentence contained swearing and an insult. Brilliant. Bonehead looked over towards me unhappily as he put his hand in his pocket to retrieve my money. We waited in hope that the broadcast might have alerted some eager record company who had a nose for obvious brilliance. It didn’t. Manchester’s In The City festival was approaching, though, so it was back to rehearsals.

  On 13 September 1992, we played the festival, our first, at The Venue, which we had all frequented throughout our youth; we were on with Machine Gun Feedback. It felt like we were the home team, which would surely give us some kind of advantage. In fact, it seemed to have the opposite effect. ‘Too much like the Roses’ seemed to be the general consensus. This left us all feeling a touch dejected. Noel wasn’t happy with Liam’s words for the crowd either. Liam had called one of the audience ‘a fuckin’ nonce’, which hadn’t gone down too well. I didn’t see how Noel thought the ensuing argument between Liam and himself on stage might help our musical cause either. It was natural for the rest of us in the band, but we tended to forget how shocking it could be for someone else to see. Nothing was held back. I always knew that all Liam wanted was some recognition from Noel. And I also knew that it was the last thing that

  Noel would ever give him. The fact that their father was absent from the family home certainly didn’t help matters, but both young men were angry for different reasons. Noel was not a happy chappy. We were completely ignored by the In The City crowd. We were all disappointed, but tonight Noel seemed particularly dejected. He was standing at the doorway to The Boardwalk’s rehearsal room, seething. Earlier that day he had parted company with the Carpets.

  ‘Fuckin’ twats. We’re rehearsing five nights a week from now on. Fucking thick Oldham cunts,’ he spat.

  The cocaine didn’t do good things for Noel and I was considering having a word, but not that night. It’d only end up on my lap. We all liked and got on with the Inspirals, but that day Noel drew another line. Us or them. It was a side of Noel I had not seen before.

  Anyway, Cunt Balloon’s (this was Clint Boon’s new Noel name) decision to flirt [Mancunian for sack] Noel might just work to our advantage. If you could pull any positives out of his hate and anger, surely it would be that we would be rehearsing more. So we turned up the schedule.

  Me and Liam also turned up the schedule working for BigUn. It had been one disaster loping after another, but at least it was amusing. Charles Talleyrand was one of the greatest diplomats Europe has ever seen, a Frenchman who was exiled from his country due to his precocious behaviour and took up residence in Levenshulme, of all places, during the late 18th century. One summer day in 1992, BigUn, Liam and me were sitting outside the General’s garage in Talleyrand, a part of Levenshulme named after its former high-profle resident Frenchman. The car we were sat in belonged to another displaced Frenchman: Mr Eric Pierre Cantona. The car was also slightly modified due to the fact we had the driver’s door strapped with a piece of old rope to the roof.

  The General stood in front of his garage – Bonehead’s best friend and a true Spartan. So we had called in a favour. Cantona had just arrived in Manchester and had been befriended by BigUn. As Cantona’s car had needed new tyres, BigUn had offered to help out. Then, in an attempt to make a few bob, rather than take the car to the approved and authorised garage, or even to the General, we had bobbed along to see a friend of BigUn who could do the job on the cheap. As they raised the car to fit the new tyres, however, it had fallen off the hydraulic ramp. BigUn had also left the driver’s door open, which was ripped off in the fall and thrown across the garage floor. He stared at me with absolute horror on his face as the door rocked to a halt on the concrete.

  ‘Oh my good fuckin’ God,’ he began. This started the first bout of hysterics from me and Liam.

  So we turned up in Tallyrand, door on roof. The General, real name Jimmy Regan, looked at BigUn as if he had lost his mind. ‘You want me to weld a whole fuckin’ door on so that it looks like it has never been violently ripped off? On Eric Cantona’s brand spanking new Mercedes? In the next hour?’ he asked, with wide eyes.

  BigUn replied, ‘Yeah. If you could.’

  ‘No. I fuckin’ can’t,’ came the quick reply. Ten minutes of cajoling later, the General reluctantly gave in and took the car into the garage. After much banging and grinding and a hasty spray job, the car was returned looking as if the A fuckin’ Team had fixed it up. Me and Liam started another bout of hysterics. Actual physical pain through laughter. BigUn, though, looked like he had been run down by a truck. He eventually righted the wrong, but would never ever tell us just what it cost him.

  The band’s rehearsals were going well and we were still playing The Boardwalk, but not actually getting paid. We were simply paying off what we owed in backpay for the rehearsal room. Each week we would flee using various exits and methods in an attempt not to pay for the room. We never considered the fact that all our equipment was still there, or that we would be coming back to rehearse again. Forward thinking wasn’t a band strongpoint.

  It was both mentally and physically exhausting, but it was in aid of something good. We were finding ourselves and the songs were getting tighter and tighter. Initially, I had wondered if the sound we had created would sit with Noel’s songs. But rather than making them weaker, it seemed to add something extra. This, coupled with Liam’s vocal, also changed the punch of the package. To Noel’s folk-tinged sound, Liam added venom and danger.

  Other bands had taken to hanging around our door. ‘Whose song is that?’ they would ask.

  ‘It’s an Oasis song,’ we would proudly reply.

  It wasn’t that long ago they were trying to rip the piss out of the ‘covers’ band, as they dubbed us. We also now had a group of young women who had taken to hanging round the back. The group seemed to grow all the time, and they would hang on Liam’s every word. Things were looking hopeful.

  I had not yet realised my dream of a less chaotic place to live, though. I had taken to living on Fort Ardwick, which sat on the edge of the city centre and had become known locally as Baby Beirut. As in all such areas, they had good and bad. One of the good elements was a neighbour called Charlie Farley, known locally as the Rusk, who was friendly with a guy who was head of A&R for a local record label. Charlie promised that he would speak to his guy about the band I was in, although this was the type of promise I heard regularly. But Charlie was true to his word. He returned a few days later and told me he had organised it. A tie-slacks-and-shirt man and a stunning female colleague came down to see us at the rehearsal room one evening. They smiled and they left. They didn’t come back. If they had returned in three months’ time they would not have recognised the band. We were about to embark on a brief period that would shape us forever.

  This was a critical point in the development of Noel as a songwriter. And us as a band. Up to now, we had a set that consisted of mainly heavy punk rocky affairs – ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Star’, ‘Columbia’ and ‘Bring It on Down’. Noel had met a band called The Real People through the Inspiral Carpets. They were as stereotypical Scouse as you could imagine and had a hit record called ‘Window Pane’ during the baggy scene in Manchester. They had used some of the money they made to open their own recording studio (called, logically enough, The Studio) in Bootle. In autumn 1992, Noel had asked them if we could use it and they had, rather surprisingly, agreed. In return, we offered to let them produce anything that they found interesting. Such generosity was typical of the band as people. And so we were off to Liverpool. Fucking bring it on.

  There had been a violent and explosive rivalry between Manchester and Liverpool over the decades, but personally I had nothing but admiration for
the Scousers. I think it all began when the Mancunians decided to build the Ship Canal, which rendered Liverpool useless as a port to Manchester, then the largest industrial city in the world. Over time, this ill feeling carried over to supporters of the football teams of each city and over the years many a pitched battle had been fought. It was difficult to get ambushed in Liverpool, though. The swish-swish of acrylic always gave the shellsuit-clad hooligans away. (Only joking, La…) As I say, I’ve got a deep respect for Liverpool. I can’t think of another city in this country that has the ability to unite against any injustice that the rest of the country had chosen to ignore. From Thatcher to The Sun. And fuck me, they’ve paid for it.

  We drove up the East Lancs in the van. Liam was already hypered and was jumping around excitedly. The road into Liverpool was lined by Edwardian houses long past their prime, a passing nod to a time when the city was a thriving port; they still stand derelict, to this day, a testament to Thatcher’s regime and Blair’s recent daydream. We arrived at a rundown shack near Bootle docks. The surrounding buildings were derelict, bar one. The To Let sign on that solitary building had been adapted to read ‘ToiLet’. Appropriate, really. We parked up. Luckily for us, the van we were in wasn’t worth thieving and the hub caps were already long gone.

  We had soon unloaded and were in the studio. The Realies stood before us. Tony and Chris Griffiths were the two songwriting brothers who formed the nucleus of the band. Tony and Sean were the drummer and rhythm guitarist, respectively. They welcomed us with a blast of hashish smoke and four crooked smiles. I already felt at home. Tony Elson, the drummer, was a proper character and looked as hard as nails. We got on immediately, which I was very glad about.

  We then got down to business in the eight-track studio. It wasn’t long before Liam’s personality had won the band over. ‘Frankie Goes to Fucking Hollywood,’ he said with a laugh. He was shaking his head as he reminded the band of the city’s musical heritage.

  ‘The Beatles,’ came back The Real People.

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Liam, ‘but what about The Farm?’

  The band held up their hands in mock surrender and we all fell about laughing. The next three months would be spent educating ourselves around all things rock ’n’ roll. The Realies had just come down from their trip as we were about to embark on our own. Their experiences and advice were drip fed to us over this period.

  The next three months would see us change the way we rehearsed, the way the songs were constructed and the way Noel composed his lyrics. The ‘Real People’ sound is probably most evident on tracks like ‘Don’t Go Away’ or ‘All Around the World’. It was a departure from the brash punk of ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Star’ and ‘Bring It on Down’, but it was one that would change our fortunes forever.

  It was our second week in Bootle with the Realies. We had that comfortable thing already and we just knew that we could produce something good here. Liam was frustrated, though. He wanted to write a song. One of our earlier rehearsals had developed into ‘Columbia’, a simple instrumental that needed finishing but we still rolled it out live. Liam sang a melody quietly to himself while Chris Griffiths plucked away on his acoustic.

  Liam suddenly raised his voice: ‘There we were. Now here we are. All this Confusion. Nothing’s the same to me.’ Chris Griffiths asked Liam to repeat this line over and over, then joined in, in a higher pitch, with, ‘But I can’t tell you the way I feel because the way I feel is oh so new to me.’

  Crash, Bang, Wallop. Oasis and The Real People collided. It sounded bang-on, and in the next couple of hours it was completed. Chris threw in a few ‘yeah, yeah, yeahs’ as his Liverpudlian marker and Liam pleaded his Mancunian ‘C’mon, c’mon, c’mon’ and we had another new song. We headed back to Tony Griffiths and Noel and sang the new melody and lyrics to them. We told him that Chris had come up with it. Noel looked proper chuffed and was immediately repeating the melody. Liam then proudly told Noel he was involved in the writing as well. Noel’s smile seemed to vanish as quick as the light after the flick of the switch.

  We were duly introduced to the Griffiths family, which included his cousins Digsy and Steve. They were on another planet altogether. It was like a carnival when they were present and their banter and general comradeship was infectious. As a group of people they had a spirit and bonding like no other I had seen.

  Liam still had his share of frustrations to bear, though. He was wearing cans for the first time in the studio. A set of headphones enabled you to listen to a backing track but would also relay your voice as if recorded. This could be quite unsettling at first. Chris Griffiths was standing in front of Liam, trying to convince him that it had to be done.

  ‘I don’t like the way I sound,’ Liam said. ‘It puts me off me singing.’

  Chris replied simply, ‘Just don’t think.’ It worked. In no time at all Liam was comfortable and started singing away. Insert your own jokes. Over the next day or two, Liam’s voice underwent a transformation. He mimicked Chris’s elocution and Scouse drawl in his own Mancunian style. The slightly over-pitched teenage warbling he had arrived with suddenly changed into a more growling and brusque delivery. It suited both the songs and Liam himself. This style would be encouraged further down the line by Creation Records boss Alan McGee, but it was Chris who first taught Liam how to sing that way.

  As Chris worked with Liam in one part of the studio, Tony was mentoring Noel in another. The songs we arrived with were being torn apart and restructured in front of our very eyes. Chris had shortened every song we had. He also gave Noel advice on song structure, which became very evident in his writing from that point.

  ‘It has gotta be no longer than four minutes, simple,’ Chris Griffiths would drawl.

  This had meant that we had to get rid of most of Noel’s long guitar breaks, which we were all happy about – bar Noel. Chris also devised bridges to lead the verses to the chorus, which instantly gave the songs more structure.

  The songs that we developed in this period would make up the backbone of Definitely Maybe. We entered the session with a small set of songs, but we left with the first album nearly written. I can’t give enough credit to Chris and Tony, who shaped not only the way Noel composed his lyrics but also taught us all to structure and enjoy music. We spent over three months with The Real People and without them we would never have created Definitely Maybe. Or (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?. Or Be Here Now.

  The Griffiths boys were like a musical factory. After each session they would invariably sit us down and play us something new that they had composed. I clearly remember a fantastic ditty that Tony had knocked together on his keyboard. It was a string arrangement and as catchy as anything. This melody would be later used by Noel as he constructed the single ‘Whatever’. On top of this there was also ‘Columbia’, ‘Rocking Chair’ and ‘Don’t Go Away’. All songs that were ‘inspired’ by The Real People.

  We left after three months of sheer lunacy, bedlam and mind-bending sessions. The band was tight and we’d never sounded as good. We’d had a new set of songs and Noel was still working on ideas borne there. We headed off down the M62 in the van unaware that we would be returning to record our first single, with The Real People, less than a year later.

  We also started to travel a little further afield, with gigs at The Venue – which was 500 yards away – and the Hippodrome – which was at least 5 miles from Manchester. The new songs were warmly welcomed by the punters and we felt we had really been through a sea change. The excitement in the faces of people in the audience now looked genuine. We all knew we were onto something. One thing you were guaranteed on a gig night was an adrenaline- and substance-filled Liam. ‘Like fucking Worzel Gummidge,’ Bonehead had complained, ‘Different head every night.’

  One evening in rehearsals, Noel revealed he was ready to show us the song he had told us he was keeping under wraps in the Bootle studio. He then went on to play ‘Live Forever’. When I say Noel could blow us out of the water with his comp
ositions, I mean it. You know if a song has potential the first time you hear it. ‘Live Forever’ was a simple piece of brilliance and the best offering to date from Noel, in my opinion. Liam had a look of pride in his eyes and kept glancing at each of us with a broad smile on his face. It was his ‘I Told You’ face. And he had. He had shown faith in his brother. This was a completely different style of song to what Noel had come up with in the past. Enjoy the simple things in life, I thought, as I began to develop a drum pattern for these pieces of brilliance Noel called songs.

  ‘Live Forever’ was the icing on the cake of what would prove to this day to be Noel’s most productive songwriting period. Since our arrival at Bootle and the work with Chris and Tony Griffiths, we had in the bag ‘Whatever’, ‘Acquiesce’, ‘All Around the World’, ‘Cloudburst’, ‘Fade Away’, ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’, ‘Up in the Sky’, ‘Married with Children’ and ‘Digsy’s Dinner’. The Griffiths brothers would also contribute to ‘Supersonic’, but that was yet to come. Add to that ‘Live Forever’, which was born in Bootle, and we had an exciting and diverse body of music. From the moment we all sat and played back these songs, we knew something would happen. It was a matter of ‘when’, not ‘if’. We knew it and the Realies knew it. We were good. Real good.

  CHAPTER 4

  ALL FOR ONE AND ONE FOR ALL

  We were all thrilled about how good we now were and had decided to take the new songs somewhere new. When we heard of a possible gig in King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow, we were well up for it. We had managed to hawk together £200 to hire a van. With the other three in the front and myself and Guigs sprawled across the amps in the back, we made the journey to Glasgow on the last day of May 1993. We headed a two-van convoy that, behind us, included BigUn and a right firm in a transit on loan from Salford Van Hire. This van would double as both transport and accommodation if necessary. We all had the same intentions: a good night out. I suppose at that point it was just another gig in another town on another day. Obviously we hoped to create some interest and see the audience reaction at an out-of-town gig, but I guess no one could have predicted just how fateful this gig would be.