We were sitting in the ever-reliable transit van. The radio was blaring out an advert for a musical festival… then we heard the recognisable intro to ‘Columbia’. We all looked at each other in astonishment. It had been released as a white label but had been given airtime on Radio One. As the advert faded the volume of the song increased, and Bonehead started jumping up and down, forgetting that we were in a vehicle. His head was leaving dents in the tin-can rooftop. The rest of us cheered. The only member not joining in was Noel. I guess for us it was a different trip. Noel seemed hardened by his time with the Inspirals and we used to tease him when he delivered his daily statement: ‘Done it all before.’ We used to tell him he had not ‘done it all before’; he’d only carried the instruments as the Inspirals did it all. But this did nothing to encourage his enthusiasm.
Liam and BigUn had had a falling out. It seemed that none other than Sir Alex himself had pulled BigUn into the office at Old Trafford. He wasn’t very happy, it seemed. Liam had blurted to all the papers about how we had fixed Cantona’s car when he was working for BigUn. He had gone on to talk about having cocaine for breakfast, dinner and tea. Sir Alex was unhappy with the comments and BigUn was given the heave-ho – for which he blamed Liam. Liam made a call after the gig and they sorted themselves out. Lucky, really, considering Liam was lodging at BigUn’s gaff.
But we had bigger things to occupy us: we were off to Monmouth to record at Monnow Valley recording studios. The Stone Roses were making The Second Coming a few miles away at Rockfield. Mani had told Noel which pub the band would be drinking in while they were in Monmouth and suggested we might like to meet up. We’d found the boozer and it seemed to suit every taste we might have. There we were, in the middle of Monmouth, and we were to find out there were more drugs on offer than in Manchester. Me, Liam and BigUn were sitting at the bar. Behind us some locals were fighting over a card game while others danced, spaced out, to the Super Furry Animals. A Welsh band for a Welsh pub.
Suddenly, we heard: ‘Fuckin’ hell, it’s The Stone Roses.’ We all spun round, hoping to find the full Mancunian crew. Instead, the rest of the pub were looking at us.
‘Are you Ian Brown?’ one inquisitive local asked Liam. It was the thickest Welsh accent I had heard. After Liam finally interpreted what the question was, his face changed.
‘No I’m not. Now fuck off, cottage burner,’ he replied. Liam was quite to the point with people. Always had been. The United Nations had not missed out when he had decided on a career in music. But this was not a good place for it.
‘Who the fuck do you think you’re speaking to, bollock brains?’ came back the immediate and aggravated reply, in an even thicker Welsh brogue.
Once again it was time for me to start my peace-keeping missionary work. First I calmed the Welsh boy down with the customary placation pint and then turned my attentions towards Liam. ‘How would you react if a Welshman told you to fuck off in front of all the boys, Liam?’ I asked.
Liam took the top from his pint, contemplated for a moment and then asked, ‘Do you think they’ve got any gear?’
As usual, if Liam didn’t understand, or simply didn’t have an answer, he ignored the question. As a drug transaction might broker peace, I decided to ask my new Welsh friend if he could help us out. Within moments we had an array of goodtime in front of us. Acid, weed, MDMA, bugle and crack. And we were in fucking Monmouth! I shouted Liam and BigUn over and since it had been a while for all of us we decided on the acid. After we necked a couple of tabs each we sat by the door and awaited the ride. Yet another person approached Liam and asked if he was a member of The Stone Roses and then wanted to know what he’d said about the Welsh earlier. He was obviously picking for a fight. The warmth and comfort of the acid had taken hold now, though, and Liam actually began telling people that yes, he was Ian Brown, and no, he wouldn’t dare call someone a cottage burner – followed by a roar of maniacal laughter.
After an hour or so, we decided that it would be a good thing to see if we could find Ian Brown at Rockfield recording studios. This decision was unwise for a number of reasons. We didn’t know where the studio was. It was pitch black with no streetlights and we had no transport. Liam was talking about voices telling him to burn down the village. Ian Brown was probably asleep in bed. It was two-thirty in the morning. We were out of our heads.
So with all this in mind, we threw open the boozer doors and headed out into the thick black night, intent on finding the studio. After what seemed an eternity we had left the glow of the town and were in the heart of the countryside. Liam was to the side of me with his arms outstretched, trying to find his hands in front of his face. He was studying them intently, oblivious to the cold and dark surroundings.
‘I don’t think we’re moving,’ whispered BigUn from the darkness behind me. I tried to figure out if I was moving and although I was aware that I was putting one foot in front of the other, I had to agree with BigUn. The darkness was not doing the trip any favours and enveloped me like a dark blanket. It was suffocating.
‘I think, therefore I am,’ shouted Liam, who had become invisible in the darkness in front. As if to prove this profound utterance, he suddenly walked into something and let out a cry.
‘I’ve just fuckin’ smashed into something. Twat.’
He kicked out in anger and connected with some power. Liam barked his pain into the blackened night. BigUn sparked his clipper and produced a pool of light. Liam was hopping around in the dark next to an old beat-up tractor that was sat on a verge at the side of the lane. It was an ancient model with the two headlights sitting on top of the rusty body like bug’s eyes. I was immediately transported back to Kinnitty in County Offaly, Ireland, where I would spend whole summers riding these tractors round farms and fields. Without a moment’s hesitation, I jumped on the tractor and with a quick twist and a turn the engine roared to life. The stillness of the night was shattered by the pumping pistons. With another flick, the lights illuminated the narrow country lane in front of us. Liam and BigUn screamed in delight, hopped on and with some difficulty we headed off, laughing and tripping, shouting and swerving our way through the Welsh countryside.
We arrived at Rockfield Studios after a 2-mile ride. It was a long horseshoe-shaped barn building with a farmhouse attached. We jumped off the tractor when we spotted the lights and crept up the gravel driveway. Our stealthy approach was marred only by the crunching gravel and our continuous laughter as the trip reached its zenith. The barns had been converted to house a number of recording studios, which were attached to a large farmhouse. It was nearly three in the morning as we knocked on the door. No one answered, so we tried the door and to our surprise it opened. Inside, we saw a table tennis table.
‘Ping pong’ roared Liam, and then started to laugh hysterically. This had obviously caught somebody’s attention, as we heard an inside door swing open and then crash shut followed by heavy footsteps on the stone flagged flooring. ‘Shit! Hide!’ shouted BigUn and even though we hadn’t done anything wrong (besides taking a vehicle without consent and consuming illegal drugs), we each dived behind one of the many stone pillars supporting the barn roof. Whoever had come to investigate had brought with them the power of light and after flicking a switch we were all illuminated in the courtyard.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ enquired a voice from the doorway. I suppose we should have moved, but instead we stood firm in the crazy belief we couldn’t be seen. ‘I’m phoning the Old Bill if you don’t leave.’ With this, we sheepishly returned to the courtyard. I put my hands up in the air in mock surrender and the other two followed suit.
‘We’re here to see Ian Brown. We’re in a band called Oasis.’ As was becoming more common, the namedrop worked. We were ushered into the building and pointed towards a door at the far end of a long corridor. As we opened the door we saw a slouched Ian Brown sitting in a leather chair. Behind, working away at a mixing desk, was an engineer. BigUn shouted, ‘Fuck me, it’s Ian Brown’; me and
Liam looked at him and told him to shut up.
‘Morning,’ muttered the lead singer, who was surrounded by a cloud of smoke as he pulled on a fat one. ‘Come in, sit down.’ Nobody moved. We just stood in the doorway and stared. This was the man who had inspired most of the band to become musicians, and in particular Liam. Liam had a cartoon surprise face on. I suppose this was due both to his meeting an idol and the LSD that was still rocketing around his mind. We took seats either side of Ian Brown, who then started to talk like talking was about to be outlawed.
‘I’m a fly in the ointment, you see. But I don’t want to be no fly in the bottle. They ain’t got anything to pin on me. It’s not just swings and roundabouts, there’s also the slide to consider. The paling of the shadows are a sure sign of the morning light.’
What the fuck? I guessed with this dialogue it made the weirdness of the trip even more intense. I was burning up and all I really wanted was to speak to Reni. Drummers’ union, so to speak. I was waiting for Liam to start monkeying around, but it seemed it was all a little too much for him. Whether it was meeting Ian Brown or being on the trip I’m not sure, but he was simply sat there, staring straight at the Roses’ singer but unable to say anything. The mouth was firmly shut and he simply nodded as Mr Brown started to confuse everybody again. As I was sat immediately next to him, I bore the brunt of most of his questions. So I just smiled and gave him a kind of weird trippy look. Didn’t stop him talking, though.
‘Is Reni around?’ I ventured after he finished another four or so sentences that, when stringed together, didn’t actually mean anything to me. Ian Brown looked at the clock on the wall. I was wondering what the fuck sort of reply I was gonna get. I thought the answer would probably be space and time related.
Instead: ‘He’ll be here in a couple of hours, but we’ll have to be gone by then. The rule of one cannot be the rule of all.’
He’s a right fucking weirdo, I thought to myself. It took me some time to figure that it wasn’t the trip making the whole event surreal, it was Ian Brown and his gobbledygook. If this was the end result of being in a band, I was thinking we should all reconsider. Anyway, it seemed that Reni recorded his tracks for the album between five and eight in the morning. This was so he could be alone and, to be honest, after a few more of Ian Brown’s ramblings I understood the solitary part. We managed a sort of conversation for the next hour, which mainly consisted of one of us asking a question that was followed by an unrelated prophetic or bizarre answer from the right honourable Mr Brown.
Ian did not take up the offer of any of our drugs as he ‘preferred to stick with the coffee and the weed. Why don’t you change that song to “Cigarettes and coffee”? It sounds better.’ This was his final piece of advice. Not a peep out of Liam all night. Strange, that.
Shortly before Reni was due in, we had to leave due to the fact we were semi-conscious. So we headed back to Monnow Valley on our tractor with the Welsh dawn accompanying our comedown.
‘Get the fuck up. Get the fuck up. Get the fuck up.’ This was the voice in my head as I slowly opened my stinging eyes and readied myself for the aftershock. It was not a bad one, though, and within an hour I was dressed, shaved and washed and downstairs in the rehearsal studio. We were getting our photo taken for the ‘Supersonic’ single. I was grateful for my position at the back of the shot, as I was still spinning from the previous evening and early morning. There was still no sign of Liam. He finally trudged into the room looking downcast. He was wearing the same denim shirt and jeans as the previous night.
‘Fuckin’ smile, you miserable twat,’ ordered Noel.
‘Fuck you, dickhead,’ came back a half-hearted reply. Shit, Liam wasn’t even rising to Noel. He really must not have been feeling that good. I thought that maybe his meeting with Ian Brown wasn’t what he had expected. The argument was interrupted by the sleeve designer, Brian Cannon, who asked us to take up our instruments and look rebellious. When the resulting shots were shown to us, I noticed that depressed, vacant stare still on display across Liam’s face.
Brian’s company, Microdot, had worked with The Verve and an introduction was made. They turned up a few days later at the studio. We bonded immediately as bands and always got on well from then on. It was a relaxed and playful atmosphere built on mutual respect. After we signed our deal, we played a number of gigs with them.
The producer had us recording our individual pieces in separate rooms away from each other. It just wasn’t right. For three years we had rehearsed and recorded together. The eye contact and feel was as important as the music itself. It was what we had become accustomed to. Without this energy, the music sounded soulless. Day after day we would record, only to be bitterly disappointed when we played back the results in the evening. The downing of too much goodtime and a continual overindulgence in Jack Daniel’s hadn’t helped either, I suppose.
After 18 days of hard work and sweat, we only had ‘Slide Away’ in the can. Although having said that, it wasn’t half a good song to have in the can. I’d loved ‘Slide Away’ the minute I’d heard it. Mr Melody strikes again. The version of the song that we’d just finished is the version you can hear on Definitely Maybe. It was the only thing that Dave Bachelor, our producer, got right. Dave was a good guy who had in his time produced The Kinks, among others, but he just wasn’t the right man for us. Or so we told the record company. Easier to explain that than admit we just got mindless for a couple of weeks. Don’t think Creation bought it, though. In an attempt to get back on track, we were off to see Coyley at Sawmills Studios.
I’d better formally introduce you to Coyley at this stage. Mark Coyle had been the sound engineer for both The Stone Roses and the Inspiral Carpets and had struck up a friendship with Noel that lasted until only recently. He was rapidly losing his hearing even in the early days, which was an unfortunate occupational hazard, I suppose. He had offered to work the desk for us in the early gigs at The Boardwalk. This sounded great to us all, as Mark had the experience of touring with the Carpets, so was sure to improve us. He would also swagger with our attitude. On many occasions he would have fisticuffs with angry club owners intent on turning us off after we had overplayed. Mark was also responsible for the musical intake while on tour. He would bring along an eclectic mix of music tapes, from Burt Bacharach to The Creation, Ennio Morricone to Neil Young. Noel would namedrop these artists if he was ever asked to recount his own musical influences. Funnily enough, he never mentioned Alvin Stardust or Abba. I always found Mark good company and his importance to the band in the early days should never be underestimated.
Sawmill Studios sat on an island in Wales. We arrived by a small engine-powered boat. This was a first for us. They told us it was the only available recording space, but we soon found out that the decision to record here was more down to its seclusion than any availability problems. It was a 3-mile trek along a darkened railway track to the nearest boozer and a police sniffer dog couldn’t have found any drugs. Creation had obviously decided that the experiences at Monnow Valley were not to be repeated. Their plan had the desired effect. During the next week we recorded again as a band in the same room, unlike in Monnow Valley. It was a re-creation of the set-up we’d had in both the rehearsal room and Bootle, and we had that feel back, that understanding a nod or a wink could bring, that spark. We began to trawl through the new batch of songs and laid down ‘Shakermaker’, ‘Up in the Sky’, ‘Digsy’s Dinner’ and ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Star’ in quick succession. It was obvious that it worked when we played as a unit and it didn’t when we didn’t, so we ploughed on. Next we completed ‘Live Forever’. The song was a joy to record. That evening, me, Liam and Bonehead sat on a grassy riverbank, fishing. Wrapped in warm coats, we waited on the fish, who stared blankly at our bait, which was made from tinned pineapples. We all agreed that the sound and structure so far had been bob on. We finish the last two days with ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’ and ‘Married with Children’, and everyone was excited about the recording. We really f
elt that this was the one. When we finally heard the album mixed down, though, we were all a little deflated. Although it was good, there was something not quite right. Once again that ‘oomph’ was missing. When we played live, we blew people away. There was a distinctive roar that seemed impossible to recapture in a recording studio.
By this stage, the only track that we hadn’t completed was ‘Bring It on Down’. Noel wasn’t happy with the recording we had, and highlighted the drum track as the reason. I had received a phone call from him: ‘I’m bringing in a session drummer to record “Bring It on Down”. We need to have the album finished and we can’t waste any more time. Or money,’ he told me. I was gutted. I couldn’t see what was wrong with the original recording, but I wasn’t going to argue. I knew just how important it was that we finished the recording quickly, so reluctantly agreed.
One day back in Manchester and then we are all aboard the spaceship transit van, which hurtled (at 50mph) towards the Big Smoke. The trip to London had become more familiar now. We had the Realies on board again and the mood was electric.
We arrived at the studio to find the session drummer already sitting in a tiny, dark, sweaty room. The intensity was immense. I keep rattling the various patterns of ‘Bring It on Down’ through my head. Then I was off, my hands held invisible sticks, my mind with a kicking tune. I was beat perfect, I felt. I listened as the session drummer started to play my drums. It was not a nice feeling. His first take was poor and his second was even worse. It was a difficult song to drum. After two sessions of banging away, he was still no closer to it than he’d been on the first take. That song was always about the feel. It didn’t matter how technically good you were. Noel was looking well fucked off and went for lunch in a mood.
Oasis: The Truth Page 11