Oasis: The Truth

by Tony McCarroll

  ‘Fuckin’ weirdo wanted me condom. She tried to stick a fuckin’ label on it.’

  The girl herself had also returned from the bedroom and was now sitting down and talking about spiritual things. Warning bells started to ring and Liam and me looked at each other. The large industrial door to the apartment suddenly swung open and the room started to fill with various model types, each looking more withdrawn than the next. I was half expecting Andy fuckin’ Warhol to come waltzing in. Mary Poppins next set about lighting a great many candles, and I stood transfixed at the church-like appearance of the high-roofed apartment. With the echo of some unknown underground post-punk band reverberating through the open space, Mary moved towards an alcove that was burning candle bright. She slowly unlocked a steel cabinet in the corner, which looked like a small fridge. From inside, she removed a number of items and held them up in the light. It took a moment, but I finally realised what they were. She was waving a handful of used condoms with white labels attached. I suddenly realised Mary Poppins’ plan and started to roar with laughter. This agitated Liam even more, who was now beginning to panic. He looked at me, wide eyed, so I decided to take the bull by the horns.

  ‘What’s on the labels?’ I asked Mary.

  ‘Previous donors,’ came the reply.

  Each rubber had been labelled with the date and time of donation, as well as the origin of the man fat. The small fridge was actually keeping the juice loose, so to speak, and I guessed Mary was planning to artificially create her own supergroup. The two labels I caught read ‘Kurt Cobain’ and ‘Nikki Sixx’. I found this fuckin’ hilarious, though it didn’t have the same effect on Liam. By now he was yanking at various locks on the enormous front door in order to escape into the New York night. He seemed to be heaving them open and then, in a drug-induced panic, locking them again. The longer this went on, the crazier he seemed to be getting and the more I laughed. After I calmed him down, we made off back to the safety of the group’s hotel. I told Liam he should be proud of being held in such high company. He told me to fuck off.

  The next morning, I awoke in the Big Apple. The hotel window framed a Lego-like skyline; it reminded me of one enormous film set. I walked to the window and looked west, half expecting to see King Kong hanging from the Empire State Building as he swatted biplanes. The hotel phone rang. It was BigUn.

  ‘All right, fella’ I said brightly, eager to relay last night’s hilarious events.

  ‘Have you seen the news?’ he replied, in a serious voice.

  I explained that I was in New York and that the events in little old Manchester, England, were of little importance to them American boys. BigUn then told me about the events of the previous evening. The Policeman had been driving his car through the outskirts of Stockport after visiting an off-licence for a bottle of wine and had stopped at a set of traffic lights. As he sat waiting for the change, a white Ford Granada had pulled up next to him. Slowly, the passenger window of the Granada was lowered and a shotgun barrel emerged. The Policeman looked casually to his right and spotted the gun. He stamped his foot violently on the accelerator of the powerful car, which shot off at a ferocious speed, but not quite quickly enough. The gun was discharged and the Policeman took the full extent of the blast to the right side of his head. He and his black Mercedes 500 SLE headed off towards a local pub. By the time the car smashed through the pub’s brick wall, he had already well and truly left this life.

  Although I guess I had always expected the Policeman to come to a tragic end, it still shocked me. I remembered back all those years to when he first cuffed me round my head and gave us all a stern warning. I suppose when I thought back on my youthful attempts to pull myself away from the streets I realised that joining a band is actually a serious way out, and promised myself to enjoy every single moment of the trip. But even so, my first performance in America had been overshadowed by the events from back home.

  26 JUNE 1994. GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL, SOMERSET

  We were back in the UK after our whirlwind visit to the States. It was our first Glastonbury. We rolled up to security in our minibus. The security looked at the five band members and driver and gave a knowing look: our reputation preceded us once more. They would have shown more concern if they had taken more time and discovered the six or seven people who were lying on the floor of the minibus with enough to keep us going for a week. We marched out onto the stage to a welcoming applause. Everyone was in a boisterous mood, and the carnival atmosphere had gotten to the band. We played a rousing set and left to a thunderous appreciation. It was a good moment, but very quickly turned sour. When we headed back to the minibus we passed Paul Gallagher, who was living it up with the Inspiral Carpets outside their tour bus.

  ‘Cunt Balloon,’ hissed Noel from the side of his mouth, and stopped. It was as if we had spotted the bad guy in a cowboy movie. I half expected Noel to spit after he said it. He and Clint stared off in the afternoon sun. After an uncomfortable moment, I pushed Noel off and we moved on, laughing. Although Noel had avoided the confrontation, he would not let it go. When Paul Gallagher returned to us, Noel let rip.

  ‘What the fuck are you talking to them for?’ was his first question. Paul said nothing and shuffled away, recognising that to argue could lead to problems with his getting in to any future gigs. We then headed out into the crowd. After much consumption, we arrived at Johnny Cash’s performance. It was the first time I’d seen him live and I sat and watched in awe. Life just could not get any better. Then, we passed through the fairgrounds and saw the trapeze artists. It was all hot dogs and dreadlocks as our revelling group headed back to the minibus.

  When we arrived, we were greeted by The Man who Can. He then introduced us to a tall wiry chap called the Cat in the Hat. The Man who Can told us that if he were ever absent, the Cat would look after all our needs. The Cat in the Hat then bid farewell to the Man who Can, who vanished like a dog in the fog. People are just too kind sometimes.

  29 JUNE 1994. ELSTREE, LONDON. TOP OF THE POPS

  We were at Top of the Pops to perform ‘Shakermaker’. The stage manager was running through the stage layout for that day’s recording and showed us the plan. There were three separate stages. Liam and Noel on the highest stage, but right at the back. Bonehead and Guigsy slightly below, on the middle stage. And on his own on the front stage, right at the front, Tony the Drummer. Fuckin’ brilliant. ‘About time they put the looks up front,’ I told the rest of the band, to hoots of derision and playful punches thrown. ‘Maybe this will boost the number of female fans,’ I added, only to be attacked again.

  Afterwards, as I searched for a toilet, I was stopped by a runner who told me I was required in make-up immediately. I made my way there and spent a good 30 minutes in the chair, being made to look orange and waxy by a gorgeous-looking girl. I asked her if she’d be doing the make-up for the rest of the band, to which she replied that the rest of them had refused to come down due to their, quote, ‘masculinity’. I looked at myself in that mirror surrounded by lightbulbs and thought, Fuckin’ hell, I’m gonna get ripped to shreds. I looked like Dale Winton. After returning, to a bout of howling and piss-taking, I sat proudly at the front, blemish free.

  We were standing at a cash point on Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester city centre on a wet and cold summer’s evening. The Lemonheads’ Evan Dando stood shuffling in the queue for the cash machine, his sheepskin coat pulled over his head to protect him from the Mancunian drizzle. Evan had become an honorary member of the band, upon his own insistence.

  He suddenly swivelled around and yelled at the top of his voice, ‘Hey guys, how much money shall I get out?’ The American accent alerted all possible scoundrels that it might be feeding time. Like meerkats, certain cagoule-clad individuals in the queue suddenly become upright and alert.

  ‘Five hundred will do us for now,’ said Liam, with a laugh. ‘And hurry the fuck up.’

  The meerkats were now aware that the American had local back-up and their necks retracted, althou
gh a couple seemed to be weighing us up as well.

  ‘Are you sure that’s enough?’ asked the oblivious Dando.

  ‘Well if it ain’t, we can come back after midnight,’ I reassured him, as Liam stared down anyone who might still appear interested.

  Although we had released our first two singles and were by now regarded as the saviours of British rock music, neither Liam nor me had the proverbial pot to piss in. So with Evan Dando’s wedge of notes, it was party time. Liam made the phone call and we waited outside Hurley’s Sports shop on Piccadilly. Fifteen minutes later, a Honda Civic pulled over and the drugs were delivered. We immediately headed for Corbiere’s, a club basement bar that housed what must have been the most comprehensive jukebox in the North-West.

  Dando began to rattle on about how he and Courtney Love were very close and I advised him to step back and take a good, long look. Never understood that Courtney Love thing. He then told us that she had given him Kurt Cobain’s coat, which he was wearing. It was a scruffy old chequered trench coat. We headed back to his hotel room, where we watched as Dando proved how tough the hotel windows were by running towards them and then leaping at them. We were on the 10th floor. My heart stopped every time he connected, as I was sure the window would shatter and Dando would fall to his death. I diagnosed it as Extreme Attention Seeking Syndrome.

  ‘Evan Helpus’, as we had taken to calling him, suffered terribly from this debilitating syndrome. At the Buckley Tivoli, he had invaded the stage when we began ‘Live Forever’. He had brought a girl with him, with whom he waltzed round the stage. We all looked at each other as if to say, What the fuck? He had also ‘written’ a song with Noel one night, which he labelled ‘Purple Parallelogram’. Not too sure how much of this songwriting Noel remembered, though.

  We had gone out in Manchester to celebrate the impending release of ‘Live Forever’, which we knew was a fantastic record. It turned into a hazy evening of low-quality drugs and alcohol. I was told later that Dando then returned to his hotel, near Manchester Airport. Apparently, he wound up totally destroying his room, which woke up the rest of the floor. When the hotel management visited to remove him, he barricaded himself in. The police were duly called, and identified him as a potential lunatic. Finally, six experienced police officers armed with machine guns broke his resistance and arrested him. I never saw him again.

  8 AUGUST 1994. ‘LIVE FOREVER’ RELEASED. REACHED NO.10 IN THE SINGLES CHART

  Our third single was a stormer and my personal favourite. Our first Top Ten hit. I suppose if anything reminded me of the fantastic time we had in Liverpool, it was this song. Noel was furious, though, after reading an NME review that alluded to the same:

  Two ungainly slabs of thug-boogie down the line, and I had this lot marked down less as the Beatle-browed saviours of rock n roll and more as The Real People for 94. Remember the Real People? Scally bruisers with a heavier take on baggy, a taste for scrapes and an inevitable obsession with the Fab Four… See? ‘Live Forever’ though, is much, much better. With predictable bravado Noel classes it alongside ‘Wild Horses’ and ‘Cortez the Killer’, but really it’s more like the Las ‘There She Goes’. It totally gives off the impression that the Gallaghers believe they can make the world dance around their little fingers – which they can nowadays, more or less. And it even succeeds at being extremely pretty, a quality you’d hardly expect from such svelte sophisticates. Basically what thus far looked like Mancunian lad arrogance, looks like sheer effortlessness. A terrific record.

  John Mulvey

  The fact that John Mulvey had alluded to the influence of The Real People had upset Noel’s equilibrium. To throw petrol on the fire, I asked if they would get their production credits on ‘Supersonic’. Noel seemed less than amused. But neither was I.

  9 AUGUST 1994. THE RIVERSIDE, NEWCASTLE

  We were playing to another hall that was packed to the rafters. It was a particularly wild one; I watched a full can of lager fly over the crowd, soaking those under its flight path. Radio One were broadcasting the concert live and Jo Wiley was watching us from the crowd. Jo always enthused about us as a band and we all really liked her. There was something grounded and normal about her. Liam was receiving the usual heckles and stood glowering into the crowd.

  We had just started ‘Bring It on Down’ when I first noticed him. He was stary-eyed and his face was pulled tight in anger. Then he was off, jumping the barrier and running towards us. Before I could move, he had jumped onto the stage. His arm retracted quickly and then he punched Noel square in the eye. Noel howled and sank to the floor. I pushed my kit over and with Liam, set about the assailant, who was about to complete a follow-up blow on Noel. Liam caught him on the jaw as I threw a flying kick. The roadies and security then jumped on him, which upset the crowd, who now viewed the invader as the underdog. He was dragged off stage and it was announced that the gig was cancelled. This news did not go down very well at all. To add fuel to the already raging fire, Noel then picked up a microphone stand and raised it above his head. He moved to the front of the stage, where he shook it victoriously. I watched as balls of phlegm were launched in his direction and became aware that the hostility of the crowd had boiled over. Bonehead and Guigs stood motionless, with their instruments still strapped on, through the whole commotion.

  ‘C’mon, let’s go,’ said Liam and we quickly headed off stage. After being told to leave our belongings in the dressing room, as they would be collected later, we were fired out the fire exit to the entry behind the concert hall and into our minibus. Our bus had seats that could spin 360 and the windows were blacked out. The only problem we had was that there was a car parked immediately in front of us, which blocked our escape. As we sat and pondered our next move, the crowd erupted out of a door further down and quickly spotted the van. The mob soon surrounded us, and were intent on our blood.

  ‘Just push the car out of the way,’ I screamed at the driver as the first brick left a spider web on the strengthened window next to me. He put the bus into gear and slowly, at first, started to push the car. All the band were now in their seats, with their heads between their knees. Bricks and bottles rained down on the bus. Somebody was attacking the back door windows with a steel pipe and I was thinking that it was gonna come through any minute and then we would be in trouble. The bus driver, though, suddenly created enough space to swing his vehicle around the car and we pulled off. I heard screams as we ran over somebody’s limb and watched as those still clinging to the bus were thrown to one side.

  30 AUGUST 1994. DEFINITELY MAYBE RELEASED. REACHED NO.1 IN THE ALBUM CHART

  We released our first album to huge critical acclaim. Definitely Maybe became the fastest-selling debut of all time and would eventually shift over 7.5 million copies. It hit No.1 on the first week of release and stayed there for three weeks, while also topping the charts in over 30 other countries. Since then, it has been voted both the best debut album and the best album ever released. I guess when I sit my grandchildren down and try to define my life, I will have to point to this record. It had really meant something to me to be working with the boys I had grown up with, the boys who had known just how harsh times could be in Manchester. We took on the world with our band of merry Mancunian men and no one could stop us. And then we made this album. With the magic of Owen Morris sprinkled all over it, it was a rock ’n’ roll debut to be extremely proud of. And I was.

  5 SEPTEMBER 1994. HACIENDA, MANCHESTER

  We played the Hacienda which was always going to be a hectic night. The house security weren’t the sort to let you think you were different because you were the band. And they weren’t the sort you would argue with either.

  Shaun Ryder was backstage before the gig. He wanted to watch the performance from the side of the stage but Noel wasn’t wearing it. Our security man told Shaun ‘it’s not going to happen’ which led to a barrage of unveiled threats from a pissed off Shaun. I noticed that Noel had made himself scarce.

  It was a solid
performance at the Hacienda and it was good to see so many familiar faces. The after-gig dressing room was in a jubilant mood and the gin and tonics were flowing. Unfortunately, events were brought to a premature end as we were ejected by the house security in a very no-nonsense manner. Nobody argued. Not even our own security. We just drank up and left. Shaun Ryder was stood amongst the security and gave us a little wave and a smile as we did.

  CHAPTER 6

  OASIS ADULATION AND THE BASSIST REVELATION

  JAPAN TOUR

  PERSONNEL LIST

  BAND

  Liam Gallagher, vocals

  Noel Gallagher, guitar

  Paul Arthurs, guitar

  Paul McGuigan, bass guitar

  Tony McCarroll, drums

  CREW

  Margaret Mouzakitis, tour manager

  Ian Robertson, assistant tour manager/security

  Jason Rhodes, production manager

  Mark Coyle, sound engineer

  Roger Nowell backline technician

  Melissa Linsalato, merchandise/promotion

  Quattro, Tokyo (Japan) – 13 September

  Quattro, Tokyo (Japan) – 14 September

  Quattro, Toyko (Japan) – 15 September

  Quattro, Toyko (Japan) – 16 September

  Quattro, Osaka (Japan) – 18 September

  Quattro, Nagoya (Japan) – 19 September

  11 SEPTEMBER 1994. RINGWAY AIRPORT, MANCHESTER

  We were off to the Land of the Rising Sun for the first time. I couldn’t fucking wait. I’d been interested in Japanese culture ever since I’d watched Monkey blowing on his finger to summon his cloud car on BBC2.