by Paolo Hewitt
‘Anyway, we get taken down the fucking police station. The coppers were like, “What do you think you’re doing?” Don’t know. Fuck knows. Mam turns up. Headmaster turns up. Then they got a fucking social worker.
‘He starts going, “Why are you doing all these things?” ‘Cos me mates do it. “So tell me about your childhood.” Don’t know. Then he was like, “I want to come round and speak to your dad.” I was like, don’t come round to my house, you don’t want to speak to me dad. In fact, wait a minute, yes come round to my house. In fact, come on let’s go. ‘Cos I hated this cunt.
‘He walks in and me dad’s like, “You fuck off. You’re telling me I’m a bad parent? It’s that cunt there.” And I’m standing there going, I told ya so.’
In Noel’s third year, his mum left McVitie’s biscuit factory and joined St. Mark’s as a dinner lady. Exam question A. In not more than 100 words, describe how best to bunk off school, take drugs and hang out with your mates when your mum is the dinner lady and expecting to see you every day.
Answer. Go to school. Register. Then leave. But always ensure you are back at school by lunchtime. Walk into dinner hall. Make a point of saying ‘Hello mum’, preferably in front of teacher on lunch-duty. Eat dinner. Leave school for the afternoon and then return home at normal times. Full marks, Noel Gallagher.
‘Me mam was flabbergasted at the military precision of how I managed to blag a whole term of school when she thought I was in every single day,’ Noel proudly says. ‘I think she admired me for that.’
Noel spent his days at his friend’s houses, playing records, sniffing glue. At home, he practised the guitar and at age thirteen he attended his first concert, The Damned at the Manchester Apollo. He recalls being dazzled by the lights, the huge sound, the spectacle. He also remembers being bemused by the wild pogoing that the band’s fans erupted into throughout the band’s performance.
Noel stayed at the back, coolly watching.
This pogoing lark looked a little bit too energetic for his liking, plus he couldn’t rid himself of the thought, the same one Peggy had experienced when she first saw screaming Beatles’ fans, that somehow it all looked a bit silly. There must be something a bit more serious. And there was.
One Saturday evening, Noel found himself watching the Granada music show So It Goes. The show was hosted by Tony Wilson who was also head of Factory Records, based in Manchester.
Factory courted controversy. Their first major signing, Joy Division, took their name from the phrase used by the Nazis to refer to Jewish women incarcerated in concentration camps who were regularly raped. A Joy Division EP, ‘An Ideal For Living’, used as its front cover a photo of a Nazi stormtrooper, a Jewish boy and a member of the Hitler Youth. When their lead singer, Ian Curtis, committed suicide in May 1980, the band reformed under the name of New Order, the term used by the Nazis to describe their vision of the future.
Tony Wilson once said that his whole philosophy was contained in a Sid Vicious quote. ‘I’ve met the man in the street,’ the now-deceased Sex Pistols bassist had said, ‘and he’s a cunt.’ Wilson liked that.
Yet in Manchester, the label was revered by many, especially students, the angst-ridden, middle-class teenagers who heavily related to Joy Division’s Gothic music and elliptical lyrics. Plus, Joy Division weren’t signed to a big company.
Punk had initiated a move away from major record companies. CBS, EMI and co. were all seen as the enemy, money-grabbing Conservatives who were out to stifle all innovation, all rebellion.
Taking advantage of the mood, several small record labels sprung up in the wake of punk. But many of them, Stiff Records being the prime example, were London-based.
Factory Records started in Manchester, signing local bands, and became a significant part of Manchester’s cultural history before collapsing in the early 1990s. They would also have the distinction of being the only record company to turn down Oasis.
Tony Wilson’s background in TV included presenting several music programmes for Granada. But So It Goes gained the highest ratings. As he explained once, ‘We got all the best bands because the BBC wouldn’t touch them.’
Noel saw a lot of punk groups on that show as well as more contemporary acts such as Joy Division or The Jam. Subsequently, he bought himself a pair of bondage trousers (‘black ones with red tartan’), a black leather jacket, and ‘huge Dr. Marten boots’ which he strolled around town in. It was the sentiment behind punk, the energy, the fuck-you attitude, which riveted Noel so. He was young and isolated, and punk was the perfect vehicle with which to vent his frustrations.
In 1967, Paul McCartney read in the Melody Maker that The Who’s new single, ‘I Can See For Miles’, was the loudest ever made. Determined to outstrip them, McCartney then wrote ‘Helter Skelter’. The sound and attitude behind that song directly inspired The MC5 and The Stooges, who in turn inspired The Sex Pistols.
Which is why Noel Gallagher believes that Paul McCartney invented punk rock.
In contrast, it was Paul Gallagher who bought modernism into the Gallagher household. Paul was a fan of The Jam and the second wave of mod bands that had surfaced in 1979. Noel dismissed it all at the time. Mod carried none of punk’s frisson and frankly most of the records from the likes of Secret Affair, The Merton Parkas et al. were lame. It was only much later on that Paul Weller would capture Noel’s imagination.
‘He was pissed off about something,’ Noel enthusiastically relates about Weller. ‘He was angry at the world and questioning everything, politics, ways of life, family life. To be honest, I didn’t have a clue what he was going on about; it was the overall thing.’
All the groups that Noel would cherish (later on it would be The Smiths and then The Stone Roses), started from the street (‘not some art concept’), and played for the people. It was the direction he would take his own group in, although at this point music still hadn’t consumed his life. Football held more importance.
A regular now at Maine Road, Manchester City had performed well in the early 1970s. They gained respectable league positions (starting from the 70-71 season: eleventh, fourth, eleventh, fourteenth and eighth respectively), lost a League Cup final against Wolverhampton Wanderers in 1974, but beat Newcastle two years later to win the cup.
In the FA Cup, their progress was only so-so, but in the crucial local derbies, they often outplayed United, their greatest triumph coming in 1974 when Dennis Law, formerly of United, scored City’s only goal with a backheel kick that pushed United into the Second Division. To see a former United legend such as Law dispose of his former teammates with a cheeky backheel, that was class.
There was another strain of football in Noel’s life, but its only connection with Manchester City was that it was played on Huff End playing fields where the away-fans’ coaches park.
Gaelic football is a mix of football and rugby. The goals are rugby posts but have a net strung beneath the bar. You kick the ball but you can also handle it.
Thomas Gallagher played, and he would take Noel and Paul along and they too would end up in a game. Eventually, Noel joined the Oisian’s Gaelic Football Club and won many trophies with his team.
‘It’s a tough game,’ Noel states. ‘Physical contact is allowed and the Irish don’t give a fuck. The referee’s pissed anyway ‘cos it’s someone from the pub and all the dads are there, pissed up, watching their sons, going, “Go on, have him.”
‘We used to travel to Liverpool and Leeds and we used to win the league. We went on a trip to Ireland and played at Crow Park, which is the National Stadium in Dublin. It holds about 92,000 people and there were about four people when we played.’
If anywhere, this is where Noel would have gained his strength from, developing a strong constitution that would be constantly tested by drink and drugs in the coming years. But what always caught Noel’s and some of the other boys’ attention when they played in Manchester was a house that they could see from the field, situated on Mauldeth Road West. The number of
the house was 388 and it always had this smart 1960s Zephyr car parked outside which the boys became fascinated by.
Another place to head for was Erwood Park. This was a huge park that divides Burnage from Levenshulme. By now, though, Noel was taking more of an interest in the guitar. He could play the bassline from songs such as’ Anarchy In The UK’, if only on one string. And this impressed him so much that rock-star aspirations started to form in his mind. Soon after, he moved on to simple blues licks and the dream started to harden. Eventually Noel learnt a song, the perennial classic for all aspiring guitarists, ‘House Of The Rising Sun’ by The Animals. Interestingly, many of Noel’s later compositions would follow its style by incorporating a descending chord structure as an intro.
‘I remember playing that song for, could have been two years, until I could do it flowingly,’ he recalls. ‘It used to take me about an hour to go from one chord to another but I persevered. This guitar I had, the strings were far off the fret board so you’d have to push the strings down really hard and it really hurt me fingers.’
Help came from an unlikely source. Quite often, Noel and his friends would play football matches against the boys from Levenshulme in Erwood Park. The outcome was always the same. As soon as the first foul was made, they would pile in and try to beat the shit out of each other.
Before or after these games, Noel would always spot a group of older guys in the distance, rolling around the grass in fits of laughter. Noel figured they were on glue. After all, that was the effect he and his friends got from the substance. But somehow their behaviour seemed different.
These boys were hippies (‘smellies, that’s what we called them’). They wore kaftans, smelt of patchouli oil and their hair was long. One guy in particular interested Noel. He always brought an acoustic guitar to the park. His name was Flo and the local people thought him, well, weird.
‘And me and him became really good mates,’ Noel reveals.
‘He used to sit in the park with his hippie mates, drinking cider, listening to Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven”, and when we were playing football, it would be like, look at all those hippies. We were like little punk-rock kids, never trust a hippie and all that.
‘But they were good guys. They were smoking all these weird cigarettes. We’d say, “Have you got a cold, mate? Your eyes are all red.” And they had these tiny little tape recorders and sat there smoking pot.
‘So I said, “I’ve got a guitar.” They were like, “What, you can play?”
‘I’d say, “I can do ‘House Of The Rising Sun’,” and me and him [Flo] became great mates ’cos I used to sit there for hours watching him play guitar. He could play “Rising Sun”, but also things like “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” by The Beatles, which I thought was fucking phenomenal.
‘That he could play a song and sing it all the way through. Everyone else would be laughing, going, “You fucking dickhead,” but I thought it was fucking great.
‘This was before I started taking drugs with him. ‘Cos we were always proud of glue sniffing for ages and ages, but he was like, “That’s just chemicals, man, you’re fucking your inner-self. Take these mushrooms, they’re natural, man.” So he gave me some in a cup. Fucking ace.
‘Mushrooms were just fucking brilliant. I have never laughed so much in my life, but in pain laughing – I couldn’t stop laughing. And he had a ferret. He used to bring it for walks on a lead. It was golden coloured and it had red eyes and when we were on mushrooms, it wasn’t a ferret then, it was some bizarre monster. We’d be hiding behind the trees on mushrooms thinking this monster was going to eat us. Top time.’
Another boy who played football in the park was a kid from Levenshulme. Everyone agreed that he was one of the ace footballers. By contrast, Noel was too lazy. He would stand in the middle of the park and never run. Just receive the ball and make long passes. But this guy was something else. He had balance, ball control and a footballing brain that allowed him to see moves before anybody else did.
‘And at the end of every game,’ says that kid, ‘you would see all these dead cigarette butts where Noel had been standing.’
For Paul McGuigan, or Guigsy as he was better known, it was an image that would endure.
Four
They hadn’t played here for just over a year. The last time was 18 December 1994 at the Academy. Now they were headlining the huge NYNEX arena in central Manchester, and close to 20,000 people had bought tickets. The first-ever Oasis gig took place on 18 August 1991 down the road, at the Boardwalk. No more than fifty people showed up. Tonight would be their 218th gig.
The last time Noel had been here was as a roadie for The Inspiral Carpets and nobody noticed him when he walked by. Now all eyes were on him.
The capacity for this venue was 19,300, but Marcus said, ‘We’ve gone for 15,000 tickets. We calculated under so there should be tickets left at the office. That’s the idea.’
He was standing in the venue’s vast dressing-room. He jerked his head towards the exit door behind him and his Welsh accent became far more prominent. ‘But the bloody touts are already out there. Fuck knows how they do it. After Brighton [29 December gig at the Conference centre] I set up a ticket-line to try and stop all that. I made it so that fans can ring up. If they haven’t got a Barclaycard, then they go into town to pick them up.
‘But most of them have got Delta or Switch cards. They can only buy four maximum. If I want to I can call up all the addresses of everyone who has ordered. But these touts have a network of people. They call up ten people who then order four and that’s forty tickets in their hands already. And how are we supposed to know who’s in on it?’
‘At Earls Court,’ he continued, the frustration rising in his voice, ‘some were charging £100. The average was £40. Fuck, I wouldn’t pay a hundred quid to see anyone. And then you’ve got the bootlegs. But you’ve got to hand it to them, some of them are brilliant, the covers especially.
‘There’s one just come out using the Mojo session we did. It’s a better pic than the magazine used. In fact,’ his voice dropped down a register, ‘the cover’s better than Morning Glory.’
From behind Marcus, the sound of the band soundchecking could be heard. It was a new song they were running through. It had no title as yet but it did have a memorable couple of lines that Noel was singing: ‘Where angels fly / You can’t tread / That’s what you get for sleeping with the NME.’
Liam now enters the arena. Rather, he swaggers in, his long legs bent outwards, his long arms swinging, his whole demeanour that of ‘who wants it?’ One of the roadies kicks a ball to him.
Liam is wearing a Lennon-style cap, a large green jacket, jeans and trainers. He starts playing football with the roadie until he miskicks it and the ball rolls under the stage.
‘Can’t be arsed,’ he shouts to his playing partner and then he runs to the stage and clambers on to it just as the band hit ‘Round Are Way’. Liam saunters to the mike and starts to sing. At the song’s ending, Noel wastes no time and immediately strikes up the chords to his new song.
By doing this, you may suspect that Noel wants Liam to disappear as his brother doesn’t yet know the words. More likely is that due to their relentless touring programme, soundchecks are now the only place where Noel can try out new songs and new ideas with the band.
The way it happens is simplicity itself. Noel will start up a chord sequence that has been buzzing around his head of late. Bonehead and Guigsy will walk over to him, study the chords and then join in.
Alan White will then gauge the song’s correct tempo, and bring his drums in. In this manner, a new song can be firing through the speakers within two minutes of Noel first playing it. Or they may play a Beatles’ cover just to get them in the mood.
This afternoon, the four of them play ‘Free As A Bird’. It is ragged but strangely touching, especially to hear Noel singing the line that Macca wrote to John Lennon: ‘Whatever happened to / The world that we once knew.’
&
nbsp; Certainly, everybody’s life in and around Oasis had changed irrevocably. They would never know again’ the world as they once did. There would never be any going back. They had pulled it off, escaped into their dreams and then made them a reality. How top was that?
A four-piece horn section, especially brought in for the gig, arrives and sets up at the back of the stage as the band troop off. They play their instruments without Oasis. Echoes of The Beatles again; ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ to be precise.
Then Liam walks back on-stage clutching a Manchester City football shirt. It is a present, the actual top that Willie Donachie wore in the 1976 League cup final when Manchester City played Newcastle.
‘Yeah, but who won the game?’ asks Scotty, one of the road crew.
‘Fuck knows, not arsed,’ Liam replies, proudly holding it up. A minute later Noel walks back on-stage. Scotty asks him the same question. Noel, with a little bit of irritation in his voice, immediately says, ‘We did, of course, 2-1. Barnes and Tueart scored.’
He straps on his guitar, and band and horn section swing through ‘Round Are Way’. Then comes a thunderous ‘I Am The Walrus’, the song that has ended their set for years.
With horns now added, playing wayward, deliberately off-key and slightly off-time, the song gains so much more. Meanwhile, Trigger, the road-crew manager, the man responsible for ensuring that all the gear is set up on time, sits in the Oasis dressing-room. His baleful face looks exhausted. ‘We got in here at two this morning to set the stuff up and we won’t be out till five tomorrow I shouldn’t reckon,’ he explains. ‘There was some classical thing on here last night and they [the venue] didn’t tell us until two weeks ago. I keep telling them [the Oasis organisation] that one day there’s going to be a disaster. There really will. We’ve nearly put as much gear up as we did at Earls Court in a day, and soon...’ He shook his head, not wanting to contemplate such a scenario.