by Paolo Hewitt
The label only had one other group. They were called Blue Zone and were led by a sixteen-year-old vocalist called Lisa Stansfield.
Once Latin Quarter were signed, Marcus’s first ambition was to break them big in England.
‘They were writing politically correct, melodic pop tunes with a reggae tinge, and a couple of the songs were gems,’ Marcus recalls. ‘So I was trying to get them away in England, get them in the NME and all the weeklies. There were some people who championed them in the press but the general vibe was, Nah, this is old hat, we’re into Haircut 100, or something.’
Again, the unexpected occurred. The band’s debut album hit the charts in Germany. It would eventually rack up a quarter of a million sales and teach Marcus an invaluable lesson in pop management; there was more to life than just Britain. There was a whole world you could conquer. The experience literally opened his eyes.
‘I very quickly learnt, you don’t have to be big in England to sustain a career,’ he explains, ‘and then I looked at Latin Quarter’s success in Germany. Over there, they were licensed to RCA, and RCA developed the band with a very long-term point of view. They weren’t expecting a big reward straight away.
‘They were prepared to wait. And then Sweden cracked and we thought, right, we’ll start developing foreign markets and sod the NME and Radio One. And in the end they had success in England with “Radio Africa”. So my first experience was really positive.’
In 1986, Marcus felt confident to take on another group, The Bible, who scored three or four minor hits. ‘But in both cases,’ he says, ‘the bands self-destructed. It sounds a bit dramatic but I think everyone gets bugged by the level of success they have or haven’t got. And I was unable to give them that confidence within that time.’
As Marcus struggled to keep both bands afloat, a dynamic news story broke in the NME. The Smiths, the Manchester band who had taken over from The Jam as the critics’ and people’s choice, were to split up. Unable to work with each other through now very apparent differences, Johnny Marr the guitarist, who had been revered for his exceptional songwriting ability, was now a free agent. And he badly needed a manager.
Both he and Morrissey had not only led The Smiths but had also assumed managerial roles. The contractual maze that The Smiths’ demise now brought to light was mind-boggling. Plus, Marr was exhausted. He could no longer take on everything. He needed some cover.
To that end, he had visited his lawyer James Wylie to see if he could recommend anyone. Wilson brought up Marcus’s name.
Sure, Marcus was a friend but Wylie also admired his thorough approach and the way in which he had handled his groups thus far.
‘I’ll ring him and see what he has to say,’ Wylie told Marr. When the call came through, Marcus was flabbergasted and not a little scared.
‘Johnny’s profile is still very high now,’ Marcus points out, ‘but at that time he was like Lord God Johnny Marr.
‘He could have picked any top manager from either side of the Atlantic and, in fact, he did have this American guy managing his affairs in America. I was a fan of Johnny’s, but I’ve got to be honest and say that I fall into that category of people who love The Smiths music but could only take Morrissey in small doses.
‘I respect him as a lyricist and as a singer but he’s not my cup of tea. But I thought Johnny was fucking amazing, and double so when I actually met him and got to know him. He is such an open-minded guy, totally open-minded musically, and he’s a great guy to while away the early hours of the morning just talking and boring everyone to death about the last twenty-five years in music.’
Marr and Marcus hit it off straightaway. Marr relieved his American manager of all duties and then appointed Marcus his sole manager, a position he still holds today.
‘Johnny gave me shitloads of confidence basically,’ Marcus states. ‘He’s a very giving guy, to be honest, very understanding, very encouraging, and it was a hell of a break for me. And it was through Johnny that I ended up managing The The.’
After leaving The Smiths, Marr had decided to spend his time playing with various musicians. Whoever caught his fancy, really. To that end, he had hooked up with The Pretenders. But then an offer came through from Matt Johnson, the man behind The The, to work on his new album. Marr phoned Marcus for advice.
‘I said, Well, if that’s the choice it’s got to be The The. Because Matt was like the young-gun in town and with Chrissy [Hynde] it could take ten years to make the album. Matt was ready to go.
‘And then, totally unbeknown to me, Matt was in wrangles with his manager and he ended up managerless and during that course of time, he said, “Do you want to manage The The?”
‘I was like, Yeah, mad for it. And that’s when I really got into worldwide touring because for me it was just the greatest band going. Johnny Marr, David Palmer on drums – what a drummer he is – James Eller on bass and Dave Collard on keyboards. You rarely get to see a band like that.
‘So we did a world tour that lasted exactly a year and at the end of it my experience and knowledge had gone up like 3,000%.’
But the smile was soon wiped off his face. Within months of the tour’s end, Matt Johnson fired him.
‘Matt does albums in cycles,’ Marcus explains. ‘He’ll write the album, promote it and then he retreats into the world of Matt Johnson, and during his retreat after Mind Bomb I think a lot of people were pissing in his ear saying, “You need heavy management. Marcus is all right, he’s a nice guy, but you need someone who’s going to kick arse with the chief executive of Polygram or whatever.”
‘He had what I think is an old-fashioned perception of what an effective manager is. And it really wasn’t personal.
‘If he walked in right now we’d have a fucking great night together. But he was just going through that cycle and for about five minutes I was really worried but Johnny was just amazing. He very quickly reassured me. He was saying, “I can’t believe Matt’s done this, it’s the biggest fuck-up he’s ever made,” and he made me feel good about myself. And I’ll never forget Johnny for that.’
The next musician to catch Marcus’s eye was Andy Frank who was then in a band called S.K.A.W. (an acronym for the classic song ‘Some Kinda Wonderful’) and who had signed to Warner Brothers. Marcus had bought one of his singles and had been knocked out by the B-side, ‘which was like West Coast blues-laced acid stuff’. The song strongly reminded Marcus of his teenage roots.
S.K.A.W. broke up and Frank then set up another band called Pusherman, who now record for Marcus’s own label, Ignition Records. As all that was going on, Marcus found himself in May of 1993 talking to a very excited Johnny Marr.
The object of Marr’s enthusiasm was an unknown Manchester band. Oasis. ‘Oasis,’ Marcus replied, thinking to himself that it was a bit of a strange name. ‘What kind of music is it?’
Marr said guitar-driven pop. ‘They’re good,’ Marr continued, ‘fucking good.’
But Marcus was too busy with too many other things on his plate.
‘If you’re a successful manager,’ he points out, ‘you’re inundated all the time, not only with tapes but with people saying, “We should take on this or that”, “Look at these”, “Listen to that”, and physically you haven’t got the time to do everything.
‘So, I gotta be honest, I never got round to doing anything. And then Johnny phoned me again and said, “Look, this guy out of Oasis has been offered a deal, can you recommend anybody?” So I got a lawyer for them, which was John Statham.
‘And then John rang me and started saying, “These guys haven’t got a manager and they want to know why you haven’t been to see them.” I was like, “John, chill out. I’m busy, I’m doing this, I’m doing that, you know what it’s like.”
‘He said, “Fair enough, I’m only trying to find them a manager.” Anyway, a week or two later I was up in Manchester visiting Johnny, and Andrew Berry, the hairdresser, was there. He said, “Oasis are playing, why don’t you come and see them?�
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‘I was like, “Yeah”, but actually thinking I wasn’t going to go because I hadn’t heard anything except the manager of another group who was saying, “Oasis, nah, if it was gonna happen, it would have happened by now.” That was the vibe, believe it or not.
‘Then Johnny said, “I’m going up there, fuck it, let’s go into town and see them.” And it was like, well, if Johnny’s going to go, there must be something in it because he had never seen them either.’
So Marcus Russell, with Johnny Marr in tow, got into his car and drove to a student union bar called the Hop and Grape in Manchester. He got out of the car, walked into the gig and, again, the unexpected; his life changed forever.
Twelve
On 12 June 1992 Oasis woke up to find themselves splashed all over page twelve of that day’s Manchester Evening News. The writer was Penny Anderson, one of the very first journalists to interview the band.
On a full-page spread (indicative of the press to come), she wrote, ‘It is not very often that an unsigned band appear on these pages as the main feature, but Oasis deserve it.’
Noel had passed her a tape that Coyley had recorded at rehearsals. It contained songs such as ‘Take Me’ and ‘Colour My Life’.
Although Penny felt the lyrics needed more work (a criticism that would echo down the years), and the songs were too lengthy, Oasis were ‘the best demo band I have heard in years’. In the article, Noel, in an impish mood, and obviously pleased by the attention, describes their music as, ‘Not pop, not rock but somewhere in between. Maybe pock?’
He then refutes any suggestion that Oasis are cashing in on the vogue for heavy guitar-based music heralded by the success of Nirvana’s Nevermind album.
‘I’ve always been into guitars,’ Noel points out. ‘We want to put keyboards on but keyboard players don’t look cool on-stage, they just keep their heads down. There has never been a cool keyboard player apart from Elton John.’
It was, of course, a joke. But after the article appeared, Noel was pulled up several times in Manchester by people saying, ‘So you really think Elton John is cool, d’ya?’
Later on in the article, using the Gallagher foresight, he prophesied, ‘If we’d been around in 1989, we would have been signed by now but we would have been under serious pressure to deliver an album. But in eighteen months we’re going to be five times as good.’
It was true. In that time Oasis would have two top-forty hits under their belts and one of the debut albums of the decade nearly ready for release.
Another person to hear this demo tape was Phil Sachs at Factory Records.
Liam remembers the band going to meet him to get his verdict. ‘He said that we sounded too Manchester,’ he says with bafflement in his voice. ‘We said, “Well that’s what we are. We’re not Turkish or Israeli, we’re from Manchester.” So we fucked him off, took the tape.’
It was fortuitous for Oasis to be turned down by Factory. Despite their success with groups such as New Order and Happy Mondays, Factory were heading towards financial ruin. By the end of the year, receivers had been called in and the record company’s debts were estimated to be in the area of £2.5 million. Tony Wilson’s empire may have turned Oasis down, but a meeting which would produce far more benefit for the band was about to take place.
The Real People, a Liverpool group, had been going since 1988. They had been formed by two brothers, Chris and Tony Griffiths. In December 1989 they signed to Sony Records and a year later, their debut album was released.
In 1992 they toured America. While there, they also recorded a few tracks for their second album with the late Jimmy Miller, the famed 1960s producer who worked with The Rolling Stones and Traffic among many others.
On their return, the good news for The Real People was that they were offered a support slot with The Inspiral Carpets on their UK tour. The bad news was that they were about to lose their manager, Anthony Bodgiano, and that personnel changes at Sony had now removed all their supporters at the company.
Despite all this, their new single, ‘Believer’, had entered the charts at thirty-eight. But the group found themselves in limbo as Sony refused to back the band with any kind of serious promotion. It was in this context that the band set out on the road with the Inspirals.
‘The Inspiral Carpets were all right,’ Tony Griffiths of The Real People confirms, ‘but Noel and Mark Coyle were dead sound and that’s because they always gave us bevvies out of their riders.
‘We got talking and all that and after a few gigs, I found out that Noel was actually into our band. He had bought our records and our album and seen us a few times.’
On one of the dates, Liam came down to visit Noel and see the band. After the gig, Tony met Noel’s cocky young brother and immediately thought the same as everyone else when they meet Liam for the first time.
‘I met Noel first,’ Griffiths says, ‘but meeting Liam was weird because the first time I set eyes on him, I just went, you’re a star. I’d never heard him sing or nothing, it was just instant. He just had that look and attitude.’
It hadn’t been the first time that someone had expressed such sentiments and it’s probable that this was something that bugged Noel. He was the songwriter, the musician, the one who slaved for hours over his songs, constantly fine’ tuning them and having to deal with bouts of real self doubt. Yet, because of his essentially shy nature, people never instantly singled him out. Noel could be just as destructive as Liam but never as impulsive. In contrast, Liam, with his boisterous presence and natural charisma, got all the attention and was the natural magnet.
At the end of the tour, Noel and Mark invited The Real People down to see Oasis play at the Boardwalk on 5 January 1993. They would be supporting Puressence, another band tipped for big things.
It would be great to be playing live, but Noel and Coyley’s excitement was somewhat tempered by some very unwelcome news. The Inspirals had decided they no longer required their services. Maybe there had been too many complaints about their behaviour or maybe the band, as they explained to Noel and Mark, no longer had the finances to pay them. Whatever the reason, Noel was seriously pissed off. He now had to sign on and there is nothing worse than having to adjust your living standards to a much lower level. Now he was no longer financially solvent, Oasis would also be affected in terms of maintaining themselves financially.
Guigsy and Bonehead still worked, Guigsy as a personnel officer for British Telecom and Bonehead as a self-employed plasterer. But both Gallaghers were now on the dole, while, according to the band, it was always hard to squeeze cash from Tony McCarroll. It would only be through the DSS that Oasis could expect any kind of regular income.
When the Griffiths brothers arrived at the Boardwalk, Tony spotted John Bryce, who used to work for Sony Records but had now moved to Warner Chappell Publishing. He went over, said hello, and together the pair of them watched the gig.
Liam came on wearing a pair of shades, and sections of the audience started heckling him, shouting ‘Showaddywaddy’, in reference to the dire 1970s glam rock ‘n’ roll group whose singer also sported shades. Liam told them all to fuck off.
Oasis then played their customary short set to an audience of about fifty people. Now they had two new songs in the set list. They were ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’ and ‘Bring It On Down’.
‘They were the ones,’ enthuses Tony Griffiths. ‘I was standing there with this John Bryce and it was obvious to anyone standing there what was going on on stage. It was just fucking boss. And I said to John, sort them out some studio time and Chris my brother will produce it, and he said, “Yeah, fucking sound.”’
But Bryce found it impossible to convince his people in London of the wisdom of recording a band they had never seen or heard. So Tony and Chris decided to do it themselves.
‘We’d been setting up our own studio in a place called Porter Street in Dock Road,’ he explains, ‘a big warehouse which had like three floors.
‘We’d set up an ei
ght-track studio in this boss large room and at the same time we were about to produce our album. But then all this shit happened with the record company so we didn’t know what was going on. We didn’t have any gigs to do so we basically ended up working for Oasis for three months. We recorded about twelve tracks and it was really, really good.’
Eight of these songs would appear on the demo tape that Noel would later hand over to Alan McGee, head of Creation Records.
The sessions, produced by Mark Coyle and Chris Griffiths, took place at nights, starting at about eight in the evening and going through until about seven in the morning. They set the studio up to capture the band totally live, with very little added to the finished results.
By all accounts the atmosphere in the studio was easy-going with both bands showing each other a lot of mutual respect. Oasis even made a rough recording of a Real People song entitled ‘Heaven Knows’, and a lot of the sessions would veer into a party mode.
‘I still had a publishing deal at the time,’ Tony recalls, ‘so we had money to get the beers in, gin and tonics, all that stuff, plus there was a lot of good coke around at that time as well.’
When the band weren’t recording, they would retire upstairs where there was a pool table and a stereo. Captain Beefheart and Beatles’ music was the order of the day.
‘Slade as well,’ Tony recalls, “’cos our drummer, at the time, Tony Hodgson, he’s got the best musical taste in the world, and he was going through his Slade period where he was digging out all these Slade records, and that’s basically what we were listening to at the time.’
The boys would engage in endless argumentative banter about music and football. It amused Oasis no end how talkative their Liverpool allies were, especially when Tony and Chris introduced them to their older cousin Digsy, ‘the funniest man in the world’. Digsy also played in a group called, and this is indicative of his humour, Smaller.
As for Noel and Liam, Tony saw little of their argumentative side, except that which is common to all brothers.