Getting High
Page 24
A bouncer intervened and a very drunk Johnny Hopkins, who weighs about eight stone and measures about five foot eight in height, offered the bouncer outside for a fight.
Finally, Noel went off to ‘see some girl’, and the rest of the band headed down to the Falcon pub in Camden to see the band Whiteout, who they already knew.
McGee resisted that option and went to the Sabresonic club in Farringdon where Andrew Weatherall was DJing. Later on in the club, he bumped into Noel. Surprisingly, the guitarist was in a furious mood.
‘What’s the matter?’ McGee asked. Noel replied that at The Falcon, Liam, Bonehead and McCarroll had got on-stage with Whiteout.
‘This is my band,’ Noel raged, ‘and they shouldn’t do shit like that. You wait until I see them.’
It really pissed Noel off, Oasis on stage with a second-rate band. Didn’t his band members have any fucking pride in themselves?
‘Come on,’ McGee said. ‘Let’s go back to my place and play some records.’
At McGee’s house there was an old battered acoustic guitar in the corner. At seven in the morning, Noel reached over, picked it up and played Alan McGee a song he had written years ago. It was called ‘Rockin’ Chair’.
A week later Marcus and McGee met up again with Garry Blackburn of Anglo Plugging to hammer out a strategy for the band’s entry into the music world.
Blackburn already had good news. Steve Lamacq, a Radio One DJ, had booked the band for a session to be recorded on Wednesday 22 December and broadcast on 4 January. Oasis would be heard by millions.
What McGee and Marcus now wanted to do was to issue a white label of one of Oasis’s strongest tracks, ‘Columbia’, to all radio stations round about the same time as the recording of the Radio One session.
The song wouldn’t be available in the shops. It would only be heard on radio. It was a good choice of song to introduce the world to Oasis. ‘Columbia’ boasted a pile-driving rhythm, stinging guitar riffs from Noel, a contained vocal from Liam, catchy backing vocals, druggy lyrics, and managed to combine an obvious rock feel with a solid dance-orientated backbeat. Plus the title paid deliberate homage to the country that is notoriously known for its heavy cocaine production.
On 23 November 1993, three weeks after this decision was taken (and obviously with Noel’s blessing as nothing could ever get down without his say-so), McGee went to see Blair McDonnell, the head of Sony Publishing, who wasn’t convinced by McGee’s new signing.
McGee had played McDonnell the Oasis tape in August. His response? Not interested. Manchester was three years ago. Forget it.
Now McGee was going in to threaten him. Get Oasis’s publishing rights or let me out of our Sony distribution deal. McGee was anxious to secure the publishing deal as it would work in the same way as the recording deal, and he and Sony would become their publishers.
McDonnell was now a bit more interested but it would take another five months of McGee’s persistence and haggling before Noel Gallagher, in April 1994, signed to Sony publishing for £125,000. It touched McGee that Noel chose Sony.
‘He had better offers on the table,’ McGee recalls, ‘but Noel went with Sony I think because he knew that I and my partner, Dick Green, got a percentage.’
But such business details sometimes eluded Noel, especially after a session with a bottle of Jack Daniels. McGee remembers leaving Noel’s flat in Camden early one morning and the songwriter taking him aside. ‘Look Alan, I trust you, so for fuck’s sake don’t tell my publishers. But here’s a load of new songs I’ve been working on.’
McGee took the tape and then looked Noel straight in the eye and shook his head sadly.
‘Noel,’ he said, ‘for fuck’s sake, I am your publisher.’
On 11 September 1993 Oasis played one of their most memorable gigs. It took place at the Duchess of York pub in Leeds. They will never forget it. There was no one present. Well, there was a couple sat in one of the comers. But then they got into a terrible argument and left. So Oasis played to the owner and the barmaid.
‘We couldn’t decide whether to do an encore or not,’ Noel said. ‘I mean I thought the crowd didn’t deserve it to be honest with you.’
Still, it was a good warm-up for their In The City appearance three days later. But this time the buzz was about a group called Whiteout, and despite Garry Blackburn telling everyone he knew to check Oasis, the band went unnoticed despite receiving their first mention in the music press, a very encouraging NME review by Emma Morgan of their gig in late July at the Boardwalk.
‘Shout to the rooftops and dance in the streets,’ her copy began. ‘Creation have not gone mad... Oasis are a genuinely fine guitar-propelled pop band.’
Later in the review she makes a reference to the undoubted Stone Roses’ influence, and mistakes ‘Digsy’s Dinner’ for something called ‘Stray Dogs’. But there is no doubting her enthusiasm. ‘Oasis,’ she concluded, ‘really are the shoots of vitality in a barren pop land.’ Not bad for your first-ever mention in the UK music press.
Their Canal Bar show was also reviewed by Paul Mathur at Melody Maker. He writes that there were less than one hundred people present, but, ‘Oasis are magnificent’. He refers to their obvious influences – The Stone Roses, The Faces, The Happy Mondays, The Beatles, The Sex Pistols – draws attention to ‘Live Forever’ (‘an anthemic reiteration of the beautifully arrogant power of youth’), and concludes with the sentence, ‘Oasis have got me. You’re next and you’ll love it.’
Along with this press coverage, Oasis also made their national radio debut at this time, and appeared in front of TV cameras, all on the same day. Radio 5 had a weekly show called Hit The North which was presented by Mark Radcliffe and Marc Riley, formerly of The Fall.
During the In The City week they had elected to showcase the most promising bands that were playing in Manchester. Riley was a friend of Caroline Ellery, who managed the group Intastella. It was she who urged him to put Oasis on.
At first, Marcus Russell was reluctant for the band to be previewed at such an early stage, but they soon persuaded him otherwise.
That day they came in and played ‘Bring It On Down’, ‘Digsy Dinner’ and ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’. Peter Hook, the New Order bassist was co-hosting the show with Riley.
The band were downstairs in the basement and after they had finished ‘Bring It On Down’, Riley commented to Noel on the similarity between his guitar sound and the late Mick Ronson’s, who was best known through his work with David Bowie.
Noel replied that they had actually dug up Mick Ronson from his grave but the smell was awful. Nearly as bad as that coming from Peter Hook’s leather trousers.
‘They were so lippy and arrogant,’ Riley recalls, ‘but it was great to have them on.’
Directly after the show the band then travelled over to Leeds to perform two songs for a local TV show called Something For The Weekend. In this respect, the band had been helped no end by two people who Noel had met and who also lived in India House. Liam Walsh and Alison Martin worked for a plugging company called Red Alert. Their aim was to help young bands get radio and TV exposure and in the band’s early days they did as much as they could, such as securing them their first appearance in front of the cameras.
The press was also starting to pick up now.
In the 2 October edition of Melody Maker Oasis received another mention. In an article entitled ‘State of the Nation’ John Robb tipped Oasis as the band of the future.
On 7 October they supported Liz Phair at Manchester University and the NME reported (9 October) that she was heard to be complaining that Oasis spoke like ‘New York drug addicts’.
A week later Oasis supported The Milltown Brothers at the same venue, before going off on tour with another Creation signing, The BMX Bandits.
They played Keele University on 27 October, and Sheffield University the following night. Then it was on to the Wherehouse in Derby on 1 November and the Wulfrun Hall in Wolverhampton two days later.
This was basically a showcase gig for the media, put on by Creation, and their next bit of press coverage wouldn’t come until early December.
Meanwhile, Noel travelled up to Manchester to sign off. Much to his delight, he spotted Phil Saxe of the now-defunct Factory label in the same building, signing on. Revenge is so sweet, he thought to himself.
Noel also went to Louise’s and gave her a cheque to cover the rent arrears. Then he returned to London and his new home.
Noel had experienced mixed thoughts about leaving Manchester. It was his hometown and he was fiercely proud of it. After all, it had, in his own words, ‘given me my life view’, but he also knew it was filled with people who would rather hold him back than see him succeed.
Guigsy felt the same way and he soon left town as well, taking up residence in West Hampstead, and then London’s West End before moving to his current residence in North London.
But Liam and Bonehead refused to join the others. Liam found London ‘too impersonal, I couldn’t get my head round it’, and Bonehead agreed. He had Kate to consider, too.
On 28 November Oasis supported the band CNN at Sheffield University, before regrouping in Birmingham to play support to Saint Etienne. One of their members, Bob Stanley, remembers Oasis well.
‘Liam made a beeline for Sarah Cracknell, our singer, and was trying to give her lines of speed. At one time he actually locked us out of our dressing-room so he could talk to her. But Noel was friendly enough.’
No doubt Noel, although not a fan, would have admired Saint Etienne’s pop, although their studied approach would have told against them. Noel is drawn primarily to passionate music.
This tour was the first time that Jeff Barrett had seen Oasis live. He was looking forward to the event. He had heard of Oasis through McGee and from his days as The Happy Mondays press officer knew Noel. Noel had also dated a Manchester friend of Jeff’s, a pretty blonde named Hannah.
Jeff had now set up his own Heavenly Records label with his partner, Martin Kelly, who also managed Saint Etienne. It was Kelly who had specifically asked for Oasis to support them.
Jeff and Martin placed themselves at the front of the stage as the band came on. Within two songs they were vociferously cheering the band on. By the end of the set, they were left speechless by the band’s sheer musical class, their charisma and their arrogance.
Afterwards, Martin Kelly quarrelled with Marcus over the band’s payment while an elated Jeff Barrett went backstage and met Liam for the first time.
‘I told him,’ he recalls, ‘that he reminded me of Nathan Gough who managed The Happy Mondays. Liam said, “Well, you can fuck right off,” and I told him, “Well you’d better get used to my face, it’s going to be right in front of you at all your gigs.”’
Oasis were starting to get this now, people coming backstage and telling them how great they were. Their attitude, as ever, was, so you fucking should. You’d be a dickhead to think otherwise.
But it couldn’t have escaped Noel’s attention that the one song people kept on about was ‘Live Forever’, a point again made in Paul Mathur’s follow-up piece on the band that appeared in the 4 December issue of Melody Maker.
Mathur had been taken by Johnny Hopkins to the band’s rehearsal room in the Boardwalk. There they ran through a selection of their songs and Mathur returned to London to write lines such as, ‘Songs like “Digsy’s Dinner”, “Whatever I”, [sic] and in particular, the magnificent “Live Forever”, are delivered with an assurance that belies their relative inexperience. And they seem to be averaging about a dozen new songs each week, most of which are gobsmackingly tremendous.’
Mathur also quoted Liam as saying, ‘There’s a lot of people who seem to be making records just to fill up the time. We want to write classics.’
(You can just imagine Noel reading that line and then turning to his brother and saying, ‘Oh, we want to write classics, do we?’)
When Jeff Barrett returned to London, he made a phone call to Stuart Bailie at the NME, who was then editor of the Live pages. Although Barrett had no financial or otherwise interest in the band, his love for music was so contagious, he had to spread the news.
‘Stuart,’ he said, ‘this band Oasis? Well, everything you’ve heard about them is true. They’re phenomenal.’
‘Really?’ Stuart replied. ‘That’s not what Johnny Cigarettes says in his review.’
Attending the same Birmingham concert, Cigarettes’s opening line read, ‘If Oasis didn’t exist, no one would want to invent them,’ and his final line said, ‘But most annoying is the fact that they’re too cool to have a personality or be more surprising than the dullest retro indie fops, too well versed in old records to do anything new, and evidently have too few brains to realise that any of the above is true. Sad.’
Noel insists that he was nonplussed by the review, and that is probably true. But to receive two differing reviews in the same week, one ecstatic and one totally and utterly dismissive, would have served to prepare him for the vagaries of the music press.
Such hiccups aside, there was undoubtedly a momentum starting to gather pace. Melody Maker writer Calvin Bush reviewed Oasis supporting Saint Etienne at the Plaza in Glasgow. After dismissing ‘Shakermaker’ he wrote, ‘And then, Oh God, they play eight songs, seven of which are more marvellous than Lena Olin [Hollywood actress in The Unbearable Lightness of Being] in slinky black lingerie and a bowler hat. They are, frankly, incredible.’
The band next headlined at the Warwick University on 4 December before moving on to another tour four days later supporting The Verve, a group they actually had time for. The Verve were led by Richard Ashcroft; Noel would later write a song, ‘Cast No Shadow’, with him and Paul Weller in mind. He would also make a dedication to Ashcroft on the Morning Glory album.
The tour lasted eight days and visited Wolverhampton, Manchester, Glasgow, Preston, Newcastle and Bradford.
The bands got on well with each other and there were several all-night sessions, playing each other CDs and tapes, taking each other’s drugs and talking to the early hours.
The last Oasis date of 1993 was at the Krazy House in Liverpool, where they supported The Real People. Oasis were also back in the studio with The Real People, with a view to recording their debut single. But Noel felt uneasy. He knew that bands have to make a major impact when they launch themselves upon the world.
‘So I sat down,’ Noel casually notes, ‘and wrote “Supersonic” and “Take Me Away”.’
In the studio was a large dog named Elsa. Someone had inadvertently spilled cocaine on the floor and Elsa had licked it all up. She then spent the next few days gazing at a wall. So when Noel was busy scribbling out the lyrics, the image came to mind and thus, ‘I know a girl called Elsa / She’s into alka seltzer.’
After the recording was finished, they then travelled down to London for the Radio One session at the Maida Vale studios. This is where their radio plugger, Dylan White, first met them.
‘They were completely knackered. Noel was lying on a sofa and I asked them who the songwriter was. He said, “I am,” and I said to all the band, “I’m going to shake your hands now because in the future there won’t be any time.”’
The songs included in their set that night were ‘Bring It On Down’, ‘Shakermaker’, ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’, ‘Up In The Sky’ and the newly recorded ‘Supersonic’.
Alan McGee was in attendance at the Maida Vale show and he remembers hearing ‘Supersonic’ for the first time.
‘I kept thinking to myself, What’s wrong with this song? It’s too perfect.’
It was here that another piece of Oasis mythology was made. McGee holding a glass of Jack Daniels and coke sat down on a chair which subsequently collapsed. The drink spilt all over his white Levi’s jeans.
In Noel’s
hands that incident became, ‘Alan McGee was so excited by our performance that he poured a bottle of Jack Daniels all over himself.’
Face it, it does read a lot better than what really went down.
Thirteen
Liam Gallagher entered Mark Coyle’s bedroom in the Monnow Valley Studios in South Wales and told him to get the fuck up.
‘We’ve been waiting half an hour, you dickhead.’
Coyley made no response, just lay there sleeping. Liam went over and shook the engineer. ‘Oi, Coyley, get up.’
Coyley hated being woken up. It did his head in. He was one of these people who had to get their required amount of sleep. Woe betide anyone who prevented him from doing so. He came to with a start.
‘You fucking wanker,’ he shouted, ‘fuck off.’
‘Piss off dickhead and get up.’
Coyley raised himself up, grabbed some shoes by the side of the bed and threw them at Liam. Then he grabbed the lampshade and threw that too.
‘Fuck off, you madhead,’ Liam shouted, ducking the objects, but a huge smile breaking out on the singer’s face.
Then Coyley leapt out of bed and started running after the giggling singer. Outside, Oasis were sitting in their van waiting to travel to the Water Rats in Kings Cross, London. It would be their first proper concert in the capital, a prestigious concert people kept telling them. But they were unimpressed. To them, all gigs were important.
They already knew there was a buzz about this show. First off, ‘Columbia’ had brilliantly served its purpose by causing a real stir. It had received its premiere on Monday 6 December 1993 on Radio One’s increasingly important and popular Evening Session, hosted by Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley, and had been regularly played thereafter. It was the first time a demo had been put on Radio One’s playlist.
In his report to Creation, plugger Garry Blackburn wrote, ‘Reaction to this track has been fantastic, discussed at playlist meeting on Thursday 16th, now on C-list [lists devised by Radio One, A-list being those records that are most played] as of Monday 20th, and has been kept on C-list as of Monday 27th December. We will not go heavy on this...’