Getting High
Page 31
‘I’ve lost a lot of friends,’ he noted, ‘split up with my girlfriend. I was going out with this girl for about six years, living with her and all that. Hopefully, I’ll get over it.’
And songwriting?
‘The music and the melodies I can write every day,’ he casually said from behind his huge shades, ‘but the lyrics I have to wait for. The music’s a doddle.’
That night, as drained and excited fans streamed out of the gig, Evan Dando, armed with an acoustic guitar, stood on the roof of the hall and ‘serenaded’ the crowd with songs.
Next it was back to Sweden, where their record company had unintentionally let the album out a week earlier, prompting real fears that Oasis would lose UK sales by fans snatching up import copies. That didn’t happen.
They booked into a hotel the night before the show and the band went out on the town.
Next morning, Marcus rose early for a breakfast meeting. He was sitting in the hotel lobby with a Sony employee when the hotel’s manageress angrily approached him, waving a copy of the day’s newspaper at him.
The Sony employee translated. Oasis were on the front page because the paper couldn’t believe, after the Hultsfred bar incident, how such a bunch of louts had been let back in to the country.
The manageress agreed. She had just said as much to an employee. ‘But they’re staying here,’ she had been told, ‘that’s the manager over there.’
Now she was demanding to enter all their rooms at nine in the morning (they had all crawled into bed two hours ago}, and check for damage. If there was any, they would be thrown out.
Marcus tried to dissuade her but then he had to laugh. ‘Okay, go and wake Oasis this early. Go on.’ From every room there came insults, swearing and threats.
When they were on the road all the band shared rooms except Noel. He was now insisting on having his own room, the first member of Oasis to do so. After all, he smiled, I’m not called the Chief for nothing.
Liam and Guigsy shared rooms and that left an unhappy Bonehead forced to go in with Tony Mccarroll. ‘One fucking word out of you,’ he’d say to him, ‘and you’ll get it.’
But that was nothing compared to the abuse Guigsy heaped upon McCarroll’ s shoulders. Sometimes it was so vehement, so cruel, that even Liam and Bonehead were moved to take the fuming bassist aside and say, ‘Here are Guigs, leave him alone, chill out a bit.’
Guigsy couldn’t help it. If only McCarroll would keep his gob shut. But he didn’t and when he didn’t he came out with lines like, how he loved that Beatles song ‘Ringo In The Sky With Diamonds’, or, check this one, Europe was an island.
That killed Liam, that one. ‘I’m fucking thick,’ he shouted at the drummer, ‘I ain’t been educated but even I know that Europe isn’t a fucking island, you great big fucking dickhead.’
After the Swedish show, the band flew over to Ireland. Fittingly they played their first Irish gig, the Tivoli in Dublin, on the day the IRA announced a ceasefire. ‘Mental gig,’ Marcus remembers.
The next night at the Limelight in Belfast, as the band were halfway through, ironically enough, ‘Bring It On Down’, a lone loyalist bomb was heard to go off outside. Marcus missed that gig, opting instead to return to London for business meetings.
The next day, Oasis flew high above the sea that Peggy and Bonehead’s mum had crossed all those years ago, and landed in Manchester. Marcus was there, a grin all over his face.
Definitely Maybe, he told them, had not only shot in to the charts at number one, it was the fastest-selling debut album in history. Oasis were, believe it or not, in The Guinness Book Of Records. They’d outsmarted even Michael Jackson. And Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras, the Three Tenors whose album had been hotly tipped for the top spot that week.
Creation put out a smug press release boasting that Oasis would outdo three fat blokes singing any day of the week.
Definitely Maybe would stay in the charts for years to come.
So, on this victorious night, where better to perform than the Hacienda, witness to their teenage years and run by the very company that first turned them down. Oasis tore the place apart. But they did so with some revenge in their hearts. You didn’t fucking listen, did you? See what you missed?
Europe was starting to take notice as well. MTV’s 120 Minutes had screamed a lengthy interview with Noel and Liam in August, the last time they would sit down together for the cameras.
Miles Hunt of The Wonder Stuff was the interviewer. He’d read Noel’s scathing comments about him in the Melody Maker and he confessed to being a little nervous about meeting them. But the boys had no axes to grind. They were saving that for each other.
On set Noel hid behind his shades and stared impassively. Liam sat next to him with a Not Bothered look on his face.
The interview began okay but the friction soon built. It started with Miles asking about the guy who had whacked Noel in Newcastle. Noel replies, ‘It was because he found out I was sleeping with his girlfriend.’
‘Was it?’ Liam asks, slightly perking up.
‘Yeah,’ Noel says, staring straight ahead.
‘Nice one,’ Liam notes but with no energy. Months before they would have been verbally bouncing off each other after Noel’s comment. But today there is bad air between them.
Soon it comes to talking about the band’s history, and the rift opens wide up for all to see.
‘He’s took over the songs,’ Liam says, ‘but he’s not took over how the band is run or how I’m gonna run my life. He hasn’t taken over me.’
‘Yes I have,’ Noel interjects, but Liam ignores him and continues, ‘He’s took over the structure of the songs and how they should sound and he’s given us discipline, which is right. But he’s not taken over the vocals or the guy who stands in front of that microphone, because that’s me.’ He spits it out.
Noel sits, quietly seething, as Miles then turns to him and asks, ‘So you do all the songwriting?’
Coolly but very carefully, Noel says, ‘I do all the music, all the lyrics and, oh, I co-produced the album.’ Top that, bruv, who can’t stop seeking all the attention.
Noel, having asserted himself as the Chief, is then asked to choose a video and he selects ‘Hung Up’ by Paul Weller, a song that he would later nominate as Weller’s best solo song for a photographic book that was published the following year on Weller.
Their other MTV appearance that month, for Most Wanted, was thankfully more pleasurable. Noel, Liam and Bonehead, played live, all three sitting on stools, with Bonehead at the electric piano.
Although Definitely Maybe has just been released they totally ignore that and instead premiere ‘Whatever’ for the TV cameras. At the song’s conclusion, to the melody of ‘All The Young Dudes’, the Gallagher brothers put in a Manchester City chant, singing, ‘All the young Blues / Carry the news...’
They then perform a gentle ‘Live Forever’. Class.
Oasis were moving at breakneck speed now, acting as if they were somehow scared that they would wake up tomorrow and find everything had been a glorious dream, the curse that afflicts all working-class people when their ambitions are actually realised.
Abroad now, to Germany, and where better to debut Oasis than in Hamburg where The Beatles honed themselves into the tightest band of their generation, before the screaming started and it all went to waste, gig-wise.
Oasis played the Logo where the promoter breezily said, ‘No, we don’t need any barriers in front of the stage.’
Marcus replied, ‘If you don’t put them up, we walk.’ Reluctantly, the promoter ordered that barriers be put up. After the show, he came to Marcus and said, ‘Thank God you did that. I never thought the crowd would go that wild.’
Over now to the Arena in Amsterdam and from there home for a brief stay and then on to concerts in Japan (Japan!), where they hadn’t even released a record yet but the gigs were all sold out. How mad was that? (On the flight over Noel and Guigsy sat together struggling with their hang
overs while the rest of the band were busy inviting two girls to one of their gigs. When they showed up Guigsy was introduced to one of them. Her name was Ruth and they’ve been together ever since.)
The Quattro booked them for a week-long tour, starting on 13 September and ending on the 19th. Four nights in Tokyo, one gig each in their Osaka and Nagoya premises. It was absolutely mental.
Pictures came back of Noel crushed against a wall by about thirty Japanese girls, another beatific smile spread across his mouth.
The girls waited outside the hotel. They screamed when they saw the band come out, they screamed at the gigs and they screamed in delight when they got to party with them all night.
One night the band were taken to see a Beatles’ copyist band called The Parrots and they were so good, so on the nail, that Noel joined them on-stage for a couple of numbers. Then back to the hotel and more girls, more drinks.
In Danielle Soave’s account of all this glorious madness for GQ magazine, she notes Liam squaring up to Tony McCarroll in the hotel, shouting, ‘You better get your shit together or you’re out of this band.’
Naturally McCarroll was also driving Guigsy to distraction. One night, the bassist finally snapped. He told McCarroll that, swear to God, if he didn’t shut up and go away, he was going to get a knife and plunge it into his gut.
Mccarroll, immune to insults after all this time and usually able to convince himself that all was cool, chillingly realised that the bassist wasn’t joking. He was deadly serious.
Panicking, McCarroll went up to Noel’s room and banged on the door. Noel opened up with a brusque, ‘What?’
There was a girl lying on the bed behind him. McCarroll told Noel about Guigsy’s real and frightening threat.
‘Well, you tell Guigsy,’ Noel barked, ‘that I’m the first in the queue to fucking knife you, and if Guigsy does it before me I’ll have him as well.’
McCarroll walked away, not knowing how seriously troubled Noel was by his presence in the band.
The album Noel could hear in his head would demand a higher level of proficiency from all the players. He was determined to show that on his next recording he could go deeper and startle people even more with his range. With Definitely Maybe Oasis had trounced the opposition. Now Noel wanted to stamp all over them. Definitely Maybe was a great album but it showed just a few aspects of Noel’s talent. To really prove himself, he and the band would have to cast the net much wider, like all his idols had done. And Noel doubted very much that if McCarroll stayed that would be a possibility.
That said, Noel couldn’t forget that McCarroll had been there from day one. Like him or not, he had slogged it out with the rest of them and even if he was a total misfit, his efforts couldn’t be discounted.
But something, Noel knew, before he turned his attention back to the smiling girl in his room, would have to give.
And it did. But it wasn’t McCarroll who walked. It was Noel Gallagher.
He had met Brian Cannon through The Verve; Brian had designed their record sleeves. Noel liked his style and when they first met, they got on well together. They shared similar tastes and Brian was from the North as well, Wigan, to be precise.
Brian was also younger than Noel so when it came to the presentation of Oasis, Noel insisted on using the designer. Part of Noel’s vision was to give outsiders a chance. They would work together although Noel made it plain from the outset that his was the final word.
At an early meeting, Brian showed Noel various logos and they decided to parody and echo the Decca Records design by inserting the word Oasis into a small box. The background would be black but Oasis would be in white.
For ‘Supersonic’ Brian had called in Michael Spencer Jones to shoot the band in the Monnow Valley Studio. The photograph was then printed so as to bleach the band’s faces white and emphasise the slightly garish colours around them.
For the ‘Supersonic’ sleeve, the colours were similarly treated but the band were absent. Instead, they depicted an Oasis tape playing and everything else in the room melting as the music played.
For ‘Live Forever’ they changed tack and decided on a blown-up black-and-white picture of the house in Menlove Avenue, Wootton, where John Lennon had stayed with his Aunt Mimi.
On the Definitely Maybe album cover they again used a domestic setting. But this time it was Bonehead’s old house in West Didsbury. The beauty of this sleeve is that it gives no indication whatsoever of the fiery, antagonistic music contained inside.
In the photograph, the band are totally static. They all, apart from Liam lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling, are watching Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad And The Ugly on a TV. The only moving object is a swirling lampshade.
Around them are various Oasis reference points, such as the pictures of Burt Bacharach, Rodney Marsh and George Best. George Best? But he’s United. Ah yes, Noel replied, but he was first and foremost an Irishman.
As the band nonchalantly laze around this flat with its potted plants and wooden floor, the impression given is one of tasteful restraint. Now put on the record and feel the opening track, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’ leap right out of the speakers and throttle your ears.
Brian Cannon, not surprisingly, was a big fan of the group so when the chance to go to Los Angeles to shoot the picture for their next single and to see them play arose, he happily accepted. He had no idea that on that trip he would see them fall apart. Nor did the country he left behind.
Britain was now besotted with the group.
All the talk was of Oasis. They were everywhere. Top Of The Pops had let them play an album track, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’, on the show, the Daily Star had now run a page feature, where they called Oasis, ‘The wildest and most outrageous rock band since The Who,’ and in Vox magazine, Noel endeared himself to every serious music lover by saying, ‘I realise that without them [the band] I’m nothing, in the same way that without me they’re nothing. The money won’t last forever and we’ll all end up broke one day, ’cos bands like us always do. But in ten years’ time, when we’ve got a few albums in the shop, my name will be in brackets by the songs. That’s something that will last forever and it’s all I want from this.
‘I’m not mithered [bothered] about being on the cover of this or that, or being a sex symbol or a voice of a generation, all I’m arsed about is going down alongside Ray Davies, Morrissey and Marr, Jagger and Richards, Lennon and McCartney, Pete Townshend, Paul Weller and Burt Bacharach.’
Over at Creation Records, the company’s money problems now wiped out in a stroke by Oasis, McGee had turned his obsessional nature towards healthy living. He now worked out every day in the gym. He refused all alcohol, drugs and tobacco. His high came from activating the endorphins in his brain through regular exercise. He now weighed eleven stone and he’d never felt more positive in his life.
Similarly, but in totally different ways, Tim Abbot was seriously enjoying life. He was working and playing with the most sensational band of the decade. Which is why, when he was woken at five in the morning by a call from Noel in America, he was initially pleased to hear from him. But when Noel said, he’d come over and see him tomorrow, Abbot got confused. Oasis had just started their first proper US tour.
‘He said,’ Abbot recalls, ‘that’s it, the fucking band’s over. They’re all fucking pricks. They don’t deserve it. Can you arrange to get me guitars and me baggage back, and can you phone Marcus and apologise, and tell him I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused but I can’t go on.’
Five hours later, Abbot was on a plane bound for America.
They didn’t like it, this strange land with its neon lights and funny ways. America threw them. There was an underlying falseness everywhere. People flew American flags in their back garden and said things like ‘Now have a nice day’ as if they meant it.
Then there were the others, like the record company people, who would come up and say, ‘Hi there, Loam, where’s your brother, Nile?’
It would annoy them so much, they’d change the channel only to find a religious nutter talking about God and asking for millions.
But the real killer was that they had landed in a country that didn’t know them. For the past year, Oasis had been the kings. They’d known nothing but success and huge attention. Everywhere they went in Britain, people stopped and stared. In the US they were barely known. It was like going back to the fucking Boardwalk or something.
Marcus had warned them about this and Noel knew the score. But it got to the others.
They started in a small club called Moe’s in Seattle, Nirvana’s hometown, on 23 September, and the next night played the Satyricon in Portland. The next day they travelled to San Francisco, where they were booked to appear on a radio station called Live 105.
The DJ had secretly invited Blur to the session thinking that the bands would be overjoyed to see each other. Wrong. Blur walked in, Damon said, ‘Hello,’ and Liam called him a wanker. It was pretty much downhill from there.
On the 27th they played what Marcus refers to as their first hicksville gig, Melarky’s in Sacramento. The crowd gave them a good reception, which was encouraging.
Then, on their day off, they arrived in Los Angeles where they discovered crystal meth, the most potent form of speed known to man. Use it and you don’t sleep for days. Then the comedown kicks in, guaranteed to depress and tire you to the point of such exhaustion that you lose patience with everything and everyone around you.
The first mistake some of the band made was to sample the drug and then stay on it, all day and all night, searching as always for the high. The second was to attend a party that Epic had unwisely thrown on the roof of the band’s hotel on the afternoon of their debut gig at the Whiskey.
Epic splashed out $50,000 on the bash, and Noel was moved to ask Marcus, ‘What the fuck is going on? We haven’t even put a record out and they’re treating us like fucking Bon Jovi or something.’