Getting High

by Paolo Hewitt

  For the past few months, he had been listening to a private tape, given to him in America, of John Lennon starting his biography. On it, the former Beatle says, ‘I love that thing they said about George Bernard Shaw, that his brains had gone to his head.’ So did Noel. It was the impetus he needed to start work on what proved to be an exceptional song.

  That he was excited by it can be gauged by the fact that he premiered it publicly on acoustic guitar at Sheffield Arena. Paul Weller and Johnny Marr were in attendance, and Ocean Colour Scene and Pulp played support. A sign of what was to come.

  ‘That was funny that gig,’ Noel recalls. ‘I remember being onstage in this huge hall and Liam saying, “Why are all those kids being held back by the barriers?” and, I’m shouting, “I don’t know, I’m trying to play my guitar, you wanker.”’

  Which is when Liam and Noel told the crowd to fuck the barriers and the bouncers, and come further forward. Instantly, a mass of people vaulted themselves forward, an image that Noel would refer to after the show as ‘like a revolution or something’.

  Later that night, back at their hotel, Noel leant over to a friend and said, ‘Do you realise that a year ago we were just about to put our first single out and today we played to 12,000 people?’

  It had been an astonishing twelve months by anybody’s standards. Two days later ‘Some Might Say’ c/w ‘Talk Tonight’, ‘Acquiesce’ and ‘Headshrinker’ was released.

  Both NME and Melody Maker made it their Single Of The Week, and both reviews stated that it wasn’t the best Oasis single to date but it had so much punch it literally swept all before it.

  The next week it entered the charts at number one. In the same week, Paul Weller’s new single, ‘The Changingman’, came in at seven. One of Noel’s ambitions was to eclipse Weller’s record with The Jam of having three singles enter the charts at one. And there he was, six places above him.

  At a party in Soho, after Oasis had played Top Of The Pops, Noel sat in a chair, excitedly telling people, ‘Weller’s single has gone in at seven. That’s the first top-ten entry he’s had in years.’

  ‘Yeah, but Noel, you’re in at number one.’

  ‘I know, but Weller’s in at seven. It’s fucking top, isn’t it?’ Meanwhile, Tony McCarroll was back in Manchester trying to adjust to life without Oasis. After the Sheffield show, Marcus had called him in for a meeting and told McCarroll what he had heard all these years but refused to believe. If he didn’t shape up, he would be out. Now, it was true. He had played his last-ever gig for the band.

  Fifteen

  ‘When I read “Oasis is Noel’s band” it fucking sends me mad. It’s no one’s band. Take one away and there’s nowt left.’

  It lay at the core of everything, the way his brother ruled the band, dominated it with his songwriting and took all the major decisions. It badly angered Liam, made him feel that if he, Liam, sat down one day and wrote a song nearly as good as ‘Hey Jude’, it would be very, very doubtful that Noel would choose to record it. And that did his head in.

  He also believed that the success they now all enjoyed was as much about him as it was Noel. Sure, we know who writes the songs. And fair play, each one’s a cracker.

  But would they be so potent sung by anybody else? Could they be so perfectly realised without his unique voice placed right in the centre? And who were all the boys modelling themselves on? And who were all the girls rolling over for in early-morning hotel rooms? Me, Liam. Li-Am the walrus, koo koo ka choo. That’s who.

  It bugged him the most when Noel pocketed all his publishing money. Did his head right in. Oasis wasn’t about money. It hadn’t been formed for that purpose. It had been created to further music, and therefore Noel should share his good fortune. It was a band. All or nothing. I’d do it. Give a shit, here’s the dosh, lads. But Noel refused.

  As for himself, Liam was determined to have it large. He had waited years for recognition and success and now he had it, there would be no letting up. Liam would play as hard as he worked. On days off, he would wake up with a hangover at about four in the afternoon. By six, there would be a drink in his hand. By nine, the night, a promise full of pleasure would be beckoning to him and he would not, could not resist. The only thing that bugged him out was the media attention.

  On 28 February 1995, he had got into a drunken fight at the Dry Bar in Manchester. Not only was it reported in all the papers, but some scumbag had given The Word the camera tape of him being ejected. They’d screened it, the fuckers.

  But Liam, in his rampages around town never forgot other principles.

  ‘I remember going down to that club Brown’s,’ McGee recalls, ‘and Liam was there. I hadn’t seen him in quite a bit and he was surrounded by all these women, gorgeous women trying to get his attention. So I went over to say hello and he said, “Sit down, sit down.” So we started chatting and I said, “Liam, look if you want to pull these women I’ll go away, I don’t mind, in fact I perfectly understand. I’d do the same thing in your shoes.”’

  Liam looked at McGee.

  ‘They can wait,’ he said. And then, ‘So come on, how you been? Still signing shite bands on our money, are ya?’

  Noel and Meg were in Camden now, living down Albert Street in a small flat. It was obviously a serious relationship but initially Meg found Noel hard to get used to.

  To begin with, Meg’s job wasn’t working out. Flavor, the company she had set up, was failing. Too many phonecalls, not enough results. Noel told her that she should quit, find a less stressful job. It was taking too much out of her.

  But Meg couldn’t help it. That’s how she was. Determined. But also a realist. She knew the job was driving her into the ground with worry and stress. Reluctantly, because she had failed, Meg quit.

  ‘And then all of a sudden,’ she states, ‘I was penniless, I didn’t have a job and I felt like he was thinking that I’d given up my job because of who he is and that I was just going to stop work. But that isn’t like me. I desperately wanted a job, so that’s when I started doing the doors on clubs, just to show him that I was a hard worker.

  ‘Then he started work on Morning Glory, and I can understand when you’re writing that you have to be cut off but at the same time I wasn’t feeling strong.’

  According to Meg, Noel, once seized by an image or something on the TV or in the pub, whatever it was that kicked off his antennae, would drop everything and disappear into their small kitchen and furiously write. It’s how the lyrics for ‘Champagne Supernova’ came about.

  ‘I bought this sugar jar which had a little man hanging on it nearly buried by sugar,’ Meg says, ‘and then he just went into the kitchen and wrote that song.’ That jar is to be found on the inside sleeve of Morning Glory (‘Someday you will find me / Caught beneath a landslide...’).

  But Meg was also finding it hard to get a reaction from Noel. He wasn’t a tactile person nor was he one for sitting round discussing his feelings. He was brilliant at entertaining people and his humour was contagious. But go deeper and the barriers snapped up. And that threw her. In Meg’s world, if the two of you sit down to watch the TV, you do so on the sofa, cuddling. That’s what lovers do. Noel sat in his chair, alone. Self-protected.

  ‘Sometimes I used to think he was like that with just me, but then I sort of got to know that he’s like that with everyone, his friends, people close to him, everyone. I’d hear him on the phone or talking and he never gave anything, never expressed himself.’

  But he did. It all went into the songs. And he knew it more than anybody. In ‘Hey Now’ he wrote, ‘And time as it stands / Won’t be held in my hands / Or living inside of my skin / And as it fell from the sky / I asked myself why / Can I never let anyone in?’

  Which is why when his dickhead brother moaned at him about the money, how the band were all on wages but Noel was filthy rich, he could never see his point of view. Didn’t Liam have an inkling of the work he put in? Did he not also hear the voices in Noel’s head telling him that h
e was nothing more than a piece of dogshit? Did he not see that Liam was one of the very few people on the planet Noel could totally trust? And that if he wanted money all he had to do was ask. Damn right, Noel took the money. And as much of it as he could.

  And it was in this frame of mind, that Oasis regrouped at the Rockfield Studios in Wales to make the album that would first break, and then make them.

  Noel first heard him in the corridor of a rehearsal studio. His playing was so clear it made the songwriter stop in his tracks and ask, ‘Who’s that on the drums?’

  The answer was Alan White and, like Noel, he had a brother named Paul. He also had a third brother whose name was Steve who was undoubtedly fast becoming the best drummer in the country.

  The brothers White had grown up in Eltham, South London. Paul, the eldest, had little aptitude for a musical instrument. He went off to do a variety of jobs: bricklaying, plastering, cab driving.

  But Steve was different. At ten years of age, he had persuaded his parents to buy him a drum kit that cost £30. Steve set it up in the front-room and then hammered away on it. That noisy arrangement couldn’t continue, so their father turned the loft of their house into a practice room, hung a few curtains up to muffle the noise, and then said, all yours, son.

  Alan, the youngest of the three, was too young to notice. He was born on 26 May 1972 and attended Deansfield Primary School. It was just as he was about to enter Crown Woods secondary school that he started to get the drumming urge.

  At the dinner-table, Steve would always be tapping away. Next thing you knew, so was Alan. He was buying records now, ‘Dancing In The Street’ by Martha And The Vandellas was his first purchase. But he soon graduated to James Brown. It was the drum rolls you see, the ones that Clyde Stubblefield, Brown’s funky drummer, would insert into each record, that truly caught Alan’s attention.

  Certainly those funky drums said more to Alan than school did. Alan didn’t have time for most subjects, a bit of art, a bit of English, that was about all that interested him. But he was good at long-distance running, and played a bit of football as well.

  He supported Charlton FC, the local team. His dad would take Alan and his brothers to see Charlton play and that was that. Like Guigsy and the Gallagher brothers, he had no choice in the matter, really.

  Alan was about ten years old when his elder brother Steve hooked up with Paul Weller and started an enduring and fruitful musical partnership that has lasted to this day. When Steve was not with Weller, he was busy encouraging his brother.

  Steve was the first to teach Alan about drumming and drummers. He would show him licks, play him various records. Steve’s beloved jazz albums Alan couldn’t get with, but the funk stuff – The Meters, Sly Stone, James Brown – now that really gripped him.

  When Steve was away touring, Alan would steal up to the loft and practise. He was a soul-boy drummer. And he was getting good. Promising enough, in fact, for Steve to recommend that he take lessons from his old teacher, Bob Armstrong. He’ll sort your hands out, Steve said.

  Alan’s parents were cool about their youngest son’s interest. Their way had always been to encourage their children. Their philosophy was simple. Follow your instincts. You want to drum? Then drum.

  Alan left school with no exam results worth talking about and secured a job in the clothes shop Next, situated by London Bridge. He started at ten in the morning and was finished by three in the afternoon. It was a tidy arrangement. Straight after work Alan was home to practise. Every two weeks, it was over to Bob’s for drum tuition. Alan rarely missed a lesson or a day without drumming. Steve had taught him, by his own example, the real value of discipline. You want to make it, then practise. Don’t fuck around.

  Then one hot summer morning on the train to work, Alan ripped his trousers at the crotch. He had no boxer shorts on underneath. Alan got to the train station, praying that no one would notice. He made it to a phone and called up his boss. They had never liked each other.

  ‘I said, “I’m calling from the station, I’ve ripped my trousers and I’ve got to go home and change them. I’m going to be late,”’ Alan recalls. ‘He said, “Oh no, you come here straight away. Get back on the train, hold your trousers together and walk over the bridge.” I said, “I’m not walking over London Bridge with me hampton out” [hampton being cockney slang for the penis, as in Hampton Wick, dick], and he said, “If you don’t come in now, you ain’t got the job.” So I put the phone down and that was the end of that one. I just dossed around for a bit.

  ‘Then I got a job in Footes the drum shop which is in Golden Square, London’s West End, and I worked there for about two and a half years.’

  Meanwhile, Alan kept up his lessons with Bob Armstrong, who was a keen exponent of the Moeller technique, a graceful style that allows you, through a certain use of the hands, to play two beats where others can only play one.

  Alan put this technique to work both at home, and at work, where he was also making a lot of useful contacts.

  He also bought his first drum kit from Steve, (‘paid 500 quid, he ripped me off’) and he was now using it to back a folky singer called Tamara. Alan White made his playing debut at the King’s Head in Fulham. He can still remember it.

  ‘I was shitting me pants but I was well excited. I thought it would have been a bit more difficult but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.’

  This association lasted about a year and a half but then Alan got bored, wanted to move on. That’s when Steve, who had played on a session with a band called Star Club, recommended Alan to them. They called; Alan passed the audition.

  Prior to his arrival, the band had signed a deal with Island Records and had recorded an album.

  Two singles duly followed. The first, ‘Let Your Hair Down’, received positive reviews, good airplay and looked like it was going to put them on the map. But it never quite took off. Nor did the follow up, ‘Hard To Get’.

  That’s when the band decided that America held the most promise for them. They embarked on a gruelling tour, came home and were told by their record company to record a second album. The band, Alan, Steve French, Owen Weiss, and Julian Taylor (‘the best bass player I’ve heard in my life’) started work.

  Then their A&R man got it into his head that the reason for the band’s lack of success was down to their guitarist, Steve. He started lobbying to have him removed. Realising that if he stayed the band would be dropped, Steve quit and travelled over to New York. He needn’t have bothered. His departure was such a blow to the group, they never quite recovered their momentum. Alan thought, fuck it, the game’s up, I’m outta here.

  So on to the dole, you shall go. Alan signed on for about a year and spent some time pondering how the band had all been left broke but everyone who had been around them were now driving new cars.

  The band did reform but under a new name, Paint. It was hardly inspiring. Alan found himself on the Camden pub circuit – Dublin Castle, the Monarch – and he felt himself going nowhere. Again, he quit.

  Not long after, Dr. Robert, who was now launching a solo career after the demise of his group, The Blow Monkeys, invited Alan to record with him.

  ‘I did some of his album,’ Alan states, ‘and I worked with him for about three months. I well enjoyed it, he’s a top man, Robert, and he had some wicked songs. The one I’m really pleased I played on was a song of his called “Circular Quay”. It’s beautiful and I was really pleased with my playing on it. Then we went out to Japan and did a tour which was good. I was quite content working with him, but then Noel called.’

  Alan was working in a rehearsal studio with a Creation artist named Idha when Noel walked by and heard him. He noted the name with interest, especially when he discovered he was Steve White’s brother. When Tony McCarroll was sacked, Alan was the first drummer that Noel called. Alan wasn’t there when the phone rang. But his mum was.

  ‘Some bloke who sounded like he was off Coronation Street called you today,’ she told her son wh
en he walked in that evening. ‘Noel Gullagugga, something like that.’

  Alan stepped back. ‘Do you mean Noel Gallagher?’ he asked. ‘Yeah, that’s him. The number’s over there. Do you want a cup of tea, love?’

  The next day Alan phoned back.

  ‘I said,” All right, Noel? It’s Al, I believe you want a chat.” And he said, “Yeah, I want you to be in my band.” I said, “Don’t you want me to audition?” He said, “No, don’t worry about that. I’ve heard you play. As long as you’re not eighteen stone and you’ve got a nice jacket and a nice pair of Levi’s, you’re in.”’

  They first met at the Cafe Delancey in Camden. Noel remembers, ‘I didn’t know what he looked like until this guy came up and said, “All right, Noel? How’s it going? Fancy a Nelson?” [Nelson Mandela, Stella lager] I knew it would be cool then.’

  Noel was staying temporarily in Fulham at the time, at Johnny Marr’s flat, so after a drink they went back to the flat and Alan played him a tape of the records he’d appeared on. Noel said, brilliant, you’re in.

  The next day, they got together at John Henry’s rehearsal space, studio six, in North London. They jammed for a couple of hours and then went down the pub to meet Guigsy.

  Alan walked in and did a double-take when he saw the Oasis bassist.

  He recalls, ‘We met him in this pub down the road and I thought he was about thirty-five years old. He had mad hair and it was all grey. He had a drink and he was shaking. I thought, fucking hell, it’s like someone out of the Stones who’s done too much. Then I found out he was only my age, and I thought, this band is having it. Guigsy has got grey hair, Bonehead’s going bald, Liam is always in the paper having a ruck, what the fuck have I let myself in for?’

  They returned to the studio and now the three of them played together. Noel then said, ‘We’ll come back tomorrow and play some of the new album.’

  Alan said, ‘But I don’t know any of the songs.’