Getting High

by Paolo Hewitt

  Some days that would happen. You would see him walking through the plush corridors of the hotels they now stayed in or walking alone through the vast empty arenas that his music would draw thousands of people to, and, with his head down and shoulders scrunched up, he could look like the unhappiest man on earth.

  That night, as Liam went from bar to bar, and girls gathered round to have their names put on the guest-list, Noel stayed in his room and watched Earle Sebastian’s documentary on Marvin Gaye, the genius singer who could never, whatever his triumphs, win his father’s love or approval.

  The next day at lunchtime, while Noel gave interviews, a representative of their record company secured the video for The Beatles’ new single ‘Free As A Bird’, as well as a tape of their just released Anthology 1. Then she hurried to the hotel and organised a screening of the film in the room put aside for business conferences and the like.

  Bonehead, Guigsy, Whitey and Liam eagerly sat down to watch the video. It was the first time they had heard the song which the three remaining Beatles had put together using a John Lennon demo-tape from the 1970s.

  ‘Fucking mad to hear this song,’ Bonehead said.

  After watching the video twice, the band applauded. It was a major relief. The new Beatles’ single was fab, not sad.

  As he walked out of the small auditorium, Liam said, ‘If that single goes in at number two because of fucking Jerome and Robson and I meet them, I’m going to go up to them and say, “You daft cunts, how dare you.” Then I’ll do this.’ And he spat twice at the wall.

  ‘Fucking right,’ Guigsy said.

  In the dressing-room before the show, Noel sat by himself replaying ‘Free As A Bird’ several times. He also listened to the Anthology tape, especially the songs The Beatles had once unsuccessfully and famously auditioned for Decca with.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ Noel said.’ All those years that everyone’s been slagging that guy off for turning The Beatles down, and then you found out, he was right. If I heard that tape I wouldn’t have gone near them.’

  (This was probably the impetus for Noel’s later comment that his first two albums were much better than anybody’s first two albums. This included his beloved Beatles, but Noel failed to take into account one small matter. Noel had twenty-five years of pop to fall back on. The Beatles didn’t.)

  The gig was a ragged affair. The band played okay but never really connected with the Swedish audience. The crowd, in turn, seemed very aware of the presence of a section of football supporters who had an infamous reputation for violence.

  They came to gigs now because the team they supported had been ordered to ban everyone from all their home games and play to an empty ground. This followed an incident when someone had run on to the pitch and beaten up the referee.

  Concerts were one of the few places in which this mob could now congregate, and no doubt it was one of them who hurled a coin at Liam halfway through the show, eliciting the response, as it flew past his head, ‘You cheeky cunt. I’ll fucking have you.’

  There was a party later at a club which Liam arrived at, walked inside and then said, “Fuck it, this is shit.” He got back into the taxi, still raging about the coin incident.

  Slumped in the back seat, he bitterly stated, ‘I’d rather be a fucking taxi-driver with two eyes than in Oasis with one. I’d rather be a butcher. This fame game, I understand it, but I’m not in it for that, me. I could have lost a fucking eye tonight and then there wouldn’t be an Oasis.’

  At the hotel, he ignored everyone in the bar and headed for his room on the eighth floor. A minute after he had slammed his door, the drinks machine in his corridor lay on the floor, ice cubes everywhere, Coca-Cola slowly seeping into the carpet.

  Noel meanwhile had gone to a small party in Frank, the lighting man’s, room and then left to see Alan White. They sat talking until they heard the sound of men shouting outside.

  Noel and Alan put their heads around the door to see what was happening. A drunken Irishman was swaying outside the room Noel had just been in and was being told to fuck off by Bear, one of the road crew. But the man kept trying to push his way back into the room.

  ‘See that Bear guy,’ Noel said to Alan.

  But before Alan could answer, Bear suddenly pulled back his fist and unleashed a wicked punch to the man’s head. The man staggered backwards and Bear followed up with about ten more punches in five seconds. Roadie Roger then stepped in to pull him off.

  ‘Well,’ Noel calmly continued, ‘he was the ABA welterweight champion and the boxer Dennis Andries is his cousin. But I suppose you know that now, don’t you.’

  The boys went back inside and Noel switched on the TV and started changing the channels. The video for ‘Wonderwall’ appeared. Directed by Nigel Dick, this, along with, ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’, was their best film yet.

  As Noel watched himself, he said, ‘You know that record that has come out of me and our kid fighting? It’s gone in at forty-two. And guess how many Oasis singles are in the top hundred?’

  ‘Ten,’ Alan guessed.

  Noel screwed up his face in disgust and looked over at him like a teacher whose star pupil has just said something unbelievably stupid. ‘We’ve only made eight, you dickhead.’

  But Alan was razor sharp. ‘Yeah, but the fighting record has got two sides so that makes it ten. All right?’ Then he breathed a sigh at getting away with his joke.

  ‘It’s fucking top,’ Noel said turning back to the TV. The next week, under the name The Smokin’ Mojo Filters, the version of ‘Come Together’ that had been cut at Abbey Road, would also enter the charts, ensuring Noel Gallagher’s presence on ten singles in the top hundred. His brother Liam would be on nine of them, the remaining three members each on eight.

  The next day, Oasis flew to Paris for the MTV awards. A very drunk Liam was interviewed at the party afterwards by one of their girl presenters.

  ‘Everyone says that Liam Gallagher is hard to interview but he is with me now,’ she said, ‘so let’s see what he’s really like. Hello Liam.’

  ‘He-ll-o. My na-me i-s L-i-am an-d I h-a-ve be-een told to sp-eak slo-w be-cau-use Ma-ncs spe-ak ve-ry fa-st and no-one und-er-st-and-s wh-at we’-re say-ing,’ he slurred. Then he slipped his arm up the girl’s back and started rubbing it. The interview finished a minute later.

  After the MTV show, Oasis travelled to Copenhagen for a gig on 24 November, and two days later played their triumphant homecoming show in Manchester’s NYMEX arena on the 26th.

  The next day they arrived at the BBC studios in Wood Lane, London, to record three numbers for the Later show which would be transmitted the following week.

  On the second day in London, Liam, who had been staying up most nights recently, walked out claiming his voice wasn’t up to it. Noel flew into a rage, accusing him of unprofessionalism. Liam told him to fuck off, and Noel nearly hit him.

  When the show was aired, presenter Jools Holland tactfully explained that Liam had called off ‘with a sore throat’. Noel now assumed vocal duties and the band opened with a fiery version of ‘Cum On Feel The Noize’. The song, with its loud guitars and call-to-hedonism lyrics, perfectly suited Oasis. Indeed, their version betters the original. Noddy Holder’s slightly jokey vocal is stripped away, and both Gallaghers sing it with a real passion.

  Noel was then interviewed by Holland.

  ‘I hope I haven’t given Liam my cold,’ Holland said.

  ‘I’ll give him something when I see him,’ Noel snapped back.

  Noel then went on to talk about his despised school music teacher (‘I’ve got one thing to say to him,’ Noel looks directly at camera, ‘do you want to borrow a tenner?’), and as ever, found it hard to look directly at Jools, his eyes darting here, there and everywhere but the man.

  After being shown a clip of Slade performing ‘Cum On’ Noel went back to what he felt most comfortable doing, and performed ‘Wonderwall’ with a string section. The programme ended with a roaring ‘Round Are Way’ comp
lete with horn section.

  The next night, Noel showed up at the third night of Paul Weller’s four-night stay at the Brixton Academy. He watched for the first time Simon Fowler perform his acoustic ballad version of ‘Live Forever’, and was entranced by how the singer had totally transformed his song.

  Then, much to the crowd’s delight, Noel walked out with an acoustic guitar and delivered six songs: ‘Wonderwall’, ‘Whatever’, ‘Cast No Shadow’, ‘Talk Tonight’, ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ and The Beatles’ ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’, which he had exclusively donated to radio for World Aids Day on 1 December.

  Noel returned the following night to play again, and the next day he and Oasis departed for the US.

  The band had also found time to record two new B-sides for their forthcoming single ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’. These were Noel’s song ‘Underneath The Sky’, and a cover of Slade’s ‘Cum On Feel The Noize’, which would end with Tim Abbot babbling away in a Brummie accent.

  ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ had been aimed at a Christmas release, but as the weeks passed that plan of action seemed more and more unlikely.

  ‘Wonderwall’ refused to leave the charts.

  Every week more and more people were walking into record shops and purchasing it, as well as the Morning Glory album, pushing the band to a level of popularity that not even they, the proud, determined new Mancunians, had ever dreamt about. No one had. Creation, the management, the band, they all thought at the start they would equal The Stone Roses’ success. Now their records really were starting to approach Beatles-like sales.

  To stop themselves pondering on the implications of such worldwide success, the band kept working harder and harder. And, of course, the more they hid away through their work, the more their records sold, until finally the following September, the band would again snap in two before regaining its balance.

  The American tour wasn’t the usual round of venues that they were now getting used to playing in the States. This time the tour had a difference. At Christmas, many radio stations who place themselves in the ‘alternative rock’ bracket, hold festivals which are then broadcast live in their area.

  Marcus had booked the band on to such a tour. ‘It’s the Trojan Horse theory,’ he explains. ‘Ostensibly we weren’t doing gigs advertised as Oasis gigs. We were doing gigs advertised by radio stations, but the reason you do it is to demonstrate to American radio that you’re up for it and you want it.

  ‘And it worked. It was very significant. I mean, some hardcore Oasis fans were saying, “What the fuck are Oasis doing playing with these grunge bands like White Zombie or Jaw Breaker?”

  ‘And I was like, “Why not?” We’ve got every right to play the game, we’ve got every right to say to radio, “Why are you playing this shit? You should be playing us.” Unless you get in there and announce it, nothing’ s going to change.

  ‘I knew the bills we were on would be the last bunch of bands you’d choose to play with. But that’s why I call it the Trojan Horse theory. You get in there and then before they know it, you’ve started to break down a lot of American barriers and, more importantly, their preconceptions of British guitar music.’

  The band played radio festivals in Seattle, Washington, Chicago, Minneapolis, Toronto, San Francisco, San Jose, finishing up in Los Angeles and playing a festival and Johnny Depp’s Viper Room on the same day.

  While there, they also shot a video for ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’, again directed by Nigel Dick, and featuring the famous British actor Patrick Macnee who had shot to fame in the 1960s TV show, The Avengers.

  Macnee wouldn’t be the only famous name from their past that Oasis would meet that day. That evening, back at their hotel, John Lydon, accompanied by his brother Jimmy, also paid them a visit.

  Liam and Noel sat with the Pistols’ singer, and a lot of the talk centred on football, Lydon being an Arsenal fan. Halfway through the conversation, Lydon made a quiet comment about Liam’s vocals.

  ‘What the fuck do you mean by that?’ Liam challenged and maybe then the forty-year-old Lydon suddenly saw himself as he was twenty years ago. Lydon now had wisdom but Liam had youth on his side.

  Rotten told Liam to calm down a bit, and he in turn started to make fun of Rotten’s haircut. Rotten then kept referring to Liam as ‘the singer’, before revealing that The Sex Pistols would be reforming in 1996 and touring the States.

  ‘Perhaps you could support us?’ he offered.

  ‘Yeah, mad for it,’ Liam replied, knowing full well that if such an event took place it would be Oasis topping the bill.

  Simon Halfon, a British sleeve designer living in the US was present at the table and reported that it was ‘weird’. ‘The conversation would be going all right and then Rotten would say something a bit off and it would all go a bit tense. Then it’d go back to being all right. At the end, I remember Rotten saying things like, “What do I know? I’m just a poxy Pistol.”’

  Rotten later invited Noel down to a recording session and then left.

  On 19 December Oasis flew home, landing on the morning of the 20th and that night Noel went to see Mike Flowers play at London’s LA2 venue. The press, meanwhile, had published their Best Records Of 1995 lists.

  Typical was the NME, who made Tricky’s trip-hop album Maxinquaye the number one placing, Morning Glory in second place. In the singles chart ‘Some Might Say’ was fourth, ‘Wonderwall’ sixth.

  On the 22nd, the band assembled at The White Room’s TV studios in West London to make their seasonal appearance on the Channel Four programme.

  For this show, which was televised on New Year’s Eve, Oasis delivered excellent versions of ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’, ‘Wonderwall’, ‘Roll With It’, ‘Round Are Way’ and ‘Some Might Say’. Channel Four’s final and fitting image of 1995 was Noel performing ‘Wonderwall’. But backstage the mood wasn’t good. Tiredness had crept in now and they all just wanted to go home.

  After the show, Oasis took a short ride to the Halycon Hotel in Holland Park where Creation had hired out a room. All the band were given major presents, but the centrepiece was when Alan McGee handed Noel a set of car keys and told him to go outside. There a chocolate brown and white Rolls-Royce awaited Noel, who can’t drive.

  Liam, meanwhile, stayed inside.

  That year, Noel had made appearances in three separate music documentaries. In the summer, he turned up on Granada’s My Generation documentary on The Small Faces and spoke enthusiastically about Steve Marriott’s vocal power. And over Christmas, he popped up twice. He was featured in a Carlton TV special on The Beatles and said that when he first met Paul McCartney, the songwriter told him that he looked like a Beatle.

  ‘I hope so,’ Noel shot back, ‘I’ve spent enough money trying to.’

  Noel also appeared on a Burt Bacharach documentary, where he revealed to the nation the ‘inspiration’ behind ‘Half A World Away’.

  By then he and Meg were in Manchester spending time with Peggy and Paul, while Liam flitted in and out.

  On New Year’s Eve, they, along with Jess and Fran, went to the Sunday Social where the same good-looking kid who had spoken to Noel precisely a year ago approached him and asked, ‘So what’s the best thing to have happened to you in 1995?’

  ‘Meeting Paul McCartney,’ Noel instantly replied.

  Soon after, Noel, Meg and a few others returned to their Camden flat. At about six in the morning, one of the party, in front of Noel, started quizzing Jess about the Oasis songwriter.

  ‘Do you think that Noel is honest in interviews?’ she was asked.

  ‘I think,’ Jess replied, ‘that Noel Gallagher gives out a series of truths and half-truths so that in twenty years time, when they come to look at his career, they’ll never really know who he was.’

  Eighteen

  On Monday 8 January 1996 Noel got into his Rolls-Royce and was driven by Les to Garry Blackburn’s offices in Stamford Brook, West London.

 
Blackburn is a plugger who runs his own company, Anglo Plugging. The company is responsible for securing TV and radio appearances for acts such as Oasis, Portishead and The Beautiful South.

  Today, they have booked Noel on to Channel Four’s Hotel Babylon. The show is hosted by Dani Behr who will interview Noel. Afterwards, he is scheduled to perform an acoustic version of the new single, ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’.

  The single has already been put back a month because ‘Wonderwall’, both by Oasis and The Mike Flowers Pops, is still high in the charts.

  As the band will be away touring on the day of the single’s release, Blackburn is keen for Noel to make at least one TV appearance in support of ‘Anger’. The fact that it will undoubtedly be a major hit isn’t an issue. But Blackburn is wary of taking any chances. There have been too many incidents in the past of successful groups shunning all promotion only to see their new records falter.

  For Blackburn, there was also a nice little knock-on effect. By securing a high-profile artist such as Noel for the show, Blackburn was now in credit with the show’s producers. Therefore, the next time he had a new band to promote, traditionally the hardest to get on TV, he could then cash in his chips. I got you Noel that time, he would remind them. Scratch mine, I’ll scratch yours. It is the law that the music business was built on.

  Noel enjoyed going on TV. In interviews, he was always witty and charming and, of course, he relished playing anywhere.

  The fact that the show was hosted in a large country house that he had been led to believe had been bought by George Harrison for the Natural Law party, was an extra bonus for Noel. Plus, he had good news. ‘We’ve got Maine Road,’ he told Blackburn as they drove out of London.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yeah, it was firmed up last week. It’s in April of this year.’

  ‘Christ,’ Blackburn said, ‘How many does it hold?’

  ‘40,000,’ Noel said, trying to sound matter of fact. ‘Probably get more than they do at their home games. How’s Karen by the way?’