by Jamie Jones
Oasis were superb that night, at their nonchalant best and the crowd lapped it up. We jumped up and down in a tangled mass of wild abandon. Everyone in the place appeared to surge towards the stage as they launched into ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’, desperate to be a part of the night, to be as close to these indie-rock gods as possible. Lads who were presumably drunk or high were jumping the 20ft from the seating area down into the standing section to get closer to the action. It was a very special night, with 1500 people rocking the foundations of the old place. It was more than worth the bollocking from Mum and her pledge to never let me use Dads’ car again.
For those electrifying few months, my dedication to Oasis was at the same level as my dedication to Morrissey. I couldn’t get enough of them, the spirit, the tunes, their effect on the indie world that we lived in.
It was also a massive year for me for reasons other than music. I just about passed my A-Levels in the summer. I put my D in English Literature squarely down to almost passing out with excitement when seeing the exam paper had what I thought was the ideal question on George Orwell. His novels and essays had become my reading of choice over the previous 18 months and he had done as much as Billy Bragg in shaping my political and social views. Unfortunately, in my feverish state, I produced the most childlike fan boy rubbish excuse for an exam essay ever committed to paper. I may as well have just written “I love George Orwell” on the paper and walked out of the room.
I took the decision, along with Jacko, to defer my place at University and to take a gap year. I was chuffed, and quite surprised, that Cardiff had accepted me on to their BSc Social Policy course, so was quite happy to string out the unfamiliar glow of achievement for another year before actually starting the course.
Most folk take such a year to go and explore the world, see new things and have amazing experiences. I got a temporary job with the local life assurance company, inputting standing order mandates for £4 an hour.
Jacko and I were both sick of being skint so our gap year plan was to earn as much as we could whilst also going out for a few drinks at the weekends. We would then go to the summer music festivals before heading to Europe for a month of inter-railing. We weren’t setting ourselves very high targets but we achieved everything we set out to in that year and that’s not something I could say about many other years.
1994 was also the year that, after 18 months without regular employment, my teenage hormones clocked on again. The year began with a brief fling with a girl in our 6th form called Nicola, who after a few weeks with me decided that she was better off going back to her ex-boyfriend. It was never going to work between us, she didn’t really like music of any kind and loved spending her weekends in the nightclubs up town. I, on the other-hand, had taken to spending any spare time I had listening to 30 year old Johnny Cash recordings to supplement my musical diet. When she packed me in, one cold and wet Friday evening stood outside her house, I simply smiled sweetly, got on my bike and went home to listen to “Live At San Quentin”.
As the Britpop spring sprang into summer I did something that I had never done before, I got together with one of my mates ex-girlfriends. Mark and Kate had been together for a couple of teenage years, which were roughly as long as dog years. They had been blissfully happy during the majority of their time together, with Mark even missing some Posh home games to spend time with her. I, more than anyone, would absolutely slate him for putting a girl before our football club. Going to the match was what we did as a group of mates, it was our thing, and I didn’t see it as growing up in any way to ditch that for spending time with a girl.
They were the golden couple of our group, as couples crashed and burned around them, they just kept going. But like 99% of epic, seemingly unending, teenage love affairs, it didn’t last. Mark was heading off to university in the autumn. He was determined to get out of my beloved home city, he had outgrown it and was all set to make his own way in life away from Kate and his old mates. They came up with the standard adolescent statement that it was a mutual decision to split up but none of us believed that. I understood why he was doing it but it still smacked my feelings against my ribcage knowing that one of my best mates couldn’t wait to get away. Mark and I were close mates, bound together by a mutual love of sitting in darkened bedrooms and listening to music, without feeling the need for too much conversation. Although it was a little weird, and went against several unwritten rules, it made Kate and I getting together all the more obvious. He was leaving us behind, and knowing that we were both going to miss him, we clung to each other for comfort.
Not that Kate and I ever discussed Mark or their relationship. We were 18 years old in the summer of Britpop; we had much better things to do. There were albums to buy, bottles of her mums Chardonnay to swipe from the fridge and then extremely quiet, slightly tipsy sex to be had in her bedroom so that her parents, who were asleep in the next room, didn’t hear.
Kate was a pretty girl without ever realising it and I found that really attractive. We had been friends, through Mark, for a couple of years and slipped easily into being a couple. We knew each other that well it was easy. It wasn’t full of love or desire or excitement about the future, it was just easy for both of us. That summer was shaping up to be a truly great one and we had made a logical decision to be together through those experiences. We would sit in her bedroom, or occasionally mine, and listen to all the new music that was being released and chat about where we saw our lives going. We were close and we cared about each other, but never remotely came close to falling in love.
Never Use Morrissey Lyrics To End a Relationship
OUR main topic of conversation when quaffing stolen wine was the upcoming Glastonbury and the glorious time that we would spend watching bands, drinking and sleeping under canvas in a 2 man tent. Not that Kate and I were due to share a tent though as I always co-habited with Jacko at festivals. He was my best mate, and I wasn’t about to turf him out of my tent just because I had a new girlfriend.
Glasto 1994, was everything I’d hoped for and much more. It was the best festival that I’d been to by an absolute mile. With the sun beating down, a group of 12 of us, most of whom had just finished their A-Levels, spent a weekend making memories. Even a serious kid such as I could relax and let the days just wash over me with a smile on my face and a pint in my hand. You couldn’t get a paper onsite so we didn’t know any news or events for the 4 days we were there and that was amazingly liberating. We really didn’t have a care in the world.
Some of our group went to Glasto for the atmosphere, the spirituality, the sex and drugs but for me it was always about the rock ‘n’ roll. I spent hours in the build up to the festival endlessly reworking my personal timetable, and then learning it off by heart. I didn’t have time to waste looking at programmes and timetables whilst I was at the festival, it all had to be committed to memory. I had to know that if someone asked me who I was going to see on the Saturday at 8pm, I would instantly be able to say with absolute certainty: “Bjork”. Along with every other indie-boy on the planet, I had developed a huge crush on Bjork since her “Debut” album was released. Unfortunately, when I got onsite and saw the actual stage times, I discovered that part of her set clashed with Weller’s on the Pyramid. As usual, I put a man with a guitar before a beautiful woman.
My personal Saturday timetable had the name “Paul Weller” as the must see. I had fallen hook, line and sinker for the Weller revival that had come about thanks to his majestic “Wild Wood” album. It was an album that got deep into my DNA and would have to be listened to at least once a day. To songs like “Sunflower” and “The Weaver” I would stand in my bedroom singing along, shaking my hair and jutting my chin out in the Weller style.
I was the only one of our gang that wanted to see The Modfather so I made my way down to the front of the crowd at the Pyramid Stage for his slot. You could just wander down to the front 5 minutes before any act began their set and I managed to get myself almost onto the stage barrie
r to await his arrival.
Weller was on fire that night, banging out all his tunes with an edge and passion that got the ever increasing crowd on his side. As the sun finally set on the sweltering June evening, watching Weller play “The Weaver”, I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else in the world. I genuinely thought that life couldn’t get any better as my brain set its camera to automatic and took hundreds of mental images.
I wandered the site on my own into the early hours swigging from my paper cup which a very kind lad, whacked off his nut on E, had insisted in filling to the pint line with Southern Comfort and lemonade. I must have looked like a gurning simpleton myself, walking around with a huge grin on my face, before taking residence outside a Joe Banana’s Blanket Stall, where the skull grinding techno from their sound system lulled me to sleep on the dewy grass.
The Sunday at Glasto that year went straight into the top 3 days of my life chart. Kate and I had started it with a quick sleeping bag fumbling whilst Jacko was out getting his essential early morning cuppa. I then spent the day stood in a field with the sun shining down, with my mates, my girlfriend and her mates, having a drink and watching the best single day line-up that I think a UK festival had ever seen. The NME stage line-up that Sunday included:
(in order of appearance, from headliner down)
Spiritualized
Blur
Radiohead
Inspiral Carpets
Pulp
Chumbawamba
Credit To The Nation
Oasis
Echobelly
Taking aside Chumbawamba (but not the criminally underrated Credit To The Nation), that was my musical year, right there in one day on one stage.
At 2pm, Liam Gallagher walked out onto the stage on this sweltering day in a jumper, sunglasses and swigging from a can of Red Stripe. He surveyed the expectant masses with disdain, Noel’s guitar kicked in and Oasis ripped the field to shreds. The crowd were ecstatic, singing back to Liam the words to songs that were still months away from being released. I danced like I was wired to the mains, clad in my classic black Oasis logo t-shirt, and didn’t want it to end. Everyone in that packed Somerset field knew that this band of ruffians were all set for world domination.
Pulp were at their best in the middle of the afternoon. Their tales of bedrooms and hiding in wardrobes shouldn’t have worked in the sunshine, but Jarvis and co. always knew how to put on a peerless show. While the rest of the festival was clad in the obligatory shorts and band t-shirt, Jarvis walked on stage sporting huge 1970’s sunglasses and wrapped in a corduroy jacket and spent the next 45 minutes with an enthralled crowd hanging on his every yelp and scissor kick. My only regret of that weekend was, by staying to watch Pulps set, I only got to see 5 minutes of the legend that was Johnny Cash on the Pyramid Stage.
The Inspiral Carpets kept the indie vibe rolling along through the afternoon with the best of their “Devil Hopping” album and singles like “Dragging Me Down” and “This Is How It Feels”. We then witnessed a breathtaking set from Radiohead, during which Thom Yorke appeared to be undertaking psychological therapy by screaming his lyrics at the crowd. We cheered and clapped, for want of not knowing what else to do, whilst this tortured genius went about his art, before getting a beer from the bar and settling down for the evening’s main event.
Blur were riding the crest of “Parklife’s” success and Albarn sucked up the joyous acclaim of the Glasto’ faithful with the gusto of someone having their first drink on an all-inclusive holiday. Their set was a celebration for band and crowd alike and was joyous to watch and be a part of. As the sun set over the site, the band rattled through “Parklife”, with thousands of fans bouncing and swaying as appropriate. It was an extra special performance, a gig where you grabbed hold of your mates for the singalong tunes, then shared a hug with your girlfriend to the quieter ones and all felt right with the world.
After having our retina’s scorched by Spiritualized’s light show, I was determined to hold onto the feeling of having the world at the end of my Adidas Sambas for as long as possible, so wandered the festival site with Maff and Jacko, drinking into the small hours, taking in everything this tented civilisation could offer from the late night raves to the stone circle, via the left field stage. Kate had, sensibly, gone back to the tent for a kip as we were set to begin the journey home at 4am. We had travelled in a minibus driven by Frank, the 22 year old boyfriend of one of the girls from our school who was also at the festival. The plan was that we would begin the long journey back to Peterborough in the middle of the night in order to beat the traffic.
At 3am, I went for one last sit in front of the Pyramid Stage on my own, wondering if I would ever have another weekend as good as this one. Before my serenity lead to the inevitable sleep takeover, I stumbled back up the hill to wake Kate and pack away our tent. As I’d consumed plenty of Carlsberg, some herbal highs we’d bought off a Scouser and hadn’t slept since Saturday, as soon as the minibus began to trundle off site, I fell soundly asleep across Kate’s lap.
I must have been knackered because, when our minibus crashed into the motorway central reservation, I remained asleep. Kate had to shake me awake to make sure that I hadn’t smacked my head and been knocked out. I awoke to lots of tears from the girls, Jacko sat white as a sheet gripping the seat in front of him, and shouted apologies from a shaken up Frank. I assumed that he had fallen asleep at the wheel and we had somehow contrived to avoid certain death but, to be honest, I was too drunk and high on life to care too much. Thankfully, nobody was hurt so with minimal damage to the mini-bus and a couple of strong cups of coffee for Frank at the nearby service station, we set off on our way again. I went back to sleeping peacefully for the remainder of the journey.
When I got home and Mum asked me “How was it all?” I gave her my now stock returning from a festival response; everything had gone well, we’d had fun, not drunk too much and of course not taken any drugs. I failed to mention the minibus crash. I may have been only a month away from my 18th birthday and the tantalising freedoms that theshold had to offer, but I didn’t want to take any chances where Mum was concerned.
Kate and I were in the midst of a summer that was full of sunshine and hours spent locked in her room after her mum and dad had gone to the pub. We were becoming adept at making each other smile but we both knew that deep down she still loved Mark and that I only really loved Morrissey. I would find a way to bring Moz into any conversation, from; What would Morrissey think to the news stories of the day through to debating which Smiths album we should play whilst we explored each other’s teenage appetites.
We would openly talk about our futures, but never our future. We knew that we didn’t have one. Something or someone was going to come along and tempt one of us away from this life of festivals, sun and sex. As summer turned to autumn, I thought our relationship was getting boring and decided that I wanted out. Being an obsessive, who wanted Moz to influence every nook and cranny of my life, I couldn’t simply tell Kate that.
I was a bastard to Kate. She was a lovely girl who had always been nothing but considerate and kind to me. I’d got bored and suddenly found myself wanting to be on my own again for no real reason other than that I listened to too much Morrissey and thought that being in this enjoyable easy-going relationship wasn’t what Moz would have wanted for me. Where was the complicated element of this relationship, other than Kate still loving one of my best mates? Where was the heartbreak and the drama? One wet September evening, I sat Kate down on her bed and gave her the old flannel about “it’s not you, it’s me”, made an exaggerated show of giving her a long, slow kiss on the lips and walked out of her house. That was it, we were over. I had taken on Morrissey’s vegetarianism, sideburns and now thought it a good idea to paint myself as someone who was “better off alone”. I walked out of her life, leaving her a note which contained lines from Moz’s “Will Never Marry” as I disappeared up my own arse.
Kate got the last laugh though a
s within a week of splitting up with her, I realised that I’d made a mistake. She told me that she just wanted to be mates now and finished our chat with, “To be honest your Morrissey obsession is weird and was beginning to freak me out a bit”. Kate moved on and I spent the next 6 weeks trying unsuccessfully to persuade her to sleep with me again. It turned out that Morrissey couldn’t satisfy all of my teenage urges.
The rest of 1994 was spent alternating between enjoying life, which usually involved me jumping round my room listening to “Strangeways Here We Come” or worrying about what the future might hold. This usually involved turning off the light, crawling into the space under my desk and listening to “Vauxhall & I” on repeat. Whatever mood I was in, Moz had the tunes to help or, indeed, hinder.
Now that we had a few quid in our pockets thanks to our gainful employment, my mates decided that it was a good time for us to start going up town on a Saturday night. If this had meant going to the only indie club in the city I would have been happy but it didn’t. My mates wanted to go to nightclubs and make drunken attempts to cop off with members of the opposite sex. I liked the early evening drinking in the pubs, playing at being adults, having a laugh and a chat but the move into the clubs at 11pm filled me with dread. I hated the delights that Peterborough’s clubs; Rinaldos, Shanghai Sams and 5th Avenue had to offer. My night would invariably go downhill as I passed the bouncers on the door and entered my vision of hell. Inside the darkened rooms would be lads and girls my age and beyond looking to couple off, dance to “Saturday Night” by Whigfield and drink overpriced bottled lager. I hated it. I didn’t fit in. I didn’t want to fit in.