Oasis: The Wonderwall of It All Before It Went Wrong

Musicians often make the best critics. Noel Gallagher of Oasis fame was once introduced to Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. “Ah,” drawled Mr. Richards, “Oasis. That was quite interesting… for a while.”How sagacious was Keith Richards. From 1994 to 1997, Oasis were the most compelling story in music. They arrived fully formed and ready to fight the world.In those early interviews, they attacked almost every band apart from The Beatles, The Stone Roses, Paul Weller, and The Verve. Everyone else was liable to be lacerated, from Phil Collins to Elton John, Suede to Blur, George Harrison to the aforementioned Keith Richards. According to Liam, the latter two were jealous and senile and needed to eat more meat pies.“We are not arrogant,” Noel said early on. “We just think we are the best band in the world.” Unlike others, they had no qualms about revealing almost every aspect of their lives, including their use of Class A drugs. This was a bold but clever move. Since the ’80s, the British tabloid press had developed a lucrative strategy of first building up certain individuals — Boy George springs immediately to mind — and then gleefully exposing them when their private lives failed to match the public image. Oasis largely avoided that trap by being remarkably open about their drug use, particularly cocaine.“Having drugs is like taking a cup of tea in the morning,” Liam once said. Noel claimed to sprinkle cocaine on his breakfast cereal as others might sprinkle sugar. “All those albums and all the B-sides were written on drugs,” Noel confessed. “That is why they are so good.”When, in 1994, the News of the World ran a front page claiming that Liam had snorted cocaine off the top of a coach, the effect was negligible. By then, everyone in Britain knew about the band’s fondness for white powder and simply shrugged their shoulders.Oasis were as disruptive as they were fascinating, as mercurial as the Sex Pistols and the early Rolling Stones, bands they adored. They brought rebellion, arrogance and genuine danger back into the public arena in a way that had not been witnessed for years.More importantly, they backed it up with memorable rock’n’roll music. That’s the crucial point. For all the interviews, rows, drugs, boasts, insults and headlines, there was always the music.“Live Forever”, their third single, remains the song Noel has yet to beat. It was an anthemic declaration of defiance, optimism, and belief in the power of music to transport us somewhere better. And there was not only excitement surrounding the band’s every move, but a sense that five musicians were having enormous fun — not taking anything too seriously, going with the flow, laughing all the way.If the band traded early on in fierce rock’n’roll — their debut album, Definitely Maybe, caused one critic to suggest they should have called themselves The Sex Beatles, such was its mixture of melody and energy — Noel Gallagher knew that he could not plough that same musical furrow indefinitely.Noel was not only the band’s songwriter; he was their strategist. For aficionados of “The Godfather” films, Noel was Michael Corleone: Calculating, patient and considering his every move. Liam was Sonny: Hot-tempered, impulsive and liable to blow everything up in an instant.Liam Gallagher and Noel Gallagher on stage during a concert of Oasis at Grenoble, France, 31st March 1996. David Lefranc/Kipa/Sygma via Getty ImagesTogether with their manager, Marcus Russell, Noel mapped out the band’s future. But his plans frequently collided with his brother’s behaviour.When Oasis signed with Epic Records in America, a dinner was arranged to celebrate the deal. During the evening, Liam verbally attacked a senior record-company executive. Noel’s anger was palpable. Later, Liam would cancel tours on a whim. His defiance was not a problem to be solved. In his mind, it was the very thing that made Oasis special.Noel saw it differently. Without his songs, he argued, there would be no Oasis.And so the battle lines were drawn. The recording of the band’s second album “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?” was fraught with fights and disruption. The tension between the brothers was becoming impossible to contain. One was there to realise his songs; the other was partying relentlessly and refusing to be controlled. At one point Noel attacked Liam with a cricket bat. The following day, the sessions were halted until the brothers could find some sort of peace.Yet somehow, out of all this chaos, they produced an album that would change their lives. When “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?” emerged on October 2, 1995, it contained, Wonderwall, the song that would transform Noel Gallagher’s life, and the fortunes of Oasis.The title had its origins in the 1968 psychedelic film “Wonderwall,” starring Jane Birkin. Its soundtrack was composed by George Harrison and released as “Wonderwall Music,” his first solo album. For Noel, the title was another thread connecting Oasis to the Beatles mythology that ran through so much of his musical thinking.But the song itself was something entirely different from the ferocious rock’n’roll that had announced Oasis to the world. Unlike “Rock’n’Roll Star” or “Supersonic,” this was a mid-tempo ballad, built around acoustic guitars, strings and an extraordinarily infectious melody. Liam sang it; Noel wrote it.It was also evidence of one of Noel’s greatest strengths as a songwriter — and one of his deepest beliefs about popular music: Great songs should be contagious. They should not merely be listened to. They should be sung back.Noel had understood this long before Oasis. As a child growing up in Ireland, he had been present at family gatherings where traditional Irish songs would be sung by one and all. His musical radar powerfully picked up the power of people being joined together by song.As a young man watching his beloved Manchester City football team, he experienced the same sensation, albeit on a much larger scale as he felt the extraordinary power of tens of thousands of people who had never met suddenly turning one voice, becoming something far greater than the individuals who made up the crowd.Noel wanted that for Oasis. He wanted songs that could escape the record, escape the concert, and eventually belong to everybody.“Wonderwall” would do precisely that. Its power was recognised worldwide. It gave the band their first top ten hit in America, and charted in every country it was released. It was the record that told the world Oasis were not just a fierce rock’n’roll band but had the musical talents to reach millions of people.“(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?” would sell more than 22 million copies worldwide, becoming not merely an Oasis album but one of the defining records of the decade. The band always though that they would be the ones to replace their idols The Stone Roses who had seriously struggled to follow up their landmark debut album.“Morning Glory” put paid to that notion and catapulted the band into the rarefied space occupied by the likes of U2, Springsteen, and the Rolling Stones. ‘Be Here Now’ CD, by Oasis. Via James Keyser/Getty ImagesAfter extensive touring, the band began the mammoth recording sessions for the follow up, “Be Here Now,” released, exactly 29 years ago, on August 21,1997. The album sold around 400,00 copies in Britain — on its first day. Three days later, that number reached 663,000, the album eventually reaching No. 1 in 15 countries.For a band that only three years earlier had been playing small clubs, the figures were almost absurd. But “Be Here Now” was more than a mere album. It was the moment when Oasis reached the summit of their own mythology. They were no longer simply the biggest band in Britain. For a brief moment, they appeared to be the biggest band anywhere.Everything about Oasis had become excessive — the money, the arguments, the interviews, the expectations and, finally, the music itself. “Be Here Now” sounded like a band determined to prove that bigger was always better: Longer songs, louder guitars, more layers, more everything. And perhaps, without anyone quite realising it at the time, they had nowhere left to climb. As Liam put it, in typically Liam fashion, “After that album, we seemed to be surrounded by a lot more guys with man bags.”Oasis had become the worldwide rock stars Noel had always dreamed they would be. But fame demands a price. Young men form bands to escape the drudgery of ordinary working life. They dream of no bosses, no routine. The nine-to-five disappears, only to be replaced by the five-to-nine and a world of airports, hotels, soundchecks, interviews, recording studios, rehearsals, and concerts. Every day is scheduled. Every movement is organised. The freedom they thought they had found becomes another kind of routine.Only three years earlier they had been five Mancunians chasing the impossible dream. Now there were managers, record executives, publicists, security men, journalists, and hangers-on surrounding them wherever they went. It was noticeable on their “Be Here Now” tour that the band often reminisced about their early days, when life was filled with humour.Liam’s “men with man bags” joke was funny because it was true. Where everything before had been viewed with a kind of childish excitement, cynicism and arrogance now took its place.“Look at me,” Noel said in a late-nineties interview. “I couldn’t get into festivals before. Now they have to pay me a million pounds before I even step onstage.”Weeks into the recording of their fourth album, “Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants,” Paul Arthurs and Paul McGuigan — Bonehead and Guigsy, the guitarist and bassist who had been there from the beginning — quit the band. The smile had gone.Oasis, the juggernaut, simply shrugged its shoulders and carried on. Two more musicians were brought in. Eventually, Noel walked away in 2009.‘Getting High: The Adventures of Oasis’ by Paolo Hewitt. Dean Street PressIt would take many years for Oasis to reform. When they finally did, in 2025, the announcement was greeted with a wave of giddy excitement that recalled, however briefly, the extraordinary days when the band had seemed capable of anything. Meanwhile, something remarkable had happened to “Wonderwall”. England football supporters adopted it as their anthem, singing it after matches during the recent World Cup tournament. Its new life on the terraces helped propel the song back into the charts.When you hear “Wonderwall” today, it is difficult not to think of something Noel Gallagher recently said about the past: “For those three years, 1994 to 1997, we were the same as our audience. Then huge money came in and everything changed.”Then he sighed. “I’d give anything to have those three years back again.”Perhaps that is the real story of Oasis. That, for three extraordinary years, they were young, reckless, funny, arrogant, ambitious and completely alive. Then the money and huge success arrived.And everything changed.Paolo Hewitt is the author of ‘Getting High: The Adventures of Oasis’ and ‘Forever the People: Six Months on the Road With Oasis.’

Oasis: The Wonderwall of It All Before It Went Wrong

Oasis: The Wonderwall of It All Before It Went Wrong

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