OASIS: Definitely Maybe (Creation CRELP169)
The much-anticipated debut album from this year’s future of rock’n’roll sounds like one of those early Beatles LPs that was just a bunch of singles plus a few extra tracks. This is guitar pop distilled to its simplest, most infectious form, without ambiguity or gender-confusion. Responsible in equal measures are guitarist/songwriter Noel Gallagher, who has a McCartneyesque ear for a great tune (the best, Live Forever, Supersonic and Shakermaker, have already been singles), and petulant-voiced singer Liam Gallagher. The brothers’ brash teamwork gives the album a rowdy exuberance that’s summarised by Cigarettes And Alcohol. The rest of the band churn away for all they’re worth to a riff filched from T Rex’s Get It On (another song “adapts” the tune of I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing). Oasis stick to straightforward chiming sixties pop, and they’re all the better for it. There’s a send-up of speed-metal bands on Bring It On Down and a throwaway acoustic piece, Married With Children, that runs, “Your music is shite/It keeps me up all night”. In this day and age, it’s strange to hear a band with nothing on their minds but beer and sex, stranger still that such a stunted attitude can produce such great pop.
The boys are back in town
Trashed hotels, fist fights, easy sex – Oasis have rediscovered rock’s roots. They’ve also found the time to knock out a great tune
12 August 1994
London’s Columbia Hotel is famed for its lenience towards the rock bands that inhabit the place. Recently, though, it found the behaviour of some of its clientele too much to stomach, and joined the growing list of hostelries who have invited Oasis not to come back.
“They were being a bit rowdy. They were throwing shoes in the bar,” admits the Manchester quintet’s omnipresent publicist.
Destroying hotels was once de rigueur for touring rock groups, but the custom died along with the Who’s Keith Moon, who legendarily drove cars into swimming pools. Oasis have revived it. It’s not a cheap past-time (“This one hotel charged me £145 for a cheap plywood table I threw out a window,” grumbles rhythm guitarist Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs) but their growing following delights in their escapades. They also espouse smoking, drinking and drugs, and call women “birds”.
Groups don’t come much more politically incorrect than Oasis, but they’re on their way to stardom. Last week they were simultaneously on the covers of Melody Maker, the NME and The Face. This week their new single, Live Forever, was selling faster than any record except Wet Wet Wet’s.
The return of the ultra-lad is hopefully a phenomenon that begins and ends with Oasis, who are named after a bar where Manchester City supporters congregate. Their music, however, may portend the turning of a corner for British pop. Uncomplicated, catchy guitar rock like theirs suddenly sounds fresh after five years of dance-music-dominated charts. The three singles released so far – the debut album, Definitely Maybe, follows on 31 August – revolve around brilliantly catchy hooklines written by guitarist Noel Gallagher.
“There’s nothing particularly different about their music, but it works. The song Cigarettes And Alcohol is about being young. It doesn’t have to mean anything,” argues 20-year-old Zoe, one of the dozen girls lounging around Oasis’s dressing room after a sold-out show in Leeds. “I like their attitude. They’re cool as fuck.” She gazes imploringly at the band’s love interest, singer Liam Gallagher.
Attitude may be what breaks them in America. No young British group has made it big there since Duran Duran in the mid-1980’s. Last year’s Next Big Thing, Suede, were comprehensively rejected, their Englishness and sexual ambiguity proving too unpalatable. Oasis have the advantage of being both roaringly heterosexual and easy to comprehend in any language.
It’s frequently noted that the band barely move on stage. Even Liam is motionless, occasionally flexing a finger to rattle a tambourine. There’s no “show” to watch, and the band look and dress like builders anyway. Yet somehow, they’re transfixing. Liam has one of the great untutored pop voices, whingy yet strangely resonant; his brother is a talented guitarist.
Off stage they’re almost as immobile as on. Noel, Bonehead, bassist Paul McGuigan and drummer Tony McCarroll sprawl about the smokey dressing room, glancing at the girls perched on the couches. Liam selects one for a quick snog in the loo. The mood is genial but subdued – tables and windows don’t make contact.
“We do get up to various antics on tour, but journalists have created this ‘monster of Oasis’ thing. Anyone can throw a chair through a window, but not everyone can write Live Forever. I’m in this job for the music. It’s the most important thing in my life. I’d choose music over any relationship. I can’t hold down a relationship with a girl for longer than six months,” Noel confides back at their hotel (“I thought we were banned from Trusthouse Forte,” Bonehead puzzles).
All five members come from Irish Catholic stock. Their parents settled in the “totally depressed, working-class” Manchester suburb of Burnage. The Gallaghers’ father is a country & western DJ.
“At least, he was. The last time I saw him was when two paramedics were carrying him out of the house to hospital after I beat him us ‘cos I was sick of all the years of physical and mental abuse he put me through. I was a bit of a rogue, glue-sniffing and that, but he was totally over the top. When he came out of hospital, we’d moved house, and to this day he still doesn’t know where my mam lives.”
Noel, 27, and Liam, 22, left school with no qualifications. Liam signed on, Noel worked as a roadie for a few Manchester bands. Eventually Beatles fan Noel joined the group his brother had formed, and effectively took it over. The Gallaghers have a fractious relationship that has led to fisticuffs in front of journalists.
“As the writer, and as it’s ‘my’ band, I tend to be pretty stubborn,” says Noel. “When people interview him, as he’s not a writer and can’t talk about music, he can only talk about himself, how many birds he’s shagged and how many tables he’s thrown across the bar. But after we fight, we’re the two most sorriest people you’ve ever seen.”
Noel is equally opinionated about Tony McCarroll’s abilities. “If our drummer left, I’d be happy, ‘cos he’s shit. He’s just not very good. He needs to practise more. But if he did leave that would be the end of Oasis. It’s all five of us or nothing.”
This gang mentality was obvious in Newcastle the night before, when Noel was attacked on stage by a man (a friend of McCarroll’s?) who punched him in the eye. As one, the group stopped playing and marched off. Twenty-four hours later, Gallagher sports an impressive shiner.
“That gig was sold out for six weeks. Was he waiting all that time just to have a go at me?”
Perhaps Oasis bring it on themselves by seeming to be ever-ready for a scrap, your place or theirs, anytime. The publicist stresses that they’re leaving the yobbery behind. Noel agrees.
“Liam was saying in an interview that it was really rock’n’roll to get thrown off a ferry and arrested (as they were in Amsterdam not long ago). That’s not rock’n’roll. What’s rock’n’roll is going to Amsterdam, playing a blinding gig and making those people want to see you again. That’s rock’n’roll.”