Getting High (2 page)

Liam and the girl are sitting on a sofa behind Owen. They are not looking at each other or touching. Nobody is saying a word.

‘Dickhead thinks the vocals aren't mixed up enough,' Noel announces to Owen. ‘Dickhead thinks we don't know what we're doing.'

Owen briefly smiles and carries on pushing buttons, wheeling his chair along the desk. It is obvious that he too doesn't want to get involved. He has already spent many hours in the studio with the brothers and he knows this scene back to front.

‘I didn't say that you didn't know how to mix fucking records,' Liam retorts, ‘I said the vocals are not mixed up enough. You can't hear them.'

‘You can't hear the vocals?' Noel replies.

‘No, I can't hear my vocals and I think that ruins the song.' Liam enunciates the sentence as if he is talking to a dumb kid.

‘Everybody else can hear the vocals but you can't?' Noel asks, using the same tone of voice as his brother.

The girl next to Liam looks uneasy but he laughs loudly. ‘Who's everyone else?' he asks.

‘Well, everybody else in this room to begin with,' Noel says.

‘Well, I'm not everybody else. And who else are you talking about? Bonehead? Guigsy?'

‘Oh yeah, Guigsy,' Noel says, picking up his cigarette box. ‘How is Guigsy these days?' he asks of the Oasis bass-player.

‘He's doing double fine.'

‘Is he?'

‘Yeah he is. Fucking double top, Guigsy is.'

‘That's not what I heard. I heard different to that.'

‘Did you?' Liam sardonically asks. ‘Well, I haven't.'

‘Well, I have,' Noel throws back, real irritation in his voice.

Owen stops pushing buttons and stops to stare at his desk. The girl next to Liam crosses her long legs.

‘Marcus says he's in a bit of a state,' Noel continues. 'And it's funny, isn't it? Guigsy's fine and then off you all go to France while I stay here trying to learn how to mix a record and, surprise, surprise, he comes home early and he's not very well. Funny that, isn't it?'

‘Yeah, double funny.'

‘That's what you think, is it? That it's all double funny.'

‘Look, it's got fuck all to do with me, mate. I told you what happened. Told you enough times.'

‘Oh yeah? Well let's hear it again.'

Noel extracts a cigarette from his box and lights it. Strangely, he holds the ciggy between the second and third finger of his right hand and he shakes it accusingly at Liam. ‘Because I know, I just know you had something to do with it. I fucking know you did.'

‘I didn't,' Liam protests.' All I did...'

‘All you did was to fuck things right up.'

‘Hang on, hang on, you haven't heard what I've got to say, have you?'

Now the words are getting heated, the voices are being raised. No one else really knows where to look; all they know is that they don't want to get involved. But right now all Noel and Liam are aware of is each other. All they can see is each other. All they can hear is each other.

‘Come on then,' Noel says, ‘let's hear what you've got to say. This should be good, this.'

‘I've told you once.'

‘Well, fucking tell me again.'

Liam snorts defensively and begins his tale. ‘We go to Paris and we're in this hotel, blathering to the press and all this shit, and suddenly, where's Guigsy? Nowhere to be seen. So we go up to his room, bang on the door and tell the mad cunt to get out of bed.'

‘All you did was bang on the door.'

‘That's all we did. Bang on his door. So the mad cunt is in there puffing up and we go in...'

‘Hang on a sec,' Noel demands. ‘You bang on his door and then go in even though the door is locked.'

‘No, you mad fucker,' Liam replies, ‘Guigsy let us in. Okay?'

Noel nods his head. Liam continues, ‘So we said, “What you doing?” He goes, “I'm staying in bed.” So we get him up...'

‘How did you get him up?'

‘Fuck sakes,' Liam says, ‘we didn't beat him up or anything.' He shakes his head in amazement that his brother should think like that.

‘We just told him to come out with us, right? So we go to this bar and there's some dickhead there and Guigsy goes, “I'm going to whack that guy.”'

‘And you said?'

‘All I said was, “Well, hit him,” 'cos to be honest, I'm sick and tired of people in this band saying they're going to hit someone and they don't. You're going to whack someone, whack them. If not, shut up.'

‘And that's all you said to him?'

‘That's all I said to him.'

‘You're a fucking liar, mate. You said more than that to him. I know you did. I know you. I know what you're like.'

‘I'm not a liar, dickhead. I said...'

‘Oh for fuck's sake!' Owen has had enough and now he's snapped. He swivels round in his chair and says, ‘For fuck's sake you two, you always get into one, don't you?'

‘Well fucking tell him,' Liam shouts, pointing at Noel who is now smirking back at him, happy to see Liam riled. ‘Don't fucking tell me. I'm telling the truth. That dickhead won't believe me.'

Noel again shakes his cigarette accusingly at his brother and says, ‘There's more to this. I know it and I'm going to get to the bottom of it.'

‘Look,' Owen interjects, raising his hands like a boxing referee who wants to stop a fight, ‘can we please just listen to the mix.'

Before either Noel or Liam can say a word, Owen turns back to the desk, pushes a large button and the sound of a gentle acoustic guitar drifts in, its melody counterpointed by soft notes from a shimmering electric guitar. The guitars are joined by some slow swooping orchestral strings which add another melody before Noel's voice enters, plaintive but strong. This is ‘The Masterplan'.

He sings, ‘Take the time to make some sense / Of what you want to say / And cast your words away upon the waves / And sail them home with acquiesce upon a ship of hope today / And as they land upon the shore / Tell them not to fear no more.'

Now the orchestra gets louder as Noel's voice changes from its gentle mode into one of hopeful determination.

‘Say it loud and sing it proud today,' he urges before reaching the contagious chorus line, ‘Dance if you want to dance / Please brother take a chance,' and a horn section is introduced, adding to the majesty of the music as the song reaches its first climax.

Unexpectedly, a distorted electric guitar, like John Lennon's on ‘I'm Only Sleeping' now butts in, rubbing against the strings, taking us up to the bridge. Then as Noel again urges, ‘Say it loud and sing it proud today,' the song dips into its second chorus, propelled by chugging strings.

After the second verse, which contains the lines, ‘Because everything that's been has passed / The answer's in the looking glass / There's four and twenty million doors on life's endless corridor,' the song goes back into its triumphant chorus before reaching its zenith, Noel's electric guitar solo put with backing vocals, strings, horns, all of them climbing together before an acoustic guitar enters to take us back to earth, back to ground. It's a masterpiece. The song ends with Noel's reverberating guitar sending out silver shivers of notes and chords.

In the studio there is a momentary silence and then Liam stands up, goes over to Noel and says, ‘That is as good as any Beatles' song, I'm telling you man, it is. You don't know how fucking good you are.'

Noel looks shyly at the floor, drags on his cigarette.

Liam turns excitedly to Owen and the girl, a huge smile on his lips. Once again the music has healed the Gallagher brothers.

‘And it's a B-side,' Liam excitedly exclaims. ‘How fucking top is that?'

Tomorrow, she starts work. Proper work, that is. Her schooling is over now, finished for good. So is her youth. Now she is an adult with a job and responsibilities.

The year is 1956 and the place is County Mayo, situated in West Ireland. Her name is Peggy Sweeney and one day she will marry and bear the surname Gallagher. She is just thirteen years old.

Right now she is not thinking about school. Her thoughts are on the house in Charlestown where tomorrow she will get on her knees and clean and scrub, cook and dust. It is a big house, an imposing house that she will walk to in the cold dawn mist, a house stocked with objects and valuables that she has heard about but never ever seen. She hopes that these rich people, the O'Haras, will be nice.

To be sure, she can hardly imagine such wealth. Yet one day, incredible and staggering amounts of money will be sitting at her very fingertips, hers to keep if she so chooses. The sons that she is to bear will become world-famous. They will make millions and then they will bring those riches to her. But all she will ask for is a bigger colour TV.

Today, there is no work. Today Peggy will sit by the small stream that passes by the bottom of her garden and stare at her watery reflection. She is dressed in a grubby cotton dress and her feet are bare. She has sea-shell eyes and dark brown hair. Above her the sky is an azure blue and the sun is a yellow snooker-ball.

Around her are the fields and the open spaces that she knows so well; she has played here, laughed, cried and fallen upon this land.

Behind Peggy, stands her mother's home, a tiny two-up, two-down house that has ten children and one adult under its roof.

Cows, chickens, hens and pigs surround it. Through their intermittent cacophony, the sound of her mother singing can be heard through the open window. The melody is Irish, the words are Gaelic.

Her ma has a rich, deep voice, a resonant voice that always brings pleasure. In the village the people say,' Ah, that Sweeney woman, have you heard her sing? Such a happy woman, such a happy sound.' When Peggy hears those words about her mother it makes her feel so proud.

A light wind comes up and passes through Peggy's hair. She gives a slight shiver and looks down at the water to try to get a glimpse of her future. Occasionally she has sensed what is to happen next. But today, all she can see is work and tiny piles of worn-out pennies.

From an early age, she has known that life would never be easy. It is the way of the world, the way of her people who say that in life there are two realities: there are your dreams and then there are the facts-you are allowed one but you must obey the other.

In Peggy's dreams she would have liked to have stayed on at school. She loved reading and learning about Irish language and culture. But the luck was against her.

The family turns to Peggy. There are eleven of them now. If Peggy stays at school and lives in her dreams, how will they eat?

Her brother Paddy had already gone and now he is in Yorkshire. Each day he descends into the earth to wrench out coal, hour after hour after painful hour. When his paypacket arrives, his grimy hands rip open the flimsy envelope and his blistered fingers carefully extract a certain amount. Then he slowly walks to the post office and sends the money to his mother, his brothers and sisters. He does this every week. He is a good man, her brother, a great man. Unlike her father he hasn't deserted them.

Now it is Peggy's turn to help. She doesn't question this fact or allow herself any regrets. It is the way of the world and she can't change it.

You get on with things the best you can. Life is hard but it is simple if, like Peggy and all the villagers, you are not given the chance to make it complex. Plus, her ma calls her the most responsible of her children, and that must stand for something.

Peggy gazes down at the stream again. She studies the passing clean water for signs but there are none. How could she know that her mother's voice, so strong and so clear, would actually echo down the years? That it would never die. That it would, in fact, be immortalised.

Through Peggy that voice will travel to Manchester and there be passed on to her sons. And they, years later, will take that voice all around the world, and people everywhere will be hypnotised and inspired by its sound; their heads filled with colour and hope.

How could Peggy know such a fantastic thing at age thirteen? On the day before she began proper work?

Such possibilities hadn't even been invented.

So Peggy Sweeney, still mesmerised by the endless water that passes by her feet, gazes down into the river and looks upon the reflection of her face. It is glimmering, shimmering, and although today there is no sign, it really doesn't matter, because she has never felt happier to be sitting there, a proud and happy child, a tiny real piece of God's work.

Hard people, the Irish: hard workers, hard thinkers, hard players. God had made them so because theirs was a land of extremes, a country of hope washed in suffering. Famine, invasion, war and poverty had all, like vengeful banshees, ridden the Irish land, cutting down all before them. Yet still, in the face of such atrocities, the people sang, and still they endured.

‘The Irish sing the saddest songs in the universe and then they get on with it,' Sex Pistol frontman John Lydon once wrote. Later on, in a more pertinent phrase, he noted, ‘The Irish don't give a fuck.' This was also true, and between those two quotes would stand Noel and Liam Gallagher.

The Irish paused, not for self-pity but to find a way out of their desperate predicaments. They cast their eyes northwards and they saw the promised land that would deliver them. Its name: America.

Over the years, millions upon millions travelled there, to become policemen, labourers and politicians. Those that climbed the ladder and realised the dream had to be well versed in survival techniques.

The outside is a cold and useless place to be. Being on the outside, it kills. Literally. Ireland and capitalism, poverty and discrimination, taught them that. They learnt their lessons quickly. By the turn of this century, Tammany Hall, New York's centre of political power, was run by the Irish.