Getting High (28 page)

At the end of the tour, Noel and Mark invited The Real People down to see Oasis play at the Boardwalk on 5 January 1993. They would be supporting Puressence, another band tipped for big things.

It would be great to be playing live, but Noel and Coyley's excitement was somewhat tempered by some very unwelcome news. The Inspirals had decided they no longer required their services. Maybe there had been too many complaints about their behaviour or maybe the band, as they explained to Noel and Mark, no longer had the finances to pay them. Whatever the reason, Noel was seriously pissed off. He now had to sign on and there is nothing worse than having to adjust your living standards to a much lower level. Now he was no longer financially solvent, Oasis would also be affected in terms of maintaining themselves financially.

Guigsy and Bonehead still worked, Guigsy as a personnel officer for British Telecom and Bonehead as a self-employed plasterer. But both Gallaghers were now on the dole, while, according to the band, it was always hard to squeeze cash from Tony McCarroll. It would only be through the DSS that Oasis could expect any kind of regular income.

When the Griffiths brothers arrived at the Boardwalk, Tony spotted John Bryce, who used to work for Sony Records but had now moved to Warner Chappell Publishing. He went over, said hello, and together the pair of them watched the gig.

Liam came on wearing a pair of shades, and sections of the audience started heckling him, shouting ‘Showaddywaddy', in reference to the dire 1970s glam rock ‘n' roll group whose singer also sported shades. Liam told them all to fuck off.

Oasis then played their customary short set to an audience of about fifty people. Now they had two new songs in the set list. They were ‘Rock ‘n' Roll Star' and ‘Bring It On Down'.

‘They were the ones,' enthuses Tony Griffiths. ‘I was standing there with this John Bryce and it was obvious to anyone standing there what was going on on stage. It was just fucking boss. And I said to John, sort them out some studio time and Chris my brother will produce it, and he said, “Yeah, fucking sound.”'

But Bryce found it impossible to convince his people in London of the wisdom of recording a band they had never seen or heard. So Tony and Chris decided to do it themselves.

‘We'd been setting up our own studio in a place called Porter Street in Dock Road,' he explains, ‘a big warehouse which had like three floors.

‘We'd set up an eight-track studio in this boss large room and at the same time we were about to produce our album. But then all this shit happened with the record company so we didn't know what was going on. We didn't have any gigs to do so we basically ended up working for Oasis for three months. We recorded about twelve tracks and it was really, really good.'

Eight of these songs would appear on the demo tape that Noel would later hand over to Alan McGee, head of Creation Records.

The sessions, produced by Mark Coyle and Chris Griffiths, took place at nights, starting at about eight in the evening and going through until about seven in the morning. They set the studio up to capture the band totally live, with very little added to the finished results.

By all accounts the atmosphere in the studio was easy-going with both bands showing each other a lot of mutual respect. Oasis even made a rough recording of a Real People song entitled ‘Heaven Knows', and a lot of the sessions would veer into a party mode.

‘I still had a publishing deal at the time,' Tony recalls, ‘so we had money to get the beers in, gin and tonics, all that stuff, plus there was a lot of good coke around at that time as well.'

When the band weren't recording, they would retire upstairs where there was a pool table and a stereo. Captain Beefheart and Beatles' music was the order of the day.

‘Slade as well,' Tony recalls, “'cos our drummer, at the time, Tony Hodgson, he's got the best musical taste in the world, and he was going through his Slade period where he was digging out all these Slade records, and that's basically what we were listening to at the time.'

The boys would engage in endless argumentative banter about music and football. It amused Oasis no end how talkative their Liverpool allies were, especially when Tony and Chris introduced them to their older cousin Digsy, ‘the funniest man in the world'. Digsy also played in a group called, and this is indicative of his humour, Smaller.

As for Noel and Liam, Tony saw little of their argumentative side, except that which is common to all brothers.

‘It's complete shite,' he stresses, ‘it's what the media want it to be. It makes it more interesting. I'm in a band with me own brother and we talk to each other like dogs, but that's the way you are, because you're brothers. I don't talk to anyone else like that.'

The songs Oasis recorded over these three months included ‘Alive', ‘Cloudburst', ‘Do Yer Wanna Be A Spaceman', ‘Strange Thing', ‘Bring It On Down', ‘Whatever', ‘Married With Children', ‘Fade Away', ‘Rock ‘n' Roll Star' and ‘Columbia'.

All of the songs bar ‘Strange Thing', are now available and very little has been changed on the finished recorded versions. The original recording of ‘Rock ‘n' Roll Star' boasts a slightly different intro and is played at a slower pace than that on the
Definitely Maybe
album. Liam has yet to come up with his unique phrasing. He sings ‘sunshine' in a completely straightforward manner, although it's clear that his voice is starting to find its now unique sound.

On ‘Bring It On Down' Guigsy's bass is to the forefront on the intro, sounding like John Entwistle's playing on The Who's ‘Pinball Wizard'. Liam's vocal is also treated in a much heavier fashion, filtered through for a megaphone effect.

‘Columbia' has a different intro altogether and ends with a disembodied voice, sampled from the radio and deliberately slowed down, intoning things like, ‘Take away the melody from your song... like an ever-flowing stream.' It's then replaced by what sounds like a Hare Krishna chant.

It was this song that would later cause some controversy. According to Griffiths, Noel had the chord structure for ‘Columbia', an early example of his ability to bridge the gap between rock guitars and a dance music element. But he had no melody or lyrics. One night, Chris Griffiths sang a melody over it which began with the words, ‘There we were / Now here we are / All this confusion/ Nothing's the same to me.'

‘That was the thing that started it off,' Griffiths recalls. ‘And it was Liam who wrote the chorus, “I can't tell you the way I feel / Because the way I feel is oh so new to me,” and it's like, Liam wrote that.

‘Then I came up with some shite words for the third verse and Noel went fuck off and wrote something well better.'

A collaboration then, yet when the song was released, Noel Gallagher was the only name credited. Similarly, the fact that the eight-track demo of ‘Alive' ended up on the B-side of the band's second single, ‘Shakermaker', was also a contentious point.

‘That kind of pissed us off a little bit, the fact that three months of our work was getting put out and Creation Records are making loads of money out of it. But see, we're not arsed. If we had wanted to sue Oasis we would have already done it. We don't want to come across as the dickheads of the music business jumping on the Oasis bandwagon, because as far as I'm concerned I'm in a boss group myself.

‘I'm just amazed I was a part of it because the thing is we were always talking about us both being successful and, you know, let's all buy a studio on an island and go there. It's the shite you talk when you're all off your heads.'

It was during this period, late March 1993 to June 1993, that Oasis played twice in Liverpool. Once at Le Bateau and once at the Krazy House. At the first gig Smaller, Digsy's band, played support and about twenty people showed up.

‘But nearly everyone there,' Griffiths recalls, ‘was in bands from Liverpool, and me and our kid are going, “They're boss, aren't they?” And they're all laughing, going, “They're fucking Mancs.” We've never ever been into that Liverpool versus Manchester thing. It's all shite, that.'

When Oasis had finished, Liam was spotted by some bouncers smoking a spliff. The bouncers went to throw him out. Liam, as ever, kicked off and Tony had to intervene to keep him in the club.

‘Luckily enough, I knew the manager but I nearly ended up getting a fucking hiding.'

In April, the band played their Krazy House gig and then in May they appeared at the Boardwalk again, their sixth appearance there. Later on that month, Sister Lovers told them they had a gig booked at a place in Glasgow, King Tut's, supporting a Creation band called 18 Wheeler.

‘We'll have that one,' Oasis said.

It was a girl that sent Alan McGee scurrying over to King Tut's club in Glasgow on the night of 31 May 1993. A girl. He wasn't acting on a tip-off about an explosive new group and he certainly didn't have business on his mind. Alan McGee went to King Tut's hoping to get laid.

McGee was in the middle of one of his regular break-ups with his then girlfriend Linda. The night before he had told his sister, Susan, about the bust-up and she had responded by saying, ‘Come down to King Tut's, I'll be with a couple of mates, one of them is dead nice and she hasnae got a boyfriend.'

McGee had been unsure about going to King Tut's that night. He was hungover from the previous night's excesses, but he felt obliged to pop in as one of his bands, 18 Wheeler, were playing. When the chance of meeting a girl suddenly occurred, his mind was made up for him.

‘I was such a cantankerous git in those days,' McGee says with a laugh, ‘so I bowled in pissed, hoping basically to pull one of my sister's mates. Sure enough, the girl didn't show up.'

McGee actually arrived two hours earlier than he should have done. He naturally thought that all the bands on the bill would be playing during pub hours. He didn't realise that King Tut's had been granted a late licence. If he had known that, he would have arrived two hours later and missed the first act.

When McGee walked in his attention was instantly grabbed by a tall, young Mancunian wearing an Adidas top and sporting an eye-catching haircut.

‘And I remember turning round in this pub and the minute I saw him I thought, he looks like Paul Weller, the kid looks like a fucking star. And that was Liam.'

At first, McGee thought Liam was part of the Manchester gang who were present. They had travelled up with Oasis and were making a lot of noise and acting in a threatening manner.

They had been put in this aggressive mood by the harassed owner of the club. He thought he was putting on three bands that night. Instead he had got four.

‘Who are you?' he asked the gang of about fourteen Mancunians who had tumbled out of two hire vans bearing guitars and equipment.

‘We're Oasis, mate,' Liam told him, ‘and we're playing here tonight.'

‘But I haven't booked you.'

‘Tough shit, we're here, that's it.'

And then it was pointed out that although the promoter had bouncers on the door, this firm outnumbered them four to one and as they had just travelled for hours in a van they had paid for, they would be very, very annoyed if the band didn't play.
Capiche
?

The promoter took one look at the band and their mates and acquiesced. Oasis set up their equipment.

Meanwhile, McGee climbed the stairs of the pub to get a better view of the first band on. He was amazed when he saw Liam walk on-stage. He assumed he was part of the Manchester fan contingent. Probably one of their drug dealers.

Oasis went into ‘Rock ‘n' Roll Star', ‘Bring It On Down', ‘Up In The Sky', and finished with ‘I Am The Walrus'. Fifteen minutes worth of work, if that.

Liam, who McGee described that night as ‘absolutely charismatic and confrontational', held the mike in his hand as there was no mike stand. And because the stage was so small, Guigsy for the first and last time, played just behind and to the left-hand side of Noel who always stands centre right.

McGee watched the gig with an excitement he hadn't experienced in years. He absolutely swears ‘that I knew I was going to sign them within two songs.'

But he didn't go backstage waving his cheque book in the air. He waited patiently for them to appear in the bar. When they emerged, he went up to Noel and introduced himself. Noel did a little double-take. He remembered McGee from his days of raving at Spectrum in London's Charing Cross. And, of course, he knew all about Creation Records. But this character standing in front of him looked nothing like the McGee from four years ago.

‘Noel said to me, “The last time I saw you, you had tons of hair and sunglasses on”, which was right because I thought I was Malcolm McLaren up until 1989. And then I said, “I want to sign you”, and he goes “Do you want to hear a tape?” And I went, “No, you're real. I'll sign you.”'

Even so, Noel still gave McGee a demo tape. The cover of the cassette was a picture of a swirling Union Jack going down a plug. It had been designed, from an idea by Noel Gallagher by Tony French, a friend.

‘But he forgot to put the plug-hole in the middle of the flag,' Noel recalls, ‘so we had to explain it to everyone.'

On the back of the tape was a number to call and a note to ask for Paul, Noel's older brother.

McGee promised to get in touch. Noel said goodbye, went back and told the rest of the band about the offer. He said that McGee seemed quite out of it so the news was taken by all with a pinch of salt, and then they travelled back to Manchester.

The next day, Noel was still unsure about McGee's offer. He couldn't work out if the guy was taking the piss or was for real.

The only person he could think to get advice from was the Inspirals' old manager, Anthony Bodgiano, whom everyone in town had nicknamed Scamiano.