Getting High (32 page)

In the studio was a large dog named Elsa. Someone had inadvertently spilled cocaine on the floor and Elsa had licked it all up. She then spent the next few days gazing at a wall. So when Noel was busy scribbling out the lyrics, the image came to mind and thus, ‘I know a girl called Elsa / She's into alka seltzer.'

After the recording was finished, they then travelled down to London for the Radio One session at the Maida Vale studios. This is where their radio plugger, Dylan White, first met them.

‘They were completely knackered. Noel was lying on a sofa and I asked them who the songwriter was. He said, “I am,” and I said to all the band, “I'm going to shake your hands now because in the future there won't be any time.”'

The songs included in their set that night were ‘Bring It On Down', ‘Shakermaker', ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol', ‘Up In The Sky' and the newly recorded ‘Supersonic'.

Alan McGee was in attendance at the Maida Vale show and he remembers hearing ‘Supersonic' for the first time.

‘I kept thinking to myself, What's wrong with this song? It's too perfect.'

It was here that another piece of Oasis mythology was made. McGee holding a glass of Jack Daniels and coke sat down on a chair which subsequently collapsed. The drink spilt all over his white Levi's jeans.

In Noel's hands that incident became, ‘Alan McGee was so excited by our performance that he poured a bottle of Jack Daniels all over himself.'

Face it, it does read a lot better than what really went down.

Liam Gallagher entered Mark Coyle's bedroom in the Monnow Valley Studios in South Wales and told him to get the fuck up.

‘We've been waiting half an hour, you dickhead.'

Coyley made no response, just lay there sleeping. Liam went over and shook the engineer. ‘Oi, Coyley, get up.'

Coyley hated being woken up. It did his head in. He was one of these people who had to get their required amount of sleep. Woe betide anyone who prevented him from doing so. He came to with a start.

‘You fucking wanker,' he shouted, ‘fuck off.'

‘Piss off dickhead and get up.'

Coyley raised himself up, grabbed some shoes by the side of the bed and threw them at Liam. Then he grabbed the lampshade and threw that too.

‘Fuck off, you madhead,' Liam shouted, ducking the objects, but a huge smile breaking out on the singer's face.

Then Coyley leapt out of bed and started running after the giggling singer. Outside, Oasis were sitting in their van waiting to travel to the Water Rats in Kings Cross, London. It would be their first proper concert in the capital, a prestigious concert people kept telling them. But they were unimpressed. To them, all gigs were important.

They already knew there was a buzz about this show. First off, ‘Columbia' had brilliantly served its purpose by causing a real stir. It had received its premiere on Monday 6 December 1993 on Radio One's increasingly important and popular Evening Session, hosted by Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley, and had been regularly played thereafter. It was the first time a demo had been put on Radio One's playlist.

In his report to Creation, plugger Garry Blackburn wrote, ‘Reaction to this track has been fantastic, discussed at playlist meeting on Thursday 16th, now on C-list [lists devised by Radio One, A-list being those records that are most played] as of Monday 20th, and has been kept on C-list as of Monday 27th December. We will not go heavy on this...'

He goes on to say that Mark Cooper at BBC2's
Later
show, Gary Crowley at Carlton TV's
The Beat
,
The Word
and
The Big E
had been serviced, and that ‘everyone very interested'.

Add to this, Marcus Russell's strategy of slowly building up a fan-base while deliberately avoiding a high-profile show in the capital, and it was no surprise that the gig had sold out in minutes, leaving a substantial amount of people waiting outside the Water Rats trying to get in.

No doubt the band would have had sympathy for those unable to buy tickets but, as Marcus would have pointed out, it was better at this point to play a small place and have people clamouring to get in, than to satisfy everyone straight away. Marcus would repeat this game-plan until even he, two years later, had to finally cave and book the band into the biggest gig ever seen in Britain: two nights in Knebworth Park playing to a quarter of a million people. And even then, that would still leave one and three quarters of a million people disappointed.

That night, 27 January 1994 Oasis played for forty minutes. They performed ‘Columbia', ‘Bring It On Down', ‘Shakermaker', ‘Supersonic', ‘Digsy's Dinner', ‘Up In The Sky', ‘Live Forever', and ‘I Am The Walrus'. There was no encore.

‘I remember us being in this poxy dressing-room,' Bonehead says, ‘and opening the door to look out and this club which had seemed so small when it was empty was now absolutely packed. It was top.'

‘Nah, it was full of fucking journalists and media people,' Noel says dismissively, although the audience did also include musicians from The Verve, Saint Etienne and The Charlatans.

Two days after the show, when he should have been back in Wales, Noel was taken by McGee down to the MTV studios in London to witness Primal Scream's first live TV appearance for two years in support of their new single, ‘Rocks'.

‘It was the first time we had played live in ages,' Bobby Gillespie points out, ‘so we just kept playing because it felt so good. Then our drummer went out for something and I saw Noel there and just shouted at him, “Noel, the drums!”'

Unfortunately, as Noel strode towards the drum kit, the MTV producers decided enough was enough and turned the cameras off. Footage of the Primals and Noel performing ‘Rocks' and The Rolling Stones' ‘Jumping Jack Flash' was never recorded.

Noel had already met Bobby at a Paddington hotel about a month before. He was a big fan of the Primals'
Screamadelica
album and an admirer of their outspoken views. Bobby recalls Tim Abbot bringing Noel to their room, and he and Throb, the Scream's guitarist, performing various Sam Cooke and old soul tunes. Noel then asked if he could play a song.

‘And he did a really beautiful version of “This Guy's In Love With You”,' Gillespie recalls with obvious admiration. Eleven months later, Noel would support the Primals on their Christmas show at London's Shepherd's Bush Empire. Paul Weller would also appear with the Primals.

The reviews for the Water Rats show were unanimous in their praise, but at this point in their career, despite the gig's success, Oasis really weren't in the mood to celebrate. The reason was that the recording of their debut album was now completed and not only had the sessions been agonisingly slow, but the finished tapes were nowhere near the sonic assault Noel and everybody else wanted.

In part, Noel had to blame himself, for. he had made some unexpected decisions concerning the album. First off he had totally baffled the band by refusing to record ‘All Around The World' or ‘Whatever'.

‘Nah,' he had firmly stated, ‘”All Around the World” isn't going on the first album and certainly not on the second one. It might go on the third album but probably the fourth. As for “Whatever”, that's going to be our sixth or seventh single.'

That was fair enough, showing Gallagher foresight, but the second surprise proved to be costly: Noel's choice of producer David Batchelor.

Noel knew Batchelor from his Inspirals' days, when he had mixed them live. Batchelor had produced the cult 1970s band The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, a group renowned for their carefree attitude that had acted as a real precursor to the punk movement. He had then gone on to work with acts such as The Kinks in the late 1970s, and his musical CV strongly appealed to Noel. They had similar musical tastes.

‘He [Batchelor] talked a great record,' McGee explains.

The other main contender at this point was obviously Coyley, but his inexperience in the studio went against him, a fact he was the first to point out. He would be more than happy to engineer and let someone more knowledgeable man the controls.

That man was Batchelor, but as the sessions progressed he was finding himself increasingly at loggerheads with the band owing to his production technique. Instead of recording the band live and then adding various parts, known as overdubbing, Batchelor insisted on recording each member of the band separately.

This method not only prolonged the sessions but the mixes that were being achieved didn't match up to the raucous sound the band wanted.

Noel's ambition was to make Oasis records as loud as The Who's
Live At Leeds
album, but these early mixes were far too tame for both his and the band's tastes.

‘It didn't sound like us,' Guigsy explains. ‘It was too nice. He tried to make us sound nice instead of just taping us.'

Ironically another Manchester band, The Stone Roses, whose audience Oasis would so dramatically swipe, were recording their new album, the long-awaited follow-up to
The Stone Roses
, down the road at Rockfield Studios.

In nearby Monmouth, Noel had bumped into their singer Ian Brown, who reportedly had said, ‘Oasis, yeah, about time.'

(Later on, as everybody waited for Oasis to self destruct, it was the Roses, who took something like fourteen months to put this album,
The Second Coming
, together, who fell apart and not the hell-raisers from Burnage.)

The sessions dragged on. Liam vociferously complained about Batchelor, and McCarroll was routinely abused by every band member. Somehow, the hapless drummer was able to convince himself that the band's vicious insults were actually demonstrations of their regard for him which, of course, further aggravated his tormentors.

Things only really livened up when the band partied. This either meant massive drinking sessions in nearby pubs, or riotous affairs in the studio. But on one occasion Bonehead was at it so hard that he nearly got a hiding from Noel, and the band produced one of their most scintillating performances.

‘It's about four or five in the morning,' Guigsy remembers, ‘and everyone is drifting off to bed. But Bonehead's still going and he wants to speak to people. Everyone's in their rooms and it's pure country quiet where you can hear everything and you can hear him walking downstairs going, “What do I do? What do I do? I know, phone people up.” So after he's tried a few people, he's decided, “I know, ring the Roses.” So John Squire comes on the phone and Bonehead puts on a Rasta accent, “Hey man, is that the man Squire from the Squire family, we meet you at the comer, man, get you some toot.” Then he puts the phone down and rings up again only this time he's an Indian curry shop owner with their takeaway orders.

‘Bonehead's like laughing and crumbling to bits. Eventually he goes to bed. Then he opens up the window and starts shouting at the rabbits outside, “Ya fucking Mr. Bunny, go to bed, come on Mr. Bunny, beddy times.”

‘And that wakes the whole gaff up. Next morning, I'm eating breakfast and he comes down the stairs. He's like, “All right, Guigs?” and then he sits there just farting and laughing his head off. Then Noel comes down and he is double grumpy. Noel's like, “You better go to fucking bed, dickhead, because I don't want to see you,” so Bonehead goes off and Noel sits down going, “I'm going to kill the cunt when he wakes up. Wait until he sobers up.”

‘So to calm Noel down I take him into town, buy him the papers and some Pot Noodles, crisps, cream cakes, all the stuff he likes, and then we pop into the pub at about half-ten and order a cab for eleven. Half-five in the evening me and Noel are still sitting and we are proper off our faces. Then we go back to the studio.

‘Bonehead is now avoiding us, he's like, “Noel is going to kill me,” and Noel walks into the studio and goes, “Right you bastards, we'll do ‘Slide Away'.” After each take we got more and more off our heads, but Noel's going to Bonehead, “You're staying straight, you're not getting off it
ever
again.” Liam had fucked off somewhere but it was one of these takes that we used on the album.'

As this was the band's first real experience of a proper recording studio, they had reluctantly bowed down to Batchelor's experience. But as they struggled to find a way through, the unexpected news broke that they wouldn't be able to call on their record company boss for advice and support.

In early 1994 Alan McGee suffered a complete physical breakdown, caused by his massive drink and drug intake, and frenetic lifestyle. He would be the first of many to temporarily fall by the wayside as the Oasis juggernaut gathered pace.

‘Basically,' McGee admits, ‘I became a professional drug addict. There was this image of me as Alan McGee, the party animal and I was playing up to it. Cocaine, amphetamines, Ecstasy, speed pills, diet pills, Jack Daniels, and then taking Night Nurse to go to sleep.

‘And it wasn't just the drugs, it was everything connected to it. The whole company was based right round me. It was the cult of personality, and there was no respite. I'd get back home in the morning and there'd be like twenty' three messages on my answer machine. I was just too available. There was no cut-off point.'

McGee entered the Florence Nightingale clinic in London's West End. On his first day, the fire alarm bell went off. Everyone was evacuated. Some patients tried to escape, others, like McGee, stayed outside on the street. As he was waiting to go back in a patient pushed past him, bent down and picked up an empty crisp bag.

‘I've found my handbag,' she announced.

‘That was the point,' he now says. ‘I just went, all right, Christ, this is real. But I also realised I might be fucked up and I need a lot of therapy to sort my head out, but the bottom line is, that is a crisp packet and I know it's a crisp packet.'

It would take nine months, four in re-hab and five spent slowly readjusting his life, for McGee to take hold fully of the reins again. Dick Green, his partner, and all the other key Creation employees would now have to fill the space McGee had vacated. And they did so brilliantly, according to the Creation boss.