Getting High (49 page)

At the
NME
, Mark Sutherland was unequivocal in his judgement. Blur's was ‘nothing short of a classic pop single', while Oasis's ‘ludicrously intensive campaign suggests the prolific work rate is finally taking its toll on Noel Gallagher's once seemingly bottomless well of cracking choons'.

Noel tossed away the paper in disgust. He was 60% sure now that Oasis would lose. Then Marcus called. Blur had again upped the odds. They had just announced their decision to play in Bournemouth on the same night as Oasis. This was going too far now. Any more of this and fuck the niceties. We'll have him, Burnage style. (Oasis subsequently grabbed the higher moral ground by moving their show to the following night, explaining that they didn't want their fans to be embroiled in any trouble.)

That night, Noel caught a cab over to the Kensington Hilton and met Paul Weller. They had a few drinks at the bar and then the two musicians returned to Noel's Camden flat and spent the night getting wasted. So wasted in fact that when Marcus arrived at midday to pick Noel up and take him to
Top Of The Pops
, Noel was, in Weller's memorable phrase, ‘frothing at the mouth'.

At the TV studio, Noel and Liam decided to swap roles. Liam played the guitar while Noel swayed dangerously by the microphone singing the song. The BBC only realised, one tabloid reported, because, ‘Noel stuck his tongue out when he should have been singing.' After the show, Noel went home and collapsed.

The following Saturday, Oasis flew out of the country to start a Japanese tour. On Sunday, at seven that night, Radio One announced the winners of the singles battle. Blur, straight in at number one.

‘Roll With It' c I w ‘It's Better People', Rockin' Chair', and a live version of ‘Live Forever', taken from Glastonbury, number two.

In the week that some 1.8 million singles were sold, ‘Country House' claimed 274,000 sales, ‘Roll With It' 216,000. Now Oasis really knew what it was like to lose at Wembley in a Cup Final.

Noel moved quickly to shrug off the defeat. He pointed back to February 1967 when Englebert Humperdinck's ‘Please Release Me' kept the best-ever Beatles' single, ‘Strawberry Fields' c/w ‘Penny Lane', off the top of the charts.

It was a hasty excuse that couldn't disguise the horrible taste that Oasis felt in their mouths. The next interview Noel undertook was with Miranda Sawyer for a major
Observer
profile of the band. In it, he told her about Blur, ‘the bass player and the singer – I hope the pair of them catch AIDS and die because I fucking hate them two.'

Sawyer is herself from Manchester and wasn't surprised to hear Noel using such language.

‘It's the kind of thing people around Manchester say,' she claims.

‘People say, I hope so and so dies. When Noel said it, I thought he was a bit of a prick but I also thought it was quite funny. I certainly didn't expect it to be blown up like it did.'

Nor, would it seem, did her editors. In the published piece, the
Observer
didn't flag the comment in any way and left it buried somewhere on the second page.

Yet it was undoubtedly an intemperate remark whose insensitivity was highlighted a few weeks later when a woman whose boyfriend had just died from being an HIV carrier related that he had requested Oasis records to be played at his funeral.

Melody Maker
were the first to highlight it. Two days, after the
Observer
appeared, they reported that Noel had brought the whole Blur I Oasis clash down to new levels of indecency. This was picked up by the rest of the media, and the story grew and grew.

Meanwhile, Sawyer, prior to flying to New York for a holiday, had been contacted by
Melody Maker
, who, she claimed, misquoted her. On her return, she spoke with Oasis's press officer Johnny Hopkins who said she should write a rebuttal to them. This she did, which they then pulled apart.

‘I couldn't do anything right at that point,' she says.

She also totally refutes Noel's later statement that he retracted the comment directly after saying it. ‘If he had then I would either have not written it or pointed out the retraction.'

Miranda described Noel's mood throughout the interview as ‘jovial'. ‘Whether he was drunk or not I couldn't tell. It was a phone interview that took place at six in the morning over here and because of the phone lines it was hard to tell.'

Jovial or not, by the time he got back to England, Noel would have another public row to defuse.

Japan was a good place to be when the news came through. If anything, the audiences were even wilder now that they had Oasis records to play in their bedrooms. One fan stencilled a picture of Peggy and her three sons that had appeared in the UK press across her shirt, and two others sported the new Manchester City shirt, even though the season had only just begun.

The band played five nights in Tokyo at three different venues. Two at the Club Citta, one at the Liquid Room, two in the Garden Hall. After one of the shows, two girls arrived backstage with pills and powders.

The band plus followers returned to the hotel and partied all night in the swimming-pool, managing by five o' dock in the morning to have an irate manager informing them that they were banned forever from his hotel. Liam had removed every emergency exit sign he came across; sixteen of them were discovered in his room.

Then it was on to Osaka and two triumphant nights in the Imperial Hall. They then boarded a plane for London, knowing full well that on their arrival home, Noel's AIDS comments would be whipping up a storm of bad publicity.

The Terrence Higgins Trust, an organisation dedicated to helping people who are HIV positive, said they were ‘deeply shocked'.

At the London Lighthouse HIV hospital, spokesman Ben McKnight took a cooler approach, agreeing that the comment was insensitive, but adding, ‘This is just them whipping up more publicity rather than thinking of how people might be affected.'

Damon and Alex from Blur refused to comment, and Oasis moved quickly to limit the damage. Noel released a press release apologising for his remarks, stating, ‘As soon as I said it, I realised it was an insensitive thing to say and immediately retracted the comment. I was horrified to find the journalist concerned chose to run with it. Anyone who knows me will confirm that I am sympathetic towards the plight of HIV carriers as well as being supportive of the challenge to raise awareness about AIDS and HIV. Although not being a fan of their music, I wish both Damon and Alex a long life.' After that, things began to cool down.

When Noel returned home that Wednesday afternoon he was to find a message on his answer machine asking him if he would be available to be photographed with The Stone Roses for a potential
NME
cover. The story would be based around a unique venture that Oasis, prior to their departure, had agreed to participate in.

The project was the
Help
album, a record that would raise cash for the victims of the Bosnian War and attempt to enter the record books by being recorded, produced and distributed within a week. The idea came from Tony Crean at Go! Discs Records.

Stunned by the phase of absolute brutality that the war in Bosnia had now entered into, Crean had been galvanised into action. His idea was to secure the services of young British bands who would all enter studios from midnight on Sunday 3 September and deliver a finished track by Monday the 4th. Midnight was the deadline.

The master tapes would be cut and flown to pressing plants on the Tuesday and manufactured as cassettes on the Wednesday. They would then be flown to Polygram' s distribution centre in Chadwell Heath on Thursday and distributed to the shops on Friday, ready to be put on sale on that Saturday.

Such a mission had never been attempted before and its success lay totally with the full participation and professionalism of those involved.

On hearing the photo request, Noel jumped a cab to photographer Steve Double' s studio in London's East End. He was in a good mood that day. Alan McGee had taken on Meg and given her a job as artist liaison. Now she had something to get up for in the mornings.

At the studio, Noel had his photo taken with Ian Brown, Robbie Maddix, who had recently joined the Roses, and Sice from The Boo Radleys.

The musicians were then interviewed by
NME
's Mark Sutherland. Noel didn't mention Sutherland's recent poor review. Instead, they all spoke of their concern about the war but, unlike the Red Wedge movement of the 1980s which had inadvertently placed musicians in politician's clothes, they professed to having no solutions, just plain human compassion.

The following Sunday, Oasis entered the Maison Rouge Studios in Fulham just before midnight. Already, Liam and Noel had fought over the recording.

‘What song are we doing?' the band has previously asked Noel.

‘Remember how we played “Fade Away” at the Borderline? Like a ballad? That's the song. And I'm singing it.'

Liam, naturally, had to fight him on that one and after the squabble was over, Liam agreed to supply backing vocals, and the band, with Johnny Depp guesting on guitar, laid down a beautiful version of the song. Lisa M. sang backing vocals and Fran Cutler provided the ‘And you know that' which ends the record. By five o'clock, they had left the studio, Noel with the tape in his hand.

Crean hadn't only got the likes of Portishead, The Levellers, Radiohead, Suede, Neneh Cherry, Manic Street Preachers, Blur, The Charlatans and The Chemical Brothers to contribute, he had also swung it for Paul Weller to enter Studio Two in Abbey Road and record the Beatles' song ‘Come Together'.

In the preceding week, Weller had written a letter to Paul McCartney telling him about the project, offering an open invitation to attend the session.

It was precisely where Noel was heading that day. He told Liam about the arrangement but his brother said, ‘Arsed'. ‘If I meet Macca, I meet him. But I'm not going out of my way for him.'

Noel showed up at Abbey Road, the studio where his most favourite group ever had conspired to make some of the most riveting and far-reaching pop music of our times.

There was enormous doubt as to whether McCartney would show but at two in the afternoon, suddenly, he was standing there with wife Linda. Later, he played electric piano, bass and sang backing vocals. He also taught Weller's band a song he had written the day before but there was no time to record it.

About an hour after his arrival, Noel put down his guitar part in the small control-room that had recorded nearly every Beatles' song. McCartney to the right of him, Weller to the left, the subsequent film of this moment not only symbolised British pop in the 1990s, but also Noel Gallagher's musical journey. There would never be another day like it.

Soon after, Noel left the studio and hurried over to Radio One to preview ‘Fade Away', and publicise the album. Then he returned to Abbey Road, finally heading for home at around midnight.

It was as if he, the good Catholic boy, was now publicly atoning for all his sins.

They put Plan B into action on Monday 28 August. The tabloids (not the music press) announced that Oasis would play the Earls Court Arena, London on 5 November 1995.

The seating would be removed to allow an audience of 20,000 people. Ticket prices would be held at £14 per head.

Blur's biggest show to date had taken place that summer at London's Mile End stadium with an audience of 17,000. Oasis tickets would go on sale the next day.

The following night Noel called Marcus for an update on sales. He was told that demand was so heavy, Oasis would now play two nights at the venue. Forty thousand people would see them. They would be Europe's largest-ever indoor shows. It put a smile back on the band's faces.

They then sat back to await the reviews for
Morning Glory
, each one of them expecting praise to shower upon them like golden pennies from heaven. But in that turbulent summer of 1995 nothing would go as planned.

To begin with there was a major problem with ‘Step Out', the song that clearly lifted the verse from Stevie Wonder and Henry Cosby's song ‘Uptight'. It had been sent over to America for clearance, and the songwriters had come back demanding a massively high royalty rate. The song, which had been chosen to open side two of the album, was swiftly removed. However, this was at such a late stage that Creation had already sent out CDs containing the song. (These CDs are now highly-valuable collector's items, as are the white labels of ‘Columbia', ‘I Am The Walrus', ‘Acquiesce', and Brendan Lynch's mix of ‘Champagne Supernova'.)

‘It was a bit of a nothing track,' Noel told
Loaded
magazine. ‘If I could go back now I'd definitely swap “Rockin' Chair” for it, but we had to make a snap decision and I was wrong.'

On 30 September
NME
and
Melody Maker
ran full-page reviews of the album. They weren't what was expected. John Robinson in the
NME
wrote that the album felt like ‘the morning after the night before'. He railed against what he perceived to be a deliberate shift in Noel's songwriting, away from fast furious rock ‘n' roll towards a rock classicism, and ended by saying that the album contains ‘tales of a group that has peered over the edge and could lose their footing... Ultimately a nervous peek through the curtains, not a bold rise and shine'. He gave it seven out of ten.

David Stubbs at
Melody Maker
was much harder, more scathing. ‘Now we realise that the reason they are inarticulate is that they are not very bright', was one of his opening salvos, before going on to call the album ‘occasionally sublime but too often laboured and lazy', finishing with, ‘Oasis are fallen, fallen short of the stars. They sound knackered'.

Worse was to come in
Vox
when Steve Sutherland complained that the album contained ‘too much Paul Weller and too little John Lydon, too much Noel, not enough Liam', before concluding, ‘Measured against
The Great Escape
, Blur are better'.