Oasis: Part 1 with Rob Harvilla

By 1994, grunge had waned and Madchester had set the table for the next massive wave of British music—the UK was ready for its next big rock band to refocus the global lens back on ol’ Blighty. That’s when Oasis popped onto the scene fully formed and captured the mantle with their iconic haircuts, perfect clothes, explosive feuds, and of course, their absolute bangers. Join along as Yasi Salek and her Wonderwall, The Ringer’s Rob Harvilla, ask each other: where were you while Oasis was getting high? In this part one of two, we cover everything between the band’s formation and what led up to the legendary Britpop chart battle. SKIP AHEAD: 6:48 – Formation: Liam and Noel Gallagher 29:57 – Formation: Other band members 45:15 – Oasis pre-Noel 1:03:06 – Oasis gets signed 1:36:41 – First single “Supersonic” 2:12:49 – “Definitely Maybe” 3:06:48 – Early Britpop Battle EPISODE PLAYLIST: Listen to songs we detail in the episode ⁠HERE⁠ CREDITS: Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalek Guest: Rob Harvilla @robharvilla Producer: Liz Sánchez Audio Editor: Adrian Bridges Additional Production Supervision: Justin Sayles Theme Song: Bethany Cosentino Buy tickets for the live show HERE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Yasi Salek?

  Guess what, babe? We're doing a live show in Los Angeles in the new year 2025, and you are invited. On Wednesday, January 29th, Band Splain is doing a crossover show, a crossover event, if you will, with the one and only Robert Harvilla from the beloved show 60 Songs That Explain the 90s: The 2000s. Rob and I will be podcasting live with a special guest from the beautiful Lodge Room in Highland Park. And tickets? They go on sale this Friday, December 13th. That's tomorrow at 10 a.m. Pacific Time at theringer.com/events. Don't miss out. Check out theringer.com/events tomorrow, Friday, December 13th,

• 0:45Yasi Salek?

  and get your tickets to come see me and Rob at the Lodge Room on January 29th. We hope to see you there. Bring presents.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  What's with this band anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait, like Band Splain? Never heard this band in my life. Oh, you haven't? I love them. Really? Why? Yeah, I love this song. Oh, I don't know that one. Band Splain, Band Splain, Band Splain. I really hate this band. Whatever. I'm their biggest fan. Band Splain, Band Splain, Band Splain, Band Splain. Band Splain.

• 1:35Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome to Band Splain. I am your host, Yasi Salek. This is a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist. Today's episode is about Oasis. If you've never heard Oasis, well, you can have it all, babe. But how much do you want it?

• 1:59Yasi Salek?

  You guys, my guest today is my wonderwall, Mr. Robert Harvilla. Welcome to the program, Rob.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  That's very kind. That's the nicest thing you've ever said about me.

• 2:09Yasi Salek?

  And I'm It's true. You're my work wonderwall for sure. And I don't have much of a life outside of work. So that sort of de facto makes you my all around, much like Noel Gallagher. I'm a bit of a workaholic. So

• 2:22Speaker 02

  There we go. Both committed to your craft, to the exclusion of

• 2:26Yasi Salek?

  Correct.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  How are you enjoying England, Yasi? You're fairly early in this, in this process. I just, I, do you want to leave? How much do you want it?

• 2:37Yasi Salek?

  What is the opposite of Brexit, where I go there and don't want to leave from there? Also, whatever's hap- something's happening and I need to warn you and I need to warn everyone who knows me. And I do apologize in advance. It's not on purpose, but I have been developing a tick, much like, remember when Madonna married Guy Ritchie? And then she would talk in interviews. Yeah. Like the other night I was like, I'm keen on that. And I was like, oh no, it's happening. It's happening. It's, I can't help it. So

• 3:08Speaker 02

  On the telly, yeah, it's gonna be

• 3:11Yasi Salek?

  On the telly, exactly. I don't know what we did when we took that language and just fucking dumbed it down. But we lost all of the pizzazz.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:21Yasi Salek?

  Right now, mate, I've, I, I'm oscillating between favorite phrases. And right now I've settled on get to fuck, because it's so versatile and just elegant. Do you know what I mean?

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Sure. You yell that at your dog a lot.

• 3:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Get to fuck. Rob, before I get into mapping the DNA of the Gallagher brothers back to like the Middle Ages or whatever I'm about to do, um, why don't you tell me a little about your history with this band?

• 3:53Speaker 02

  I think I have to start by owning my American perspective here. You know, I'm a little self-conscious.

• 4:00Yasi Salek?

  We did a little disclaimer on the blur one like that too.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  You did. You did. Yes. After, after listening To you and a couple delightful Scottish people, you know, deconstruct the Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses for nine hours. You know, I'm a little self-conscious about the Ohio of it all, but I'm just gonna have to own it, right? I'm gonna have to own coming to Oasis is like a Midwestern alt-rock teenager and sort of marveling at what was the same and what was different between, you know, all the grunge that I loved already, right? Like, I just, I'm trying to flashback and hear myself, hear Supersonic for the first time again and sort of try to figure out where this fits in to my evolving worldview, which

• 4:46Speaker 02

  is all based on one place, which is all just Seattle is the only place that matters. Like, how do I now contend with England possibly being another place that matters, right? Like, what, what makes Oasis, you know, the same? What makes them compatible with this new worldview? But what makes them, you know, frighteningly, awesomely different at the same time?

• 5:07Yasi Salek?

  Right. I understand the difficulty you must have faced having to whiplash from flannels and Doc Martens to cigarettes and alcohol.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  You know what struck me immediately? I, I think the culture shock of it was as much personality-driven and like, you know, just the way they talked in interviews, like anybody. Like, I was thinking about Richard Ashcroft from The Verve, just in something I read, just said, "Put us on the cover now." I remember him saying, I don't know who he said it to, if it was Spin or Rolling Stone or whatever, but I remember being, whatever I was, 18, 19, 20, being like, "Put us on the cover now." Like, of course, you know, I've been trained by this point by Edward Vedder, et cetera, to like, "You don't want to be on the cover, you don't want to be a rock star."

• 5:54Yasi Salek?

  Right. Turned his back in the corner of the room. That's me in the corner.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  Right. And so this idea, the mentality of the Brit pop greats being, I want all the attention. I am the greatest. I want to be on every album cover. I am a rock star. I am the walrus, et cetera. That was as striking to me as much a differentiator for me as anything musical, right? Just the idea that these guys had just a completely different relationship with rock stardom than the rock stars who I worshipped at that time.

• 6:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And I think like, part of it was like reactionary to the like sad sack, um, you know, grunge. I hate myself and I want to die, but actually no, I want to live forever. And we're going to unpack that.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. There we go.

• 6:49Yasi Salek?

  Let's start right at the top.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  The Big Bang.

• 6:52Yasi Salek?

  The Big Bang, which is the, the birth of Noel Thomas David Gallagher on May 29th, 1967. He's a Gemini, I think, to nobody who studies astrology, surprise. Do you think Noel Gallagher is an astrology girlie? Do you think he like checks the horoscopes daily?

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think he does. Yes, he does. He checks the horoscopes and he does the jumble. Do they have the jumble in England? They probably don't.

• 7:14Yasi Salek?

  What is the jumble? Do we have the jumble here?

• 7:16Speaker 02

  You don't know the jumble? It's just like a newspaper thing where it's just, it's just words jumbled up and you have to solve for, you know, jumbled up words. And then there's little circles on certain letters.

• 7:28Yasi Salek?

  It does sort of go back to the Ohio of it all, right? It's like this, it's very like an aggressively American thing. We're like, no, we find like words in the puzzle.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  Why is he a Gemini? Why is he obviously a Gemini?

• 7:41Yasi Salek?

  I think Geminis, okay, for example, Kanye West is also a Gemini.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  Oh, no. Okay.

• 7:47Yasi Salek?

  They're often geniuses in their own way and excellent communicators, but kind of hard to pin down. Like they, it's the sign of the twins, right? So you, you don't know what you're going to get. There's two sides to them. And people, some people will call it two face, but it's not exactly a two face. It's more that they do have these like two kind of dueling natures.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 8:10Yasi Salek?

  And they're very sharp, very sharp tongued. So he was born in the Longside area of Manchester.

• 8:17Yasi Salek?

  To Irish Catholic parents Peggy and Thomas Gallagher. The parents of the Gallagher brothers are like Irish, Irish, right? Like they speak spoken Irish accents. Their mother was from County Mayo in Ireland and she came from a family of 10 children. And she started working at 13 years old. She like quit school and started working and it was tough. It was hard. She was came from sort of impoverished background. Many, many Irish moved to the north of England, particularly to Manchester, specifically to Manchester, to like build the railroads and work in the factories and stuff. Cause there was not jobs in Ireland and there were, this is a kind of booming industry there. Peggy came by herself.

• 9:00Yasi Salek?

  I think her sisters were there too, and she met Tommy Gallagher there. Here's what Noel said about his birth. I was born on May 29th, 1967. Sergeant Pepper came out on June 1st and I do believe on hospital radio, they were playing Sergeant Pepper as I was born into the world. And if that's not fucking true, that's the story I've been sticking to for the past 48 years.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  I'm sure that's true. I think that's exactly true.

• 9:23Yasi Salek?

  So Noel, he was the second child. His older brother was named Paul. And then five years later, along came another brother. William John Paul Gallagher, born September 21st, 1972, of Virgo. They moved pretty soon after Liam's birth into the Manchester suburb of Burnage. And Paul was given his own room and Noel had to share a room with Liam. They shared this room till Liam was 17 years old.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  I'm sure that was awesome. No, no fights over making the beds, et cetera. At no point did they draw a chalk line down the middle of the room. You know, like, like Wednesday or whatever.

• 10:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Their dad historically was not awesome. According to Noel, he was a typical Irish drinker worker, always at the bookies, always gambling on something, didn't take his drink very well, quite violent. He was violent, from what I understand, towards the mother Peggy, Paul to an extent, but mostly to Noel. Noel? I'm not sure if this is because Noel was stood up to him more, or he was more lippy, or he just hated Noel more, I don't know, but that happened. And as a result of this, both Noel and his brother Paul had pretty intense stutters as children, which is really sad.

• 10:49Yasi Salek?

  They had to go to speech therapy for like four years to fix it. Noel has said that he thinks that his father's abuse in a way benefited him. He said that in the Supersonic documentary. He said, "He used to beat the living daylights out of me, but in a way it benefited me because it made me withdraw into my own world and from that came learning to play the guitar. I guess in some ways my old fella beat the talent into me."

• 11:13Speaker 02

  That's right. I remember that line.

• 11:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  I remember cringing at that line so specifically.

• 11:19Yasi Salek?

  This is like the first of it and we'll see it come up time and time again in this Oasis story, but they're not ones for dwelling on negativity. They're not complainer, you know, like

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:34Yasi Salek?

  in stark kind of contrast to when we get to grunge, which was sort of all about like a litany of complaints and unfairness. Like that was not a consideration. Like also like

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:47Yasi Salek?

  I've read this multiple times from the Gallagher brothers and also other people around that were like, "It sounds really intense and crazy now because, I mean, it is and it's horrible." But that was every kid on that street, on that block, in that suburb. Like your Irish Catholic dad drank and beat you like, and you were poor.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  And you know, it makes me think of, you know, we'll get to it pretty soon, but Liam and the hammer, right? You know, the idea that Liam too had his love of music physically beaten into him. You know, this, this, this becomes part of the lore. I think immediately Noel saying, "The Beatles were playing as I was born." You know, that sets the template for everything that follows, obviously, right? Like every, everything is going to be made into some monumental biopic worthy moment.

• 12:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they're definitely myth makers. For sure. That's a, that's a strength. Tommy is the one that got Noel and later Liam into Manchester City football, taking them to Main Road and that was an enduring love. And then also one of Noel's strongest memories is collecting the dole every week with his dad and seeing his other friends there too. And he said, that was the Maggie Thatcher age. Everyone was there with their dad. Okay. So they used to go to Ireland a lot to visit Peggy's family. Noel was actually super into the Irish music he would hear there. Songs like Ewan McCall's Dirty Old Town and Irish standards, like Four Green Fields.

• 13:10Speaker 03

  I had four green fields.

• 13:16Yasi Salek?

  It was also on one of these trips that he learned about Elvis and the Beatles because he was there the day Elvis died, August 16th, 1977, you guys. And one of Peggy's younger sisters who was like, she was also a teenager and she was distraught over it and she was like, crying because Elvis had died and Noel was like, who is this Elvis character? And so she explained and that kind of led him to the Beatles and

• 13:41Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 13:42Yasi Salek?

  You know, the rest, rest is history. When Liam was six, Peggy had to get a job at McVie's Biscuit Factory. This was great and bo- and bad. Great because she would come home every day with cookies. That's what, that's what biscuits are. Noel said they called him Biscuit Boy at school, but it was bad because she would have to leave Liam, who was, once again, six years old, just alone at home in front of the TV from like four to nine PM, which is like a little early, I think, to leave a six-year-old.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  Six is early for six hours of television, I suppose. Yes.

• 14:18Yasi Salek?

  Not that she had a choice. I'm not, obviously she had to work.

• 14:21Speaker 02

  No, I know, but that has its effect on a six-year-old, I imagine.

• 14:26Yasi Salek?

  I think so. Yeah. And, and you know, their dad was supposed to come home, but he never would. So that's why Liam was alone for so long. Meanwhile, at the same age, uh, his teacher at school told Peggy that Liam's behavior drove her to have to take a Valium every single night.

• 14:44Yasi Salek?

  He was six.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:47Yasi Salek?

  He drove, he drove this woman to pills, six years old. And they asked Liam about it and he said, yeah, I was a cunt. Okay.

• 14:57Yasi Salek?

  Plain and simple. Liam sang in the choir and he also briefly played violin. He like begged for a violin. Then he got it and hated it and like threw it in the trash. And he said, I looked pretty gangsterish with it, but it was shit when you whipped it out.

• 15:14Yasi Salek?

  He was gangsterish with the violin. Also, something really important that doesn't come up enough, in my opinion. He was not into rock music. He was super into hip hop and he was a break dancer. And he would break dance out in front of like a convenience store.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  On the cardboard. Yeah, okay.

• 15:31Yasi Salek?

  Correct. That's right.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  I can see him doing a windmill.

• 15:35Yasi Salek?

  That's what I'm saying. He was also a tagger. He would go around tagging with his, with his graffiti girlfriend Gina. And his tag name was Galley. His tag. G A L L I.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  I think ideally you want a tag name that can not be traced to you that directly. Yeah, yeah.

• 15:53Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Who is this galley? We may never, yeah.

• 15:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 15:59Yasi Salek?

  Although in his defense, I mean, how many Gallaghers do you think are in, are in Manchester? Given the Irish flight, like, you know?

• 16:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:06Yasi Salek?

  There's probably quite a few to pick from.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:09Yasi Salek?

  Noel got into punk music pretty young, like around 13. And he went and saw The Damned at the Manchester Apollo.

• 16:17Yasi Salek?

  He was able to get in because all the bouncers of those shows were Irish. And the bouncer at the Apollo was from the same place as his mom. His name was Sean Dolan. So he would let him in after everyone was in and told him to like, you know, stay in the rafters or whatever. And so he saw The Damned, he saw Stiff Little Fingers, he saw Public Image Limited and U2. And he would wear a little tartan bondage pants, babe. Okay, yeah, Noel Gallagher. Gallivanting around town, leather jacket, Doc Martens, tartan bondage pants. He said the first album he ever wanted to own was Nevermind the Bollocks because it had swearing on it.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 16:54Yasi Salek?

  Hell, yeah.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  Great reason.

• 16:56Yasi Salek?

  He also has an interesting theory that I think almost rivals my own in which I think The Doors invented punk rock. But here's what Noel Gallagher said. In 1967, Paul McCartney read in The Melody Maker that the Who's new single, I Can See For Miles, was the loudest ever made. Determined to outstrip them, McCartney then wrote Helter Skelter. The sound and attitude behind that song directly inspired the MC5 and the Stooges, who in turn inspired the Sex Pistols, which is why Noel Gallagher believes that Paul McCartney invented punk rock. It all goes back to the Beatles, babe.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  I'm into it. It's interesting you just recounting this, the realization that their 10 year, even as kids, were 10 years past the Beatles, right? Like, the other thing that I knew about this band immediately, you know, as a 90s teenagers, they're trying to be the Beatles, but they're already have 10 years of myth of the Beatles to build on. They weren't with the Beatles in real time. You know, they're dealing, you know, and they're trying to manufacture that legacy as, as much as they are anything else.

• 17:57Yasi Salek?

  Totally, and I think we've already kind of set the stage, which for me is where Oasis existed. At the very least with the first album and maybe like to lesser and, and greater degrees throughout their discography, which is like they, they really lived at the intersection of Beatles and Sex Pistols. Like, that's what that, that's what Oasis is, right? Oasis is the Beatles put through the prism of the Sex Pistols.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:23Yasi Salek?

  And that was all kind of set up pretty early. He also got really into the Smiths, Noel, pretty early on because they were obviously hometown heroes. You know, they were existing around 82 to 87. Now, spoiler alert, the first drummer of Oasis, Tony McCarroll, was kind of unceremoniously ousted after the first album. He did write a book. I did read it. I think we're gonna have to take it with a grain of salt in the sense that perhaps the motivations for writing a book after you're ousted from Oasis and also you may be kind of really hate Noel Gallagher's guts and wish he was never born, might not be

• 19:08Yasi Salek?

  the purest.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 19:10Yasi Salek?

  But that doesn't mean we totally discount it. He was not

• 19:14Speaker 02

  No.

• 19:14Yasi Salek?

  happy. There's a lot of this story that we kind of have to take with a grain of salt.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 19:20Yasi Salek?

  And I'm just here to, I'm just a reporter. I'm just a journalist.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 19:24Yasi Salek?

  Recounting.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 19:26Yasi Salek?

  Here's what Tony said, Tony McCarroll, that was the first drummer. "When Noel discovered my fondness for the Smiths, he lambasted me. The fucking Smiths, you f-word. What's wrong with you? It seemed that although Noel had a passing admiration for the lead guitarist, the lead singer was not to his liking. I guess Morrissey's irreverent and humorous songwriting was a bit too, quote, gay, or quote, student for him. Years later, Noel would cite the Smiths as one of his first musical influences. I certainly don't remember him showing such reverence at the time."

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Oh, so is retcon. Yeah.

• 20:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Drummers ousted drummer memoirs.

• 20:06Yasi Salek?

  Ousted drummer memoirs. It's a place in the Dewey Decimal system. So anyway, okay, their dad, Tommy Gallagher, while also working, became a country western DJ at an Irish club. This is both when he started drinking extra heavily, but also when he somehow got his hands on a free guitar and brought it home. And according to Noel, he could not figure out how to play it. So he just tossed it aside and that's when Noel picked it up. There are a couple of other versions of the first guitar story.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:38Yasi Salek?

  But this is one and let's, it's not that important. So let's just stick to this one. The more important thing about the first guitar story is that any version of the story has the guitar as a right-handed guitar. Noel Gallagher is left-handed, but he learned on it anyways. He didn't, he didn't know. He, I heard him say on a podcast that until he was like 20 years old and he saw one in a guitar shop, he didn't even know left-handed guitars existed.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  Wow, that's, he's playing it upside down.

• 21:05Yasi Salek?

  Pretty impressive.

• 21:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:06Yasi Salek?

  So he would teach himself Joy Division basslines on the guitar, which is interestingly also exactly what the Happy Mondays did when they first started learning their instruments.

• 21:21Yasi Salek?

  Q Magazine asked him in 96, "Who inspired you?" And Noel said, "First it was Steve Jones with his white Les Paul and his leather keks." For those of you not familiar, keks are pants. Sure. But I didn't take it seriously until I seen Johnny Marr. He had the Brian Jones haircut and the shades and the white polo neck and the big red semi acoustic. When your haircut 100s and your Echo and the Bunnyman and everyone were jingle jangling up here, Johnny was rocking out down here. He was showing the guitar level of where it was. When The Smiths came out on Top of the Pops for the first time, that was it for me. From that day on, I probably wanted to be Johnny Marr. The first song Noel Gallagher ever wrote, he would later tell Miranda Sawyer, was called Badge.

• 22:03Yasi Salek?

  And the best line in it, he said, was, "And on your badge, it says, wear a badge." A badge is a pin, just so you guys don't know in England, like a cool little punk pin. And on your badge, it says, wear a badge. So he was really, I think, exhibiting those Shakespearean lyrical tendencies from, from an early age. No, I'm joking, because I actually will later push back on even Noel Gallagher's own, like, "Who cares? The words don't mean anything." And I'm like, "Hmm, I think the Lady Dolph protest too much." I'm with you. And I think there are some, there are some meanings in there. So by the time Noel's 14, by the accounts of Peggy and his brother, older brother, he kind of changed pretty quickly from being like this happy-go-lucky child to like a depression-addled teenager. Hmm.

• 22:48Yasi Salek?

  I'm sure not in small part due to his father. In 1978, his mom became the dinner lady at his school. A little refresher for you guys who didn't keep up with this in the Happy Mondays episode. Working-class Manchester, dinner is lunch, okay? Right. Breakfast. Yes, yes. Dinner is lunch, tea is dinner, then there's fourth meal, Taco Bell style, if you're still hungry, and that is supper.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Oh, I thought only rich people had supper.

• 23:20Yasi Salek?

  There's also supper for rich people, but that's a different meal. So if you had supper as a working class person, that means you were still hungry after tea and you went and got some snack.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  It surprises me that fourth meal was already a concept before the Taco Bell ad campaign, but I will of course trust your research on this.

• 23:36Yasi Salek?

  Can you believe it? They just got a McDonald's at this time. England was in the dark ages.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  They would have tea at the McDonald's. Right, right, right. Okay.

• 23:46Yasi Salek?

  Well, anyway, so she's the dinner lady and this was bad for Noel on two counts because A, it's probably like humiliating to have your mom be the dinner lady. But secondly, mostly it was because Noel had kind of stopped going to school. He was sniffing glue and doing fuck shit and now his mom was there and she would know. So he started showing up just for dinnertime, lunchtime.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  Just for dinner.

• 24:07Yasi Salek?

  So his mom would be like, Noel, here he is at school, my gorgeous, beautiful child. And then after a couple of months, the school came to her and was like, Noel has not been coming to school. And she was like, well, I see him there every day.

• 24:19Speaker 02

  Dinner lady is such a different phrase than lunch lady. That's like an entirely different.

• 24:24Yasi Salek?

  Lunch lady flow is a bit better, I must say. It's the alliteration. In 82, Peggy finally leaves Tommy, takes her three sons and gets a new place. This is pretty amazing, actually, if you think about it, because they lived in a council house. And it was pretty difficult to get another council house from the estate. Like this is like, you have to apply, you have to like, so she basically like begged and also she was Catholic and divorce is a sin, right? I mean, they, and she really struggled with that, but I think finally, ultimately she was like, my children don't deserve this. We're not doing this. Goodbye. That's when Noel was about 15 and Liam was 10.

• 25:08Yasi Salek?

  Something that's really tender and moving to me amidst all the like, you know, get fucked, fuck off, get to fuck, you know,

• 25:17Speaker 02

  Get to fuck, yes.

• 25:18Yasi Salek?

  God shite of it all is how like devoted the Gallagher brothers are to their mother.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  Like, I agree. That's palpable somehow. I agree.

• 25:28Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, they talk about it all the time. Live Forever is dedicated to their mom. Noel has said, my mom was fucking fearless. Liam said, my mom was an angel. She still is. She's the coolest woman that ever walked this fucking planet in my eyes. She's an absolute diamond. She, by all accounts, like was pretty amazing and also always supported them, even if she didn't like what they did. Which, you know, again, they're doing a lot of fuck shit in the beginning and throughout their career, honestly.

• 25:55Yasi Salek?

  Here's what Noel said later about the breakup of his parents. Q bags and asked him, in your late teens, your parents broke up. Liam said he took it in stride. Did you? And Noel said, I think we accepted that it was gonna happen for about three years before. So when it did, it was a relief. I was only concerned for me, ma'am. Dad had his own business doing concrete floors and he was a part-time DJ. We had all started working for him, but the worst thing in the world is working for your dad. You can't do anything right. People ask what it's like being in a band with your brother and I think, what about being on a building site in January when it's hailstoning with your dad and your two brothers and two of your cousins and two of your uncles and you fucking hate the lot of them?

• 26:31Speaker 02

  That does sound worse.

• 26:32Yasi Salek?

  Does sound worse. Then he said, we were the Clampits, the Burnage Hillbillies. Noel and Liam were not exactly well behaved children. We already talked about the Valium taking teacher at six years old and Noel sniffing glue and not going to school. Noel got six months probation at 14 years old for robbing a corner shop. That's partly when he really got his music playing chops too, because he was, you know, stuck at home. Then he was like, I guess expelled at 15 because he threw a flower bomb at a teacher. He later has said he, he did not do that, that he was merely present in the classroom when it happened. Regardless, he was expelled. Liam was suspended at 16 for fighting, but he didn't get expelled.

• 27:15Yasi Salek?

  So here's the hammer story that you brought up earlier. Liam said he was, he was mostly into football, right?

• 27:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:21Yasi Salek?

  To soccer, his whole youth, and he didn't get into music until later. He got hit in the head with a hammer. Here's what happened. Liam said, I remember all these lads coming down. I don't know what school they were from. They've come down, hoods up. I've hit this kid and the kid pulls out this little fucking hammer and went whack on me head. Then I've ended up in hospital, blood everywhere, got a fucking double maths though. So that was all right. That was it. From that day on, it was like as if something fucking clicked. I started hearing music. It started making sense.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  It's a beautiful story and it doesn't work if it's the hospital. I agree with you that it has to be.

• 27:56Yasi Salek?

  He had to end up in hospital and get out of double maths. Yeah. This is one of my favorite quotes from, I, I don't remember if it's actually in the supersonic documentary. Because I have a book of just like the unabridged interviews. But Liam says this about the difference between him and Noel, our kid's more a thinker. I wasn't a thinker. I didn't have no time to think. It was just, let's get straight into this fucking day. I'd never sit there and scratch my chin and go, how am I going to play this Tuesday afternoon? There was none of that. It was like, let's fucking have Tuesday full on. Let's freak Tuesday out so it doesn't come back again. Let Tuesday tell Wednesday, fucking hell, you're in for it tomorrow, mate. His mind.

• 28:38Speaker 02

  His mind.

• 28:39Yasi Salek?

  He wanted to scare the shit out of Tuesday.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  Well, Wednesday, he wanted Tuesday to scare the shit out of Wednesday.

• 28:44Yasi Salek?

  He wanted Tuesday to go tell Wednesday, bitch, you have no idea what's coming for you. Liam Gallagher is mentally ill. I brought up because it's funny, but I also brought up because it's actually extremely true. Like when we get into this, this sort of like relationship between the two brothers that's at the core of Oasis. I'm like, the difference is Liam Gallagher is such an exceptional human being in the sense that you know how like Freud has the idea of like the ego, the it and the super it? And you're supposed to have all three and it's, you know, Liam is just the one thing. He's just it. He's pure it, which is fascinating. I'm jealous because it's such a wonderful way to be to like constantly live in the moment.

• 29:26Yasi Salek?

  The lack of self-consciousness is so amazing.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  Well, that's rock stardom, isn't it? Like the platonic ideal of rock stardom.

• 29:36Yasi Salek?

  Sure. But like, again, you think Eddie Vedder is not self-conscious?

• 29:39Speaker 02

  Well, right. Yes, yes. There you go.

• 29:42Yasi Salek?

  Kurt Cobain.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 29:44Yasi Salek?

  You look back and you're like, Mick Jagger was probably self-conscious. Keith Richards wasn't. Keith Moon wasn't.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 29:49Yasi Salek?

  There are like these like-

• 29:50Speaker 02

  The other thing that gets mapped onto them. Yeah.

• 29:52Yasi Salek?

  Sunday is very, I thought was very interesting. Fuck you, Wednesday.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:55Yasi Salek?

  Now,

• 29:57Yasi Salek?

  Liam, the hammer hits him in the head. He's already like seventeen or eighteen at this point. He had an older friend that he was palling around with who went by the name of Bigun. His name was actually Paul Ashby. He was about six, five and huge. He was Noel's age, but he really like supported Liam, like wanted him to get into music once Noel, once Liam got into music. Noel, meanwhile, was like hanging around with like football hooligans, the governors and the mainline service crew. These were Manchester City hooligan groups. So, most of the late eighties Noel Gallagher is unemployed, living in a bedsit, doing drugs, playing guitar, writing songs, right?

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:41Yasi Salek?

  Then there's a fateful event, May nineteen eighty-eight. I believe it was the day after Noel's birthday, although they say it was on his birthday, but I'm almost positive it was the thirtieth, in which the Stone Roses play a benefit gig at the International Two in Manchester. That's right. Noel and Liam both attend, not together, of course. Noel went with his girlfriend Louise and I think some friends. Liam went by himself, Johnny No Mates. That's where Johnny No Mates came.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  I thought-

• 31:11Yasi Salek?

  That's where I learned it.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  That's what that meant, but I wanted to be sure.

• 31:15Yasi Salek?

  He said, I went by myself, Johnny No Mates. It's so good, right? Bill, he might have said Billy No Mates.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Applied even.

• 31:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah. I'm Billy No- So I think in the north, I think they say Billy No Mates and then in the south, they say Johnny No Mates. Billy No Mates is a little bit better, actually. Billy No Mates.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 31:32Yasi Salek?

  Liam said, that was my favorite gig of all time. Killed me dead, changed me fucking life. If I hadn't have gone that night, I'd probably be sitting in some pub in Leven Som. I can't say anything. I'm so sorry. I guess someone's gonna crack me. I don't know how to say that.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  It's fine.

• 31:44Yasi Salek?

  Place. Nailed it. They weren't dressed in leather kecks or like the Cure or the Smiths or that. I always found them bands a little bit fucking odd because they weren't dressed like me. Then I saw the Roses in the Mondays and I thought, you know what? I'll stop throwing stones and gobbing at them, that's spitting, because they look a little bit like us. That made more sense to me. Seeing the Stone Roses, I just thought, you know what? You don't have to have a perm, you don't have to have leather kecks on, you don't have to be this fucking Jim Morrison poet dude to be in a band. They weren't farting about on stage, they were just stood there playing the music. He didn't have flowers hanging out of his ass, if you know what I mean.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  We do.

• 32:18Yasi Salek?

  This is like huge, right? And

• 32:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:21Yasi Salek?

  For many reasons, right? Well, number one, he said, I don't have the direct quote in front of me, but several different versions of him being like, and he couldn't sing, and he was singing off key. And I was like, well, I can sing if Ian Brown could sing off key on stage. And the standing still, right?

• 32:36Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 32:37Yasi Salek?

  You know, I talked to a younger friend, I won't out her, and she was like, well, I feel like Liam Gallagher just wanted to be John Lennon. And I'm like, sure, Liam Gallagher was like monomaniacally a little bit obsessed with John Lennon. But really, it's Liam Gallagher first wanted to be Ian Brown, you know? And you see it a little bit more in the, in the posturing, in the stance, in the defiance. That spirit that we sort of assign to Liam Gallagher was, is really present already in Ian Brown. And if you look at these old Stone Roses interviews, footage of them playing, like, you can see it crystal clear. And it's cool, it's how they're wearing parkas and the whole thing, the manny, uh, renny hat, which is the, you know?

• 33:16Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 33:17Yasi Salek?

  It's the audio podcast, but you guys know what I'm talking, it's a fisherman hat.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  You gesture to your head where a hat would be.

• 33:23Yasi Salek?

  I did, I did a little circle around my head where a hat would go.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  It's very good.

• 33:26Yasi Salek?

  Now Noel's experience there did, was also extremely faithful. I mean, I think he already liked the Stone Roses, but he meets someone that's very important by the name of Graham Lambert, who is in a band called Inspiral Carpets. He was there bootlegging the show. They kind of hit it off, become friends. Uh, I think he asked him, I wanna, can I get a copy of that bootleg or something? Graham mentions to him that actually the singer of Inspiral Carpets is leaving and they're looking for a new vocalist. And Noel's like, I'll audition. And he did audition. And I think he like took the approach of like, I'll just shout like Sean Ryder of the Happy Mondays. And the Inspiral Carpets were like, no, no heart, no thank you, we're all stocked up here.

• 34:12Yasi Salek?

  But they were like, how about you become part of our road crew? And he was like, okay. And he becomes a roadie. He's like the drum tech, the guitar tech, the keyboard tech, which helped him learn about all the instruments. He becomes really good friends with another key figure in the Oasis universe named Mark Coyle, who is the monitor engineer. They loved the Beatles. The band called Noel Monobrow.

• 34:38Yasi Salek?

  That was his nickname.

• 34:39Speaker 02

  It's good.

• 34:40Yasi Salek?

  Oi!

• 34:40Speaker 02

  It's a good name. It fits. Well, yeah, it's if you're, that's a good roadie name. That's a really excellent.

• 34:46Yasi Salek?

  He just had, because he just had one. Noel said, what a gig. Amazing. I was earning 300 pounds for setting up a drum kit. Seeing the world. Wow. Couldn't be any better. Clint Boone of Inspiral Carpets later said, he wasn't the world's hardest working roadie.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 35:06Yasi Salek?

  But you know what? He had spirit.

• 35:07Speaker 02

  Not a model employee, right.

• 35:08Yasi Salek?

  Monobrow, not breaking a sweat on that monobrow. Clint Boone said, I can honestly say he was an inspiration for the band, just in the type of person he was. A total Manchester dude, more than any of us lot. He knew what was going on. Some bands would call that person a guru and they, in terms of the spirit of what Manchester was at that time, I felt like I fed off Noel. I thought that was cool. Like, he was like the mascot, kind of.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  Inspired by your roadie. That is the very admirable.

• 35:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, by monobrow.

• 35:37Speaker 02

  Admission. Yeah.

• 35:39Yasi Salek?

  This made me laugh so hard. So they played a big festival in Spiral Carpets and Bob Geldof was finishing on one stage and the Inspiral Carpets were supposed to start on another stage, but he was like not finishing. And he was like, Noel just kept yelling, Geldof, fuck off. It's time for the Inspirals. Come on.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  It's a great Noel impression, first of all.

• 36:02Yasi Salek?

  No, I can't do the man. I'm sorry.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  Comma, fuck off.

• 36:05Yasi Salek?

  Here's just a quick historical footnote. In November of 87, The Laws put out their second single, There She Goes.

• 36:20Yasi Salek?

  Little known fact, Noel gets super into this song as well. I thought it was really interesting because

• 36:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:28Yasi Salek?

  I can see it. Yeah.

• 36:29Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 36:30Yasi Salek?

  The Laws are a really interesting band and we will, we will be talking about them. We might even get a whole episode on them. Just, just you wait.

• 36:42Yasi Salek?

  Now, this is the late eighties, me and Chester. What's happening there is still the full hacienda, like acid house music scene is at like its pinnacle, right? And Noel gets super into it. You have to remember ecstasy has just arrived on the scene. E, it's hit, babe. And Noel didn't like it. He would go to the hacienda and he'd be like, what the fuck is this fucking garbage music? And then he went and someone gave him an E and he was like, this is Beethoven. This is Chopin. This is the best music I've ever heard in my entire life.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  Not the only person to have that exact arc.

• 37:20Yasi Salek?

  No, that's true. God bless. And he started going to tons of raves. He's living with his girlfriend Louise, who I believe did pay all of the bills. So here's a little known maybe fact. He does start a band prior to joining Oasis. It is called Fantasy Chicken and the Amateurs.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  Okay, I'm into it.

• 37:42Yasi Salek?

  With his friend Paul Bardley.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  It's a good band name, good logo possibilities. That's, that's, this is disappointing that this never happened. Yeah.

• 37:50Yasi Salek?

  You're doing a bunch of E, babe? You're at the hacienda, listening to house music? Fantasy Chicken is a great name for a band. I, I get it. So there is a demo tape. However,

• 38:03Yasi Salek?

  it's not available. I believe it was auctioned off at some point. So someone does own it, but it's never been made public.

• 38:09Speaker 02

  The guy who got the Wu-Tang Clan album also got the Fantasy Chicken.

• 38:13Yasi Salek?

  Martin Shkreli has it. Yeah.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 38:17Yasi Salek?

  According to the enemy who did hear it, there are like, uh, little glimmers of future Oasis songs in there.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 38:26Yasi Salek?

  But also not.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 38:31Yasi Salek?

  But also not, not as good. Now meanwhile, Liam is like 16, right? When he's seen the Stone Roses and he's like, I want to be in a band. I want to be in a band. He has a friend called Paul Gwigsy McGuigan.

• 38:48Yasi Salek?

  He's a Taurus. Everyone's Irish. They were all kind of friends since they were kids because they would all play football on this like abandoned field together. And so they all kind of knew each other from around. Gwigsy is already in a band. It's called The Rain with his co-songwriter, Paul Bonehead Arthurs. Born June 23rd, 1965, who is a Cancer. Here's a fun fact about Bonehead. You would think Bonehead got this nickname later on when he started prematurely balding at the age of like 18 years old, but he had that nickname since he was a child because his parents made him constantly cut his hair very short while everyone else had kind of longer hair. So they called him Bonehead, like even his teachers called him Bonehead.

• 39:33Yasi Salek?

  And then I believe it was like, I'm sorry, I'm gonna say it. I believe it was a case of nominative determinism.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, what?

• 39:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  What?

• 39:42Yasi Salek?

  He was cursed.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  What happens to Bonehead if his teachers are not calling him Bonehead? He is a Rhodes Scholar.

• 39:49Yasi Salek?

  Exactly, but sent him down the path. He had a brother named Martin. They were in a band before this called Pleasure in Pain, the synth band, and he played the synth. Him and Gwigsy met at a wine bar called Severe and they started talking about rock music. And that's right.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 40:07Yasi Salek?

  That's real. And Bonehead was like, yeah, man, I play guitar. And Gwigsy was like, oh, man, I could never do that. And Bonehead was like, yeah, you can. It's a piece of piss. I'll teach you. Piece of piss is in the contention for me of top phrases.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Sure, you can do that. Yeah.

• 40:23Yasi Salek?

  So Bonehead taught Gwigsy how to play. Then they have their other mate, the aforementioned Anthony Tony McCarrill, also Gemini. Again, differing accounts, but from the beginning, if you ask the other band members, it's a little bit giving, we just needed a drummer. Do you know what I mean? You know how that kind of happens sometimes when you're like, does anyone play drums? And it's so much less than the other instruments that you kind of just, you get what you get, you know?

• 40:51Speaker 02

  Somebody who owns a drum set is functionally 98% of the way toward being a drummer in a band,

• 40:58Yasi Salek?

  Exactly.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  Regardless of ability or interest for that matter.

• 41:01Yasi Salek?

  Or interest. Well, according to Bonehead, Tony just didn't have much passion for anything. And that was part of the reason like they didn't get as along with him as well. Bonehead said, I wouldn't have minded if he had five records that he said were the best records ever. And that was it. But he didn't even have that. I don't think he owned any records or even a stereo.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 41:21Yasi Salek?

  Bonehead said, Rain were really, really sad. Absolutely terrible. I had this weird long hair, bald on top and Quicks was really fat. Quicks was fat. We did cover versions of songs like Wild Thing, playing these shit gigs around Manchester, going nowhere.

• 41:39Speaker 02

  That is not how I pictured the rain.

• 41:42Yasi Salek?

  They did have a singer called Chris Hutton, Hut. You're not going to believe this, but he also wrote a book.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  You didn't read this guy's book?

• 41:53Yasi Salek?

  No, in a stunning display of self-control. I did not read it.

• 41:58Speaker 02

  That's a good move on your part. Yeah. No offense to him.

• 42:01Yasi Salek?

  He said in his book, he wrote about how Liam was planning to invade the rain for many months, hanging around them and often using Noel's connection to the Inspiral carpets as leverage.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 42:16Yasi Salek?

  So if we're to believe the bitter ex singer, Liam stalked the rain until he was asked to be their singer.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 42:22Yasi Salek?

  I'm not sure that's exactly what happened. I do think if you met Liam Gallagher, who strolled up to you with not one ounce of self-consciousness, looked like a literal supermodel, wore a jacket in a way that no man in history had ever worn a jacket and was like, I want to be your singer. You'd be like, yes, sir. Please come be the singer.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  What's the name of this guy's book? What's the name of the discarded Rain singer's book?

• 42:48Yasi Salek?

  Oh, it's called Don't Look Back in Anger.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  Yes, it is. Yes.

• 42:56Yasi Salek?

  Damn, that's so good. Don't look back in anger. But aren't you effectively, yeah, are you kind of effectively looking back in anger?

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Oh, that's so sad.

• 43:08Yasi Salek?

  So the band, the rain is sucking, okay? Like I said, Wiggs is fat, Bonehead's bald, Liam joins, they're not getting many gigs. Liam is like, this name is fucking trash. So we're first, first order of business is we're changing it to Oasis. Now, the common perception of the name Oasis is that it comes from the tour poster, Inspiral Carpets tour poster that was in their bedroom that he shared with Noel, which had on it a date at the Oasis Leisure Center in Swindon. Now, I was actually feeling very vindicated because there was a store in Manchester also called Oasis.

• 43:47Yasi Salek?

  That was like a very cool store where like the sort of thuggy scallies bought their like trainers and parkas, which I do believe were partially stolen.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 43:58Yasi Salek?

  Blagged, if you will. And that was called Oasis too. It sounds like the cool store in town. So what Liam said in Supersonic was, it certainly wasn't about Swindon Oasis. There was a stall, I think it was in Affleck's Palace, that sold cool clothes. There was a song by The Mondays called Oasis, that was named after them. So there was a kebab shop called Oasis, there was a taxi rink called Oasis. You're looking around and that name keeps coming up all the time in my head. Oasis just sounded good. I know a lot of people think it's shit, and it probably is a shit name, but everything's shit, isn't it? Until you make it good. The fucking jam? That's a shit name, the jam. And it isn't because they're good and they write good music. The Who's a shit name as well. The Beatles? A fucking shit name. He's, once again, he's not wrong.

• 44:40Speaker 02

  So the scallies blagged the trainers from the stall. Okay, got it.

• 44:45Yasi Salek?

  No, no, they would blag the trainers from overseas, not overseas, in Europe, in other parts of Europe. They were unavailable in England and they would come back and sell them to the store.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  Sold, blagged gear. Sure. I got it. Okay, thank you.

• 44:58Yasi Salek?

  Got it. Yeah, keep up, babe. Oasis is just such a hilarious name to have as a band when you're in Manchester. Hmm.

• 45:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 45:08Yasi Salek?

  It really conjures images of like a palm tree and a body of water that's like,

• 45:13Speaker 02

  Boys.

• 45:13Yasi Salek?

  You know.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 45:15Yasi Salek?

  Pre Noel Oasis has four songs ish. One is called reminisce. One is called life in vain. One is called take me and one is called she always comes up smiling. At this time Liam is co writing lyrics. They do a show in August of nineteen ninety one at Boardwalk, which is like the place that everyone in Manchester played. It's also where they practiced. Liam early on would hold the mic because they couldn't afford a mic stand. So he wasn't yet doing his, uh, you know, trademark standing with the hands behind the back situation. Liam said it was horrible because the only people there were your mates. It was a bit daunting. Try to act like Mick Jagger in front of your mates. They were just like, come on, what the fuck are you doing? Let's go to the pub. Stop all this guitar music. Let's go and watch the match.

• 46:00Yasi Salek?

  You have, it is pretty funny that you you're like putting on airs, trying to be in a band or whatever. Then your friends are like, okay, are you done with your fucking rock star job now? Can we go fucking throw some back at the pub, babe? There's eight people here. Now Noel was on tour with the Inspiral carpets and he had called while he, while he was on tour. And he asked Peggy, oh, what's Liam up to? And she was like, oh, Liam's at rehearsal. And Noel was like, rehearsal for what?

• 46:27Yasi Salek?

  And she was like, oh, he's in a band. And he was like, he's in a band doing what? She's like, he's singing. And he goes, he can't sing. He said, I shared a bedroom with him for years, playing my acoustic guitar and him sitting there going, you fucking weirdo. And all of a sudden he's a singer.

• 46:43Yasi Salek?

  So good.

• 46:45Yasi Salek?

  So Noel goes to the gig because he's back and he's like, I gotta see that. I gotta see this with my own eyes. Here's a, here's a tender piece of poetry from Tony McCarroll's book. Again, grain of salt, Tony McCarroll truly probably has a fucking voodoo to all of Noel Gallagher in his home. But he said Liam really wanted to impress his brother. And after the show, he went up to him and he was like, you know, so what did you think? And Noel allegedly, according to Tony McCarroll, and actually several other accounts, he just went, it was shit. And according to Tony, Liam was actually so deflated. He said Liam returned backstage, his fringe still stuck to his forehead was sweat. He was deflated after his brother's cutting two word review. Then Biggin entered the room smiling.

• 47:29Yasi Salek?

  That's beautiful. Hey, your kid fucking loved that, he said with a laugh.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  Your kid?

• 47:35Yasi Salek?

  Should we take a brief moment to unpack our kid, your kid?

• 47:38Speaker 02

  Please, I would love to. This is very important.

• 47:41Yasi Salek?

  Okay, our kid, your kid is a northern, and also I believe they say it in Scotland and Ireland, not as much in the south, which refers to your brother or sister. This is just me philosophizing. Probably came about when there's all these families, particularly Irish Catholic families, who have 12 children and they're six names. They're all named John, Paul, William. So you can't just be like, oh, Paul said this. Like, which Paul? So you have to be like, our, our Paul, your Paul. And then it kind of became our kid, your kid.

• 48:14Speaker 02

  Solid theory, yeah.

• 48:16Yasi Salek?

  So they would say that. They would say your kid, and that meant your brother or sister. And you hear it all the time where Noel and Liam refer to each other as our kid. So Liam was like, how do you figure that? And then Biggins told Liam that Noel had been engrossed, excitedly telling his girlfriend just how much potential the band had. Noel just couldn't bring himself to tell Liam that. That news changed Liam's mood instantly, and we were back on track.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  That's very sweet. That's, that's delightful. Our kid was, when I first watched the Supersonic documentary, you mentioned, our kid was my big takeaway. I just found that so endearing, you know, just that phrase. That was my first exposure to that phrase.

• 48:55Yasi Salek?

  It's funny though, because there's no tenderness in it for them. That's just how you talk, right? That's just like saying my brother. It's simply, yeah.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, that's true. The flippancy is part of the tenderness though, right? Like, just the way it's unthinking and unfeeling nonetheless, you know? Just something about that phrase, you know, there's a tenderness there, even if everybody is at great pains to not acknowledge it.

• 49:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, our kid. Tony just says that Noel basically never said anything positive or showed positive emotion towards Liam, which I could kind of believe.

• 49:31Yasi Salek?

  There's a couple of different stories here, but one is that Liam and the Rain asked Noel to be their manager at first, and Noel was like, no. And then they were like, well, why don't you be in the band? But after letting him sweat for a little while, he didn't want to lose his Inspiral's job because he didn't want to have to sign back on to the dole. So he basically was like, listen, I'll join the band, but everyone has to give it 100%. Never miss any rehearsals or anything. And they were like, okay, bet. He later said that he said, I don't know if he said or someone else said it, that he only joined on the idea that he would have creative control, but I don't think that was true. Tony McCarroll also says that he didn't have all the songs written when he came in like he says he did, but that one, I, again, in the middle of it, looking back at anger

• 50:16Yasi Salek?

  perhaps. Noel did say, once he joined the band, he was like, all at once, I turned into Paul McCartney. I was just like, right, you play this and you play that and I play this and you sing these words and you sing it like that and we were off. Bonehead does say he had loads of stuff written. So then they did their first show with Noel. They're playing at the Boardwalk again with Noel. They played Take Me, something called Acoustic Song, because it was acoustic, and the song Columbia, which they already had. But also, according to one account, which I would love to know more details about this, a cover of a house song, an acid house song at Noel's behest. Four songs. Noel said he had to learn how to play guitar all over again because he had never played standing up before.

• 50:57Speaker 02

  Nor a left-handed guitar, maybe, but yeah.

• 51:00Yasi Salek?

  Well, I don't think, I think he was still playing on the right hand guitar.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  Playing guitar, standing up is an entirely different proposition than sitting down. That's true.

• 51:07Yasi Salek?

  Here's Noel's account of the first gig that he played with Oasis. That gig, there was 40 people maximum there and we had a song called Rock and Roll Star. Now, I didn't see anything about the Rock and Roll Star, but again, let's take it with a grain of salt. Tonight, I'm a rock and roll star. People were going, haha, of course you are, mate. Bottom of the bill at the Boardwalk on a fucking Tuesday night. Pretentious assholes is what they thought we were. Went down like a fucking knackered lift. A knackered lift? We thought they were going to be in raptures and it ended in this bowl of silence. Um, I don't think the, I don't think the elevator should be tired. That's bad, right?

• 51:47Speaker 02

  No, I guess, right.

• 51:49Yasi Salek?

  He said, but from that first gig on, I don't know what came over us. We knew we were the greatest band in the world. We'd go fucking Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, they haven't got the tunes we've got. Clint Boone said this about the show, he was there. I remember seeing that gig at the Boardwalk, Noel's first gig with the band. There weren't many people there. It was probably maybe 20 of us, I like how Noel upped it to 40. And five of those people were in the Inspiral carpets. It wasn't the Oasis that we came to know. And Liam was very much under the spell of Ian Brown. I think he was in his mind thinking, I'll do it the way Ian does it and that'll get me by.

• 52:19Speaker 02

  Do you feel bad for the Inspiral carpets that this is their primary claim to fame?

• 52:26Yasi Salek?

  Footnote in history.

• 52:27Speaker 02

  Is, is that true? Maybe that isn't true. Maybe especially if you were there, they are still beloved in their way.

• 52:34Yasi Salek?

  I think they could have picked a better band name if they were concerned with how they would be remembered by history.

• 52:40Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 52:40Yasi Salek?

  Not to be rude.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  Carpets, no, that's, that's just, that's tough love.

• 52:45Yasi Salek?

  They made it in a big way for their, you know, I'm being serious. Like they toured the world, like they put out albums, like they played shows.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  On American alt-rock radio, sure.

• 52:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like comparing it to Oasis is like a fool's errand, right? And you can't compare anyone to Oasis, but like for a Manchester band who was probably also on the dole, like that, like they were, as far as they were concerned, they fucking made it beyond their wildest dreams, I think, if you would ask them.

• 53:14Speaker 02

  They had a mono browed roadie. That's when you know you've.

• 53:16Yasi Salek?

  They had several. They had a monitor guy, like they were doing, they were doing great. All right. Do you know what Red Nose Day is?

• 53:25Speaker 02

  That's like a charity thing?

• 53:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. There was a big Red Nose Day event in Manchester and Noel was very proud because he had arranged for them to play this event, opening for Alvin Stardust. So that they could be on Granada TV. Are you familiar with Alvin Stardust's work?

• 53:43Speaker 02

  I can't say that I am, no.

• 53:46Yasi Salek?

  Alvin Stardust was kind of like a corny glam rocker who had a big hit in the seventies called My Ku Kachu.

• 54:01Yasi Salek?

  According to Tony, Noel was a big fan of this man. Anyways, they did do this. They played to about 12 people, most of whom were the crew. Then Liam got in a fight with the actor Simon Gregson, who played Steve McDonald on Coronation Street. That's this for my British hoods at home. And then in the end, the performance was cut from the TV broadcast anyway.

• 54:22Speaker 02

  Well, that sounds like Oasis.

• 54:24Yasi Salek?

  It didn't go as planned. This is where Britpop, I think, as we understand it, really kind of has its seeds in the culture. April of 92 is when that select magazine cover comes out with Brett Anderson of Suede on it. And they had superimposed a Union Jack behind him, right?

• 54:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:47Yasi Salek?

  Suede was on many magazine covers before they put out any music. Like, they had to put out music in April 92. Their first single wasn't coming out until May 92. In 92, you were deep in the arms of Eddie Vedder, right? You were, you were-

• 55:00Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 55:01Yasi Salek?

  Alice in Chains. You were not aware that such a thing as Suede existed. Is this true? Or were you kind of like precocious and you were, you were checking the NME?

• 55:12Speaker 02

  I was not checking the NME. There is one Suede song whose video I saw one time on MTV. That song would be Metal Mickey. So I am aware vaguely that a band named Suede from England-

• 55:30Yasi Salek?

  But that's none of your business in 1992.

• 55:33Speaker 02

  Absolutely none of my business. Are they singing Jeremy by Pearl Jam? They're not, then I'm not-

• 55:38Yasi Salek?

  You had the flannel tied tight around your waist and you were like-

• 55:44Speaker 02

  I had the Stickman t-shirt and the white and black flannel. That is, that is absolutely correct. I did have trainers, but I did not know at the time that they were, that they were called trainers.

• 55:55Yasi Salek?

  They were called trainers. So Noel said, "Before we came along, the greatest hope for British music was Suede. They didn't write songs that mean anything to people living in council blocks in Glasgow. We were not into chin stroking. We were very naive. We were quite pure in a way. It was just all about rock and roll. After that came the rock and roll behavior, and that was fab for a bit as well. We were a wake-up call to a lot of kids who thought, maybe I'm a little bit of an obnoxious twat as well."

• 56:24Yasi Salek?

  They were making music for the obnoxious twats of the world. They, they, they were like, let's give voice to the obnoxious twats who for too long have not been represented.

• 56:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 56:37Yasi Salek?

  Obnoxious twats. That sentiment is actually important, I think, when we start to talk about why Oasis was such a phenomenon in like such an unprecedented way. And he, he's right. Like, there was something so universally appealing about them, whereas like, Suede is a little heady. You know, it's good.

• 57:03Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 57:03Yasi Salek?

  It's a little heady.

• 57:04Speaker 02

  Right. It's pure and naive are how I would describe, you know, honestly, the first two Oasis records and the, maybe the singles, maybe the B-sides especially. There is simultaneously, like, this is the most English band I've ever even heard of, but there is nonetheless, like, a universality, you know, that does not apply to, say, Blur, you know, not to jump too far ahead, but you know, it's Blur, you have to know a lot about England to fully get Blur, you know, yeah.

• 57:36Yasi Salek?

  So, they're just playing shows, right? They're trying to make it for like a year. They're playing shows, I'll be honest with you, no one cares, okay? No one cares about them playing shows, okay? They, I think they played like 12 shows total, so it's not like they're like killing themselves either. But they're writing, they're rehearsing all the time. Noel said, "The first real song that I completed that was good was Live Forever." Oasis was going for maybe six months or a year before that song. And we were kind of all right. We could all play a little bit. I remember one night being in a rehearsal room and we were one kind of band, like a shit indie band from Manchester. Then the next night, going down with Live Forever and everything changed. I knew enough about music and about songs to know that that was a great song. Then one followed another

• 58:20Yasi Salek?

  and it's like, this is happening now. Bonehead was saying, "You've not just written that. There's no way that's your song." He's still to this day fucking debates whether I'd written it or not. I mean, it is pretty crazy to come in like one smooth year after rehearsing with the form, band formerly known as The Rain and be like, "Anyways, wrote a little tune, here it is, Live Forever."

• 58:41Speaker 02

  Right. No, I think that's central to the Oasis appeal immediately is the sense, you know, that there's no way that they wrote these songs. There's no way that these songs did not already exist. Like, these are Beatles songs that I have forgotten somehow, you know, but there's no way that this guy did this.

• 58:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. So, a few other important characters enter the Oasis story. Well, they've already entered the Oasis story, but they enter it in our story. The brothers named Chris and Tony Griffiths, who were from this Liverpudlian band, The Real People. The Real People had played shows with Inspiral Carpets, and that's how Noel knew them. They had a studio. And Noel asked them, like, hey, can we use your studio? We want to like, we want to make like a really professional sounding demo. Like, we want to like, send a demo around. They were like, sure. They spent three months recording there, and by a lot of accounts, they had a really big impact on the shaping of some of these songs. Tony says that, again, I'm sure Tony's

• 59:42Yasi Salek?

  main mission in life is to take credit away from Noel Gallagher, so a grain of salt. But, you know, it's not entirely wrong, because they actually do have production credit on Supersonic on the single version. So, they did, they were not doing anything. But, this part I thought was very interesting. So, they're Scousers, right? Scousers are just Liverpudlians, who have that really specific accent, like how the Beatles talk. Liam Gallagher had never recorded with headphones on, right? He didn't, it kind of threw him off, because it's weird, right? You can hear, like, and he was like, I don't like the way I sound.

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  The first time you hear yourself, exactly. Yeah, it's like, I don't sound like that. I sound much better than that.

• 1:00:19Yasi Salek?

  He said, "It put me off singing." And Chris Griffiths was like, "Just don't think." It worked. I know, Tony McCarroll was like, "Insert your own jokes here," which is quite funny. He says that over the next two days, Liam's voice underwent a transformation. He said that he was mimicking Chris's elocution and Scouse drawl in his own Mancunian style.

• 1:00:45Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:00:48Yasi Salek?

  It is interesting because I do put a little credence in that where like, because you can hear, his voice does change and his attitude and his stance and his, and the pronunciation that we've come to know and love of Liam Gallagher. I think there's something to this.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:01:03Yasi Salek?

  Also, it's like really cemented later by Alan McGee, who heard him kind of singing the sunshine of it all. And Alan McGee was like, that's cool. That sounds like Johnny Rotten. And Liam was like, oh yeah, I'm never changing this. But I think it had its roots. I think it has roots in these Scousers. Pete Thousand would later say of Liam that when we hear Liam's voice, it's our voice. It's everyone's voice. And again, I think that had something to do with the sort of melding of these like northern accents.

• 1:01:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:35Yasi Salek?

  Also, both the brothers, they taught the band a lot about recording songs during that period. Here are the songs they did on that tape. "Cloud Burst," "Columbia," "Do You Wanna Be a Spaceman," "Strange Thing," "Bring It On Down," "Married with Children," "Fade Away," "Rock and Roll Star." So lots of, lots of good future stuff is on here. May 1993, Mark Coyle and Noel do get fired. They get sacked from their Inspiral Carpets roadieing job. Not the hardest working roadies in the world. So Noel signs right back on the dole, babe. Liam's already on the dole. Here's what Noel said later. He said, "No one will ever admit it. And every time I say this, it gets picked up by the wrong fucking members of the press and turned on its head. But we were all Thatcher's children who got

• 1:02:20Yasi Salek?

  off our asses and did it for ourselves. What I mean is, this all happened in spite of Thatcherism. We were on the dole, all on benefits, and it must have dawned on us all that we were not going to get anything and that nothing would be given to us. So we had better go and fucking find a way of taking it." Because that was kind of Thatcher's whole thing, right? Where she was like, figure it the fuck out. Ride your bike.

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  No one cares about you. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:45Yasi Salek?

  No one cares about you. And I, and you know, for better or for worse, no one is a, no one is a proponent of Thatcher on this program. But she also would have later like tried, basically minimized the dole. So it's like, the dole had a lot to do with this, these bursts of creativity. Like, they couldn't have lived otherwise.

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  I don't think we have to give her any credit.

• 1:03:04Yasi Salek?

  No. You know this story. I know this story. But let's tell the people this story. The fateful night that Oasis gets signed. May 31st, 1993.

• 1:03:15Yasi Salek?

  Their story is truly like a Cinderella story. It's pretty magic. And then this story, the fairy godmother is a Scottish man named Alan McGee. So Oasis rehearsed at this place that they shared with a band called Sister Lovers, all female band named after the Big Sur album. In this band was a woman named Debbie Turner, who was good friends with Alan McGee. So they had a show booked in Glasgow at King Tut's Wawa Hut.

• 1:03:45Speaker 02

  This is my favorite part of this story.

• 1:03:46Yasi Salek?

  Still open to this day.

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  Oh, oh, really? Okay, good. Let's go hang out there.

• 1:03:51Yasi Salek?

  I would love to. King Tut's Wawa Hut, would you like to host me and Rob Harvilla live show? Cause I would do that in one single heartbeat.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  That's phenomenal.

• 1:04:01Yasi Salek?

  Let's go to King Tut's Wawa Hut. So Sister Lovers are get a show opening for a band called Eighteen Wheeler, who was like, not a creation band, but a creation. They were on like an imprint of creation called August. And they were like, you guys should come play too. And Oasis is like, yeah, we should. And so they rent a van, they all like chip in, rent a van. They're not booked to play this show. And they get there and they tell the promoter, we're playing the show. And the promoter was like, no, you know, the promoter said, get to fuck probably.

• 1:04:30Speaker 02

  And this is King Tut's Wawa Hut. You know, this is get to fuck.

• 1:04:36Yasi Salek?

  The prevailing story is that they use their scary intimidation tactics to get to play, but that's actually not what happened. What happened is that Debbie Turner stepped in and was like, no, no, they have to play. Wheels shorten our set so they can play, which she said wasn't that hard because they only had five songs total in their repertoire anyways. And so the guy was like, okay, fine. Oasis can play four songs. They were the first band. Now, through a beautiful twist of events, Alan McGee thought it'd be funny if he surprised Debbie Turner by coming to this show. He thought the show was on pub hours. So, which is why he was there early. He did not know that King Tut's Wawa Hut had recently acquired a late night license, thusly pushing all the bands back.

• 1:05:21Yasi Salek?

  So he would never have been there for Oasis had. This not happened. So he's there before Oasis even goes on. He like, he sees them kind of milling about. Here's what Alan McGee said. I gradually became aware that there was all this drama going on with the bouncers and another Manchester band who had come down for an away day and were demanding to play even though they weren't on the bill. I could hear all these Mank accents arguing. I looked over and saw Liam Gallagher for the first time. He looked amazing. A proper Adidas up mod. He had hair like a young Paul Weller. And I thought, that's gotta be the drug dealer. Because nobody in a band looked that good.

• 1:06:01Yasi Salek?

  Damn. Jim and William Reid read that and were like, okay, rude. But in fairness, they didn't look that good. They had this like flock of curly flock of seagulls, fluff hair.

• 1:06:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, not the same.

• 1:06:11Yasi Salek?

  Nest is things.

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  Can't rock a parka like that, man. Yeah.

• 1:06:15Yasi Salek?

  Nobody looked like Liam Gallagher. He was literally a gorgeous supermodel. It's actually insane that anyone has that face. Like, it's truly insane. So Alan remembers that they played, you know, Bring It On Down first and then Up in the Sky. And by then he was like four to five drinks in and he was like, yep, signing this band. I'm signing them. He was with his sisters. I'm signing this band. They were like, okay. So he finds Mark Coyle, who's with them doing sound. And he's like, who's in charge? Who's, are they signed? Who's in charge? And he goes, Noel. And so he goes up to Noel, says, do you want a record deal? And Noel was like, who with? Although I think he already knew it was Alan McGee. Alan McGee was like Creation Records. And Noel was like, yes. Boom, done. That's how they got their record deal.

• 1:06:57Yasi Salek?

  This was their 13th show with Noel. That's how it goes.

• 1:07:03Yasi Salek?

  Then apparently Alan McGee went out, got more drunk, went to his hotel room. This is about three in the morning. Called every member of the Creation staff in the middle of the night to tell them he had just found the next Beatles. This is true. I corroborated this with a former employee of Creation Records who did get the middle of the night phone call with Alan McGee yelling about how he had just signed the band of the decade.

• 1:07:24Speaker 02

  Probably not the first time they got that call, right? How many times do you think Alan McGee said, I found the next Beatles?

• 1:07:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Also, my inside source said, he also said, they're all ugly except the singer.

• 1:07:39Speaker 02

  Fact check, true. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:42Yasi Salek?

  I was reading Alan McGee's book and I got to this part where like, I think they showed up at the office, they're gonna do a photo shoot and he saw Bonehead and he goes, can we not get him a hat?

• 1:07:56Speaker 02

  That's.

• 1:07:57Yasi Salek?

  Can we?

• 1:07:58Speaker 02

  Excellent accent work. There you go.

• 1:08:01Yasi Salek?

  Noel said this later, which I thought was really interesting. One of the greatest lyrics that Morrissey ever wrote, and he's a Gemini, same as me, okay, confirmed astrology girlie.

• 1:08:10Speaker 02

  There we go. He's up on it. Yeah.

• 1:08:12Yasi Salek?

  The one that stuck in my head for years is, you should not go to them, let them come to you. That's from the Hand of the Rocks Cradle.

• 1:08:20Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:08:21Yasi Salek?

  I always knew it was gonna be, and lo and behold, the chancer that I am, it fucking happened. So they get signed. Now Johnny Hopkins, who's gonna be their press officer, also an inside source, told me that was completely by accident. What happened was, he was like really complaining, I guess, about not having, he wanted more to do, because there was a top press officer already, and Alan McGee was like, listen, whatever band I sign next, you can do their press. And that band just happened to be Oasis. Luckiest man alive. He said that he went up to Manchester to kind of check them out, and they were playing at this place called Hop and Grape. And he said in Manchester, the crowds had never gotten any bigger for them. It wasn't like

• 1:09:05Yasi Salek?

  there was any kind of scene in Manchester at that time. The Mondays had gone, the Stone Roses were in Wales, and everyone was just listening to dance music. I'd see people walking off to the bar when Oasis was playing, and I couldn't understand how they could just walk away. They weren't very popular initially in Manchester.

• 1:09:21Speaker 02

  And that has to work for them, right? That's part of the defiance and the resentment that will be also a crucial part.

• 1:09:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think so. And I think, I know it's very, that's very Mancunian, right? For them to be like, them, who cares, them lot. His mom was my dinner lady.

• 1:09:40Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so the band, I think it was Noel Liam and Bonehead, they go down to the creation office. This was like a very funny anecdote where McGee had all these pictures of artists on the wall of the creation office. The faces, Paul Weller, but also Big Star, Lynyrd Skynyrd. These are, Big Star and Lynyrd Skynyrd were bands that Noel did not know about or never heard about them. He went into McGee's office and started talking about me. And telling him how much he loved Big Star and he loved Lynyrd Skynyrd. And Alan McGee was like, yeah, he told me about all the bands that I liked and he was so into music. And I was saying to him, you're the first person since Bobby Gillespie that totally is tuned into my musical tastes.

• 1:10:20Speaker 02

  Big Star and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

• 1:10:23Yasi Salek?

  He's like, I thought I found my ultimate soul music brother, but it was just all a bit of a lie. Then they get their manager again, to like, kind of the easiest thing on earth. Noel was friends with a guy named Ian. He let Ian hear the tape and Ian was like, oh, I should give this to my brother. Ian was an actor and Noel was like, why the fuck would you give it to your brother? The fuck is your brother? And he's like, Johnny Marr. My brother is Johnny Marr. And he was like, oh, my God, yes, go give it to him right now. And Johnny Marr loved it and he gave it to his manager, Marcus Russell. And Marcus Russell finally, I think he ignored it for a little while, but then he finally went and saw them play. And he was like, oh yeah, this is the fucking real deal. He met with everyone except Tony. So they were seeing a bit of an early pattern here with Tony.

• 1:11:08Yasi Salek?

  They actually apparently told Marcus at this point, like right, even before they like signed the paperwork to be on creation, that they wanted to kick Tony out. And Marcus was the one that was like, don't do that because you're going to lose three months trying to find a new drummer. And like, you need to like get the ground running. And they were like, fine.

• 1:11:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:28Yasi Salek?

  Here's something I thought was interesting. So Creation had not signed an actual contract with them, but Creation was so kind of hip back then and known for like finding cool bands and like being, having taste or whatever, that word got out that they were interested in signing Oasis and they started getting all these other offers.

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:11:49Yasi Salek?

  U2's label, Mother Records, offered to double whatever McGee was paying. And to their credit, they stuck with Creation. But this is just like a, like a little footnote, but I think it is interesting. Marcus was basically like, you guys suck internationally. Creation is amazing in the UK. You suck out of the UK. And at this point, Sony had purchased 49%.

• 1:12:14Yasi Salek?

  Of Creation for three and a half million pounds. So they had worldwide rights to everything Creation signed. But what they did was they did it backwards to make Marcus happy. They signed Oasis to Sony.

• 1:12:29Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:12:30Yasi Salek?

  To Epic, I think, and Epic licensed them to Creation in the UK.

• 1:12:36Speaker 02

  Doesn't seem like that's important, but it is very important.

• 1:12:39Yasi Salek?

  I think it was important in the sense that people tried to use it to be like, well, they're not an indie band. Actually, they were, you know, they were like signed to a major.

• 1:12:46Speaker 02

  Industry plants. Yeah.

• 1:12:48Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. And it did go really fast, but it was, you know, really just like a technical detail. So Creation Gets Busy, they stick them on their first national radio show, which is called Hit the North, which was hosted by Mark Radcliffe and Mark Riley, who was formerly of The Fall. Mark Radcliffe wasn't there on this episode. Peter Hook was co-hosting. Have you ever heard the audio of this, Rob?

• 1:13:10Speaker 02

  I have not, no. I imagine the accents are thick and raucous. Yeah.

• 1:13:15Yasi Salek?

  Oh, you can barely fucking understand what they're saying. Also, there's something off with the mics, but there is a really great part where Liam just totally makes fun of Peter Hook from like the start. And Peter was like, well, you can't come to the hacienda, my club, the hacienda. Liam got, I was like, fuck, I fucking care. I don't want to go there anyways. It's like, pretty amazing. Like, they're just so arrogant and lippy. They play a bunch of songs, too. They play Cigarettes and Alcohol, Sunshine, Dixie's Dinner, Rock and Roll Star. Did you know they opened for Liz Phair? I thought that was a very interesting.

• 1:13:50Speaker 02

  What? Wow. No.

• 1:13:52Yasi Salek?

  That's right.

• 1:13:52Speaker 02

  I didn't.

• 1:13:53Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 1:13:53Speaker 02

  I'm sure they really got along.

• 1:13:55Yasi Salek?

  They didn't. Liz Phair complained about them to the music press and said they were like really fucking annoying.

• 1:14:01Speaker 02

  Guyville opening for Liz Phair is, that's.

• 1:14:04Yasi Salek?

  Literally Guyville. Yeah, Ladville, exile from in Ladville.

• 1:14:08Speaker 02

  There we go.

• 1:14:09Yasi Salek?

  They signed their deal October 22nd. This is a fun story that may or may not be true, but I'm sticking with it because I think it is true and I love it. Do you have any memory of the band The Farm?

• 1:14:19Speaker 02

  Are they the get on, get on the groovy train? Is that The Farm?

• 1:14:23Yasi Salek?

  Yes, correct. Correct.

• 1:14:32Yasi Salek?

  You know who didn't like it or anything to do with The Farm? Is Noel Gallagher.

• 1:14:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:39Yasi Salek?

  Noel Gallagher. He hated them for whatever reason. They're from Liverpool and I'm from Manchester. But they had blown up. Like, there are a couple of bands that kind of set the stage, obviously, for Oasis's major ascent. We talked about the Happy Mondays and Stone Roses, The Farm, and Flowered Up, I think are two other ones that are worth mentioning, kind of priming the pump, if you will. At this point, The Farm is signed to Sony, so there's a picture of The Farm on the wall in the room that they're signing their contract. And Noel Gallagher is like, "I'm not signing until you add an addendum", which I don't think they added an addendum, but promising that they would take that photo down.

• 1:15:21Yasi Salek?

  And he said, "When we signed, I was gonna make fucking sure that everything was perfect, and I wasn't gonna have those twats looking down on us." I mean, there was Bob Dylan on one wall and us standing there in the middle. The Farm weren't exactly in the same league, if you know what I mean. You gotta have standards, man. You have to respect that Noel Gallagher was like this from day one. Do you know what I mean? Like, you have to respect. I actually do deeply respect it, that he was like, "I don't like that band. I will not be signing my record deal under the gaze of The Farm. Fucking get to fuck. Turn it around."

• 1:15:53Speaker 02

  No, I agree with you. There's a difference between being dicks after you become famous and being famous by becoming dicks. That is a very important distinction. Absolutely.

• 1:16:04Yasi Salek?

  There's a beautiful authenticity at the core of The Brothers Gallagher.

• 1:16:09Speaker 02

  Authentically dickish. Yes, yes.

• 1:16:12Yasi Salek?

  One little less fun tidbit about the contract, according to Tony, which I think this is probably true because there was obviously a lawsuit around this. So, we all know that Noel, from the beginning, got all the songwriting and publishing, because that was fair, because he wrote the songs. In the draft contract, there was no key member agreement, and the band owned the rights to the name Oasis. But then, when they signed the real contract, it had been changed. And Liam and him, Noel, owned the name Oasis. And it had given Noel the power to fire any member he thought unfit.

• 1:16:47Speaker 02

  The anti-bonehead clause, this is.

• 1:16:50Yasi Salek?

  Well, it was anti-Tony McCarroll in the end, but yeah.

• 1:16:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 1:16:54Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so we fucking have a record deal. November 93, guess who goes and signs off the dole? Noel and Liam Gallagher.

• 1:17:10Yasi Salek?

  Should we talk about Columbia?

• 1:17:11Speaker 02

  I would love to talk about Columbia.

• 1:17:13Yasi Salek?

  Is Columbia one of your top five Oasis songs?

• 1:17:16Speaker 02

  Probably honestly, no, but I respect immensely how important this song is to them. And perhaps also to you.

• 1:17:27Yasi Salek?

  I don't know, I wouldn't say it's like immensely important to me per se, but I do think it's a really good song.

• 1:17:31Speaker 02

  A very important thing about this song is just the noise at the beginning. Like there's something beautiful and immaculate and important to me about the way this song starts with just a lot of chaos and feedback and random yelling.

• 1:17:55Speaker 02

  Immediately with Oasis from the beginning, there's this sense of atmosphere, you know, and this sense of importance that precedes their actual importance. Like this, just this, this song starts like a song that knows how important it is before you do. You know, there's just, I guess swagger would be the way to summarize everything, but just there's an immediate swagger, unearned, that, that sort of, this band just fakes it till it makes it to sort of just a startling galactic degree. And I think that starts with the way that Columbia even starts.

• 1:18:32Yasi Salek?

  I think the beautiful thing about Oasis is that they beg the question, they pause it.

• 1:18:39Yasi Salek?

  Must you earn your swagger? Or is swagger god given?

• 1:18:43Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah.

• 1:18:45Yasi Salek?

  Is swagger not simply innate? Whether I'm a garbage man on the street or the top rock star in the world, that swagger would be there because I have value. Is how I'm interpreting it.

• 1:18:58Speaker 02

  There we go. Now, what is swagger if not just unearned confidence? There we go. Sure. No, I'm with you.

• 1:19:04Yasi Salek?

  Why do you have to earn your confidence? Is what I say.

• 1:19:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:08Yasi Salek?

  I do actually really love Columbia. I like dare you to put Columbia on, on your headphones while you're standing up and not kind of like fucking shake it. You know what I mean?

• 1:19:28Yasi Salek?

  And they get a lot of flack for interpolating and simply being

• 1:19:35Speaker 02

  Do they?

• 1:19:36Yasi Salek?

  Allowing themselves to be inspired by other bands and songs. But they did take it to somewhere new. You know, like this isn't the Beatles, right? Because the Beat, John Lennon, to my, to my memory, did not have one tenth of the attitude. I'm going to get fucking buried alive by Beatles truthers.

• 1:19:58Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, I did not hear that. And I am no longer on this podcast. Yeah.

• 1:20:03Yasi Salek?

  I'm not saying John Lennon is mid, okay? I'm just saying that in terms of the attitude they brought to the table, it was a different flavor.

• 1:20:14Yasi Salek?

  Jesus.

• 1:20:18Speaker 02

  I'm not saying John Lennon is mid, but yes. Yes.

• 1:20:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:23Speaker 02

  I love how slow this song is. Another very important quality of early Oasis for me is that these songs are like five minutes long, but they feel like they're 35 minutes long, right? Like there's like time almost reverses. There is viscous, thank you. There's like a primordial soup that I really dig, you know, about how plodding, but non pejoratively, like just the, the, the stomp. You know, the inexorable ooze, you know, of a five minute Oasis song immediately is just a very cool, very strident.

• 1:21:01Yasi Salek?

  I'm just laughing, imagining, not that he's listening, but if Liam Gallagher listened to this and he was like, what? Pidortive. You what?

• 1:21:11Yasi Salek?

  Get to fuck.

• 1:21:13Speaker 02

  Get to fuck, Rob. Yeah.

• 1:21:15Yasi Salek?

  A bit studenty, Rob, I must say. A bit studenty.

• 1:21:20Yasi Salek?

  Alan McGee and the annals of history, along with Tony Wilson, people I'm obsessed with because they don't make them like that anymore. They don't make these like

• 1:21:27Speaker 02

  They don't.

• 1:21:28Yasi Salek?

  real iconoclasts who just were like, I wish to further rock music by any means necessary. And I, in like the most anti-capitalistic way, almost, you know, like, I mean, they did do, Alan McGee did better, obviously, than Tony Wilson, but like, they were so important as figures and like, you just don't see it anymore, which sucks.

• 1:21:48Speaker 02

  You do not.

• 1:21:49Yasi Salek?

  So he decided that they should release Columbia as a white label promo single. It was only sent to press and radio, but within a week, Radio One, which is a big deal, Steve Lamack and Joe Wiley's show Evening Session plays it. And then it gets played like, I don't know, 20 times in a week or something. And it's like, fucking off to the races, you know, it's already on the radio. They've gotten some press, but I think a piece of meaningful press, they open for Saint Etienne.

• 1:22:19Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:22:19Yasi Salek?

  Here's the press. This is by Johnny Cigarettes. Also, fucking cool as hell, man. Remember when you could like-

• 1:22:25Speaker 02

  Excuse me? The Johnny Cigarettes? Okay, sure, sure.

• 1:22:31Yasi Salek?

  He said, if Oasis didn't exist, no one would want to invent them. For a start, they look and sound like they're long overdue product from a bankrupt scally also-rans factory.

• 1:22:43Speaker 02

  Geez, Johnny.

• 1:22:45Yasi Salek?

  Vaguely trippy guitar, almost tunes with vaguely late 60s rock tendencies, vaguely Ian Brown as Tim Burgess' slob of a frontman. Tim Burgess was the frontman of the Charlatans. Singing in a vaguely tuneless half wine, vaguely shaking a tambourine, vaguely, will you get the picture? But most annoying is the fact that- They're too cool to have a personality or be more surprising than the dullest retro indie fops. Too well versed in old records to do anything new and evidently have too few brains to realize that any of the above is true. Sad period. Early sad period.

• 1:23:22Speaker 02

  Johnny Cigarettes hit him with a sound. I was gonna say.

• 1:23:25Yasi Salek?

  Proto Trump, sad period. Maybe Trump was a big enemy reader.

• 1:23:29Speaker 02

  Just a Johnny Cigarettes fan and it's sad period is such a different vibe than sad exclamation point also.

• 1:23:37Yasi Salek?

  I know. That's true. Good point.

• 1:23:39Speaker 02

  Sheesh.

• 1:23:40Yasi Salek?

  Johnny Cigarettes became Oasis enemy number one after this, by the way. He was really persona non grata.

• 1:23:45Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:23:46Yasi Salek?

  But in his defense, he kind of held his, he, he wasn't like a just kidding after Oasis being like the biggest band in the country. Like he still wrote a piece for the face where he was like, fuck Oasis. So in that sense, you have to take your, doff your cap to him, if you will. So it's time to release the first real single. Let me ask you a question. In the alternative universe that Alan McGee got his way and they released Bring It On Down. Do you think it would have completely altered the trajectory of this band?

• 1:24:14Speaker 02

  I think Supersonic is awfully important as the first song many people hear. I, I need to be myself. I can't be, like it's, you can't.

• 1:24:25Yasi Salek?

  Oh, you can.

• 1:24:25Speaker 02

  It's a very different prospect for it to be anything else than this song with those words and those vowels. I don't think the universe is radically altered, but I think that this happened the only way it could actually happen.

• 1:24:40Yasi Salek?

  I'm going to tell you a little secret. Supersonic is my favorite Oasis song.

• 1:24:45Speaker 02

  Did you, have you always known that?

• 1:24:47Yasi Salek?

  I think so. I think it's just, I return to it again and again. It always hits. Like I dare you again to put on your headphones.

• 1:24:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:58Yasi Salek?

  Throw on Supersonic. Perhaps you've taken a bit of mushrooms and you're not going to have a religious experience. I'll say about that.

• 1:25:13Yasi Salek?

  I can see the appeal of Bring It On Down to Alan McGee because like re-listening with new ears after taking in again, more facts about Oasis than anyone on God's good should ever have to learn.

• 1:25:24Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:25:25Yasi Salek?

  Bring It On Down is like the punky song on the on definitely, right? It has like very punk energy and that was kind of the, you know, esprit de corps of the time or whatever, especially with Creation. I think he thought it would hit and he wasn't wrong. Again, touched by a greater, a power greater than ourselves was Noel Gallagher, who was like, they're trying to record in the studio. He was just wasn't feeling it. And he was like, you know what? I'm just gonna write a new song real quick. I'll be right back. Literally, I'll be right back. They ordered Chinese food. By the time that everyone had finished eating their Chinese food, he had written Supersonic. How?

• 1:26:05Speaker 02

  Boneheads in there eating beef and broccoli while Noel.

• 1:26:08Yasi Salek?

  Literally boneheads having beef broccoli.

• 1:26:11Speaker 02

  Do you know what they ate? You do, don't you?

• 1:26:13Yasi Salek?

  Well, Noel Gallagher said it was either Chinese or fish and chips or Chinese fish and chips. I don't know if Chinese fish and chips is a real thing. It might, it might be now, but it probably wasn't in the early 90s.

• 1:26:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, we got one of those in Ohio. Don't, don't do that.

• 1:26:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I'm sure you do. Chinese chippy. They played it for Alan McGee and McGee said, I was nuts. I was fucking nuts. I mean, most people would have gone, wait a minute, but I was on my own trip. Then they gave me a line of coke and four or five seconds into a line of cocaine, fucking everything seems like a fucking great idea. I did wake up the next morning going, what the fuck happened? What? Why do they do that? Noel said, I get a buzz off giving new songs to Alan McGee because he actually thinks we're the greatest band in the fucking world. He phones me up at four or five o'clock in the morning. I'll get out of bed and it's McGee on the other end going, I'm feeling supersonic. Give me gin and tonic. We're gonna annihilate the world, man. That in a nutshell is why we're on Creation Records because the press is up at five in the morning, reciting the

• 1:27:09Yasi Salek?

  lyrics down the fucking phone. He phoned me from Hawaii. I could hear water in the background. He just had a fucking phone on the fucking beach and he's going, whoa, man.

• 1:27:19Speaker 02

  Riding a dolphin.

• 1:27:20Yasi Salek?

  cigarettes and alcohol.

• 1:27:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:22Speaker 02

  Riding a dolphin. And I'm going, yeah, I'm in Manchester. It's Friday afternoon and I've got three quid to go buy a pizza. Listening to the Beach Boys. Yeah, that's.

• 1:27:33Yasi Salek?

  Pretty great.

• 1:27:34Speaker 02

  There we go. Bring it on down is also important. Like, you know, I can see why you would want that as your intro song, right? Like, you're the outcast, you're the underclass.

• 1:27:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, you wanna slap him in the.

• 1:27:44Speaker 02

  Extremely important.

• 1:27:45Yasi Salek?

  With your dick in the face and be like, we're here, bitch, you know?

• 1:27:48Speaker 02

  Precisely. Verbatim, that's what I was thinking. Yes.

• 1:27:56Yasi Salek?

  Supersonic will come out in April and I want to talk about the actual song more when we talk about the release of the single. But just real quick, we went from riding the dolphin on the fucking massive brick cellular phone in Hawaii off four lines of gack screaming. Gimme gin and tonic. I want to say this delicately, but unsurprisingly, very shortly thereafter, Alan McGee has his famous breakdown where he goes to Los Angeles with primal scream and like literally cannot can no longer function because he's done so many drugs. And he has to like kind of check into rehabilitation, which, bro, you did it with the best of them. I mean, it's it's actually incredible that you made it that long. Like, it's crazy what that man accomplished.

• 1:28:35Yasi Salek?

  Partying wise in such a short time. He he's the oasis of partying in the short time.

• 1:28:42Speaker 02

  There we go.

• 1:28:42Yasi Salek?

  His imperial phase of partying was above and beyond.

• 1:28:46Speaker 02

  He was truly feeling supersonic. Yes.

• 1:28:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It's important, though, because this is their main champion in the Heather label and he's kind of like MIA from here. For about Noel Gallagher was like, it's a couple of years. It was eight months, but whatever. I'm sure eight months felt like a couple of years at that time.

• 1:29:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:29:04Yasi Salek?

  He would check in now and again, but he was kind of dealing with his own stuff.

• 1:29:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:10Yasi Salek?

  Before Supersonic comes out, they do a little bit of myth building by accident. You have heard of the ill-fated Amsterdam show.

• 1:29:19Speaker 02

  Oh, boy. Getting in fights on ferries. Here we go.

• 1:29:24Yasi Salek?

  Yes, their first show outside of England. They're gonna go open for the Verve. They're meant to take the ferry over. The problems start before they get on the ferry because what happens is they have a new tour manager. And Noel goes to him and is like, do you have the float? Which I guess is the money for the tour. And the guy's like, well, yeah, but we need it for petrol. And Noel goes, fuck your fucking petrol, give me the float. They go buy a bunch of drugs and Jack Daniels. And so by the time they even get to the ferry, they're off their fucking rockers. Okay. Then they realize the ferry has a nightclub in it on the way to Amsterdam. We used to be a proper society. And the nightclub is filled with West Ham fans partying.

• 1:30:09Yasi Salek?

  So football hooligans. It's just a bit of a recipe for disaster, babe. They start having Jack Daniel's slammers, they're drinking champagne. Again, it's completely unclear what happened because everyone was wasted. But what happens is on one end, they're accused of passing off fake money, fake 50 pound notes. But they were not fake, so they get very belligerent about this. They start to get into fights with the security. And then Liam is like running around the entire fucking ferry, like being crazy. The ferry's security has had enough.

• 1:30:42Yasi Salek?

  Now they arrest, they arrest everyone except for Noel. They're throw them in ferry jail, which is a real thing. They're in the ferry jail at night. They have to sleep in the ferry jail.

• 1:30:52Speaker 02

  That's tough.

• 1:30:53Yasi Salek?

  And they're deported. They don't, they are sent, their passports are taken away and they are sent back and they cannot play the show in Amsterdam. And Noel goes, this is why I love McGee. I called him because Alan McGee is not yet in rehab. This is the after Super Sonic, he goes to rehab. I called him and I got put through to his office and he said, Noel, man, how's it going? And I said, are you sitting down? I've got some news. And he was like, what is it? And I said, everybody's been arrested on the fucking boat on the way out last night. And the only word he said was brilliant. I think within 12 hours, he had a photographer from the enemy out there and they made a massive deal of it. McGee's a genius. McGee said in his book, there weren't many dangerous bands left and people wanted to hear one. I think this is crucial.

• 1:31:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:37Yasi Salek?

  We talked about this a little earlier in the like two types of rock and roll, right? The Clash and the Sex Pistols. The Oasis were the Sex Pistols, like they were kind of trying to bring back this forgotten era of like rock bands. Part of the appeal of rock music is that it's scary. No.

• 1:31:53Speaker 02

  Right. Hotel room trashing. Yeah.

• 1:31:57Yasi Salek?

  Which was, by the way, a big Oasis thing. And I didn't realize almost 100% egged on by Bonehead, who loved to throw furniture out the window of every hotel room he was in.

• 1:32:09Speaker 02

  I am truly shocked to hear that.

• 1:32:12Yasi Salek?

  Anyways, that was that tour manager's first day and he didn't last very long. He was like, cool, first day of work. It was really amazing.

• 1:32:19Speaker 02

  Go. How to go, buddy.

• 1:32:21Yasi Salek?

  Marcus hired them a new tour manager, Marcus's new manager, named Maggie Musakitis. She's American. Here's my favorite fact about Maggie Musakitis. Are you ready for this?

• 1:32:33Speaker 02

  Hit me.

• 1:32:34Yasi Salek?

  She is in Depeche Mode 101, the documentary. She's one of the teenagers who won

• 1:32:41Speaker 02

  No shit.

• 1:32:42Yasi Salek?

  The contest. Yes, from the radio station. And you know how it kind of set the scene for like, the real world and everything was this documentary?

• 1:32:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:32:50Yasi Salek?

  There was like whatever six or eight teenagers. She's one. She's one of them. She's in the fucking documentary. Isn't that so cool?

• 1:32:56Speaker 02

  That's a delightful anecdote. Absolutely.

• 1:32:59Yasi Salek?

  I love it.

• 1:33:00Speaker 02

  Good stuff.

• 1:33:01Yasi Salek?

  She went on to tour management for like their entire, basically their entire career, like 15 years.

• 1:33:05Speaker 02

  Well, God bless her.

• 1:33:07Yasi Salek?

  Incredibly, the smartest thing they did was hire women because they did not respect men. But because they were, even Bonehead, all of them, basically raised by single moms, they listened to women. They were respectful of women. Yeah.

• 1:33:21Speaker 02

  There we go.

• 1:33:22Yasi Salek?

  So they were, they would listen to Maggie, but they would not have listened to that fuck who told them, please don't run around the ferry screaming and slapping

• 1:33:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:33:30Yasi Salek?

  Security guards. March of 94 is like, really start to blow up, right? They go on TV, they're on this show called The Word. They perform supersonic. You can watch it on YouTube. Liam is like already fully formed as a frontman. It's like, there he is. Perfect.

• 1:33:54Yasi Salek?

  Kevin Cummins, you know, the famous Mink Union photographer who took all those like iconic Joy Division photos, he was on tour with them and he said that they were blowing up so fast that like they were already too big for all the venues they had been booked in. Like it was just like all of a sudden like wildfire. They had one song that wasn't even available for purchase. It was just on the radio. And then they had a, you know, a bunch of tabloid stories about how they got deported from Amsterdam. Mark Allen, who's a journalist, said, "A lot of their appeal was down to their lack of pretension. They were militantly against any form of artifice. They wore the same clothes offstage as on. Liam's idea of stagecraft was to sit on the drum riser during guitar solos and smoke and drink lager." This, by the way, was a classic Sean Ryder thing that

• 1:34:39Yasi Salek?

  I think he cribbed from Sean Ryder, because Sean Ryder would absolutely do that. He would just literally go sit down during the Happy Mondays shows.

• 1:34:44Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:34:45Yasi Salek?

  He said that he also interviewed Noah Gallagher like pretty early on and he rattled off a list of the people he'd brazenly ripped off to write the first Oasis album. He told me Shaker Maker was stolen from The New Seekers and Flying by The Beatles. Cigarettes and Alcohol was stolen from T-Rex. He wasn't remotely self-conscious about what was or wasn't fashionable. His favorite songs included Card Trouble by Adam and the Ants, To Love Somebody by The Bee Gees, SOS by ABBA, and One by U2. One by U2 is a god tier song and we all know that, so he's right on that. He was a huge, huge U2 fan.

• 1:35:20Speaker 02

  Okay, that makes a lot of sense as an Oasis foundation also.

• 1:35:24Yasi Salek?

  He told this guy that he was still trying to rip off Don't Dream It's Over by Crowded House.

• 1:35:29Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 1:35:30Yasi Salek?

  The guy said, "When I suggested it was very honest of him to admit this, he said, 'There are 12 notes in the scale and 36 chords and that's the end of it.'" Again, he's not wrong.

• 1:35:40Speaker 02

  There we go. He isn't.

• 1:35:42Yasi Salek?

  Short of making noise music, like you're gonna retread some territory.

• 1:35:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:35:48Yasi Salek?

  Okay, April 5th of 1994 is sort of an important event because that's the day Kurt Cobain dies.

• 1:35:54Speaker 02

  It is historically like a big deal, even the perception that Oasis is created.

• 1:36:01Speaker 02

  In this exact moment, you know, that they emerge, they, they, they fill this vacuum left by Kurt Cobain's death, right? You know, and grunge is not going to die in this exact moment, but grunge is going to die very shortly, very slowly thereafter. And so this is the new, the new rock stars are people who actually want to be and talk like and act like rock stars, you know, Nirvana are not getting kicked off of fairies, you know, but what we need, what the world needs now is a band that does.

• 1:36:37Yasi Salek?

  The world needs now is love, to be loved, but in the form of Oasis. Supersonic babe, Supersonic, April 11th, 1994. Rob, do you have thoughts about this Oasis song?

• 1:36:54Speaker 02

  The first thing I think of when I think of Supersonic is Lars Ulrich, drummer for Metallica.

• 1:37:00Yasi Salek?

  Famously loved this song.

• 1:37:02Speaker 02

  I, yeah, I, I don't know why I remember this, but I do. I remember two specific interviews with Lars I read where he talked about two different songs that he heard for the first time on a plane while he was flying and he loved them so much and he loved the attitude and the energy and like the danger of these songs. And so he loved these bands for life. Number one was It's So Easy by Guns N' Roses. Number two was Supersonic. And for that reason, I have always paired these songs in my head. Like, these are the two songs that Lars loves. And I, now there is a connection in my head between Guns N' Roses and Oasis. And I, you know, I think we already said, like, I need to be myself. I can't be no one else. Like,

• 1:37:45Speaker 02

  said, sung the way Liam sings it. You know, I, I think an entire universe opens up in that moment, if you are open to it, if you are looking for this kind of thing, if you are looking for rock stars who want to be rock stars, again, as I think a lot of people were in the early, mid 90s.

• 1:38:06Yasi Salek?

  It's a powerful song. Liam is in top form, delivering his rendition of Noel's Thoughts and Feelings.

• 1:38:17Yasi Salek?

  But really making them his own, you know, I don't, I don't know to what extent Noel wrote for Liam or, or that he wrote as he would and Liam was tasked with interpreting it. I, you know, it's like impossible to know that.

• 1:38:35Speaker 02

  That's a good question, though.

• 1:38:36Yasi Salek?

  I think it was probably a little column A, a little column B, you know, like there's definitely like the phrase, I've got to be myself. I can't be no one else is very Liam, right?

• 1:38:47Speaker 02

  Right, yeah.

• 1:38:48Yasi Salek?

  It kind of boils down Liam Gallagher to the core. So like you could imagine that Noel was either like thinking of Liam or imagining a way he would like to be.

• 1:38:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's Noel transcribing Liam and then Liam singing his brother's transcription of him. Yes.

• 1:39:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Liam said many times that like, because they're brothers, he just like fundamentally and intuitively understands the, uh, the spirit of what he's supposed to sing.

• 1:39:18Speaker 02

  I believe it.

• 1:39:19Yasi Salek?

  The spiritual man.

• 1:39:20Speaker 02

  You share a bedroom with somebody.

• 1:39:21Yasi Salek?

  Right. Do you share DNA in a bedroom with somebody? So this version, that's the single version is never remixed, right? It's just that demo mix that Noel did when everyone was eating Chinese food. Like it was that good that when they came back, they were just like, nothing to improve here.

• 1:39:42Speaker 02

  We're done.

• 1:39:43Yasi Salek?

  Apparently the, the guy that owned the studio Pink Museum, his name was Dave Scott. He said that Anthony from the real people, Tony, came down to the studio and asked Noel what he was doing pissing about writing indie shit when Oasis were supposed to be a rock and roll band. And that's when Supersonic was written. Like he was like challenged. And he was like, oh, really? Fucking hold my low main bitch. I'll be right back. You want some rock and roll music?

• 1:40:12Yasi Salek?

  Also, I think this is commonly known amongst like Oasis heads, but a lot of people interpreted this song to be about like a cocaine addicted prostitute named Elsa, but Elsa was the name of the rottweiler, very large rottweiler that was owned by, I believe, Dave Scott. So it was, he was, Elsa, she was constantly sort of roaming the studio farting. She had flatulence issues and like sniffing and eating up whatever was on the floor. And thusly, I know a girl called Elsa. She was into Alka Seltzer. It's about a dog.

• 1:40:48Speaker 02

  Do you think that she actually ate Alka Seltzer or did they write the line and then feed her Alka Seltzer to like retcon?

• 1:40:55Yasi Salek?

  I feel like Alka Seltzer is maybe perhaps a euphemism for cocaine.

• 1:41:00Speaker 02

  Hmm. As pretty much, I think you can assume anything that they sing from this point forward is a euphemism for cocaine.

• 1:41:07Yasi Salek?

  They liked, they liked cocaine. They like, you know, no, actually in, to like, keep the record straight, I believe Noel said in an interview that it was just him and Liam and not.

• 1:41:23Speaker 02

  Bonehead.

• 1:41:23Yasi Salek?

  Not the rest of the band. Yeah. Well, I don't know. Bonehead was definitely doing some stuff. I'm sure. Bonehead's, Bonehead's hands are not clean. Bonehead's blood content is not clean. Noel said that what really sets the song apart was that Tony Griffiths from Real People came up with the backing vocals, the ahs that are in the bridge.

• 1:41:44Speaker 02

  Pretty good.

• 1:41:49Yasi Salek?

  And it was just a fucking brilliant moment in time. It showcased everyone's talent. Liam's singing is fucking brilliant. The drumming's great. Bonehead's bits are great. Gwigsy's bits are great. The guitar solo was great. This is maybe the first and last time that Noel complimented the drumming, but he's right. Everything works.

• 1:42:08Speaker 02

  The hand claps.

• 1:42:08Yasi Salek?

  Everything works. The hand claps. It's just.

• 1:42:13Yasi Salek?

  Noel was talking about the lyrics and he was like, listen, the way I generally write is the first few lines will form a story and then it kind of gets confused and muddled up a bit. And then you might have a line that might be true in the sense that that's what might have happened, but it doesn't work in a song. So you gotta fill in the gaps, but it's the overall thing that matters. I'm a songwriter at the end of the day. I'm not writing novels here. I'm not writing reportage. They are pop songs and a great deal of pop lyrics are fucking nonsense.

• 1:42:42Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 1:42:43Yasi Salek?

  He's not doing reportage, babe.

• 1:42:45Speaker 02

  I think getting you can sail with me in my yellow submarine in there immediately is important. I think it sort of establishes that like Beatles references are going to be liberally to annoyingly, you know, just dumped all over all these songs for time immemorial, you know, just, just prepare yourself for this.

• 1:43:06Yasi Salek?

  I believe that this song should have hit number one on the charts. Obviously I'm a little biased because I do love this song more than all the other Oasis songs, but it only hit 31. I think they just didn't have enough, didn't have enough mythology. You know, they were very brand new. They had, they had played 13 or 14 shows or whatever, 20 shows. And, but you know, it did chart. It even charted in America, although not too high. It was in the rock tracks at number 33, which is pretty good.

• 1:43:36Speaker 02

  Now, does this being your favorite Oasis song mean that in general, you prefer the rowdier, brasher, rock song Oasis, you know, to, to the Balladeers, et cetera? Are you, are you throwing in your lot, you know, with the tougher version of this band in general?

• 1:43:55Yasi Salek?

  I don't think so. Like, I don't think it's like that cut and dry for me. Like, cause Talk Tonight is like maybe a number two or three Oasis song for me. But I do, if you're asking me if I prefer definitely maybe to Morning Glory, then the answer is yes. I mean, don't, don't you also?

• 1:44:16Speaker 02

  It's a good question. I think my number one is Slide Away, not to jump ahead. And so I think

• 1:44:21Yasi Salek?

  It's a good one. Sure.

• 1:44:23Speaker 02

  That you might, that might push. They're very close in my mind. You know, I don't think that one has ever overtaken the other completely.

• 1:44:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they're two great albums.

• 1:44:36Speaker 02

  They feel very different to me. You know, they sound very different to me. I might prefer Morning Glory just a little bit for dynamic reasons, but Slide Away is definitely my number one. And I definitely understand people, you know, who think that they peaked immediately and that was that.

• 1:44:53Yasi Salek?

  Well, they didn't peak immediately, but they peaked pretty fast. We're gonna unpack that. Alright, so we've put out Supersonic. Here we fucking are, bitch. Again, Noel, I don't know why it means something to people because it means nothing to me, but it's all there for the people. Thank you, Noel Gallagher.

• 1:45:13Speaker 02

  What a peach.

• 1:45:14Yasi Salek?

  What a peach. Ted Kessler said, not of this single, but of a show review in the NME in April, "Oasis, however, are fully formed and fantastic." I think they had opened for someone. I don't need to read really the rest of it because I think that line kind of sums up what were like the next two albums that we're gonna discuss. It really feels like from like the moment they're put in the public eye, which is again, six and a half minutes after The Rain no longer exists, that they are, they're fully formed, right? They don't have this sort of like learning curve or arc that many bands have. They just show up as like the best rock band in the UK.

• 1:45:59Speaker 02

  Right. Well, you said like Pulp had been a band's, you know, forever. You know, Blur, you know, had multiple phases before they even enter their Blur versus Oasis phase.

• 1:46:10Yasi Salek?

  Blur had to try a few things. Sure. Yeah.

• 1:46:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I think about like Elastica is maybe the closest analog in terms of like they just, you know, they just materialized, but I don't think there's any comparison. Yeah, it just, it seems, it's one of those things. It feels like an overnight success. It isn't quite, you know, like they, they were hacking it out as The Rain or whatever and then touring with the Inspiral carpets. But it does just seem, you know, like they just wandered into this, you know, and suddenly they were the biggest band on the planet overnight.

• 1:46:42Yasi Salek?

  Speaking of showing up fully formed in the way that they will be perceived forevermore, April 23rd, 1994, the NME runs an interview with them, a feature by John Harris. It is titled "The Bruze Brothers."

• 1:46:59Speaker 02

  It's good. It's good work.

• 1:47:01Yasi Salek?

  It's gold, babe. This becomes very famous. I mean, in fairness, I believe Liam Gallagher is like 22, 21. They're very young, you know? And Noel's like 27 or something. It starts, "Liam Gallagher is poised above his elder brother, pressing his hand into Noel's face and occasionally barking frantic questions, like the one about whether or not he fancies being pushed through the window. 'Let's fucking go then, you dick,' says Liam. 'Let's have a fucking fight.'"

• 1:47:33Yasi Salek?

  "Hey, hey, they're Oasis and they hate each other's fucking guts."

• 1:47:38Speaker 02

  All right.

• 1:47:39Yasi Salek?

  Noel, Rob, shall we do a little dramatic reading?

• 1:47:45Yasi Salek?

  Of just like a part of it?

• 1:47:47Speaker 02

  I would be honored.

• 1:47:49Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Who would you prefer to be?

• 1:47:52Speaker 02

  I think, given our dynamic, it's gotta be Noel, right? I think you are-

• 1:47:58Yasi Salek?

  You're gonna be Noel, okay.

• 1:48:00Speaker 02

  The Liam to my Noel in this instance.

• 1:48:03Yasi Salek?

  Thank you. I mean, you're much nicer to me than-

• 1:48:07Speaker 02

  Thank you. Thank you for acknowledging that.

• 1:48:11Yasi Salek?

  The journalist says, "How, I wonder, do Oasis feel about their notoriety as rock and roll pigs? I'm into it, me. I'm into it. But at the end of the day, I go off home and get a clip off me, ma'am. And I do. She clips me around the ear and goes, 'What have you been doing, you mad bastard?'" But I like the way it's bubbling up. It's like the roses all over again. I like that, me. I want to get 2,000 people in a nice fucking gaff who are there to see me."

• 1:48:34Speaker 02

  That's not what he's on about.

• 1:48:36Yasi Salek?

  He is?

• 1:48:37Speaker 02

  No, he's fucking not. He's on about getting thrown off fairies.

• 1:48:40Yasi Salek?

  "This is true," says the journalist.

• 1:48:43Speaker 02

  Well, the thing about getting thrown off ferries and getting deported is not something that I'm proud about.

• 1:48:48Yasi Salek?

  Well, I am, La.

• 1:48:50Speaker 02

  Right then. Well, if you're proud about getting thrown off ferries, then why don't you go and support West Ham and get the fuck out of my band and go be a fucking football hooligan. We're musicians, right?

• 1:49:02Yasi Salek?

  You're only gutted because you were in bed reading your fucking books.

• 1:49:05Speaker 02

  Shut up, you dick. He gets off the ferry after being fucking deported, and I'm left in Amsterdam with me dick out like a fucking spare prick at a fucking wedding.

• 1:49:14Yasi Salek?

  It was a bad move.

• 1:49:15Speaker 02

  Shut up, shut up. He gets off the ferry and Marcus, our manager, says, "What the fuck are you doing? This lot thinks it's rock and roll to get thrown off a ferry." And do you know what my manager said to him? He said, "Nah, rock and roll is playing in Amsterdam, coming back and telling everyone you blew them away, not getting thrown off the ferry like some fucking Scouse schlepper with handcuffs. I won't stand for it. It's football hooligan-ism."

• 1:49:40Yasi Salek?

  No, it isn't.

• 1:49:42Speaker 02

  Listen, they all got fined a thousand pounds each.

• 1:49:45Yasi Salek?

  No, we fucking didn't. You can stick your thousand pounds right up your ass till it comes out of your fucking big toe. What happened on the boat, right, is this. We had a few fucking drinks, because I like drinking. I love it.

• 1:49:56Speaker 02

  You can't drink now, you dickhead.

• 1:50:00Yasi Salek?

  Anyways, we could do this for five. That was you in the bathroom. I don't even know if this is the best part, because it's not, because I could, I could fill three hours just reading this. It's just like incredible. The part about Andrew Lloyd Webber, where Liam says, "You want to be Andrew Lloyd Webber?" And Noel goes, "And who's Andrew Lloyd Webber?" And Liam goes, "I haven't got a clue. He's a golfer or something."

• 1:50:25Speaker 02

  I think you got one of the best, the, "You can stick your thousand pounds up your arse till it comes out your big toe," maybe the, the one liner. The thing where they argue about whether one of them knew John Lennon, that's a good one.

• 1:50:38Yasi Salek?

  Okay, this is it. Yeah, I, you know, well, it starts with how the Mondays were about, Happy Mondays are about having loads of ease and being in band and shagging loads of whores. And Noel goes, "No, you like shagging loads of whores." Liam goes, "Yeah, I do. Look, all I've got to say, I'm just having a crack. It's not doing anyone harm." John Lennon used to do loads of mad things. And Noel goes, "Do you know John Lennon?" Liam goes, "Yeah, I do." Noel goes, "Well, you must be pretty old then. How old are you? Twenty-one?" Liam goes, "No, I'm about 1005." And Noel goes, "You're 22, and I watched you being born, so shut the fuck up about knowing John Lennon."

• 1:51:13Speaker 02

  "I watched you being born." That's quite a raw statement to throw into the middle of an argument.

• 1:51:22Yasi Salek?

  It's so fucking good. It's so, it's just like, there's literally a part where it's like, "No, you shut up. No, you shut up," for like, an hour.

• 1:51:28Speaker 02

  The part where they yell music at each other? Yeah, yeah.

• 1:51:32Yasi Salek?

  It's, well, you guys can all enjoy this, because what happened was, the transcription of this recording was later released as a seven-inch single by Fierce Panda Records in 1995 called "Wibbling Rivalry," and it holds the record as the highest-charting interview release. It hit number 52 on the UK Singles Chart.

• 1:51:58Speaker 04

  You don't speak for the band. I do speak for the band. You do, yeah, because, fucking, yeah, I fucking speak for the band. I'm speaking now for the band. And I'm into it. I'm into all that fucking shit. Yeah, you are. I'm into it. You are. We're up there. No, listen. He's definitely not into the, no, he's not. No, he's not. No, no, yeah, whoa, whoa, yeah, he's what it is.

• 1:52:16Yasi Salek?

  I mean, you can barely understand what they're saying, so it's better to read it, but...

• 1:52:20Speaker 02

  That's part of the appeal. I think the transcript is in the YouTube video, at least I watched.

• 1:52:24Yasi Salek?

  It is, yes.

• 1:52:25Speaker 02

  Like, you almost, it's like you're watching it with captions on, and that is, you need to do that. But when you do that, it's a beautiful, beautiful document of our time.

• 1:52:34Yasi Salek?

  It's just beautiful. Especially the part where Liam's constantly accusing Noel of, like, reading Shakespeare or reading books while they're partying. But, like, again, Noel has, like, come out and said, "I've read one book in my whole life." So, I don't really, maybe, maybe, you know, he's trying to get around the accusations. By saying that maybe he's a big reader. I'm not sure.

• 1:52:52Speaker 02

  Do we know what the book is? What is the one book that Noel Gallagher has read in his fight?

• 1:52:57Yasi Salek?

  It's some sort of, I think it was a music biography. Noel Gallagher is dyslexic, so it does make quite a bit of sense that he wouldn't be like too keen on reading. There's like a couple of stories where like he'll hand Liam the lyrics and Liam will sing it and Noel will be like, no, like it's like, you know, uh, live whatever this word. He's like, well, it doesn't say that here. It does it now, fucker. And he's like, oh, sorry. I forgot that word. All right. So we've established them as the country's premier fighting siblings. And Supersonics come out and then they put out another single in June. Noel Gallagher wanted to put out a single every three months because that's what the Beatles did. That was his kind of like master plan.

• 1:53:34Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:53:35Yasi Salek?

  Again, if you're gonna do something like somebody else, the Beatles are a perfect place to start.

• 1:53:43Speaker 02

  That is true. Right. Yeah. Steal, copy the best, steal from the, yeah, sure. Sure.

• 1:53:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. So the next single is Shaker Maker. What do you, do you have feelings? Do you have emotions connected to Shaker Maker?

• 1:53:58Speaker 02

  Not specifically. I heard definitely maybe in its entirety before I went back, you know, and listen to all these as singles.

• 1:54:07Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:54:07Speaker 02

  You know, so other than like the hugest radio songs, right? Like it's, it's, it's hard for me to process this as a single. Necessarily, you know, I, I don't know if I would, it doesn't make my, my top six songs on Definitely Maybe.

• 1:54:23Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 1:54:24Speaker 02

  But I do, I immediately get really into the idea, you know, of these singles of doing it every three months. Like the first Oasis B-side or whatever that really strikes me is on this single. It's, do you want to be a spaceman? And it's just Noel. Noel on guitar, right? Like, there's a pattern that emerges with these early singles where like, it's a super brash rock song, you know, like Shaker Maker or Supersonic or whatever. And then there's like a gentle Noel thing immediately after it. I just think about how everyone rightfully clowns Oasis lyrics, you know, always, but in this period, it's like, they just want to fly in the sky up so high, right? You know, and you can roll your eyes at that, but like, they're singing about that because

• 1:55:09Speaker 02

  that's what they want to do, right? Like, I'm just, I'm very charmed by the naked desire for escape.

• 1:55:17Yasi Salek?

  Yes. Do you want to be a spaceman and live in the sky?

• 1:55:25Speaker 02

  This idea of we were children and now we're adults and we need to get the hell out of Manchester, you know? And so this song, Do You Want to Be a Spaceman? Like, it's funny how your dreams change as you're growing old. You don't want to be no spaceman. You just want the gold, you know? Like, everything for Noel, at least right now, is about like, the dreams he had as a kid and which of those dreams he's going to have to give up as an adult. And is he actually going to do anything he wants to do? Is he actually going to get out of this town?

• 1:55:55Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:55:55Speaker 02

  Right? As, as archetypal as that is, you know, as corny as it is in practice, you know, in terms of the rhyme scheme or whatever, there's just something really striking and really endearing to me about just the naked ambition of like, trying to turn yourselves into rock stars on the one hand, but just trying to like, get out of town on the other any way you can.

• 1:56:18Yasi Salek?

  100%. I don't find it corny, to be honest. Like, I find it very endearing. I think, I think a lot is made out of these lyrics, but to your point, like, if you do a kind of closer reading of them and attach it to the emotion of the music, there's a lot to take away from that. And

• 1:56:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:37Yasi Salek?

  I'll tell you, like, from dissecting a bunch of the Stone Roses, especially the first album, that's what the Stone Roses were on about, too. Like,

• 1:56:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:56:46Yasi Salek?

  Manchester was a depressing, decrepit, like,

• 1:56:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:56:50Yasi Salek?

  You know, like, at that time, you know, it's, it's changed since then. And I want to disparage Manchester. Obviously, it had had sort of a bit more of a heyday with the Hacienda and stuff, but it's still, you know, when you're, when you're Noel Gallagher and you're, you grew up in a council estate and you're uneducated, basically, right? You know, kicked out of school at 15. You know, you have dyslexic. There's two paths forward and it's you're gonna work construction till you die. Or you're gonna do rock and roll music and, and ascend and fly so high and, and get the fuck out of Dodge, you know, like, and it's telling that Noel Gallagher left Manchester first.

• 1:57:33Yasi Salek?

  The minute that, that they had one modicum of success, he moved to London. The rest of them kind of stayed around. Some of them stayed forever. Like, I'm pretty sure Bonehead never left. And actually, Bonehead still lives in Manchester. I listen to Clint Boone of the Inspiral Carpets has a podcast, just so you guys know.

• 1:57:49Speaker 02

  Oh, good, good.

• 1:57:51Yasi Salek?

  But yeah, I, I don't know. I find it, I find it touching. Shaker Maker in particular is one of the more overt examples of Noel Gallagher's predilection for borrowing from other sources.

• 1:58:10Yasi Salek?

  He's very open. Yeah. I'd like to teach the world to sing.

• 1:58:28Yasi Salek?

  Roger Cook, Roger Greenway, Bill Backer and Billy Davis are the songwriters that are credited because this song is credited to them because they were sued and paid, uh, they had to pay $500,000 for this.

• 1:58:38Speaker 02

  Yes. I'm gonna go with them on that. You know, no offense to Oasis, but yeah, that sounds.

• 1:58:43Yasi Salek?

  Noel Gallagher said after that, now we all drink Pepsi because that, uh, I think that song has like, I'd like to give the world a Coke or whatever.

• 1:58:51Speaker 02

  That's the Don Draper song. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:58:54Yasi Salek?

  There's also like the word plasticine, which is in the first verse. I'd like to build myself a house out of plasticine. That word is borrowed from Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds because, you know, picture yourself on a train in a station with plasticine borders, looking glass ties. Girl with the kaleidoscope eyes. The rest of the lyrics are kind of cute. I mean, it ties in with what you were saying about like this childhood dreams, right? I've been driving my car with my friend, Mr. Soft, Mr. Clean and Mr. Ben. So a shaker maker was a toy. That was a seventies, like a very popular toy that Noel Gallagher had as a kid. Mr. Soft was like a character from a commercial for Trebor Softman's, which had, had the Cockney Rebel song in it, Mr. Soft.

• 1:59:38Yasi Salek?

  And Mr. Clean is a song by The Jam, obviously one of Noel Gallagher's favorite bands. And Mr. Ben is a British children's cartoon. So these are all childish sort of memory things.

• 1:59:48Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:59:49Yasi Salek?

  The toy, the characters, the TV.

• 2:00:01Yasi Salek?

  He also wrote the last verse, which is the third verse, Mr. Sifter sold me songs when I was just 16. Mr. Sifter's was the, I think it was just called Sifters actually, but was the record, local record store, where Noel Gallagher would buy all his records. So he called it Mr. Sifter. He wrote this in a taxi on the way to the studio because the song wasn't done. And they were like, you have to finish the fucking song. And they stopped in a traffic light outside of Sifters. And he was like, mm-hmm, okay, Mr. Sifter sold me songs when I was just 16. They go on Top of the Pops for this for the first time. That's a major deal. The Stone Roses were in the studio because where, where were they for seven years in the studio? And they, they watched it on TV and John Squire said, we all watched it.

• 2:00:46Yasi Salek?

  I didn't think the tune was that great, but they looked just right. It was like some pristine archive footage of a great sixties band you'd never got around to hearing. This happens quite a bit with Oasis. We'll get into it much later where like, part of Wonderwall's success is that people thought it was a Beatles song and they would like, old people would call and be like, can you play that Beatles song again? And they'd be like, what?

• 2:01:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:12Yasi Salek?

  Definitely maybe comes out in August, but before they're getting so much press. I didn't even have an album out. They're on the cover of The Face. Actually, they are not. It's just Liam, which is a, is a traditional thing for The Face to do. I think they did it with Ian Brown from The Stone Roses. The, The Face is very much like one person covers, so I thought you might enjoy this. You might enjoy it. And also like, this is a gift for the legions of Gen X men that listen to this podcast, who I know have a deep and abiding interest and appreciation in Neil Young.

• 2:01:43Speaker 02

  All right.

• 2:01:45Yasi Salek?

  Do you feel personally attacked? That was simply

• 2:01:47Speaker 02

  It's fine.

• 2:01:48Yasi Salek?

  It's a fact.

• 2:01:49Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:01:49Yasi Salek?

  Noel has chosen now to inform Liam that he's been asked to join Crazy Horse, backing band to the legendary rock and roll warhorse Neil Young for an onstage jam when the group come to play London. Liam is not amused. So me twat brother thinks he's Eric fucking Clapton now, does he? He'll be wearing fucking Winkle Pickers and a ponytail next? He's in Oasis now and that should be good enough. Our kid is better than all those old blokes anyway. He's up there next to John Lennon in my book. I loved it. Liam was like, why you want to play with those old fuckers? Who cares? Incredible.

• 2:02:23Speaker 02

  Winkle, do you know, is that just overalls? What are Winkle Picker?

• 2:02:28Yasi Salek?

  Winkle Pickers are shoes. They have like a pointy toe and some straps like you would see them maybe like if you went into like Trash in Vaudeville. Do you remember that store?

• 2:02:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02:39Yasi Salek?

  They're like pointy and they have like, they're kind of like elf shoe almost looking with like three little straps.

• 2:02:44Speaker 02

  I was about to say, it sounds like, like Santa's helpers wear them.

• 2:02:49Yasi Salek?

  It's very seventies type shoe to wear. They're actually cool on a woman. I'm not sure. I can't really picture Noel Gallagher wearing them per se. Then Liam goes off about God, which happens quite a bit.

• 2:03:02Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:03:02Yasi Salek?

  And here's what Noel says. Liam's young. He's on a complete trip and he's all fucking mouth at the moment and that winds me up. He's a genius frontman. He was born to do this and that's something I can't be. But he also wishes he was me, always has done. His fans come up to him after shows and I hear him giving it all this gob shite. And I think, shut up, you twat. I babysat for you. You see, our kid wants to be remembered like Sid Vicious. Well, I just want to be a great songwriter. He thinks I'm boring and soft and he can't understand that you change. I don't know why I find all this like really, really, it's really beautiful and touching to me like because it makes me sad.

• 2:03:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I know what you mean. I, it's, it's funny how everything derives from, I watched you being born. You know, like every insults and every compliment is a, is a derivation.

• 2:03:51Yasi Salek?

  He doesn't understand that you'll change. Here's a little unfortunate spoiler alert. Liam Gallagher did not change. He never stopped. Being all mouth all the time for thank God.

• 2:04:04Speaker 02

  Selling changed. Yeah, it's the world changed, but he did not.

• 2:04:08Yasi Salek?

  All right. We have one more single before Definitely Maybe comes out. Three singles in three months. Live Forever. Let's fucking go bitch. Let is let us fucking go. Do you not realize that this was not a number one single? Can you fucking believe your eyes and ears?

• 2:04:24Speaker 02

  I cannot. No, I, I mean, it surprises me to say what it was 33. Supersonic was 33. Like, I understand there was a little bit of an arc.

• 2:04:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:33Speaker 02

  But I would have assumed by this point that they were already like actually the biggest band and not just acting like it. So this was not number, none of the singles pre Definitely Maybe were number one.

• 2:04:44Yasi Salek?

  Actually, at this point, the biggest band in the UK is Blur. Parklife has come out. Parklife came out in April and they sort of secured their spot as the biggest band in the UK. So Oasis were kind of creeping up behind, you know? The cover of the seven inch of Live Forever is a photo of John Lennon's childhood home. 251 Men Love Avenue in the Liverpool suburb of Walton. They just went up like a contemporary photo. They went outside and took a picture of his childhood house and stuck it on the thing.

• 2:05:12Speaker 02

  Great.

• 2:05:13Yasi Salek?

  Live Forever is just incredible. It's undeniable, this song, like.

• 2:05:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05:19Yasi Salek?

  Don't you feel, don't you feel when you hear Live Forever, you're just like, yeah?

• 2:05:31Speaker 02

  That is exactly my response, actually. These, these are probably my favorite of Liam's vowels. Maybe I really wanna know your garden grow.

• 2:05:43Yasi Salek?

  Garden, garden. Yeah.

• 2:05:47Speaker 02

  But that same, that same principle, that same sort of snottiness applied to something. This is the song about his mother, right? About their mother. And so like this is, it's so sweet.

• 2:05:57Yasi Salek?

  Is dedicated to their. Mother, but I do believe it was lyrically, well lyrically, it has a couple of different roots. Right. One is that he was listening to exile on Main Street. Cause remember this is an old song. He had written it like right around when he joined Oasis. Listening to exile on Main Street and he was listening to the song shine a light. And he thought, so there's two different versions of this. One is that he thought he heard Mick Jagger say the word maybe, but it was actually the part where it's may the good Lord shine a light on you. That melody also he kind of cribbed. And then he said, it was the bit from shine a light that goes, may the good Lord shine a light on you. And he replaced it with maybe I don't really want to know.

• 2:06:47Yasi Salek?

  He also, for the live for ever's and all of it was, cause that's what he started. And then he just left the song for a couple of months, like didn't work on it.

• 2:06:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:55Yasi Salek?

  Then it was the middle of grunge and he heard about this Nirvana song, I hate myself and I want to die.

• 2:07:01Speaker 02

  Oh, yes. Right, right.

• 2:07:12Yasi Salek?

  And Nol Yalgar said, I was like, well, I'm not fucking having that. As much as I fucking like him, Kurt Cobain and all that shit, I'm not having that. I can't have people like that coming over here on smack, fucking saying that they hate themselves and they want to die. That's fucking rubbish. Kids don't need to be hearing that nonsense. Seems to me there was a guy who had everything and was miserable about it and we had fuck all. And I still thought that getting up in the morning was the greatest fucking thing ever. Cause you didn't know where you'd end up at night and we didn't have a pot to piss in, but it was fucking great, man. This, I think, kind of encapsulates the fundamental difference between, I'm not going to say Britpop because Britpop isn't, isn't sort of uniform and their

• 2:07:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:07:54Yasi Salek?

  considerations and thematic concerns, but Oasis. We talked about this, but grunge was sort of, and you know, I love it. You know, I bleed. I bleed Seattle.

• 2:08:05Speaker 02

  I do.

• 2:08:05Yasi Salek?

  But.

• 2:08:06Speaker 02

  You do.

• 2:08:07Yasi Salek?

  Grunge is a music of complaint.

• 2:08:11Yasi Salek?

  Grunge is the office of complaints, right?

• 2:08:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure, right.

• 2:08:15Yasi Salek?

  Grunge is where you come to, to sort of point out the unfairness and unjustness of both the world and your life personally.

• 2:08:25Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:08:25Yasi Salek?

  And it's great. And that's why so many people connected with it. It gave voice to angst and, and pain. Whereas Oasis's whole thing, at the very least Noel Gallagher's whole thing, and I think definitely Liam Gallagher's whole thing, I would even say all of them, was like, they didn't sit around in Manchester with their one pot to piss in and their council estate and be like, this sucks. Like, it's not fair.

• 2:08:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:08:49Yasi Salek?

  They aspired, right? Their, their thing was like, what could we be? What we want? They, they tried to aspire themselves out, right? They wanted to be big rock stars and they, and it even boils down to the difference in drugs, right? Heroin is not a drug of like living to the fullest.

• 2:09:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:09:09Yasi Salek?

  Right? Heroin is not what you take when you want to like,

• 2:09:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:09:11Yasi Salek?

  go to every party and talk to everyone and like, and again, cocaine is not a good drug, kids, and don't do it. But uppers are, the uppers are the sort of the drug that people take when they are like so hungry to like not go to sleep and to like do everything and have the energy to do everything and be able to drink a thousand more drinks. And like, that's one of the bigger differences, right? That Oasis just wanted to have the most fun and to live the most. And Noel Gallagher wanted to make the most money and be the best. And Liam wanted to like tell fucking Wednesday that Tuesday had got its ass motherfucking kicked and he better watch out because Liam Gallagher is coming Wednesday, bitch, you better fucking hide. I love that. And so Live Forever was sort of like, again, a lot of

• 2:09:56Yasi Salek?

  Britpop was a direct response to grunge in, in various ways, but this one was like very specifically lyrically a response to grunge into that one Nirvana song.

• 2:10:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, the aspiration, that all makes perfect sense, you know, and it's, it's, I always sort of hesitate to just map everything to Nirvana to Kurt Cobain, to Kurt Cobain's death, but like, I don't think it's Coincidental that this song is blowing up in 1994, the same year we lose Kurt Cobain. You know, like the vacuum that creates, the devastation that creates in so many, you know, alt rock kids, you know, in America, you know, what are we going to do now, you know? And some of us, you know, like, you know, what are we going to do now? We're going to do Green Day, The Offspring, or maybe Oasis.

• 2:10:44Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 2:10:44Speaker 02

  You know, and what all they have in common broadly is like at least a superficially sunnier outlook on life in general, you know? I think we've taken the complaining about as far as it'll go. And I think that that made this song and Oasis, this, you know, particularly appealing in this moment where we had taken the idea of hating rock stardom while being a rock star, you know, to its logical conclusion.

• 2:11:11Yasi Salek?

  Totally. And again, like, it's interpreted differently by the different reaction areas. Like Blur, very famously, simply was like, okay, America sucks. Why are we orienting ourselves around American culture? Let's orient ourselves around British culture.

• 2:11:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:11:29Yasi Salek?

  Biscuits, Tally, Oi Mister, Are You Me Mother, Lori.

• 2:11:35Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:11:35Yasi Salek?

  Lift.

• 2:11:35Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:11:36Yasi Salek?

  And Oasis was like, just like, remember how the Beatles were the biggest band on the fucking earth, bitch? And we made anthems? We're going to do that again. Let's have fun. Definitely Maybe, babe. August 29th, 1994.

• 2:11:53Yasi Salek?

  I want to point out that when Definitely Maybe came out in August, Creation Records is like 2 million pounds in debt. So, thank God. Do you know what I mean?

• 2:12:01Speaker 02

  Good timing.

• 2:12:02Yasi Salek?

  Good timing.

• 2:12:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:12:04Yasi Salek?

  Not to besmirch My Bloody Valentine. My Bloody Valentine did have a bit of a hand.

• 2:12:13Yasi Salek?

  Truly, My Bloody Valentine taketh and Oasis giveth back because.

• 2:12:21Yasi Salek?

  It was real touch and go there for a second.

• 2:12:23Speaker 02

  Everyone's got a job to do.

• 2:12:24Yasi Salek?

  Well, we won't, we don't have to get into it, but if, you know, famously, My Bloody Valentine took like, once Stone Roses-esque, seven years and $6 million to make Loveless, which is a genius classic, but it wasn't exactly, um, wasn't exactly blowing out of the record stores. It wasn't, it wasn't gonna oust the Three Tenors from the charts like, uh, like Definitely Maybe does.

• 2:12:49Yasi Salek?

  Definitely Maybe enters the charts at number one, babe. It becomes the fastest selling debut album in the UK at the time. That record is actually now held by Arctic Monkeys with their debut album. And it outsold The Three Tenors, remember how big The Three Tenors was? By 20,000 copies.

• 2:13:10Speaker 02

  And Pavarotti was so pissed.

• 2:13:12Yasi Salek?

  Pavarotti, Domingo.

• 2:13:13Speaker 02

  Pavarotti and the other two Tenors were so mad.

• 2:13:16Yasi Salek?

  Here's what Liam said. Well, of course, we're going to number one. We're loads better than three fat blokes shouting.

• 2:13:27Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 2:13:29Yasi Salek?

  Three fat blokes shouting.

• 2:13:31Speaker 02

  That's pretty, that's a great, that, that should be on the Three Tenors CD. That should be Three Fat Blokes Shouting.

• 2:13:39Yasi Salek?

  Too fast, too tenor, three fat blokes shouting.

• 2:13:45Yasi Salek?

  Oh, it's too good. Do you mind if we go a little bit through the sort of like rocky recording history of Definitely Maybe?

• 2:13:51Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 2:13:52Yasi Salek?

  It shows you that like, this album could have not, it could have not, you know, it could have not done what it did. It could have not existed in the form that it does. And also the belief of Alan McGee. Again, Alan McGee was the one that was like, oh, Kevin Shields, you need 400,000 more dollars to buy guitar pedals and delay effect things? No problem. Here you go, babe. I wrote you a check. So they start recording at Mono Valley, which is a studio in Wales, Monmouth, December of 1993. That was down the street from Rockfield, where our friends The Stone Roses were on their eighth year of recording The Second Coming.

• 2:14:28Yasi Salek?

  So they get there and one day the staff was like, oh, who's staying in room three? And Liam was like, oh, I'm staying in room three. And they're like, oh, that's the haunted one. So then the rest of the time, the other guys kept playing pranks to make him think the room was really haunted. Like Bonehead found some fishing wire and he like ran it through all these different items in the room. And then while Liam was sitting there, he would just like lift so like a newspaper looked like it was floating. Do you know what I mean? Or like a shoe went in the air. And Liam was so fucking scared. Noel said, Liam is a great believer. For a man that actually has no spiritual content whatsoever, he is a great believer in the spirit world, which I find fascinating. And here's what

• 2:15:12Yasi Salek?

  Liam said, I don't remember doing much recording, just shitting me pants because it was haunted.

• 2:15:21Speaker 02

  It does sound like he's, the guy is shitting me pants. I can, I can hear that. I can hear that in the grooves. Yeah.

• 2:15:31Yasi Salek?

  Okay. So now we'll start with the actual production. They start with this producer named David Bachelor. Are you familiar with this guy?

• 2:15:37Speaker 02

  Uh, not by name, no.

• 2:15:39Yasi Salek?

  Noel knew him because he had worked with the Inspiral carpets. He had like mixed them live, but he had also been a producer who produced this cult 70s band called the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, which I'm only familiar with because that was Robert Smith's first favorite band. They were kind of weirdos. They were like proto Bowie, like punky weirdos, but like pre all that stuff. David Bachelor insisted on recording each member of the band separately. And so like, it really had no energy. It wasn't coming together. Noel said, it wasn't the band apart from our drummer who's Ringo Starr incarnate and can't keep time to save his fucking life.

• 2:16:18Yasi Salek?

  Dave Bachler was trying to be clever. We're a rock and roll band and he was separating everything out, doing it clean and it was sounding too produced. So it's just not working and they're like, okay, fuck. Why don't we try our friend Mark Coyle, Coily, who had been with the band? He mixed them live, he got how they sounded. And he, he records them live. It's sounding good, except then they're trying to mix it and it's not fucking working. This woman, Anjali Dutta, was the mixer. But they're just hating it. And at this point Noel just gives up. He's like, I don't care. Let's just put it out. And Alan McGee is like, no. Alan McGee is like, I know how fucking good this is. You get one chance to do your first album and I don't care. I will spend more money. We're getting it fucking right. God bless Alan McGee.

• 2:17:02Yasi Salek?

  And so everyone's just over it, dude. Noel's like left or like fucking, they're like, we can't. Marcus, the manager, had this guy who he actually used to manage, but he didn't anymore, called Owen Morris, this Welsh guy, who had engineered the first electronic album, which is Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner's side project. He was not a producer. He had, he had applied to actually produce the Oasis album, but he was turned down. Marcus was like, listen, can you remix this? Like, I don't care what you do. We're at Death Store. Do whatever you want. And Owen's like, okay. And the first thing Owen did was like, I booked a studio and I stuck Liam in it to record vocals.

• 2:17:42Yasi Salek?

  Owen said, Liam's version of events is that he came in and said to me, you're Phil Spector. And I said to him, you're John Lennon. I don't know if that's true, but I do remember Noel shouting at Liam, you are not fucking John Lennon. He is not fucking Phil fucking Spector. Now just shut the fuck up and get on with it.

• 2:18:01Speaker 02

  I believe that version, yeah.

• 2:18:04Yasi Salek?

  Noel Gallagher just did not have time for it, babe. He was like, I don't have time for you and you're fucking John Lennon. Should go do your job. I won't like, you know, belabor the point, but Owen. Got it, right? Like, he made a wall of sound with guitars, but he was able to isolate the lead vocal, which I think, don't you agree? Like, that's kind of a magic trick of, at least this Oasis album. Like, it's like Liam's vocals are so, like, in your face, right? But the, but there's still, like, such a thickness of guitar rock sound. It's, it's a very cool.

• 2:18:37Speaker 02

  No, I agree. It's called brick walling, right? Isn't that, isn't that what Morris calls it? Yes. I think I had this on tape. I think my brother had it on cassette. And so I remember wondering if the fidelity, or the difference in fidelity between all my grunge CDs was down to the cassette, right? Because you put this record on, it's just, like, the, the whole, the whole time. And it's not, like, that's not a negative, necessarily. And I agree with you completely, that somehow Liam, it's like the difference between being a lead singer and being a frontman, right? Like, it's, there's, there's some overlap with Anthony Kiedis here, right? Or it's, it's not that he's a, a beautiful singer,

• 2:19:20Speaker 02

  it's that he's the perfect frontman. You know, there's some sort of intangible, you know, leadership quality that both of these guys have, where they're just supposed to be front and center, and they can be front and center, even with, like, absolute brick wall chaos swirling all around them. Like, I just, I just remember this record being, like, the loudest thing. You know, when we talk about the loudness wars, like, that's, you know, we're still years away, you know, from that, and like Metallica, you know, or whatever, like, just the idea that everyone's just pushing every fader up as high as it'll go. Like, I don't think that was happening everywhere yet. But this record just seems

• 2:20:01Speaker 02

  like just the loudest thing ever recorded, you know? It's as loud on record as My Bloody Valentine, you know, is live.

• 2:20:09Yasi Salek?

  It's, I guess, I guess his whole thing was that he was sort of a student of the, the Phil Spector and Tony Visconti school of, Tony Visconti was Bowie's, right, producer? And it fucking worked. He knocked it out of the goddamn park, babe. He, like, did mix a song a day and called it the end. You know who doesn't agree that he knocked it out of the goddamn park? Who, who maybe might be looking back in anger a little bit?

• 2:20:36Yasi Salek?

  On Jolly Dutt, On Jolly Dutt, who is the first mixer. She said, though I don't think that the original mixes were amazing, I did prefer them to the final album as the relentlessness of the compressed chainsaw guitar just wears you out, even if the initial feeling of excitement is invigorating. Babe, I beg to differ, it rocks ass. I don't know what you're talking about.

• 2:20:58Speaker 02

  I think that both can be true. I think it can rock ass, but still be exhausting.

• 2:21:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:21:07Yasi Salek?

  So I heard Supersonic first, and I think that's why I bought this CD, because they played Supersonic on K-Rock. What did you make of the album cover?

• 2:21:16Speaker 02

  Ooh, the album cover, that's, that's interesting. I do think, like, just looking at the covers of their singles, I do think that they are sneakily great at album art.

• 2:21:26Yasi Salek?

  I agree.

• 2:21:27Speaker 02

  You know, and just, they're just, they're very iconic, like, just slightly surreal, but also like, you know, five guys sitting in a room, like, there's a very cool, something about even the way you're, is it Noel who's on the grounds? Like, it's Noel who's, you're looking at the back of his head. Oh, it's, okay, all right. So it's something about even the geometric composition of that cover is, like, somebody's watching TV, right? Like, somebody's on the couch with a guitar, like, it's just, it's a cool mixture of, like, really, obviously painstakingly composed and like, almost violently casual and tossed off. Like, it's, it's a nice mixture, you know, of, of forcing a myth and like, actually being a myth at the same time.

• 2:22:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It's, for me, one of the most memorable album covers, because it's, I think it's quite hard to make an album cover where you feature the band without it being corny as hell.

• 2:22:23Speaker 02

  That's true, right?

• 2:22:24Yasi Salek?

  You know?

• 2:22:24Speaker 02

  Right. Is there a grunge record with the people on the cover? I guess 10, kind of?

• 2:22:31Yasi Salek?

  10, and it's corny as hell. They're doing a huge high five, let's go motherfuckers, Jock Jams, like, it's not cool.

• 2:22:38Speaker 02

  They are about to play in their, their basketball league.

• 2:22:42Yasi Salek?

  In their intermural basketball, yeah.

• 2:22:45Speaker 02

  They lost by 20 points, yeah.

• 2:22:47Yasi Salek?

  I think there was more in the 70s, like Fleetwood Mac looks cool as hell, I think, on their, when they're featured on the cover of the album, if I'm remembering correctly. Madonna, Pop Stars for sure, but like, bands, I mean, I'm sure I'm gonna get a flood of, a flood of, uh...

• 2:23:06Speaker 02

  I'm gonna let you handle that.

• 2:23:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Blondie looks pretty cool. The parallel lines, but you know, again, it's, I'm not saying it's impossible. It's just a little harder to do than having some like really striking, just like artwork.

• 2:23:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, like Talking Heads sort of did a pretty good job at being both.

• 2:23:22Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 2:23:23Speaker 02

  Sometimes, but yeah, this is, this is a rarity. Just this, the band on the cover of your record and it doesn't look corny as hell is, is very hard to pull off.

• 2:23:33Yasi Salek?

  The guy who shot it is called Michael Spencer Jones. This is Bonehead's house, Bonehead's sitting room in Didsbury. He said he, the photographer thought it was Noel's idea, but this is what Noel said. We were gonna shoot it in somebody's front room. I don't know why. Why is it in Bonehead's front room? I have no idea. I don't know what the concept is of that at home with Bonehead.

• 2:23:55Speaker 02

  That is, I was gonna say, I would go to a bar called Bonehead Sitting Room. And so this concept works great for me personally. Yeah.

• 2:24:02Yasi Salek?

  A lot of these things are props because according to Noel Gallagher, Bonehead's house didn't look that exciting. But the props are all, they're all Easter eggs. So.

• 2:24:11Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 2:24:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, so the entire image is inspired by a Beatles album cover, no surprise. The 1966 compilation, A Collection of Beatles Oldies. The photographer had gone to the Egyptology section at the Manchester Science Museum. And that's why he put Liam Gallagher on the floor like that, like a sort of like a sarcophagus moment. He also wanted Liam to lay on the floor to draw attention away from the room's wood flooring. Cause he thought that would make the picture look like an advertisement for wood varnish.

• 2:24:40Speaker 02

  Fair.

• 2:24:41Yasi Salek?

  The wine glasses are filled with Ribena because wine shows a black on pictures. But here are the symbols. So on the TV, there's a scene with the actors Eli Wallach and Antonio Casale from the Sergio Leone film, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. It's apparently Noel Gallagher's favorite. Favorite movie. There's, there's also still of the actor Gian Maria Volante from another Leone film, A Fistful of Dollars, on the TV on the back cover. There's a picture of the footballer Rodney Marsh.

• 2:25:15Speaker 02

  Is that the photo next to the couch?

• 2:25:18Yasi Salek?

  Yes. And then the one in the window is George Best, who actually played for Manchester United. Bonehead was a Manchester United fan and George Best was like a big, really famous person in Manchester. Like, I read a story where like, no, it was on a podcast, where like, everyone in town would go to stand out. His house has all glass, like all these like glass windows and everyone in town would just go stand out and watch, like look inside his house.

• 2:25:43Speaker 02

  That sounds terrible.

• 2:25:44Yasi Salek?

  It's weird.

• 2:25:45Speaker 02

  For him, yeah.

• 2:25:46Yasi Salek?

  There's a poster of Burt Bacharach.

• 2:25:50Speaker 02

  That's what I was asking about. I got confused.

• 2:25:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:25:54Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah. The leaning against the sofa.

• 2:25:56Speaker 02

  Yes, that's, that's Burt. Okay.

• 2:25:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Noel was a huge Burt Bacharach fan. And Bonehead's Epiphone Rivera is the guitar that's propped on the wall.

• 2:26:07Speaker 02

  It's a nice guitar.

• 2:26:08Yasi Salek?

  Rob, let me ask you, besides what we've talked about already, what are some standout tracks for you on, when you were bumping your cassette of Definitely a Baby in high school?

• 2:26:18Speaker 02

  Back in Medina, Ohio, I believe this was my brother's cassette. I think in both cases, I think my brother had both Definitely Maybe and Morning Glory on cassette. And so the side one, side two of it all is very important. I remember the cutoff more for Morning Glory than for this one. But again, like, I wondered about the audio fidelity because it was a cassette. And of course, he got it. And, you know, I listened to it for the first time for Live Forever, Supersonic, whatever. Again, Slide Away is probably my favorite Oasis song overall. You know, when I finally, you know, the, the second to last song on side two, side B of this cassette, like, when I make it there, you know, that's

• 2:27:00Speaker 02

  when something really clicks for me about this band. And I, I, I think it's easily Liam's best sort of vocal performance. I think it's not quite in his range vocally, which I think works, like, you know, just, just the way, he's working a little harder. You know, he's, he's not struggling, but he's straining in a way that I think aligns, you know, with something that feels more like a conventional love song. Then most of the other songs around it. So I, I think Slide Away is the turning point where I go from like, this is a band where I know two or three songs from the radio where like, this is, you know, this is, this is awesome.

• 2:27:49Speaker 02

  I think Cigarettes and Alcohol is the one that's really doing it for me lately. You know, you can put together a mini playlist of very explicit T-Rex ripoff Oasis songs. And like, this is, this is sort of the peak of it, you know, and, and I, I think that everything we're saying, you know, you're saying about just wanting to leave Manchester, you know, but like also being waking up every day excited about trying to leave Manchester as opposed to waking up every day and being sad that you're a rock star, you know, the dichotomy there, you know, I was looking for some action, but all I found was cigarettes and alcohol. Like, that's not a defeatist line. Like, it's, there's triumph in this

• 2:28:33Speaker 02

  song, even though they haven't made it yet.

• 2:28:47Speaker 02

  Rock and roll, as I understood it, as it was now being made, was like, we, you know, you make it to talk about how sad you are that you made it versus you make it by talking about how excited you are about how you haven't quite made it yet.

• 2:29:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but I think it also ties back to that thing Noel said about like, we didn't have a pot to piss in, but we woke up every day so excited because we didn't know where the night was gonna take us, right? Like, to a certain extent, that was almost enough. Like, it was fun enough. Like, you could wait for a lifetime to spend your days in the sunshine. You might as well do the white line. Cause when it comes on top.

• 2:29:25Speaker 02

  You might as well.

• 2:29:27Yasi Salek?

  The fact that that made it past the censors is pretty amazing. Noel said-

• 2:29:30Speaker 02

  It's a metaphor, yeah.

• 2:29:32Yasi Salek?

  Noel said, I'm sorry, mate, but that is a fact of everyday life. We wrote that song when we were on the dole. Like I was saying, all you need is cigarettes and alcohol, a fucking bag of drugs, a ghetto blaster and your mates. Drugs have been a part of our life since I can remember. I also, I find their honesty on every aspect. They do not futz about. Again, in stark contrast to like what we were sort of experiencing in the, in the nineties with our grunge stars, there was, seemed to be a lot of like secrecy and shame around the drug use, right? Whereas like-

• 2:30:06Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 2:30:07Yasi Salek?

  They were like, yeah, we do fucking cocaine, babe. It's awesome.

• 2:30:11Speaker 02

  Right. Well, I think that's what you were saying about, like, and as just, I feel silly saying this, having not tried either drug, right? But like, I agree with you. They're like, you take heroin and you want to hide somewhere and, and be on heroin, whereas you, you, you take cocaine and you want to tell everybody that you're on cocaine, right? Like this is-

• 2:30:32Yasi Salek?

  Well, you don't want to, you don't want to tell everybody you're on cocaine, Rob Bell, to give you a little insider info, because then they're gonna want your cocaine. So, yeah.

• 2:30:40Speaker 02

  That's, that's a good note. It's a good tip. Thank you.

• 2:30:44Yasi Salek?

  They might not have been secretive about it in the press, but one thing about people using cocaine is they're often very secretive about it in the moment. And it's really hilarious because you'll know that everyone has it. And then everyone is being really sneaky and going to the bathroom and you're like, why do we not just, um, I do not do drugs anymore, just in case my father is listening.

• 2:31:02Speaker 02

  I'm aware of that. Hi, Dad.

• 2:31:04Yasi Salek?

  Forty-two years old. Hi, Dad. What about Rock and Roll Star? Another Sun Xi'an.

• 2:31:10Speaker 02

  If you were inclined to sort of rank, you know, great side one, track ones on debut albums, I think you would be hard pressed to find one that does a better job of sort of establishing what this band is all about, you know, what this band wants to be, what this band is. As a mission statement, I think it's pretty hard to be Rock and Roll Star, you know? And I, and again, you know, not to make everything about Nirvana, but you know, and that wasn't Nirvana's first album, but like, Smells Like Teen Spirit as the trigger for so much of grunge versus Rock and Roll Star as the trigger, you know, for some percentage of Britpop. You know, I just think temperamentally right there, that explains

• 2:31:55Speaker 02

  a lot about what's the same and what's very different about these two approaches to being a rock star.

• 2:32:01Yasi Salek?

  I like that they were like casting a spell, you know, like, like Noel said of that like first show where they're like playing Rock and Roll Star and everyone's like, okay, there's eight people here.

• 2:32:13Speaker 02

  Right, right. Are they faking it or have they already made it?

• 2:32:17Yasi Salek?

  Have they already made it? Yeah. We talked about Columbia, a great song. There's no skips on this album for me. So like, I quite love Up in the Sky. Bring It On Down, we talked about kind of a punky. Diggsy's Dinner is one we should talk about. So if there is a sort of like weak spot on the album, it says, but again, I think it had its purpose. When I was hearing it again, I was like, damn, this, this is a bit of Chaz and Dave chimney sweep music, to paraphrase what Liam Gallagher called blur.

• 2:32:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:32:46Yasi Salek?

  And then I, I, I, I'm almost positive, and I don't know if you read this, but like, that they were sort of like mimicking Britpop, like with this song. So I'm, I'm not sure if that's true or not, but it does kind of sonically sound like it. It's obviously a bit of a joke song. Diggsy was the cousin of the brothers from The Real People, who also had his own band called Smaller. And it's, you know, he was talking about, he wanted to have lasagna and they made a fucking song out of it.

• 2:33:20Speaker 02

  Something about the idea of a no skips album, like I, it's not to say that a great album needs skips, but I, I, I wonder if like a great album benefits weirdly from like interstitial type moments. The way like this, is it the Swamp song, like the two things on

• 2:33:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:39Speaker 02

  uh, Morning Glory, you know, it's, and it's like, those are nobody's favorite moments on that record by a long shot, right? But I wonder if they do serve a purpose, you know, like if you need a buffer between cigarettes and alcohol and slide away, if it somehow magnifies the greatness of both of those songs, if there's just like a brief, even two minutes, sort of interlude for you to recalibrate yourself, you know, like I, I do just wonder if like a song that's nobody's Favorite, you know, a song that you would skip, you know, if you were trying to find songs to skip like those tracks even serve a purpose.

• 2:34:20Speaker 02

  On an album that still somehow comes out perfect without having like, you know, 11 perfect songs on it. You know what I mean?

• 2:34:26Yasi Salek?

  Yes, I think you're totally right. I think a great album requires at least one moment where you take your foot off the gas.

• 2:34:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:34:35Yasi Salek?

  For the like holistic listening experience and I think Diggs's dinner is this and it's a good, I mean, it's fun. I know I remember like, ugh, get this out of my fucking ears. Like it's, it's fun and good. It just doesn't really hold a candle to the rest. I found the quote, it was Alan McGee that said he thought it was Noel taking the piss out of, um, Britpop. Noel's never confirmed or denied that. All Noel said was like, you couldn't put a song like that out today because we were just having fun and writing a stupid song about our friend wanted to go have lasagna and tea. Married with Children, we should talk about, cause I, I think it's a pretty good song. That doesn't get as much credit, maybe.

• 2:35:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:35:15Yasi Salek?

  Noel said he wrote it about cohabitation, obviously. He, he was living, I think at the time with his girlfriend, that woman Louise, who famously paid for everything and was kind of connected in the music industry. The one line that was like directly her was in, in the verse where he's like, I hate the way that even though you know you're wrong, you say you're right. I hate the books you read and all your friends. Your music's shite. It keeps me up all night, on, up all night. Noel said, I, I don't have special times when I sit down and write. If a line comes to me, I have to write it down there and then. I was going out with this girl and one night I woke up and thought of a bit of a song. So I jumped out of bed, picked up the guitar and started trying to get it down.

• 2:35:54Yasi Salek?

  She woke up, turned to me really pissed and said, can't you just shut up? Your music's shite and it's keeping me up all night. I had to use it.

• 2:36:01Speaker 02

  There we go.

• 2:36:09Yasi Salek?

  He named it because the television program Al Bundy came on the TV when he was thinking about what to name it.

• 2:36:15Speaker 02

  Wow, shout out Al Bundy.

• 2:36:17Yasi Salek?

  To your earlier point, which I did want to get into a little more, but it's gonna come up a couple more times so we can talk about it, but there's a song that was originally only on the vinyl version of the album called Sad Song. Do you know this song?

• 2:36:31Speaker 02

  I know the name, but it doesn't immediately.

• 2:36:33Yasi Salek?

  It's on Spotify because it's on the like expanded version of the album as the demo.

• 2:36:37Speaker 02

  Right, right. There's like a thousand of them. Right, okay.

• 2:36:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's a, it's just this like really beautiful, classic sort of Noel, sweet, sad, love, loving song, you know, or whatever. This one's not about love, I don't think. But here's what the first verse is. Sing a sad song in a lonely place. Try to put a word in for me. It's been so long since I found this space. You better put in two or three. We as people are just walking around. Our heads are firmly fixed in the ground. What we don't see, well, it can't be real. What we don't touch, we cannot feel. And it's almost, it's so interesting to me because, and I'm sure Noel Gallagher, I know you're listening, babe, he was like sitting there being like, it doesn't mean anything, bitch, you're fucking crazy. So you don't need to fucking Freud me right now. But I'm like,

• 2:37:22Yasi Salek?

  it's the flip side of everyone, except perhaps Liam Gallagher, has this inner tension, right? This in the inside me, there are two wolves. It's actually very psychologically true and it, it's how we yield different versions of ourselves is between the tension of the two opposing voices. Eventually the tension builds up enough that a secret third thing emerges and then you grow into that and then it starts over. And to the counterpoint to like, I'm gonna live forever. I'm a rock and roll star.

• 2:37:50Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 2:37:51Yasi Salek?

  This is what we don't see. Like, it can't be real. We cannot touch. It can't be feel, you know, like I can't, my dreams might not ever happen.

• 2:38:10Yasi Salek?

  I just found that really moving, you know, that, and I can see maybe why they left it off the album, but I'm like, oh, underneath the bravado, underneath.

• 2:38:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:38:21Yasi Salek?

  The mono brow is a heart.

• 2:38:24Speaker 02

  And I wonder why it was left off the album if it's more anomalous musically, right? Like, we don't have room for like a Tender acoustic Noel thing, or we don't have room for an expression of vulnerability, you know, this unguarded, you know, by the brick wall or whatever.

• 2:38:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, because time wise, they had room. It's 52 minutes. They definitely had time. And their singles, that's what I was gonna say, their singles work like this, right? It's almost as if, and there's instances where the B-side, which is the Tender Ballady one, 10 out of 10 better than the A-side.

• 2:39:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:39:01Yasi Salek?

  But they still, you know, and you almost kind of get the sense, or, you know, perhaps I'm projecting, but the like, Noel was just like, I don't need y'all to really have that part of me right up front and center, you know, we're just gonna stick this.

• 2:39:15Speaker 02

  You gotta work a little harder to get to this side.

• 2:39:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure.

• 2:39:24Yasi Salek?

  Here's what Johnny Marr said about Definitely Maybe. Definitely Maybe sounded like it had always been there. Noel's lyrics definitely had a sense of optimism in there. He said it better than I said when we were talking about grunge, sense of optimism, forward thinking and forward motion. He's expressing something that's aspirational.

• 2:39:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:39:42Yasi Salek?

  All right, Johnny Marr, come for my job, babe.

• 2:39:45Speaker 02

  I'd like to see Johnny Marr talk about Sublime for six hours. I'm sorry.

• 2:39:49Yasi Salek?

  Johnny Marr, come on the pod, babe. Come on the pod. Johnny Marr's never in his beautiful life heard of Sublime, and I think that's how it should be. He's like, who?

• 2:40:00Speaker 02

  Probably, yeah, yeah.

• 2:40:02Yasi Salek?

  So what you see is what you get, and what you hear is what you get too. This is Melody Maker. One track in rock and roll star, and it's pretty clear. Of all the great new British pop groups, Pulp, Suede, Elastica, Gene, Blur, damn, Gene really didn't stand the test of time here in the end. Oasis are the least playful, the least concerned with postmodern flights of influence. Oasis are the least. Playful. What do you think about that?

• 2:40:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, playful in the blur sense, you know, of doing parodies of.

• 2:40:34Yasi Salek?

  They're not living in clever clever land.

• 2:40:37Speaker 02

  Right, exactly.

• 2:40:38Yasi Salek?

  They're not writing from clever clever land.

• 2:40:40Speaker 02

  Playful means clever in this, right?

• 2:40:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I mean, and a lot was made about the tongue in cheekness and jokeyness and sort of archness of the other Britpop bands. I would argue Elastica is sort of like thrown under the bus in there because Elastica was also pretty straight.

• 2:40:57Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:40:58Yasi Salek?

  To the point rock music about like, with like some metaphors, but like it wasn't, they weren't talking about class considerations or the Lori.

• 2:41:05Speaker 02

  Right. It's like, you can't get it up. Like, here's a song about it. Yeah, that's.

• 2:41:09Yasi Salek?

  Pretty much. Exactly. The last line I thought was also very good. Definitely maybe is at the exact point where pop meets rock. Revolver meets exile and Main Street. The lightness of the roses meets the heaviness of the Mondays.

• 2:41:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:41:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah, Paul Lester. Yeah. It's, it's like when my old boss at the grocery store told me that I live at the corner of on we enjoy.

• 2:41:33Speaker 02

  I love how often you quote that line about yourself. Yeah.

• 2:41:38Yasi Salek?

  Can you believe that a person could say that to you when you're like 19 years old and it'll just forever stick with you? First of all, what the fuck was this 21 year old man knowing what on we meant?

• 2:41:50Speaker 02

  Well, he's only 21. I always pictured him as being much older than you. Okay. I thought he was like.

• 2:41:54Yasi Salek?

  No, we were all students. This was like the island, the island of the market. We're all in college.

• 2:42:01Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:42:01Yasi Salek?

  And his name was Chris and I think about him often.

• 2:42:05Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:42:06Yasi Salek?

  So definitely maybe gets pretty great reviews. New York Times reviews it, but not till January of 95. I feel it's very American, the way that New York Times interprets it, which is, they say, Oasis serves up druggie sounding music that is drenched in sexual heat and propelled by an offhand yet carefully plotted sense of chaos.

• 2:42:28Speaker 02

  Sexual heat. Sure. I mean, sure.

• 2:42:34Yasi Salek?

  I think maybe this lady just saw Oasis perform and saw Liam Gallagher and caught a little.

• 2:42:38Speaker 02

  There we go. Very into Parkers.

• 2:42:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, a kagool, if you will. Okay, it's fucking on, bitch. Okay? I don't want to make too much of the fact that this is their first album. And it's gonna stand the test of time in the halls of classic incredible rock bands. We beat out the three fat fucks who shout, knock them right out of number one. They've been touring pretty nonstop for a year at this point. They go to Japan. They get to Japan. This really strikes me because maybe like, I don't know, I can't explain it. The album wasn't out in Japan.

• 2:43:22Yasi Salek?

  They are greeted with Beatlemania levels, like screaming fans, girls following them everywhere, giving them expensive gifts. Like they had to buy new suitcases because they kept giving them designer clothes and like Beatles rarities and stuff.

• 2:43:39Speaker 03

  Followed us everywhere, outside hotels, in the fucking foyer, outside your room, in your fucking room, everywhere you went. It was like mania, do you know what I mean?

• 2:43:49Yasi Salek?

  I think it was Gwigsy didn't like it. Gwigsy's like, I don't understand, like what, why are they, what are they so excited about? Liam's like, me. They're so excited about me and it's awesome.

• 2:44:01Yasi Salek?

  But they were extremely excited and you know, maybe no one loves rock music more than England, but Japan is coming up close.

• 2:44:12Speaker 02

  Right. You know, it's the cheap trick of it all, I guess. There's just a very specific type of rock star, like a capital R, capital S, rock star attitude that particularly, I don't want to over broadly characterize the Japanese people, but yeah, that I'm just curious.

• 2:44:31Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 2:44:32Speaker 02

  If there's something there.

• 2:44:34Yasi Salek?

  Well, whatever it is, they had a great fucking time. I don't know if it was this trip or the trip the year after, but I will say to this day, they're banned from the Rapongi Prince Hotel.

• 2:44:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure they are.

• 2:44:48Yasi Salek?

  So good on them. And then they go off the back of exhaustion in Europe and also of being celebrated like kings in Japan. They're like, okay, time to go to America. The reception was just a little bit different when they got to America. Actually, there's a really great story where they're like, yes, oh my God, we're kings. The Japanese girls gave us goatee clothes and they land in America and go straight to like a Days Inn.

• 2:45:15Speaker 02

  Playing radio festivals or something. Yeah, sure.

• 2:45:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Well, actually, literally, they had to keep going on these fucking radio. They hated this, right?

• 2:45:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think everybody does. Yeah.

• 2:45:26Yasi Salek?

  Right. But them in particular, because they don't have the the part that the mechanism and Liam just doesn't have it, the mechanism that makes you have to be like polite against your will to people who are in power over you or whatever.

• 2:45:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:45:40Yasi Salek?

  Not happening. And Noel just wouldn't do it. Noel's like, I don't want to talk to some fucking record executives. Why? If I don't give a fuck, don't talk to me. And then on top of it, they have to go on these radio shows. And then on top of on top of it, they go on Live 105. And Live 105 was like, guess who we also have here? Guess your friends? Blur.

• 2:46:01Yasi Salek?

  And they're like, oh, cool.

• 2:46:08Yasi Salek?

  They perform supersonic and then the radio, the host who's like quintessential, like you remember that TikTok that's like, we play Man in the Box more times per hour than any other radio station?

• 2:46:20Yasi Salek?

  It's like that guy, that like alt rock. And he goes, okay, do you guys want to play another song? And Liam goes, not really. No. They don't.

• 2:46:31Speaker 05

  Uh, you want to do another song? Not really, no. No? Should we bring in the other guys? Probably the two largest bands in England right now together in one radio studio. In one ring, man. That's right. I'm in the blue shorts. Are they coming in? Come on in. We're in the white shorts, Blur. That's right.

• 2:46:48Yasi Salek?

  And then fucking, for whatever reason, they make them take calls from fans. And like the first eight fans that call ask for Blur because Blur is more famous in America at this point.

• 2:47:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:47:02Yasi Salek?

  And it's just awkward and tense. At some point, I believe Liam calls Damon a wanker.

• 2:47:09Yasi Salek?

  Then they go do a similar thing in K-Rock. And the, the most meaningful part of that for me, meaningful might not be the right word, but the most hilarious part is someone calls in to ask about penis extensions. Like, would you ever get a penis extension? And Noel goes, "We've got a penis extension." He's our drummer.

• 2:47:31Speaker 02

  It's a good line. It's pretty good.

• 2:47:33Yasi Salek?

  Tony McCarroll. Tony is getting abused left and right, babe. It is funny, though. The problem with Noel is that he's so mean, but so funny. And it's really complicated.

• 2:47:44Speaker 02

  It is. You don't know how to react.

• 2:47:47Yasi Salek?

  You catch yourself being like, "I shouldn't laugh at that, but it's, it's too hilarious. We've got a penis extension. He is our drummer." Here's when things go a little tits up, as they say at pear shapes. They get to LA. They're supposed, they do this Karaoke thing. They're supposed to play the whiskey the next day. Bonehead's brother shows up with, I believe, a big bag of white powder. They are like, "Yay, cocaine." It's not cocaine. It is meth, amphetamine. It is meth.

• 2:48:17Speaker 02

  Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah.

• 2:48:20Yasi Salek?

  Noel called it ninja speed. The photographer was with them, Michael Spencer Jones, and he was like, "They've barely gotten off the plane. I'm checking into my hotel and I walk into Liam's room and there's a bag of cocaine," or whatever it was, "the size of which you had never seen in your life. It was like a bag of flour on the table. It was unbelievable." I'm thinking, "Wow, you've only been here about 20 minutes." What is remarkable is that whatever it was, it was consumed within about 72 hours. It was astonishing. It could have kept the Bolivian army going for about 12 months, what was on that table. Yeah, I, I know you haven't taken crystal meth, Rob, but...

• 2:49:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:49:02Yasi Salek?

  A hallmark of crystal meth is that you will be up for like two days.

• 2:49:06Speaker 02

  Right, okay.

• 2:49:07Yasi Salek?

  And also, yeah, it's just not, it's not like a vibey drug. So by the time they get on stage at the whiskey, they have not slept. Liam brings the crystal meth and puts it on a nap and is constantly just ducking back there to take more. The show is an unmitigated disaster. The roadie accidentally put the wrong setlist in front of Just Noel. So Noel is starting songs that the other band members are not playing. They're playing different songs.

• 2:49:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:49:40Yasi Salek?

  Liam is, according to Bonehead, Liam was just fucking singing about whatever. You know, any old words will do, just not the lyrics of the song. And Noel goes, yeah, it was just making up stupid words to live forever and stuff like that. And I was in a fury. I was like, what the fucking hell are you doing? They're just like fighting onstage, shooting each other death stares. And then at some point Liam just throws his tambourine right at Noel's head.

• 2:50:06Speaker 02

  A tambourine, Chekhov's tambourine.

• 2:50:08Yasi Salek?

  Chekhov's tambourine. Noel said, not like the Bruce Lee throwing star or fucking lightsaber. It was a tambourine that hit me on the shoulder. It went out of time, I might add.

• 2:50:20Speaker 02

  That's the, that's the line. That's the line that makes the whole thing out of time, I might add.

• 2:50:27Yasi Salek?

  Out of time, I might add. Also, Ringo Starr was there, allegedly, allegedly, and he left. He walked out, so that also didn't make Noel Gallagher happy.

• 2:50:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:50:38Yasi Salek?

  Noel was unhappy. They have a screaming match backstage after. Mark Coyle said that like, he thinks that the band never recovered from this. Like, he thinks that's the, that's the night it all ended, you know? This was the day that Noel Gallagher became president or whatever. But what happens is they have a huge fight. Liam and Bonehead and them go out after, they're like, whatever happens, who cares? We're going to the Rainbow Room. Noel goes back to the hotel. He finds Maggie, the tour manager, and is like, I'm leaving. I need money, give me money. And she lied and was like, I have $800. She had more, but she figured that $800 would keep him in the United States at least. They wake up in the morning and Noel Gallagher is gone, babe.

• 2:51:23Yasi Salek?

  They're in the middle of a tour, tour is not done. Maggie's like, um, ring, ring to the manager. Uh, we have a bad problem, babe. Noel Gallagher left and he's like, you what? He's not here.

• 2:51:35Speaker 02

  Eight hundred dollars is a lot of money to give him and that's, I understand you could give him more, but you could also give him less. You could give him eighty dollars, for example.

• 2:51:46Yasi Salek?

  I think maybe she had to give him a believable amount that he wouldn't be like, I know we have more than eighty dollars, you know?

• 2:51:54Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:51:55Yasi Salek?

  I don't presume to know what was going on in Maggie's head, but you know, you had to, he's a smart man. He's, he's gonna know the eighty dollars. First of all, eighty dollars is not getting you anywhere. I won't, what, a Greyhound to Phoenix? Like, he's not gonna go anywhere with that. So Maggie, being a genius, checks Noel out, asks for the bill, goes through the phone numbers on the phone, you know, bill of the hotel statement, mostly UK numbers. He had obviously called his mom to complain about Liam.

• 2:52:25Yasi Salek?

  One four one five number, San Francisco. And she was like, aha. I know that she, he had a fling with a girl up there, so he must be up there. They called the girl. Marcus calls the number. And even though she's kind of like playing like coy, he's like, no, I know. He's there. Noel said, I met this girl. I don't know where I met her. It has to have been either an Inspire Carpets gig or an Oasis gig. Fuck knows. I must have phoned her and said, it's fucked up here. I'm gonna come stay with you for a few days. I don't know what the fuck I thought I was doing. I was just gonna disappear, fake my own disappearance or something. It was quite a traumatic time because you are at this point, you are the biggest band in England. Thank God you don't have a mobile phone or a computer, so you don't realize what the fallout is.

• 2:53:08Yasi Salek?

  I was hanging out there for a couple of days and probably doing too many fucking drugs. And she was saying, so you're gonna leave the band and that's it? What are you gonna do? I guess I can't sing. I wasn't a singer then. I'm no frontman. It wasn't like this girl saved me from myself. I just needed a bit of perspective. I wasn't gonna burn the house down to prove a point. A few gigs got blown out. What can I say? I had a good time. While Noel's doing this, Marcus is losing his mind. He calls Tim Abbott. Um, yeah, Noel left. They've all done meth. They're off their tits. Massive row. He took the tour money. He's fucked off. Tim's like, okay, Tim Abbott, by the way, to remind everybody is the, is a higher up at creation who's sort of running the show while Alan McGee is incapacitated.

• 2:53:53Yasi Salek?

  Tim Abbott gets on a plane. Okay, right. See you soon. I have to come fix this shit. He shows up at the girl's door in San Francisco. And Noel's like, oh, hi, Tim. What you doing here? And he's just like, I just wanted to check in, uh, see how things are going over here. And he's like, so do you want to go to Las Vegas? Should we go to Las Vegas? And Noel's like, yeah, I do want to go to Las Vegas. Let's go to Las Vegas. So they go to Las Vegas. And they stay at the Luxor and they party. Okay. They get some mescaline. They have some deep talks.

• 2:54:26Speaker 02

  So just do fear and loathing at the Luxor. Yeah.

• 2:54:30Yasi Salek?

  But here's a meaningful moment that I do think helped things. Tim Abbott remembers that they're like, they must've been gambling at the tables or whatever. And he said, this American woman leans over to Noel and says, excuse me, but I must just say you are the spitting image of George Harrison. And my husband here, we've just got married. We have a pact. It's written up that I can be unfaithful with George Harrison and you look just like him. She had a hall pass, babe. Anyway, they were like in their forties. They had, she said she'd seen every Beatles concert in Philadelphia and she had every Beatles record and she knew every song. And she was besotted by Noel. But then she was like, and what do you do? Because again, Oasis are not famous in America. Yeah. She has no idea who this band is.

• 2:55:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:55:15Yasi Salek?

  And he goes, well, actually I'm, I'm in a band. And he goes, well, I'm sort of not in it anymore. And Tim Abbott's like, we got smashed with these people. We swapped addresses. And the lady was like, when your band comes to Philadelphia, why don't you come around? We'd love to come see you. And he said, that was a watershed because he'd really been touched by a complete stranger.

• 2:55:33Speaker 02

  What a beautiful moment.

• 2:55:35Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if it's true or not, but I'm choosing to believe when I write the Oasis biopic.

• 2:55:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:55:41Yasi Salek?

  It'll be in there. Here's what Liam said. I wasn't worried about his state of mind at all. He wasn't the one on crystal meth. I don't know if he was or wasn't. We, he weren't in that bad of a state of mind if he turns around and fucking gets his tour manager to book a nice little flight to Las Vegas.

• 2:55:57Speaker 02

  Fair.

• 2:55:58Yasi Salek?

  He is, he is. I think this is a little bit of revisionist history though, because in Paulo Hewitt's book, which came out much earlier, Tim Abbott said he called the band to like, kind of update them. And Liam had said, I'm not bothered about it as long as he's all right. So he was a little worried about his brother. So whatever. The lady thinks she's George Harrison. They do mescaline. Who knows what the reason is, but Tim Abbott convinces Noel to go to Texas. The band had skipped a few shows, but they had gone to the, whatever the next show is going to be in Texas. And they were set up to record there with Owen Morris. And what did they record there? A bunch of great songs, namely, "Talk Tonight, Talk Tonight",

• 2:56:39Yasi Salek?

  which was obviously inspired by the entire going to San Francisco, staying up with the girl.

• 2:56:56Yasi Salek?

  And also I guess he just lays down the, the law at this point. He's like, I need to know that you guys are like in it to like actually do like, you're taking this seriously because I'm not going to do this if you guys are not going to take this seriously. He said, "One of the things I learned from the Inspiral carpets was if I ever get anywhere, there's no way it's going to be a democracy. They would take forever to decide on anything. I just wanted to know where their heads were at. I don't recall giving anyone an ultimatum. I don't do ultimatums. I'm either in or I'm out and that's it. Everyone's said the right words and then fucking three weeks later it all blew up again."

• 2:57:30Speaker 02

  Well, I think you said in the Stone Roses episode, a band like this needs somebody who's all the way in, who believes in it.

• 2:57:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:57:40Yasi Salek?

  Lars Ulrich was a, it doesn't, it's not always the creative engine, right? It happened to be in this case, but yeah.

• 2:57:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:57:48Yasi Salek?

  I guess it does make you a bit more powerful if you're also the creative engine because you can sort of threaten to take that away, you know?

• 2:57:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. You write the songs, Liam. Please don't, but.

• 2:57:59Yasi Salek?

  I want to talk a little bit about, real quick, about what's happening in the UK at this time, the fall, the fall of 94. Lad fever, babe. Lad fever has swept the nation. Do you know what a lad is, Rob?

• 2:58:12Speaker 02

  I'm going to guess that it is it just Americans have bros and the English have lads?

• 2:58:18Yasi Salek?

  I think that's the closest appro- It's a, it's like, not one to one, right? Like, I think it's, obviously, it's a very cultural thing, but I think that's like a fair, a fair-ish approximation. Lads were bro-y. They were little dangerous. They were into like, drinking and drugs and hot girls, sports, you know?

• 2:58:44Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:58:45Yasi Salek?

  Football. Primarily football, maybe not cricket, like Wigsze.

• 2:58:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, probably football, yeah.

• 2:58:51Yasi Salek?

  They called it new lad. It was like, the like, because there had been like, a thing in, in the UK about the new man, and that was more of a soft, sort of, intellectual, feminist, you know, it was the 90s, early 90s, right? So, and then I think the pushback against that was new lad. And it was like Nick Horn, Nick Hornby's novels were sort of, uh, loved in that high fidelity, although, he took exception with that later. There's a magazine that comes out in this year called Loaded. It kind of started out, I believe, as like, half taking the piss of lad culture, but half also into it.

• 2:59:30Speaker 02

  Indulging it, right, yes, that old-

• 2:59:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:33Speaker 02

  Meta lad.

• 2:59:34Yasi Salek?

  That old chestnut.

• 2:59:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:59:36Yasi Salek?

  Metal item. And what it ended up doing was kind of cementing and spawning real lad magazines, like Maxim. You know, like, those sort of, this was the first one. I believe the first issue had Gary Oldman on the cover.

• 2:59:51Speaker 02

  Sure, it did.

• 2:59:52Yasi Salek?

  So, in Vox magazine, they asked Liam about being a lad, and he said, "Being a lad is what I'm all about. Define lad? I don't define anything. I'm just me, and I know I'm a lad. There is no lads in any bands today. End of story. Johnny Marr's a lad, The Stone Roses are lads, Bez and Sean Ryder were lads." Although, maybe they were a little too laddy. "I can tell you who isn't a lad. Anyone from fucking Blur." Okay, I bring this up, A, because it's funny, but B- This is what kind of becomes in our lead up to the big battle of Britpop, which we haven't gotten to yet, but we're obviously going to get to. And I think a lot of people's understanding of Britpop and of Blur, Oasis is the sort of rivalry, right?

• 3:00:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:00:36Yasi Salek?

  And the big part of the rivalry was that Oasis were considered lads, right? They were considered this sort of working class, salt of the earth, a little bit dangerous, realer, more authentic. And Blur were considered not that. So Noel Gallagher says, you know, I'm a lad, lads rule, Blur isn't lads, fuck them. And then Noel Gallagher, later on, much later on, in one of these amazing, I think it was Don't Look Back in Anger, which is an oral history of sort of British culture and Britpop in the 90s. Noel Gallagher said, "It's when Britpop turned into this lad fucking thing and started objectifying women. Everybody wanted to be like Liam, the village idiot, who considered himself to be the king of the lads.

• 3:01:22Yasi Salek?

  Ergo, every other brain dead fuckwit in England wanted to be like him, mad for it and all that." Alan McGee did chime in and just sort of be like, "Mmm, fake news, revisionist history." He was like, "Noel was just as fucking laddie and as guilty as anybody. We were all just basically having a laugh and we got away with it for a long time. He liked the 90s for all the reasons that everybody else did, which was drinking drugs and chasing women. But I don't think you'd ever define him as sexist." And Noel said, "I wrote Wonderwall and Don't Look Back in Anger. They're not laddish anthems or about scratching your balls and drinking lager. They're about something a little bit deeper, but only a little bit deeper. We were surrounded by women working with us, just a little tiny bit.

• 3:02:06Yasi Salek?

  But it was always overshadowed by Liam and his fucking moronic behavior. Every guy that ever worked with us wanted to be in the fucking band and thought it was all right to be doing coke at nine in the morning. You can trust women a little bit more." You find this a lot when I read a lot of his music books, where like, the guy up in the band writes a book like 12 years later and is like, "Yes, I was appalling how the other men treated women, me an ally, however."

• 3:02:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, right, yes.

• 3:02:32Yasi Salek?

  And you're like, "I'll believe it when I see it, babe." It's really easy to say that from the other side of the fence. I've heard some, I've heard some tale told of Noel Gallagher's escapades in the shagging department and I'm just gonna say, it sounds like he had quite a good time. Okay, we're building the myth, babe. It's November. We're touring Sweden. What happens in Sweden? I'll tell you what, Liam is arrested for stealing razor blades from the store. Why? I don't know. Could have paid for them.

• 3:03:00Speaker 02

  Arrested? That's, that seems-

• 3:03:03Yasi Salek?

  Arrested.

• 3:03:03Speaker 02

  Very Swedish reaction.

• 3:03:04Yasi Salek?

  Sweden is- Yeah, they're not, they're not down with shoplifting, babe. They're not allowing you to come in their fucking pristine country and take razor blades. They also destroy their hotel rooms to like, an insane point, to the point that it gets written up by the news.

• 3:03:20Speaker 02

  That's what you'd like to avoid, or maybe you don't want to avoid it, but that's, maybe that's a point you want to reach where you're-

• 3:03:25Yasi Salek?

  But the news like-

• 3:03:26Speaker 02

  It becomes newsworthy.

• 3:03:26Yasi Salek?

  In Sweden. Sweden was like, these disgusting animals came to our-

• 3:03:30Speaker 02

  It's like the Beastie Boys in England.

• 3:03:32Yasi Salek?

  Yes, exactly. That same month at the Q Awards back in Britain, Noel meets Tony Blair for the first time.

• 3:03:40Speaker 02

  Oh, good.

• 3:03:41Yasi Salek?

  For those of you who don't know who Tony Blair is, he is the, at this time, the leader of New Labour, the political party. And he tells him, "I listen to Definitely Maybe every morning in the car on the way to work." Tony Blair was like, "Hey, fellow kids, I'm cool."

• 3:04:02Speaker 02

  How do you do?

• 3:04:02Yasi Salek?

  I'm hip with it.

• 3:04:03Speaker 02

  I'm a rock and roll star.

• 3:04:04Yasi Salek?

  How do you do, fellow kids? Yeah. December 7th, they play Glasgow. This is notable because this was the first, but definitely not the last time, that Liam leaves stage in the middle of the gig, saying that he, his voice is gone. They play three songs and he's like, "I can't sing anymore, bye." Noel was like, "Yeah." So we're like, "Uh, okay, what do we do?" And the security guard comes over and is like, "Liam's not coming back. The cars are running, so we should leave before there's a riot." But he said it a little bit too close to the microphone, and there was kind of a riot anyways, and people started throwing stuff at us. But what Noel did was he came back on and he played an hour long acoustic set and

• 3:04:48Yasi Salek?

  he sang the songs. So this is kind of meaningful, I think, is like the first time.

• 3:04:52Speaker 02

  This will happen again.

• 3:04:54Yasi Salek?

  I believe he had already performed in front of a smaller crowd at a creation party because Liam refused to do acoustic, but on a bigger scale, this was the first time.

• 3:05:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:05:06Yasi Salek?

  The single Whatever comes out at the end of December. I had kind of forgotten about this song. Do you remember this song?

• 3:05:12Speaker 02

  I do not remember this song in real time.

• 3:05:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:15Speaker 02

  No, I, I think it helps to be English in this case, right? Cause this is a Christmas single, right? You know, and like, when I re-listen to it for the first time, I was like, I'm free to be whatever. I just thought of that. It's the Soup Dragons.

• 3:05:31Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 3:05:32Speaker 02

  Remember that song? Like if we're talking about, I'm free to do what I want.

• 3:05:52Speaker 02

  I feel like I don't appreciate this song in its original context. Like now it's just sort of the caught breath between the two records. But I think it was probably a bigger deal at the time than I gave it credit for.

• 3:06:08Yasi Salek?

  I think so too. And I'm judging this based obviously off of some of the enemy stuff, but also even on Spotify, cause this song lives in the, um, you know, deluxe edition disc two.

• 3:06:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:06:22Yasi Salek?

  And it has a hundred and nine, almost a hundred and 10 million streams. And that is more than Columbia. That is more than Shaker Maker. That is, you know what I mean? So it's clearly a, it's more than cigarettes and alcohol. So it must be a very popular song.

• 3:06:38Speaker 02

  Fan favorite.

• 3:06:39Yasi Salek?

  Fan favorite. Yeah. It's a good song. I get, I get it. They wanted to hit a number one for Christmas, but they, they didn't hit number one. They hit number three. Should we talk quickly about the Brit Awards?

• 3:06:52Yasi Salek?

  In February of 1995, I know we're starting to set the table for the battle of Britpop, AKA Blur and Oasis hate each other. The Brit Awards, Rob, in your understanding, and I think, correct me if I'm wrong, is like, they're the Grammys, right? They're that important.

• 3:07:10Speaker 02

  That's where I was gonna put them right in between, is the VMAs and the Grammys. And they are not quite the Grammys, but they are far closer to the Grammys than the VMAs. Sure.

• 3:07:20Yasi Salek?

  This is an iconic Brit Awards, because I think it does, it shows the shift.

• 3:07:25Speaker 02

  Right, right, right. This is the cool goes mainstream moment.

• 3:07:29Yasi Salek?

  Yes, because Blur wins four awards, including Best Album and Best Group of the Year, which is a big deal. When they win Group of the Year, Damon goes up and says, "I think this should be shared with Oasis."

• 3:07:45Speaker 02

  Really?

• 3:07:46Yasi Salek?

  I'm gonna tell you something. At this point, Oasis hates Blur just because on, they're standing on business, they, on principle, they're just never gonna say I like something they don't like.

• 3:07:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:07:57Yasi Salek?

  Blur doesn't hate Oasis. Blur is like, they seem cool. They're also not threatened by Oasis, yet. That hasn't happened yet.

• 3:08:04Speaker 02

  Right. That's an important point.

• 3:08:07Yasi Salek?

  Damon is extremely competitive. So, once it does become clear that they're sort of, in some way, a threat, the tune changes. But right now, it's all like, we're all friends here, we love them, they're great. And they won Newcomer of the Year. Now, the response to Damon's, like, gracious sentiment was, uh, mixed. According to the takes, Noel got everyone at the table to jump up and dance to Girls and Boys when they performed. He said he doesn't remember that, but he also says it's totally possible he was very wasted. But he did tell a journalist that night, "If we'd have won that, none of our lot would have said what he said. Our lot would have said, 'Fuck the lot of you.'" What Blur did was a great gesture, and I want to go on record

• 3:08:50Yasi Salek?

  saying that it's us and them now, against the world. He must have been real drunk, because that doesn't stay for very long. Liam, on the other hand, um, was not really, just like, he didn't have the same reaction. Graham Coxon remembers from Blur, "I was sitting right next to Liam, who was just being provocative and trying to intimidate us all night. Every time we came back from the stage with another award, he'd glare at me and say, 'You fucking look me in the eye and tell me you deserve that award.'"

• 3:09:17Yasi Salek?

  If there are two Liam's, the second one is the cocainey one and cocaine does sometimes make you mean.

• 3:09:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:09:24Yasi Salek?

  So I think, you know, that might be a little meaner than normal, but also, you know, again, he's gonna say what he thinks. They, after this Brit Awards, they go to the studio for the next single. This is kind of fateful because this will be Tony McCarroll's final time in the studio as Oasis's drummer. Oh, Tony, they make him take drum lessons.

• 3:09:43Speaker 02

  That is a very rude thing to do to your drummer.

• 3:09:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty rude. There's two different stories about this, if you'll believe it. Tony's story is a little different than the other story. Tony says that he went to the teacher and to the lessons and the teacher was like, wow, you're way better than I thought you'd be like, this is like day three lesson stuff.

• 3:10:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:10:06Yasi Salek?

  Owen says in the Paulo Hewitt book that actually Tony told him that he never went to the lessons at all because he was too busy, which was not good. Noel said, I probably made up my mind knowing that Champagne Supernova, Don't Look Back in Anger and Wonderwall were coming up. He is not playing on them. And if he is playing on them, he is fucking not playing on them live because I've got bigger ideas for that. The last throw of the dice was for us to get him drumming lessons. He did admit that Definitely Maybe wouldn't have sounded as good without Tony drumming on it, though. He said he was the right man for the job at that time, which I thought was nice. And the drum sound definitely maybe are great.

• 3:10:41Speaker 02

  I agree. I agree that he's right for Definitely Maybe and wrong for Morning Glory. That sounds about right. Drum lessons, notwithstanding.

• 3:10:49Yasi Salek?

  There also, Tony McCarroll says this, but I didn't see it anywhere else, so it could be true, it could be not, but he says that Noel went back and played all of the bass on Definitely Maybe and it's not actually Gwigsy playing on the album.

• 3:11:01Speaker 02

  Ooh, the Billy Corgan.

• 3:11:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, the Billy Corgan of it all. Here's the thing, is it unbelievable?

• 3:11:08Speaker 02

  No, it is quite believable.

• 3:11:10Yasi Salek?

  Do we have any proof? We don't have any proof, so I'm simply just parodying what the jilted drummer said in his Looking Back in Anger tome.

• 3:11:21Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 3:11:22Yasi Salek?

  The song that they were doing in the studio, some might say, which actually Noel ends up burying the drums in the mix because he hated them so much. What do you think about "Some Might Say"? You love this song.

• 3:11:32Speaker 02

  I do. I want to confirm this, but I am fairly certain, again, I heard "Morning Glory" on tape, and I believe this is the first song on Side B of the tape, and that is a very important "Some Might Say" and "Cast No Shadow" as the first two songs on Side B is just a very important thing for me. And so, people I trust, our friend Steven Hayden among them, like, this is the single, you know, more for the other songs on the single than "Some Might Say" itself.

• 3:12:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:12:03Speaker 02

  For this song itself, like, this is, this goes in the T-Rex ripoff category, which is a pretty good category of Oasis' song to be.

• 3:12:12Yasi Salek?

  It's robust. Yeah.

• 3:12:24Speaker 02

  There's definitely something cleaner. It is less brickwalled. It is poppier. You know, I dig the tambourine going like the entire time. You know, there's something gigantic about the chorus, you know, and again, the feeling that the chorus is just so, ever so slightly out of Liam's range, which is where you want the chorus to be. There's just sort of an aspirational, you know, musically and otherwise, quality to this song.

• 3:12:58Speaker 02

  It's not like my favorite song on the record or whatever, but I do think that it sets the tone for what is the same about this album and this era and what is different.

• 3:13:11Yasi Salek?

  Yes. Like, it's marking a line in the sand. Like, we're done with definitely maybe era.

• 3:13:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:13:17Yasi Salek?

  Noel says, "There is a strange melancholy to 'Some Might Say,' considering I knew it was gonna be a number one before I even sat and wrote it." What does that mean? How did you know? You didn't even have...

• 3:13:30Yasi Salek?

  There was not even, how did you know? Okay, it's about the passing of something, a people's anthem about one day we'll find a brighter day. What the fuck? I don't know what all that is about. Looking back on it now, instinctively, I may have felt the end of some kind of age of innocence for us personally, as people about to go and become real rock stars. But when it actually happens to you, you think, is that it? I don't feel any different. I don't know what I thought you were supposed to feel, like you were supposed to be sprinkled with some kind of gold dust. I just felt like me. I guess I, it's because I knew in my heart it was gonna go to number one. I feel like there's a lot, very telling in here, right?

• 3:14:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:14:09Yasi Salek?

  I'm in my armchair doing psychology, okay? Just please allow me.

• 3:14:13Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:14:14Yasi Salek?

  I think a big thing of, for Noel Gallagher was like, I need to prove myself, right? This is, I'm gonna, I have all these number ones, like, I'm saying this because I really relate to this and it's been 12 years of therapy to undo it, but like, if I just achieve XYZ, then.

• 3:14:34Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. I'll be whole.

• 3:14:36Yasi Salek?

  Insert whatever. I'll be whole. And then it's like, oh, I'm literally a famous rock star. We hit number one and I'm still this, I'm still waking up on a Tuesday, being me.

• 3:14:49Speaker 02

  Is that all there is?

• 3:14:51Yasi Salek?

  Is that all there is? Whereas Liam Gallagher, I feel, maybe a little different, you know? Picking Wednesday's ass, babe. So, I feel like Liam Gallagher is very much the journey is the destination energy and Noel Gallagher was heading somewhere and then he got there and was like, well, wherever you go, there you are, you know?

• 3:15:09Speaker 02

  Well, isn't that a universal band thing that the ascent, you look back later and the ascent is more exciting than the apex?

• 3:15:18Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 3:15:19Speaker 02

  Like, the feeling that you're about to achieve it is bigger. Right, yes, yeah, that's, that's a universal human thing, I think. So, we map this now onto rock stardom, you know, the climb to the top.

• 3:15:30Yasi Salek?

  Desire is far more than getting the thing you want, you know?

• 3:15:36Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 3:15:37Yasi Salek?

  You mentioned this being extremely important because of the B-sides. It's crazy.

• 3:15:45Speaker 02

  It's pretty crazy.

• 3:15:46Yasi Salek?

  The B-sides are crazy. We talked about Talk Tonight, one of my favorite Oasis songs. Noel actually sings this one.

• 3:15:53Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:15:54Yasi Salek?

  Probably a mix of things. It's like, it's an unusually personal Oasis song. So maybe that's why. Also, we talked about it, but Liam did not like to sing acoustic guitar songs. And this is an acoustic guitar song.

• 3:16:13Yasi Salek?

  It's very tender, this song. It's very beautiful.

• 3:16:16Speaker 02

  It is.

• 3:16:17Yasi Salek?

  What about acquiesce? Acquiesce is maybe the biggest fan favorite B-side, I think.

• 3:16:24Speaker 02

  Acquiesce kicks a pretty impressive amount of ass, I think.

• 3:16:28Yasi Salek?

  It's true.

• 3:16:29Speaker 02

  Maybe there's a song previously that, is this the first song with Liam on the verses and Noel on the chorus? That feels very important. This feels, the unity, you know, the synergy between them, you know, expressed this explicitly, you know, splitting the song in half. You know, it's among, if not the biggest Oasis chorus, you know, because we need each other. The friggin chorus is because we need each other, we believe in one another, and I know we're gonna uncover what's sleeping in our soul. Like, this, this isn't subtext. Like, this is as close as they're ever going to get to Voltron-ing, you know, completely Liam and Noel.

• 3:17:22Yasi Salek?

  What Noel Gallagher says about acquiesce in 2016, grain of salt, but he said, "It's just so pathetic when people say it's clearly about you and Liam." Oh, right, yes, because I forget you were fucking inside my head when I wrote it. I forgot about that. So, yeah, you must be right and I must be wrong.

• 3:17:41Speaker 02

  Okay, all right.

• 3:17:43Yasi Salek?

  She feels a little angry. It feels a little, but I do, listen.

• 3:17:47Speaker 02

  2016 was a great time for, you know, it's Brexit is happening. It's, it's very stressful.

• 3:17:52Yasi Salek?

  Sure. Everyone's on edge. Everyone's on edge. Also, Noel and Liam are still on speaking.

• 3:17:56Speaker 02

  That, right.

• 3:17:57Yasi Salek?

  He said in the Paul Mather book, which is out of print and came out in 97?

• 3:18:05Yasi Salek?

  Much closer to the time.

• 3:18:07Speaker 02

  Right, okay.

• 3:18:08Yasi Salek?

  He said, "It's like I've said, I'm not always comfortable writing personal songs. It's never been what we're about." I mean, I read Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam talking about being abused as a child and how he draws on that in his songs. And I just think, fuck off. Don't tell me about it. I don't want to know.

• 3:18:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:18:26Yasi Salek?

  When I wrote Talk Tonight and Slide Away, I realized I could write personal songs, but they're always in the minority of what we do.

• 3:18:32Speaker 02

  At the very least, he has to know when he writes a chorus that starts.

• 3:18:37Yasi Salek?

  What people are gonna think.

• 3:18:39Speaker 02

  That's what people will think. And so if.

• 3:18:41Yasi Salek?

  Exactly.

• 3:18:42Speaker 02

  I will accept if he is playing with that and subverting that, you know, in his own head. But, you know, he knows how this is going to be interpreted, and I think that does matter.

• 3:18:55Yasi Salek?

  He said, um, that he wrote this song, this is such a Noel Gallagher, they went to eat Chinese food and I wrote the song. He was on the train on the way to the studio. The train broke down under the Severn Bridge for 20 minutes and he wrote this song in those 20 minutes. And then later, he said, "I was watching the OJ Simpson trial on TV." It really takes you right back, right, to placing it in time. And it came up in that, he's talking about the word acquiesce. I didn't have a clue what it meant, but it sounded a dead good word. I hooked it up and it said, "It meant being dragged into something no matter how hard you try and resist." Like the Pied Piper or something. "It seemed pretty apt for Oasis. People hear us and they acquiesce. Ha, ha, ha."

• 3:19:40Speaker 02

  I thought he was gonna say he acquiesced to being in a band with his brother, but I, both I think can be true. Yeah.

• 3:19:46Yasi Salek?

  That's, yeah. This song hit number one, or not this song, sorry, this single hit number one. Some might say their first number one, Creation's first number one single. It's also the Britpop drama, babe, because.

• 3:20:00Yasi Salek?

  They throw a party to celebrate their number one at Mars Bar. It's a very small, small bar. And I believe Alan McGee, I can't be sure. Alan McGee is a little, doing a little Svengaling, a bit of Pinocchio, where he invites Blur to the party.

• 3:20:19Yasi Salek?

  And Damon Albarn, and I don't remember who he came with, maybe Alex James, show up. And Liam gets right in fucking Damon's face and goes, "Number fucking one." Because at this point Blur has not had a number one single. This is, a lot is made of that. And, you know, fair enough. That's rude.

• 3:20:40Yasi Salek?

  But I've uncovered a further detail that is not ever mentioned, except in this fucking out of print book, which Noel himself admits that he also went up to Damon and said, "Go on, get the drinks. You're rich." And he got all funny about it. Which is really, really amazing. He was like, "Well, you're, you're fucking biggest fan." Also, a thing that is sort of like an open secret is that Liam and Damon were sleeping with the same woman. And that's part of the vitriol. Not all of it, because it wasn't that important apparently to them. But that was part of the vitriol between, between these, these two men in particular.

• 3:21:24Yasi Salek?

  It's time for a new drummer, because they fired Tony McCarroll. That was his last thing. This is where they get Alan White, another Gemini. Alan White is a Cockney guy. He is the brother of Steve White, who was Paul Weller's drummer in Style Council. And Steve White was like, "I have a brother who plays drums." Noel's very funny. In every iteration of this, when they meet up, he says, some version of, he sits down and starts talking on the drums. And I'm like, "I'm not fucking interested in how you can play. As long as you look the part, you'll do. What we do is not rocket science. You've heard what we do. I can do it, and I'm not even a drummer." There's other versions where he's like, "I was just like, as long as he's not 300 pounds."

• 3:22:05Yasi Salek?

  You know what? Alan White showed up. He was not 300 pounds. And he was down to play the drums. And he was like, "Okay, you're doing Top of the Pops Wednesday. Bye." So they did Top of the Pops with him. There's also a very funny quote of when Alan meets them all, and he sees them, and he, the first person he sees is the bassist.

• 3:22:26Yasi Salek?

  And he's like, I thought he was about thirty five years old. He had crazy hair and it was all gray. He had a drink and he was shaking and I was like, who's this old guy? Then I found out he was only my age and I thought this band is having it. Quigs, he's got gray hair, Bonehead's gone bald. Liam is always in the paper having a ruck. What am I getting myself into?

• 3:22:45Speaker 02

  Does age you a bit, rock stardom.

• 3:22:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it does. And then they play Glastonbury. This is the same Glastonbury that the Stone Roses were meant to like triumph at return or whatever. But John Squire broke his shoulder and Pulp filled in. Pulp really had the like takeaway beautiful set of the thing.

• 3:23:02Speaker 02

  Common people blows up, yeah.

• 3:23:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Oasis did not. Oasis maybe didn't even do that good of a job. They started with Swamp Song randomly and nobody even knew Swamp Song because it wasn't out yet. And also it's not exactly like a propulsive.

• 3:23:15Speaker 02

  We hope you like our new direction.

• 3:23:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, we hope you like it. It's a four minute. Robbie Williams has just left Take That and he's like twenty one and he's just hanging around. And he was on the side of the stage and Noel's like, yeah, I just remember Liam turned around and said, come on Robbie. And I don't think he meant for him to actually come on the stage. I just think he meant, come on, hey? And I turned around and Robbie Williams is dancing like MC Hammer to one of my songs on stage at Glastonbury. And I remember thinking, oh, that does not look good. That does not look good at all. In the same month, right after Glastonbury, the NME interviews Noel and Noel's like, I don't see this going on forever. I see it as three albums and that's it. I don't think I can do anymore with Oasis after that. There's only so many anthems you can write.

• 3:24:01Yasi Salek?

  I don't know for sure, but I'd say the next album will be the last. They asked Liam about this later on MTV and Liam goes, I'm not up for splitting up. If he splits it up, he'll get loads of grief off the fans so he can do it. All the fans can burn his house down, so let him do it. And then he also says, he thinks Noel has loads of albums inside him and maybe a good slap in the jaw will change his mind. We can talk later about what Oasis's legacy might have been if Noel had stuck to his guns and actually only made three albums because it wasn't a bad idea. But we're gonna get into that next episode. We're gonna figure out next episode if the new drummer, Alan White, will stay in the band? Will he go bald? Will he go gray?

• 3:24:44Yasi Salek?

  Will Noel and Liam be able to work out their differences? No.

• 3:24:47Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:24:48Yasi Salek?

  Who will win the battle of the Britpop bands? Who will win the war? You'll find out all of this if you Google it, or if you wait till next week and we'll come and tell you. Rob, thank you so much. We will pick this back up with part two.

• 3:25:04Speaker 02

  Delightful.

• 3:25:05Yasi Salek?

  Isn't it?

• 3:25:20Yasi Salek?

  If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bands Play. Our guest today was Rob Harvilla. This episode was produced by Liz Sanchez and edited by Adrian Bridges with help from Justin Sales. Executive producers for Bands Play are Gina Dalvec and me, Yasi Salek. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer Clavon, and graciously recorded by Carlos Nella Garza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, producer Dylan, AKA Dylan Tupper Rupert, and also Michael Hardman, Casey Simonson, Robert Adler, Leah Edwards, David McDonough, Dana Meyerson, Jessica Hopper, and Britt Box. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bands Play on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 3:26:04Speaker 02

  Who's the phoenix extender now?

• 3:26:06Yasi Salek?

  Extension, Rob G is.

• 3:26:12Yasi Salek?

  Extention.