Oasis: Part 2 with Rob Harvilla

You can have it all, but how much do you want it, babe? Once again, we slip inside the eye of Oasis’ mind for part two. Last episode, Yasi and Rob Harvilla talked about the band’s formation, their debut album Definitely Maybe, and the lead-up to the 1995 Britpop chart battle. Who wins the battle? Who wins the war? We’ll get into the “Oasis quo” and “Chaz and Dave Chimney Sweep Music” of it all. Plus, listen along as we dissect how Noel and Liam Gallagher created one of the greatest British albums of all-time: (What’s the Story) Morning Glory, and their infamous Wibbling Rivalry that led to the band’s eventual demise. SKIP AHEAD: 26:28 – (What’s the Story?) Morning Glory 1:14:52 – Knebworth 1:44:13 – Be Here Now 2:12:34 – Bonehead and Gwigs leave 2:41:28 – Oasis breaks up 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 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Look, it's not that confusing. I'm Rob Harvilla, host of the podcast 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, except we did 120 songs. And now we're back with the 2000s. I refuse to say aughts. 2000 to 2009. The Strokes, Rihanna, J Lo, Kanye, sure. And now the show is called 60 Songs That Explain the 90s: The 2000s. Wow. That's too long a title for me to say anything else right now. Just trust me. That's 60 Songs That Explain the 90s: The 2000s, preferably on Spotify.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Members who switched to USAA Auto Insurance saved an average of $80 a month. All you have to do is switch once and then enjoy the same excellent service year after year. Visit usaa.com/aut quote to see how much you could save.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  Restrictions apply.

• 0:53Yasi Salek?

  What's with this band anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait, like Band Splain?

• 1:05Yasi Salek?

  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.

• 1:32Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome to Band Splain. It is Oasis, Part Two, Oasis Too Fast Too Furious. I'm here with fellow Ringer podcaster and my non-biological father, Rob Harvilla, the host of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s: The 2000s. And he, I think, is ready to take on the rest of the story. What do you think, Rob?

• 1:57Speaker 00

  I'm absolutely ready. The cliffhanger conceit worked really well for me. It was very dramatic. I'm genuinely curious, the answers to the questions you asked, which I forget now, but I remember they were good questions. Yeah, so I'm ready.

• 2:10Yasi Salek?

  Sure. We didn't, we didn't live them through real time. Uh, no spoilers as this has all already happened and been well documented. I'll remind you where we were. Last we saw the lads, the brubs, literally and figuratively, they had kicked out their original drummer, Tony, brought in a new drummer, Alan White. The vibes, as per usual, are not great between Liam and Noel. And they've started having bad vibes with Blur also. So that's the, that's what's happening.

• 2:45Speaker 00

  Are the vibes ever good? Was there a good vibes era of this band? Or is the whole point of this band, the vibes are never good?

• 2:53Yasi Salek?

  You know, it's so hard to say because I did read a bunch of quotes from like other people, including like Bonehead and Wigsy and some other people around the band that like sort of insinuated or just flat out said that like the brothers played it up for the press.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  Right.

• 3:11Yasi Salek?

  Like it was like, they were, it wasn't that bad, but they would really like ham it up because they realized it was like helping the mythology. I don't know how true or untrue that is. I mean, maybe they pretended too much and it became real. I don't know, but.

• 3:26Speaker 00

  We are who we pretend to be. Yeah.

• 3:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, exactly. So it is the battle of Britpop, right? And it is culminating in the release of the singles Roll With It and Country House by Blur. This is when the like countrywide news stories, it's on the six o'clock BBC news. Your grandma who's never heard of Oasis and Blur now knows who they are because it's on, you know, the telly. So TLDR of this story is, and we told it in the Blur episode too, but Blur. Had their single ready to go. Oasis had their single ready to go. Blur had presumed that the Oasis one would come out on a different timing schedule, according to the Blur's camp,

• 4:14Yasi Salek?

  like, the way that it was normally done. But Creation doesn't do things the way it's normally done. So they ended up being like a week apart. And Blur was like, well, we don't want to release it after, because like, what if it's number one and then it won't give up its number one spot? And then they were like, well, we don't want to move it before, because then Oasis will say we're scared of them. And then I think a little bit is, reading between the lines, Damon Albarn being a very competitive person was like, let's just fucking go up against them. Let's just do it. And so they did. They slated their singles for the same day. This is unheard of. People do not do this. And then it became a big old nationwide pastime to speculate. There was bookies. There were people putting odds in the newspapers. There was a whole thing.

• 5:00Speaker 00

  Is there an American equivalent to this? All I can think of is Kanye and 50 Cent, like, much later, of course. I don't know that, like, in the 90s rock canon, like, singles chart battles aren't really an American notion, of course, but even, you know, like, Nirvana went to number one or whatever, but like, even the biggest rock bands don't put out albums with the expectation of chopping, topping the charts, like, even at the height of grunge or whatever. Like, I was just, I was trying to think of some qualitative head-to-head battle.

• 5:36Yasi Salek?

  You know, the only thing I can think of, it's definitely more like Taylor Swift releasing, like, the 17th version of her album with like 12 new voice memos to like-

• 5:48Speaker 00

  Little gauche. Yeah, yeah.

• 5:50Yasi Salek?

  With or without the intention of keeping Billie Eilish off the top of the chart.

• 5:55Speaker 00

  And Shapal, yeah, that's pretty gross, right.

• 5:58Yasi Salek?

  Pop girls. Yeah, that's, I think, that's where I've seen it more, like, the chart considerations is like, modern. I mean, I don't follow chart stuff. I never have. We'd have to, like, tap someone at Billboard magazine for this, but like, charts are a big deal. In the UK for everyone, like Scotswoman Chloe Walsh, you guys might know are famous from the first two episodes of this podcast season, told me that like they would check, like as teenagers, you would get the NME to like, look at the indie charts.

• 6:28Speaker 00

  Right.

• 6:28Yasi Salek?

  Like, it was a thing. Like, I don't recall ever knowing chart positions as a teenager. Did you?

• 6:34Speaker 00

  Honestly, no. Other than like the back of Rolling Stone. And then there was like the chart that mattered to me was like college or like alternative radio and like the Belly, the first Belly record was number one on college radio forever. And I thought that was cool. But I'm sort of torn between saying like, it's cool that we didn't know anything about the charts, but it's also cool that this happened, right? That there was like Superbowl energy about two rock bands putting out singles at the same time. Like, that's a very appealing notion on its face.

• 7:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I mean, I think besides the chart portion of it, I think the equivalent here was, I mean, I guess it was a chart motion, Nirvana knocking Michael Jackson off the top of the number one Billboard chart and Pearl Jam being on the cover of Time Magazine against their will, but still like completely sort of taking over the mainstream discourse where like they didn't belong there before.

• 7:28Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly.

• 7:30Yasi Salek?

  It's very funny that this whole situation, this whole major like sweeping the nation moment was around each band's like arguably worst singles. Like, Roll With It sucks. It's not a good song. Country House is not a good song.

• 7:48Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 7:49Yasi Salek?

  They're fine. I mean, I'm just saying within the, you know, relatively speaking, within the what's been put forth, hence it pales in comparison to like some of these other singles from both bands.

• 8:02Speaker 00

  Yes, that's true. Yeah. Like the idea of like, it wouldn't line up, right? But like Wonderwall versus what? Like Song Two or Tender or something like that? Like, yeah, it's, it's, you can't make it work chronologically.

• 8:16Yasi Salek?

  Or even, um, Parklife. Yeah. Wonderwall versus Parklife even, you know, to keep it within the Britpop canon.

• 8:24Speaker 00

  There's a spiritual division right there. Yeah, those are two very different flavors of.

• 8:29Yasi Salek?

  I mean, that's kind of what happened in the presentation of the Sharpout, right? Is the spiritual division where, you know, the press got in on it, kind of being like, well, it's working class versus middle-class art school students, you know? Like, that was the framing.

• 8:47Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 8:48Yasi Salek?

  Like, here's what the guy from the Daily Express said. "On the one hand, you have Blur, the sensitive art school popsters, slipping references to French authors into their songs. And on the other, you have Oasis, hard-drinking lads who boast about drug-taking and seem to spend just as much time fighting as writing. It's not just a conflict of attitude, image, and style. It's a conflict of pit bull versus poodle, squat versus mansion, and armpit versus deodorant."

• 9:15Speaker 00

  Wow, armpit versus deodorant.

• 9:18Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 9:19Speaker 00

  That's, that doesn't work for me, but I do like it all the same.

• 9:24Yasi Salek?

  I like it in theory, but in practice. And again, the bands got in on it, obviously, like Oasis publicly called Blur, Chaz and Dave chimney sweep music, which is just like so fucking good, because you don't even have to know that Chaz and Dave are like, a sort of like Mary Poppins head ass, like, bum bum bum bum folk British duo, which they are, to just exactly already know what they're talking about. Like, I don't know who Chaz and Dave are, but I know what chimney sweep music is, babe, I sure do. And obviously, Damon was played the rock role with the Oasis single "Over the Phone" on a radio show, and he responded by singing back the Status Quo song,

• 10:06Yasi Salek?

  "Rockin' All Over the World," because he was kind of saying they're mid and Status Quo-ish, the band.

• 10:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 10:12Yasi Salek?

  But the whole country got in on it, because it was like, are you supporting the working class, or are you supporting high-minded art? You know, like, it was kind of really like a divisive moment.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  Is this the sort of thing in your research where you had to pick a side?

• 10:29Yasi Salek?

  I did ask Miranda Sawyer this, who was, you know, a journalist and she said at the time, and she said she liked them both. And she's like, that was an option, but like many of the journalists did kind of pick sides. I don't know about people. I mean, it's, it's kind of like the Nirvana Pearl Jam thing, right? Like when I was younger, it did feel a little bit like you had to choose, not that to the exclusion of the other, but you definitely were more one than the other, although nobody seems to remember that besides me. Damon Albarn hosted a TV show the Wednesday before the charts were released. There was a special called Britpop Now and it had Sleeper, Pulp, Elastica, Supergirl and not Oasis, who said, no, we're not doing that. Fuck off. Because they didn't think they were Britpop.

• 11:14Yasi Salek?

  Liam said there was all this Britpop thing bubbling up at the time and we were getting lumped into it. I was like, we're not Britpop. We're not Camden. I always fancied us a proper fucking rock and roll band, a bit more real. They were a bit more flimsy and a bit fucking stupid, a bit silly. I don't know. There was something comedy about it all. This is interesting because that was one of the like perceptions of like the sort of core of Britpop, particularly Blur and Pulp, that they're, that they were jokey joking. They were winky, winky, you know, like, which is pretty reductive. I wouldn't say that like that's all that they were doing, but I get what he's saying. Like Oasis were not joking.

• 11:59Yasi Salek?

  I mean, they were in the press, but not with their music.

• 12:01Speaker 00

  They were not clever.

• 12:02Yasi Salek?

  They were not clever. There was like no irony.

• 12:06Speaker 00

  Right. Yeah. Irony probably even is the, the greater divide here.

• 12:11Yasi Salek?

  So everyone is thinking Oasis is gonna win. All the music weeklies, the bookmakers gave the band the odds of six to four. And then on 7 PM on Sunday evening, they announced the charts and Blur won.

• 12:29Speaker 00

  Dewey defeats Truman. By how much? It wasn't, it wasn't like a blowout, right? Like it was fairly-

• 12:36Yasi Salek?

  No, Blur sold 274,000 copies and Oasis sold 216,000. And there's also some finger pointing that it was a format situation because Oasis put out a CD single, a seven inch and a 12 inch, which was sort of classic, right? But Blur put out a CD, two CD singles. They kind of like, were like, we have one with live tracks on it.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  They tailored it.

• 13:00Yasi Salek?

  They also put out a cassette. Yeah, they put out a cassette, which was very popular and cheap. They also undercut their price. They made their singles one pound cheaper than Oasis's. They had sort of a bigger machination behind them, right? Because in the UK, it's creation. I mean, they're a subsidiary of Sony, but they're just creation kind of being like messy. Whereas like Food Records was very much part of EMI and they had a lot more money to kind of do that shit. But anyways, it wasn't a big thing and they lost. And Noel at the time wisely pointed out that in February of 1967, actually Engelbert Humperdinck,

• 13:36Yasi Salek?

  his song, Please Release Me, kept the Beatles' single Strawberry Fields from hitting number one with the B-side of Penny Lane.

• 13:44Speaker 00

  An exact A to B comparison.

• 13:46Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. And Alan McGee said something really interesting, where she said, "They led us into their party by moving the release date. They led us in the boxing ring. Everyone in the country knew who Oasis were now. They might never have had that exposure if Blur hadn't given it to them." Because Blur was the biggest band in the country at the point. So that was, I thought that was a really astute observation on McGee's part.

• 14:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:10Yasi Salek?

  They played Top of the Pops for a role that anyways, it's a fun Top of the Pops. You guys should look it up on YouTube because, you know, famously on Top of the Pops, you lip sync and Noel pretends to be Liam.

• 14:22Yasi Salek?

  And Liam pretends to play guitar as Noel.

• 14:24Speaker 00

  It's a good bit, good bit.

• 14:26Yasi Salek?

  I didn't have any memory of this, so I don't know if it just didn't permeate here in America, or maybe I was a little too young. Do you remember this compilation album called The Help Album? It was a charity compilation.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  That sounds vaguely familiar, but I don't remember any details of it, but that vaguely sounds familiar.

• 14:47Yasi Salek?

  So it was a compilation to raise money for the war child charity, which provided aid to war-stricken areas like Bosnia and Herzegovina. It's actually really cool and has a lot of really cool songs on it. And I think I just didn't like, make as big of a mark here because it was very, very British, but it has Paul McCartney, Paul Weller, Radiohead, Oasis Blur, Manic Street Preachers. Oasis did fade away as a ballad. I guess they had done that live once, but then Noel was like, I'm gonna sing it and you're gonna do backing vocals, Liam. And Liam was like, okay. And then randomly they were like, and Johnny Depp is gonna play guitar.

• 15:23Speaker 00

  Oh, God.

• 15:24Yasi Salek?

  And so Johnny Depp plays guitar on this song.

• 15:28Speaker 00

  If you didn't know that, would you suspect it? Is there a Johnny Depp guitar tone per se, or if it's just?

• 15:35Yasi Salek?

  Not that there isn't, but I'm the last person on earth that would be able to distinguish.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  I think you're second last to me.

• 15:43Yasi Salek?

  See, everyone says Johnny Depp is an excellent guitar player.

• 15:46Speaker 00

  Sure, totally. He's, he's playing guitar right now in like a perfume or like a cologne commercial. He's like playing guitar for Wolves.

• 15:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah. We're not gonna banflame Johnny Depp, but I think he originally came to LA to be a musician and then became an actor by accident or something.

• 16:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:03Yasi Salek?

  He's with Kate Moss during this time and Kate Moss is obviously like,

• 16:07Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 16:07Yasi Salek?

  you know, friends with Oasis and friends with Meg Matthews and this whole thing. So whatever, we got Johnny Depp there.

• 16:19Yasi Salek?

  There's also a version of Come Together on this compilation. You know how I feel. I believe Come Together should be legally banned from ever being recorded again.

• 16:28Speaker 00

  I wasn't aware of that, but it does, that does make sense to me, you saying that.

• 16:34Yasi Salek?

  Okay, I won't lie, I lightly enjoyed Bush doing it with the guy from Candlebox at the recent Bush concert that I went to because it really showcased the singer of Candlebox's incredible vocal prowess. But yeah, I think in general, I think we can put a moratorium on Come Together, like, let's move on. Like, as a world, as a society, I think we can move on from Come Together. But this is 95, so they have not yet moved on. So they make a little super group. Paul McCartney, Paul Weller, Noel Gallagher, Steve Craddock, Steve White, and Carleen Anderson, and they do come together. Big moment probably for Noel Gallagher, no? Performing with his, performing a Beatles song with an actual Beatle?

• 17:13Speaker 00

  There we go. He goes from knowing John Lennon to jamming with Paul McCartney.

• 17:19Yasi Salek?

  This is unrelated, but I had to drop it in for my Morrissey heads. They interview Morrissey at this time for Q Magazine, and they just drop in a quick question, "What do you think of Oasis?" Here's what Morrissey said. "I've always liked them. I think they're very amusing and very Mancunian, and the best Manchester group since..." He does a little shrug and a smile. But I, yes, you know what he's implying. "But I do wish the singer wasn't so put out. Do I really have to sing this next verse?" He can always go back to being a painter and decorator in Burnage. I read a comment supposedly by me in Club International where I called them boring electricians, words which have never left my lips. They literally just now left your lips. So they've slagged me off, of

• 18:01Yasi Salek?

  course, they have to, but I like them. Noel's very funny, very runt of the litter. You can tell that he'd run off with the fillings in his grandmother's teeth, but that doesn't mean he doesn't love her.

• 18:10Speaker 00

  It's boring electrician, sounds like something Oasis would say about the Smiths, I think. I think maybe they just got it backward.

• 18:17Yasi Salek?

  Well, I think they would call them students, very studenty. Okay, now it's the Mercury Prize. Mercury Prize is the most prestigious music award in the UK. Can we agree on that?

• 18:29Speaker 00

  We can. We can.

• 18:31Yasi Salek?

  Oasis is nominated. They lose to Portishead's Dummy, which honestly, fair enough.

• 18:37Speaker 00

  I agree. Yeah. Hasn't PJ Harvey won that a couple of times? I seem to recall.

• 18:42Yasi Salek?

  She's the only person that's ever won it twice.

• 18:44Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 18:45Yasi Salek?

  The only artist that's ever won it two times.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  Also fair enough. Yes.

• 18:49Yasi Salek?

  All right. And now unfortunately, in the same month of September, we do a little, a wee interview. Well, the interview was probably predated this time, but we do a wee interview with The Observer, with our friend Miranda Sawyer. We talked about this on the Oasis versus Blur episode, but just for the sake of keeping the timeline straight, this is when Noel Gallagher says, asked about Blur, "The guitarist I've got a lot of time for, the drummer I've never met, I hear is a nice guy. The bass player and the singer, I hope the pair of them catch fucking AIDS and die because I fucking hate them too."

• 19:24Speaker 00

  Isn't that when his mom called? Didn't his mom call and yell at him? Going all the way back to how these guys, I think this is what happened. I think that his mom called him and was like, what the fuck?

• 19:35Yasi Salek?

  Peggy was like, I did not fucking raise you.

• 19:38Speaker 00

  Peggy was not having it. And I think he was like chagrined, like he was properly chastened. You know, it's like the same, you know, the Jay-Z Nas feud ends basically the same way, with Jay-Z's mother being like, just fucking knock it off. And Jay-Z knocked it off, right? Like I, that's the best way for a feud to end. Not that it ended here, but it probably should have.

• 19:58Yasi Salek?

  It probably should have. It didn't. Talking to Miranda Sawyer about it was really interesting because she was like, in the moment, I didn't even blink twice at it because it was so obvious he was joking. And it's such like a Minkunian sense of humor, like a bit shock jockey, but like obviously joking that she didn't think about it at all, or else she probably wouldn't even run it if she thought it was like going to cause so much scandal. She thought it was like LOL, you know, like, and none of the editors thought anything of it either. And it wasn't until it was printed, they didn't go one way or the other, right? They didn't make it like a big poll quote and try to like manufacture some outrage around this. And they didn't take it out. They just like included it with the rest of the interview. And they were actually really surprised when like, it went kind of crazy. But again, this is the mid 90s, you know, like

• 20:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:44Yasi Salek?

  This is, we're sort of fresh off the, in the AIDS crisis, like, I don't, I don't know if we're off or in, but close enough. And it was just not, it didn't go over well. And Damon Albarn said, I don't know why he would say that. It was such a weird and unpleasant comment. Noel publicly apologized, maybe because of his mother, maybe because he was being dragged through hell, through all of the press. Later, they asked him about it in Q Magazine, and they asked what the biggest mistakes he's ever made. And he said, I wish I never said some of the things I've said. They've done me no end of harm. And the person's like, like when you said, you wished Damon and Alex have blurred out of AIDS.

• 21:29Speaker 00

  Good follow up, good follow up, yeah.

• 21:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And he was like, yeah, he's like, I wish I never said it. I told, I called Meghan and said, I think I've blown it. And she read it and went, you idiot. And the first person on the phone was me mom saying, I didn't raise you to say things like that.

• 21:44Speaker 00

  Oh, Peggy.

• 21:46Yasi Salek?

  I know. He said, my whole world came crashing down on me then. If it wasn't for our kid, I don't know what I would have done.

• 21:51Speaker 00

  I remembered my whole world kept crashing down. I remember that.

• 21:55Yasi Salek?

  He said, it's all right. You just said something daft. I love the idea of like Liam comforting him. And he was like, this is my little brother who I look after, putting his arm around me and saying, it'll be all right, man. But I don't think people will ever forgive me for it. There's a lot of moments like this where you're like, oh, like, there's a real love and tenderness between these two, you know?

• 22:15Speaker 00

  I think both can be true. We sort of said, like, the ferry incidents in Amsterdam, like, sort of ruined everything. Like, they never, I, I agree with the idea that they never recovered, but I also completely agree with the idea that they played it up like for a long time. Like, obviously, they did. And, you know, it's just, you can't, you can't play that role in the press and in your public life for years without it poisoning, like, your actual life. You know, and I, you know, there's no way to chart at what point it went from being fake to being real. But I, yeah. What's fascinating about this band is the push and pull of them hating each other, but being inseparable from each other, you know, and it just, it's,

• 22:56Speaker 00

  you can't tell if they're going from hate to love, or from love to hate, or sort of both simultaneously, and they'll cross in the middle somewhere.

• 23:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, no, totally. After this, Quigsy briefly leaves Oasis because he has a mental breakdown, or as it's termed, nervous exhaustion. Yeah, fair enough. Noel said, "We were rehearsing in Brixton Academy. Me and Quigsy got in a taxi back to where we live. The whole taxi ride, he just stared out the window with his back to me. I never thought of anything of it. That was just Quigs, probably thinking of the cricket as we're passing the Oval." You know, the big thing is that Quigsy is obsessed with cricket. Liam said, "Quigs maybe just didn't like the fame side of it, whereas I fucking absolutely fucking loved every minute of it. I was like, bring it on, let's have it." Noel said, "We weren't the kind of band to go, 'Poor Quigs.'" It was like, fuck that cunt, we've got shit to do, man. So we called

• 23:47Yasi Salek?

  one of our pals, Scott MacLeod. So they bring in Scott MacLeod of this band, The Yaa Yaa's. Just to underline what it was like touring with Oasis, he came, played several shows on tour, was in the Wonderwall video, and then one day in the middle of the American tour was like, "I want to go home." And Maggie, the tour manager, was like, "Yeah, we all want to go home, what are you talking about?" She was like, he was like, "No, I'm going home. Bye. I miss my girlfriend."

• 24:17Speaker 00

  You're either cut out for it, or you're not.

• 24:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And I was like, he couldn't handle it, because me and Liam were drinking all the time, arguing all the time, which seven times out of 10 escalates into fights about what is the greatest Christmas single of all time. Well, it's fucking War Is Over, Isn't It? What about Slade? Fuck Slade, Slade are shit. Slade are fucking great. I love that, like, this is what's going on, that the guy was like, "I literally can't take it out with you guys anymore," because they were fighting over Slade. They don't have a bass player and they have to go play Letterman. They were like, "Whatever, man. Bonehead, can you play bass?" And Bonehead's like, "Yeah, I'll play bass." So there's a Letterman appearance where Bonehead plays bass and they only have Noel on guitar.

• 24:56Speaker 00

  This is probably the time to ask this question, which is medium rude, but how important are the other three guys in Oasis, generally?

• 25:05Yasi Salek?

  It's so hard to say, right? Like- Are we talking for vibes?

• 25:12Speaker 00

  Right.

• 25:12Yasi Salek?

  Are we talking for musical input?

• 25:15Speaker 00

  Are they glue guys? You know, do they? Exactly. Is it a vibe thing or is it an actual contribution? Because we're getting, you know, on Morning Glory into songs that I think really work as full band songs. You know, where like everybody's personality is showcased. And that's not a given at all. That's not the norm at all. But I do wonder if in general, it's vibes or it's music, or it's neither. Or if it really doesn't matter at all and like they're friends, but like otherwise, who cares?

• 25:45Yasi Salek?

  I would argue it's definitely not that third thing because

• 25:48Speaker 00

  Okay, okay.

• 25:49Yasi Salek?

  From the beginning, Noel says that Bonehead is like the mascot, the spirit of Oasis is Bonehead.

• 25:54Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 25:55Yasi Salek?

  Like his energy is, but then also, I mean, you can kind of see it like, I don't want to get into foreshadowing here, but Bonehead and Gwigsy leave the band at the same time and

• 26:06Speaker 00

  It matters.

• 26:07Yasi Salek?

  It's not exactly amazing music output after that, you know? So like whether, whether or not that's the main factor, obviously, you know, what do they say? Correlation is not causality or whatever. But Marcus calls after this and checks on Gwigsy and Gwigsy is telling him like, well, Scott McCloud left the tour and Gwigsy's like, oh, fine. If the doctor says I can come back, I'll come back. And the doctor was like, yeah, you just have to come check in. He literally had like a medical condition.

• 26:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:36Yasi Salek?

  I don't think the touring with the Oasis Brothers fighting every day and all the drinking and partying was doing much for the medical condition, but

• 26:42Speaker 00

  Can't help.

• 26:43Yasi Salek?

  But you're right. What's the story? Parenthesis. Morning Glory comes out October 2nd, 1995 and it's, dare I say, a masterpiece?

• 26:55Speaker 00

  I was about to ask you if it was your favorite and I guess that answers that question.

• 26:59Yasi Salek?

  It's not.

• 27:00Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 27:00Yasi Salek?

  Definitely maybe is my favorite, but I think because I've spent the last couple of days immersed in the swamp of post- Be here now Oasis.

• 27:10Speaker 00

  Likewise.

• 27:10Yasi Salek?

  It's really put into sharp contrast. What uh, what's the story was giving us? What we, we didn't know how good we had it, if you will, you know?

• 27:21Speaker 00

  No, I agree with, I think literally everything you just said. I, I'll, I'll give, yes, masterpiece works for me.

• 27:27Yasi Salek?

  You know, listen, hit number one, obviously a record breaking 345,000 copies in its first week. 22 million worldwide, four million in Britain. Fifth best selling album in UK chart history. 17 times platinum in the UK as of January of this year. It hit number four on the Billboard 200, which is a big deal.

• 27:47Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 27:48Yasi Salek?

  On the back of Wonderwall, I think, cause you know, Wonderwall, you know what Americans love? Wonderwall.

• 27:55Speaker 00

  Did a Blur album get anywhere close to this?

• 27:58Yasi Salek?

  In America? No, I don't, I don't think so. No, I don't think so. I mean, I, they did really well with uh.

• 28:11Yasi Salek?

  I just call it woo-hoo to be, to be cheeky.

• 28:14Speaker 00

  It's, that's what it's called, yeah.

• 28:16Yasi Salek?

  They hit 61.

• 28:18Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 28:20Yasi Salek?

  Do, do you know what I mean? Like on the Billboard 200 with that album? They did really well in America. They got a lot of like, um, ad placements and, and you know, stuff like that, but.

• 28:29Speaker 00

  I'm sure Gorillaz did better than Blur.

• 28:33Yasi Salek?

  Gorillaz did better than all of, all of the Blur albums in America.

• 28:36Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 28:37Yasi Salek?

  Girls was very popular. This album took 16 days to record.

• 28:42Speaker 00

  Oh my God. That's shocking.

• 28:45Yasi Salek?

  Isn't that nuts?

• 28:46Speaker 00

  It is nuts.

• 28:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  That's actually nuts. I was, I thought you were gonna say 16 months, actually, so that's, there you go.

• 28:53Yasi Salek?

  That's why it's so, it comes out so close to definitely, maybe they were really like on fire. They were cooking with literal gas, babe, that's happening. Owen Morris, their producer, cause this, this album is produced by Owen and Noel. He said, Morning Cry was incredibly easy. All my sessions with Oasis were incredibly quick and easy because Noel had the songs and the arrangements. And he'd teach the band the songs very quickly, you know? This is the song, boys, here are the chords. We'd have a few run-throughs, then we'd record it, two takes.

• 29:20Speaker 00

  And it sounds like it. Now, now that you, now that you say that, there is an ease.

• 29:25Yasi Salek?

  It has that energy.

• 29:25Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 29:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Noel said something very funny, which I was feeling vindicated by my earlier assertion in the Blur episode. He said, "We were never the kind of band to sit there and theorize and try to intellectualize our music. This is the song. I've written it. This is it. I'm gonna play it how it goes. Everyone join in." We weren't artists. We were just a fucking good band with good tunes. And this was basically where I stand on the difference between Blur and Oasis, which is that Blur are artists. That was their whole thing.

• 29:54Speaker 00

  Right.

• 29:54Yasi Salek?

  We go to art school. We think of music as art. We're framing it. We're putting context. We have messages.

• 30:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:00Yasi Salek?

  And Oasis was like, "We make music. This is music. It's not art. Get the fuck."

• 30:05Speaker 00

  Right.

• 30:06Yasi Salek?

  You know, "Get to fuck," as they would say.

• 30:08Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 30:09Yasi Salek?

  I thought this was really interesting. Speaking of what we're talking about, this sort of like uncanny, otherworldly like bond between Liam and Noel, whether or not they actually liked each other on planet Earth. Owen said, "Liam was extraordinary. I mean, he had this freaky thing where Noel would play the song once on acoustic guitar in the control room to Liam, give him the words, and then he'd go and he'd fucking sing it. Noel would listen to it and check that Liam's got the phrasing for the entire song, that he'd only just heard the once. Melodies, phrasing, the whole fucking caboodle. And then Noel would go, 'Nice one, Liam.'" Noel would fuck off. Liam would bang around another four tracks down, and this would be one in the afternoon, cup of tea, lead vocal done. What

• 30:53Yasi Salek?

  the fuck? He's only heard the song once. I thought that was insane.

• 30:57Speaker 00

  That is insane. It's cool that fucking off is good if you do it by choice. It's just bad if somebody else tells you to do it. Like, that's, that's an interesting dichotomy there.

• 31:08Yasi Salek?

  I think fucking off is good if you've, if you've delivered the goods. Many times Liam will fuck off without having delivered the goods.

• 31:17Speaker 00

  Mid-delivery or pre-delivery, yeah.

• 31:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's not seen, seen as such a good thing. But here, when he's like, "Boom, bitch, mic drop." Yeah.

• 31:26Speaker 00

  There we go.

• 31:27Yasi Salek?

  They asked Noel about that, and Noel was like, "Well, he was at that point great at that, the best in the world." But it's not complicated. It's not jazz fusion. I would write a song and immediately know how Liam was gonna sound.

• 31:41Speaker 00

  I want to hear an Oasis jazz fusion record. I don't, obviously, but it is funny to think about.

• 31:47Yasi Salek?

  I don't, I don't think so. I don't think we need that. There was one minor hiccup during this recording. I don't know if you remember hearing or reading about it. Liam was, his part was very short and he was just like kind of stuck sitting around. He'd get bored and he'd go into town, this small town, and go to the pub and have a few drinky drinks. And as he was having a few drinky drinks, he made a few friendy friends. John Robb was randomly there, so he was with, I think he was recording something with a band nearby. But then also, you know, these other guys, pub guys. And he was like, okay, everybody, as we do after we've had a few drinky drinks, let's go back to my place. My place being in the studio where people are working, Noel is working.

• 32:31Yasi Salek?

  And Noel didn't like that. Noel was mad.

• 32:35Speaker 00

  No drinky drinks for Noel.

• 32:38Yasi Salek?

  Noel did maybe hit Liam in the head with a cricket bat, which I believe obviously belonged to Quigsy, who traveled everywhere with his cricket gear. Smashed him right over the fucking head. Liam was like, it definitely went off that night. It was bad, man. There were loads of little bits in the corner going electrical bits, loads of broken shit, terrible. The whole studio got smashed to bits. I think Whitey was locked in a room while I was going to town on the living room. So Noel was like, who can drive? Famously Noel Gallagher can drive, still to this day doesn't know how to drive. And Whitey was like, oh, I can drive. And he was like, that's, get in, we're going back to fucking London, drive me back to London. So they get in the car, Liam runs after them, throws a trash can at the car.

• 33:22Yasi Salek?

  I believe he broke his foot and sprained his arm or something. Bonehead's nose was broken somehow.

• 33:28Speaker 00

  Goodness gracious.

• 33:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think he broke his foot trying to kick Noel's door down is what I read. The photographer, Michael Spencer Jones, was like, yeah, they, you know, the studio came and was like, kind of didn't bat an eye because like it's rock and roll, baby. But also they were like, oh, we've not seen damage like this since Ozzy Osbourne and Sabbath were recording here. Anyways, we'll clean it right up because that's just, I guess, what we used to be a proper society.

• 33:52Speaker 00

  I guess so.

• 33:53Yasi Salek?

  But that did stop recording for a second. It was 16 days, well, perhaps not consecutively because Noel went to Jersey, not New Jersey, the Jersey of the UK, and Liam went to Portugal.

• 34:08Speaker 00

  The Portugal, presumably.

• 34:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Noel walked in and was like, hey, they thought he wasn't going to come. They were already there and Noel came like the Sunday and was like, hey. And then he handed Liam a Beatles belt buckle that he had gotten him as a gift.

• 34:23Speaker 00

  Oh, well, that's nice.

• 34:25Yasi Salek?

  And Liam was like, thanks. And they just carried on.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  That's like in Spinal Tap when they reunite at the end. Yeah, that's, that's lovely.

• 34:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 34:37Yasi Salek?

  So what's the story of Morning Glory? The title comes from Noel's San Francisco friend, Melissa Lim, where he absconded to when he left tour the meth night because she would answer the phone saying that. But also it comes from a musical, Bye Bye Birdie, from the song The Telephone Hour. What's a story, Morning Glory? What's a word, hummingbird? Have you heard about you going, Kim? I wouldn't know that because I don't believe in musicals, but Noel said that while definitely maybe is about dreaming of being a pop star in a band, what's the story is about actually being a pop star in a band. What do you think about that? Do you get that sense from Morning Glory?

• 35:21Speaker 00

  It's interesting because all of definitely maybe is like, I'm a rock and roll star. I'm going to live forever. I'm up in the sky like. It's a lot more explicit in its intent.

• 35:33Yasi Salek?

  But it's manifestation, like casting a spell.

• 35:37Speaker 00

  Yes. No, yeah. So that's interesting. I don't necessarily look at this record and can point to a song. That's like, this is the song that's about how we made it.

• 35:48Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 35:48Speaker 00

  You know, but I do, I do think there is an ease, there is a comfort, you know, not a smugness, but just a confidence, just securing the knowledge that we are now the biggest band in the world. You know, and cool, don't advertise, right? It's, it's not about anything they say or sing, but it's just, it's ever present, you know, the idea that they know that they're here now and they don't need to talk about how they're going to get here anymore.

• 36:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think that's kind of right. I mean, even though some of the, I think, songs do pre, predate this time, obviously. There's like a bigness to like this album, like obviously, Don't Look Back in Anger and Wonderwall, one, two punch is like stadium anthem music, like rock star meant to be sing alonged by, you know, thousands and thousands of people at once.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 36:45Yasi Salek?

  Hmm, how personal?

• 36:47Speaker 00

  Wonderwall or Don't Look Back in Anger?

• 36:50Yasi Salek?

  Hmm.

• 36:53Yasi Salek?

  It's really hard to say because Wonderwall kind of suffers from that thing that happens when it's like too ubiquitous.

• 37:00Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. That's true.

• 37:02Yasi Salek?

  So I don't know. I mean, I really love Don't Look Back in Anger and I had a real spiritual experience with it once backstage at Coachella. When I didn't, I think I didn't realize this. I was partaking.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:14Yasi Salek?

  In some, in some fun, fun things. And I don't think I realized Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds were on the bill. But I just, but they performed Don't Look Back in Anger and I just heard the song from backstage and I like laid down on the grass and it was like truly a profound moment.

• 37:31Speaker 00

  That sounds nice. That sounds idyllic.

• 37:34Yasi Salek?

  It was nice. I mean, they're both phenomenal songs, right? I mean, I don't think you can, you can deny the power of these songs. Do you have a preference?

• 37:45Speaker 00

  I didn't think I did, and I agree with you about the ubiquity of Wonderwall now affecting things, but every time "Don't Look Back in Anger" comes on, I'm like, this is the one. Like, this is the one for me. You know, I, there's something really fascinating to me about how this song makes very little sense on a line-by-line basis. It is not narratively coherent, but it is perfectly emotionally coherent.

• 38:14Yasi Salek?

  What do you mean? What lyrics don't make sense to you?

• 38:18Speaker 00

  Well, "So Sally Can Wait," you know it's too late as she's what, like, I, there's like, individual lines, right? Like, "Please don't put your life in the hands of a rock and roll band, we'll throw it." Like, each individual line is great, but I don't understand how one leads from the other. I don't have any idea what story is being told here, and that's because I don't think a story is being told here. But there's something about the cumulative weight of all those lines and of this song that just perfectly conveys, you know, something emotional without actually coherently describing it. That doesn't make any sense either, but just like, I think it's, I think it was after the Ariana Grande concert bombing.

• 39:01Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 39:02Speaker 00

  That there was like a vigil and like, there was a, like, a spontaneous crowd eruption of singing that song. And that's like, that's gonna just knock you on your ass for weeks, right? Like, I, there's a reason why it's that song in that moment. And I think that part of the power of it is that it can't be explained in words. There's just some sort of cumulative effect.

• 39:26Yasi Salek?

  It literally can't because it doesn't, like you said, it doesn't make sense. And even Noel Gallagher to this day is like, I don't know what I was on about, babe. I was on, I was real fucked up when I wrote that. He wrote it in Paris after a night out with the Lads post-show where they went to a strip club. And this is what he said on a podcast, and one of the strippers was named Sally.

• 39:56Speaker 00

  Problem solved.

• 39:57Yasi Salek?

  Well, that, that, that part of it anyways. Yeah, there's a lot of it that you're like, okay, step outside, summertime's in bloom, gorge, stand up beside the fireplace. Now, why are we by the fireplace if summertime is in bloom?

• 40:11Speaker 00

  Physically, the physical, right, yeah.

• 40:24Speaker 00

  But like, I'll start a revolution from my bed because they said the brains I had went, like, that's beautiful. That's perfect, you know, and that's, that's Oasis versus Blur in miniature.

• 40:41Yasi Salek?

  Well, that I can explain because Noel was on tour in the United States and had this, like, tape that apparently someone had stolen from the Dakota Hotel. That was John Lennon starting to record his memoirs on tape. And he had said something about George Bernard Shaw, who, for those of you who are uneducated illiterates, is the Irish writer who wrote Pygmalion, which was later adapted into the film My Fair Lady.

• 41:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:11Yasi Salek?

  No offense. I believe, I don't think Noel Gallagher's ever read Pygmalion either, but John Lennon was talking about George Bernard Shaw and saying that the brains that he had went to his head. And Noel Gallagher just loved that phrase and he went ahead and took it.

• 41:27Speaker 00

  Sure. Okay.

• 41:28Yasi Salek?

  This is actually the song where he revealed to Q Magazine that he says he's dyslexic. He said, "Sometimes I give lyrics to Liam and the two key words of the sentence will be missing. When I gave him 'Don't Look Back' in anger, he's singing, 'But don't look back, anger, not today.'" And I'm saying, "It's 'Don't Look Back' in anger." And he's saying, "Well, that's not what it fucking says here, chief."

• 41:51Speaker 00

  I hope he actually said chief.

• 41:53Yasi Salek?

  Well, no, he did. That's like a really famous thing is that Noel Gallagher was called chief by all the other members of the band.

• 41:59Speaker 00

  Ah, that's, I dig that. I dig a good respectful and derisive nickname.

• 42:05Yasi Salek?

  Do you think they used that the same way? Is that a very American thing to be like, all right, chief? Like, I thought that might be very American.

• 42:11Speaker 00

  I think the American version is very different, yes, but I'm going to pretend it was the American iteration when it clearly, obviously was not.

• 42:19Yasi Salek?

  It works, it works on both levels.

• 42:21Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 42:21Yasi Salek?

  Well, the first song of the album, I just want to mention, it has an excerpt of Hello, Hello, I'm Back Again by Gary Glitter.

• 42:30Speaker 00

  It's a real unforced error.

• 42:32Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 42:44Yasi Salek?

  I would pay a lot of money to hear Wonderwall again for the first time, just so I could like have that high, because I, I'm sure it was like, oh, or even the first 10 times, first 50 times. It's just we've gotten, we've gotten upwards of 10 million. As producer Liz pointed out to her, a woman in her mid to late twenties, it's Marshall's Home Goods music, which shocked me, shocked me deeply. It shook me to my core. It chilled me.

• 43:09Speaker 00

  I don't care for that.

• 43:09Yasi Salek?

  It made me upset. Yeah.

• 43:11Speaker 00

  Please don't let her talk anymore, honestly.

• 43:16Yasi Salek?

  This is a podcast for olds, but I guess when Noel played the demos of this song and Don't Look Back, Bonehead started crying.

• 43:30Yasi Salek?

  Also, a very funny thing about Wonderwall, two funny things. One is that at the time, Noel said it was about his girlfriend, Meg Matthews, who then became his first wife. But after they got divorced, he was like, well, yeah, I had to say that because like, what am I going to say? It's not about her. But actually, it wasn't about her. It was about an imaginary friend who's going to come and save you from yourself.

• 43:51Speaker 00

  I support that lie. You gotta do that. That's excellent strategic songwriting.

• 43:57Yasi Salek?

  As someone who's had two songs written about me, one, like I said, was mean and one was nice.

• 44:04Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 44:04Yasi Salek?

  I don't know what would be worse. Like, like if they came out retroactively and were like, yeah, actually that song wasn't about you. I just told you that you dumb bitch.

• 44:13Speaker 00

  Which song is better, the mean one or the nice one about you? Like removing your-

• 44:17Yasi Salek?

  The nice one, again.

• 44:19Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 44:19Yasi Salek?

  It has nothing to do with the the spiritual content. The mean one could have been better. It just happened that the the guy who wrote the nice one is a better songwriter.

• 44:27Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 44:27Yasi Salek?

  Also, famously, I know everyone already knows this, but I wouldn't be thorough if I didn't say that the title of Wonderwall comes from the 1968 film Wonderwall, From Psychedelia to Surrealism, which George Harrison provided the soundtrack, which was called Wonderwall Music.

• 44:49Speaker 00

  There's also the thing where Liam didn't understand why the drums didn't come in immediately. And like, just crystallizes the Noel Liam divide, you know, why Noel is the songwriter? Why Noel understands dynamics and songwriting? Cause I agree with you completely that I would pay a lot of money to hear this again. Because I remember hearing it for the first time and like my breath catching when the drums come in, you know, like it's such a cheap trick. But like the first time, like that is a legitimate chills moment, you know, that cannot be entirely dulled by this song's ubiquity.

• 45:24Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 45:32Yasi Salek?

  Well, there's also the famous thing of Noel basically was like, here are these two songs. I want to sing one. Which one do you want to sing? And Liam said, I'm not singing Wonderwall. It's not fucking rock and roll. But then when it started to take shape and everyone was like, this is going to be massive. He decides that he's going to save it from mediocrity and make it what it was. So I said I would sing Don't Look Back in Anger.

• 45:54Speaker 00

  Can you picture the reverse? Can you picture Noel singing Wonderwall studio wise and Liam singing Don't Look Back in Anger?

• 46:03Yasi Salek?

  I can picture it, but I don't think it would have hit as hard.

• 46:06Speaker 00

  I agree.

• 46:06Yasi Salek?

  I mean, you can hear it. Obviously, they both, they both have sang both live in their respective solo jaunts. Also, Noel has sang both live when Liam didn't show up for Unplugged. Like, there's a bunch of times early on. But yeah, I mean, Wonderwall hits harder with Liam singing it.

• 46:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I think Don't Look Back in Anger is, part of what's so striking is the different voice, right? Like, just the shock. If you're not really familiar with this band, it's like, oh, yeah. Like, I think that's crucial to the way I first heard it.

• 46:38Yasi Salek?

  And he sounds good.

• 46:39Speaker 00

  He does. He legitimately does.

• 46:41Yasi Salek?

  I feel, I just want to do a little standing of Hey Now. I think Hey Now is criminally underrated. It's one of my favorite songs on this album.

• 46:50Speaker 00

  All right.

• 46:51Yasi Salek?

  I also think people make a lot of Noel's, like, dumb, nonsensical lyrics, and he obviously backs that up because he doesn't want to be seen as vulnerable. But this song is full of vulnerability, babe.

• 47:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:01Yasi Salek?

  Let me just read you a couple lyrics. "I took a walk with my fame down memory lane. I never did find my way back." Okay? Amazing. Then, "The first thing I saw as I walked through the door was a sign on the wall that read, 'It said, 'You might never know that I want you to know what's written inside of your head. And time as it stands won't be held in my hands or living inside of my skin. And as it fell from the sky, I asked myself, 'Why can I never let anyone in?'" I'm sorry, babe, that's fucking plain as day. That's clear as a whistle.

• 47:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:43Yasi Salek?

  That's really putting it out there, what his whole thing was, right? That he was so afraid to, like, show himself or let people get close to him.

• 47:53Speaker 00

  And it's not obscured exactly, but I do, like, I just dig the sound of Hey Now. I dig the guitars.

• 48:00Yasi Salek?

  Me too.

• 48:00Speaker 00

  You know, it's like, it's like the tallest order imaginable to follow the one-two punch of Wonderwall and Don't Look Back in Anger. Like, how do you transition out of that to, like, the rest of an album? Right. And I think this does a really good job of keeping the poignancy. Yeah, I had never thought about those lyrics like that before, and that's very cool. But I do think it does a really good job within the track list of like keeping the poignancy of those two songs, but like bringing back in like rock, right? Like there's a little bit of brashness, you know, it's not buried, but it's not as certainly not as prominent as either Don't Look Back in Anger or Wonderwall. Like it's a cool bridge to the rest of the record, you know,

• 48:45Speaker 00

  that still smuggles in a lot of very plain, vulnerable feelings.

• 48:57Yasi Salek?

  I just love it. I love it. I love it for the musicality. I love it for the lyrical content.

• 49:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:03Yasi Salek?

  Justice for Hey Now. In the Getting High book, the Palo Hewitt one, he asks one of Noel's friends, which was just like a late night, they were all hanging out. And he was like, do you think that Noel is honest in interviews? And she said that Noel Gallagher gives out a series of truths and half-truths so that in 20 years' time, when they come to look at his career, they'll never really know who he was. I thought that was like really incisive.

• 49:34Speaker 00

  Right.

• 49:34Yasi Salek?

  Given, I mean, this is, I think this book was written before 2000. So, and it kind of did prove to be true in the end.

• 49:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think that there's an aspect, you could say that Oasis were artists. It was in the art of myth-making, of like rock star myth-making, of like playing a role that's basically yourself, you're not faking it, you know, but it's this heightened version of yourself where you can drop in like purely, you know, vulnerable statements, you know, that can hide within all this bluster, right? Like just sort of a hiding in plain sight type deal. Where you're the superhero version of yourself, but you're still like an actual human in a way that no one really understands.

• 50:20Yasi Salek?

  What about Untitled, the Swamp Song?

• 50:26Yasi Salek?

  Opening Glastonbury.

• 50:29Speaker 00

  There we go, there we go. I think we sort of already talked about the idea that these little clips are useful, you know, as bridges and as a chance to catch your breath, you know, and a perfect album is not necessarily a string of perfect songs. But like, for flow, you need something that relieves a little pressure, you know, and it's just sort of an interesting, you don't really understand what's happening type deal. I do think that one of the later Oasis, maybe the last Oasis record, like, sounds like, why don't we make the whole plane out of the Swamp Song, you know, and like, that's not what you want. It's not the worst thing in the world, it's not what you want. But I do, there's a weird

• 51:09Speaker 00

  thing where these are both unnecessary and necessary at the same time. You know, you never think about them, you never put them on, you never put this record on to hear them, but I do think it's hard to imagine the record without them.

• 51:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 51:31Yasi Salek?

  "Cast No Shadow" was the last song written for the album. He wrote it on the train to the studio, and he wrote it for Richard Ashcroft, because Richard Ashcroft had, I guess, gone through the painful initial split of the Verve. Did you know that?

• 51:48Speaker 00

  I knew that, and it's, this is one of my favorite Oasis songs. Like, this is a very beautiful, very tender Oasis song, but it is very funny to imagine Richard Ashcroft hearing this song and being like, "I'm not dead." You know, it sounds like he's dead, you know, and it's just, there's something very funny about this song being like, "Oh, he's the saddest man who ever lived, and no one listens to him ever." It's like, the sad, sad, sad. And it's like, I'm right here. I am writing Bittersweet Symphony as we speak. Like, I'm still alive. You know, there's a quality, there's a quality of eulogy on this song. That's like, it's not like a backhanded compliment, but it's just like, just talking

• 52:33Speaker 00

  about him like he had failed. And his, you know, bound with all the, like, it's in the past tense, all the words he tried to say. Like, there's just something very odd about the phrasing and even just the verb tense of this song.

• 52:51Speaker 00

  That's very funny to me, even amid like the really genuine tenderness of it.

• 53:02Yasi Salek?

  Noel said it's about songwriters in general who are desperately trying to say something. But you know, people have made a lot about the bound with all the weight of all the words he tried to say being like, you know, autobiographical.

• 53:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:16Yasi Salek?

  I don't know. He said, in a way, it's about all my friends who are in groups. We are bound with the weight of all the words we have to say. We're always looking for more. Richard Ashcroft cried when Noel played him this song and Noel said, come on, hold yourself together, son. Easy now.

• 53:30Speaker 00

  That's very sweet.

• 53:31Yasi Salek?

  Don't cry, you little bitch. That's what Noel said.

• 53:34Speaker 00

  Dude's rock. Yeah.

• 53:36Yasi Salek?

  Dude's rock. Richard Ashcroft's the tender spirit.

• 53:39Speaker 00

  He is.

• 53:40Yasi Salek?

  We talked about She's Electric? We haven't. The song that borrows from the theme song of a children's program that Noel loved to watch as a child called You and Me.

• 53:48Speaker 00

  I was not aware of that. I get, I get some She's a Rainbow, some Stones off this, though that's a little more surface level. So that's, that's not surprising to me that there's a children's show involved.

• 54:13Yasi Salek?

  It has a children's song energy for sure. Morning Glory has some strong R E M, this one goes out to the one I love, influence. Do you hear that?

• 54:25Speaker 00

  That's very true. I got Rockin' in the Free World as well. I think we can both be right. But yeah, oh, there's a lot. The one I love is really good. Yes.

• 54:45Speaker 00

  I have to say, all your dreams are made when you're chained to the mirror and the razor blade is like, that is an awfully hard line, like in context or out of context.

• 54:57Yasi Salek?

  You mean hard, like let's fucking go, it's hard or like rough? Like that's really sad and dark.

• 55:02Speaker 00

  Rough. I, I think a little, like 20% of the former and 80% of the latter. Right. Yeah. But it's, that's raw.

• 55:12Speaker 00

  Right?

• 55:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, especially given that like it's so self-aware, given that like you're that's like you're in the midst of that and it no plans of stopping at this moment, but like knowing that like I'm not it's like very much like, yeah, I'm not proud of myself.

• 55:28Speaker 00

  Right?

• 55:29Yasi Salek?

  It is what it is.

• 55:30Speaker 00

  Well, yeah.

• 55:39Yasi Salek?

  Swamp song excerpt two, Pumpin' the Brakes again, Paul Weller, Paul Weller's on harmonica, honey.

• 55:46Speaker 00

  Oh, good.

• 55:47Yasi Salek?

  Give it up. And then, uh, we didn't even talk about the third major moment in the trifecta of crowd sing-alongs and Marshall's Home Goods soundtrack music, Champagne Supernova.

• 56:10Yasi Salek?

  This song I categorize firmly in my bucket of songs that I deem Sunday songs. Do you agree? You know, you know, my theory about Sunday songs, Sunday afternoon songs.

• 56:21Speaker 00

  In terms like the Sunday scaries, yeah.

• 56:23Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 56:24Speaker 00

  Like the party's over and it's just gonna hurt.

• 56:27Yasi Salek?

  Hundred percent. I mean, I if you if I wasn't a hundred years old, I would say like it's the feeling of the sun is coming up and you've been partying and you're like, motherfucker. And then someone jogs by, do you know what I mean? Like they jog right by to get a smoothie and you're like, I need to question all my life choices.

• 56:43Speaker 00

  Delivering the paper. Yes, okay. No, I get you. I get you.

• 56:48Yasi Salek?

  That's not a bad thing. This is a this is a rich canon, but where were you while we were getting high, Rob?

• 56:59Speaker 00

  In the Ohio University Dining Hall, getting another twist.

• 57:04Yasi Salek?

  You were in the wreck, the Ohio, the Ohio University Cafe, Java Jones, with your acoustic guitar, ready to fucking blow them away with your blistering open mic set.

• 57:16Speaker 00

  I told you that I did Wonderwall at like a karaoke once and I bombed. Like it was when I was at it was at a bar called On Tap. In Ohio, in Akron, Akron adjacent Ohio, and it's, I, it was horrible. The vibes were so bad. I was looking, the, the DJ had like a screen that showed like the, the record revolving and he could change the speed to adjust to your tone if you were, if your pitch was off.

• 57:47Yasi Salek?

  Oh my god.

• 57:48Speaker 00

  And I, I was trying, as I'm singing this song, I'm trying to decide if he's doing that. If I'm like so pitchy that he has to adjust it, or if he's adjusting it like to fuck with me, or if he's not adjusting it at all. There was a lot going on in my head as I tried to sing, oh wait, uh, uh, uh, try to sing Wonderwall.

• 58:05Yasi Salek?

  A little in your own head, I think, giving.

• 58:08Speaker 00

  Exactly. And it's like, the phrases are so long. It's a harder song to sing than you think, you know, like it's just in terms of breath control, you know, there's just, it's, it, there's, there's more to it than you assume.

• 58:22Yasi Salek?

  You were saying it's an incredible ender to the album, Champagne Supernova.

• 58:26Speaker 00

  Great closing track, yes. Great closing of an era track, I guess, in retrospect, or maybe that was clear at the time. I don't know, but there is something distinctly valedictory about it.

• 58:39Yasi Salek?

  You know what's really interesting about Morning Glory? The critics are at it again, honey. They're at it again in the sense that this got kind of lukewarm reviews at the time.

• 58:50Speaker 00

  Really?

• 58:51Yasi Salek?

  Which is so insane. Yes. It's, it's truly, okay, here's what Melody Maker said. "Some might say they've already blown it. Catch AIDS and die, eh? As with the Mondays, the London media have flirted with a bit of Northern Rough and it's all ended in tears. After we became jaded with Suede, we all fancied a bit of Back to Beatles basics, some scally delinquency, a bit of noble savagery from a bunch of Mancunians, whose inarticulacy was proof perfect that they had no need of contrivance or justification, that they were the real deal. Instinctive, authentic heirs who drank from the same northwestern waters as the Roses, the Mondays, the Laws, the Fab Four before them. Now we realize the reason they are inarticulate is that they're not that bright."

• 59:34Speaker 00

  Sheesh.

• 59:36Yasi Salek?

  And then the end of it is, "So what's the story? Lots of moments, but too many quarters of an hour in between. Oasis are fallen, fallen short of the stars. They sound knackered."

• 59:46Speaker 00

  It's people complaining that this album is too long is funny. Hold my beer.

• 59:53Yasi Salek?

  It's like, oh, really? Hold on, babe. Spin did one of those things that they love to do. The dual review. Obviously, they put it with Blur's The Great Escape. They gave both of them a six out of 10.

• 1:00:07Yasi Salek?

  He said, "The more Blur and Oasis act British by pretending to be funny without punchlines on their long-awaited new albums, long-awaited in England, anyway, the less I like them. Oasis's quirks grate on me, especially barbershop piano mincing like she's electric." Blur actually does a song about a Nowhere man named Arnold Seame because he does the same thing every day. Oh, I get it. Okay, it's really cra- Chuck Eddy, respectfully. It's crazy to single out the only, like, not-that-good song on an album that had Wonderwall, Don't Look Back in Anger, and fucking Champagne Supernova and be like, well, yeah, they're doing all this She's Electric shit. And it's like, mm, did we hear the same?

• 1:00:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's very Chuck Eddy, though. It's interesting always what Chuck gravitates toward and what he doesn't gravitate toward. You know, you don't, he's not going to talk about the same thing everyone else is talking about. Can I ask in general if the battle of Britpop and Oasis losing the battle of Britpop, did that mean anything? Like, a week later? Were they seen as inevitable? Or were they seen as weakened? You know, I'm trying to figure out how this album was perceived based on the battle of Britpop, if it mattered at all.

• 1:01:20Yasi Salek?

  It's one of those classic cases where the critics were kind of saying one thing, but like, the world was saying another. It was blowing out of the fucking stores, you know what I mean? So like, they kind of got it wrong. And actually, the battle of Britpop weakened Blur more than anything, even though they won that, it's very the famous thing of they won the battle but lost the war because Oasis almost became even more of an under, working-class underdog, I think. And then people were really fucking rooting for them. And then they put out motherfucking Wonderwall and everyone was like, okay.

• 1:01:48Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:01:48Yasi Salek?

  Never mind, country house.

• 1:01:52Yasi Salek?

  We also didn't talk about it, but Country House was really like leaning into like the ladishness, the new lad, like it had like the Page Three girls, which are the girls that would appear nude on the Page Three of The Sun, running around being, it was like very Benny Hill themed, being chased by the members of Blur. And it was like very cartoonish, you know, and I think some people were like, no, we want Salt of the Earth, you know?

• 1:02:16Speaker 00

  Right. Too much chimney sweep energy.

• 1:02:19Yasi Salek?

  They didn't put Wonderwall out as a single till after What's the Story, which I thought was kind of an interesting move on their part.

• 1:02:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, as you say, like with Liam trying to decide which song to sing and realizing that Wonderwall is building towards something like, yeah, I would be curious to know in like real terms, if they had any idea that this was gonna be The One.

• 1:02:44Yasi Salek?

  No. And, and also it didn't hit number one. It only hit number two.

• 1:02:49Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:02:50Yasi Salek?

  Which is really wild. There was a easy listening band called The Mike Flowers Pops, who did a cover of Wonderwall that December, just like a few months later. And their version also hit number two on the singles chart.

• 1:03:10Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:03:11Yasi Salek?

  It is said that Noel made a quarter million pounds just on that cover sale.

• 1:03:17Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:03:18Yasi Salek?

  Cause obviously as the publishing. So, you know, he did okay.

• 1:03:35Yasi Salek?

  Okay. The Battle of Britain probably did not slow them down. They play in November on the Fifth and Sixth, their biggest shows today at Earl's Court, which is like one of the, I think it is the biggest indoor gig that Europe had ever seen. That's what was allegedly happening. 20,000 people a night. Madonna went, U2 went, Elton John, George Michael, McCartney. It was a real who's who. Noel bought everyone in the band a Lembretta, those little scooteries. This is where he played that Union Jack guitar.

• 1:04:05Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:04:06Yasi Salek?

  Famously.

• 1:04:07Speaker 00

  Very important.

• 1:04:08Yasi Salek?

  And they had offered the support slot to Richard Ashcroft. Now not with the verb and smaller, which was Diggsy of Diggsy's dinner fame. They both said no. So who did they have? The country's premier Beatles cover band, the Bootleg Beatles, open for them both nights.

• 1:04:26Speaker 00

  Why did they say no?

• 1:04:28Yasi Salek?

  Scared? I don't know. Played a 20,000 Oasis fans who didn't want to hear, hear them.

• 1:04:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's, that's valid. Honestly, the more I think about it.

• 1:04:36Yasi Salek?

  Richard Ashcroft is tender, in a tender state at this point. He's like, I'm not getting out there alone. Bono went the first night and I just want to point that out because Liam has a great memory of that where he said, "Bono? Yeah, mad cunt. He reminds me of me dad. Same height, same face, only when he was younger. I told Bono that and he said, I am your dad. I said, no, you're not. He said, I am your dad and you are my son. Mad cunt. He keeps giving us presents." The first one was a cactus.

• 1:05:09Speaker 00

  Ooh, I'm sure that's symbolic in some way. Isn't the Bono talk a legendary thing? This is a corny love construction, right? That like Bono sits down with the new biggest rock bands and sort of tells them what to do and what not to do.

• 1:05:24Yasi Salek?

  Initiates them into the, I think it would probably have gone over with almost anyone. Like it probably went well with Chris Martin, but Liam was like, "You're not my dad. Can you go away? What are you talking? You're being weird."

• 1:05:35Speaker 00

  Same height, same height is funny. That's very funny.

• 1:05:40Yasi Salek?

  Liam was more excited for the special guest that was coming on night two, which was John Squire of the Stone Roses.

• 1:05:44Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:05:45Yasi Salek?

  They are the biggest band in the country at this point. Blur Who, what ends up happening? Which we talked about in the Blur episode is actually quite hilarious, but I think was maybe traumatic at the time for Damon Albarn. In which people would see Damon Albarn walking down the street and roll down their window and Blair Oasis songs. And when he would walk into a store, they would blast Oasis songs and they would come up to him. He said he was like on a train platform in the middle of like a village in France. And some French guy came up to him and was like, "Where's Liam?" And he was like, "What the fuck, man?"

• 1:06:16Speaker 00

  I would not enjoy that.

• 1:06:17Yasi Salek?

  He became like public enemy number one after that. Alan McGee, obviously happy as a clam, babe, because the money is rolling in. He gathers Oasis for the creation holiday party and gives them all elaborate, beautiful gifts. And famously, he gave Liam a Rolex and he gave Noel, who I might need to remind you cannot drive, a chocolate brown and white Rolls Royce. It did come with a driver. It's kind of an extravagant gift.

• 1:06:46Speaker 00

  Does the driver get to ever leave the car? You know, or does he has to sit in there the whole time in the garage?

• 1:06:51Yasi Salek?

  What do you think we need to do for Sean Fantasy to pull us aside at the Ringer holiday party and be like, I have a gift for you outside. It's a chocolate brown and white Rolls Royce. I bought you a roly, hun.

• 1:07:08Speaker 00

  Man, that's a tough one. For me, it is write a script that is less than 5,000 words. I think that would probably earn me a roly.

• 1:07:18Yasi Salek?

  You're never getting the roly. I know for me, it's make an episode that's shorter, shorter than two hours. Nobody's getting a Rolls Royce this year.

• 1:07:27Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:07:28Yasi Salek?

  This is a very prescient quote from Noel Gallagher and the top of 1996 in Q Magazine. If we was to sit down now and take John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Ray Davies, Steve Marriott, anybody's first two albums against my first two albums, I'm there. I'm with the Beatles. If you ask me where I'll be after my eighth album in comparison to the Beatles, then they'll piss all over me probably.

• 1:07:54Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:07:55Yasi Salek?

  He is not wrong.

• 1:07:57Speaker 00

  Neither parts of that are wrong. Yeah.

• 1:08:00Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 1:08:02Yasi Salek?

  He knew. He knew what he knew what he was doing. Anywhoed, we're not there yet. We're still in our impure phase. Don't you worry, babe. Okay, it's the Brit Awards, February 19th. Oasis wins a ton of awards. Including best video for Wonderwall, which is presented to them by one Michael Hutchence. May he rest in peace.

• 1:08:19Speaker 00

  Oh, that's right. What did he?

• 1:08:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:21Speaker 00

  Something happened here. Yeah.

• 1:08:23Yasi Salek?

  I'll tell, I'll tell you about it. Michael Hutchence came and gave them the award and Noel Gallagher said on national television, has-beens shouldn't give prizes to gonna-be's.

• 1:08:33Speaker 00

  That's right. Oh, my God.

• 1:08:35Yasi Salek?

  Which does seem unnecessarily mean, but if you don't know the backstory, it's actually quite tender that he was defending his brother because prior to this, in this award ceremony, Michael Hutchence had said onstage, I guess Liam Gallagher wants to fight me. Now, what had happened was at the 1995 MTV European Music Awards, Michael Hutchence and Liam Gallagher nearly came to blows backstage over Hutchence's paramour Paula Yates, who I think kind of had a crush on Liam. There were some words and almost physicality exchange. And then backstage at the Brits, they had another scuffle and Hutchence threw a fire extinguisher.

• 1:09:12Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:09:13Yasi Salek?

  At Liam Gallagher.

• 1:09:14Speaker 00

  Yikes.

• 1:09:15Yasi Salek?

  Maybe Liam Gallagher made some disparages and remarks about Paula Yates. We don't know.

• 1:09:19Speaker 00

  I think we can assume that. Yeah.

• 1:09:21Yasi Salek?

  So this all kind of comes to a head. Noel said, you know, there had been words or whatever. And he said, so when he came out to present the award, we went, right, these Brits organizers have stitched us up here because they know what's going on. We decided that every time we hit that stage, we're going to give it to everyone. And we fucking duly did. It wasn't scripted or anything like that. We probably wouldn't have done anything if Michael Hutchence hadn't come out and said his little bit. We were like, don't fucking try and pick a fight with us, man, because we're the best at giving verbal abuse.

• 1:09:49Speaker 00

  That is undeniably true.

• 1:09:51Yasi Salek?

  They're the best at giving verbal abuse. And they did. And then did you know that Michael Hutchence hated them so much that he immortalized his hatred in the Inexcess song, Elegantly Wasted, off the next Inexcess album, also called Elegantly Wasted, where he added some additional vocals to the chorus of that song, which even the rest of the band was unaware of until months after it came out. When you listen very closely, you can hear, I am elegantly wasted, but you can also hear, I am better than Oasis.

• 1:10:27Speaker 00

  Wow. I had no idea. I'm gonna go listen to that on headphones right now.

• 1:10:38Speaker 00

  Pretty petty.

• 1:10:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:40Speaker 00

  I'm into it.

• 1:10:41Yasi Salek?

  Not to be overshadowed by the fact that this is the same Brits award where Liam used another award to take the opportunity to shit on Blur by sort of mimicking their song Park Life and being like, he thanked all the people, so many people, and then called it Shite Life.

• 1:10:58Speaker 00

  It's less clever.

• 1:11:09Yasi Salek?

  Tony Blair is in the building, babe.

• 1:11:11Speaker 00

  Oh, boy.

• 1:11:12Yasi Salek?

  Tony Blair has started his romancing of the indie rock world, his Hello Fellow Kids campaign. When they win their last order of the night, Best Group, Oasis, Noel says, "There are seven people in this room who are giving a little bit of hope to young people in this country. That's me, our kid, Bonehead, Gwigs, Alan White, Alan McGee, and Tony Blair. And if you've all got anything about you, you'll go up there and you'll shake Tony Blair's hand, man. He's the man. Power to the people."

• 1:11:46Speaker 00

  What a beautiful sentiment. Yeah, drinky drinks.

• 1:11:58Yasi Salek?

  This is what Liam said. I didn't even know who Tony Blair was. What's his record? Is he like a jazz musician or something? Who the fuck is Tony Blair? Never heard of him.

• 1:12:08Yasi Salek?

  He was in a band called Ugly Rumors in college, by the way, just so you know. He's a real one, yeah. He was kind of mad that Noel did this because he's not into politics. And Noel said later, like, "We were fucking wasted. I was talking some bullshit. I don't know what I said." Tony Blair is gonna play more prominently into the Oasis story later, but this is kind of the beginning of it. They play Top of the Pops in February of this year, and it's just important because they became the third band ever to play two songs on a Top of the Pops. No one ever got to play two songs. The Beatles, The Jam, and Oasis. They did Don't Look Back in Anger and their cover of Come On, Feel the Noise.

• 1:12:44Speaker 00

  Which I quite enjoy, I have to say. Their cover of Come On, Feel the Noise. It really works for me. It sounds like the Beatles.

• 1:12:51Yasi Salek?

  They do really good covers.

• 1:12:52Speaker 00

  They do. They really do.

• 1:13:02Yasi Salek?

  They play in March at The Point in Dublin, two nights. These shows are major. The Irish people have claimed them because, you know, ostensibly they're Irish, two Irish parents. Their mom comes, she's super proud, huge wonderwall sing-along. But the British tabloids, who are fucking insane, I must say, like, you can say a lot of bad stuff about America, but like TMZ pales in comparison. Our tabloids, which I feel like our tabloids were like half-celebrity shit. And of course, we had crazy paparazzi back in the heyday of like 90s and 2000s. And you had also like those weird magazines who were like, I had an aliens baby.

• 1:13:44Yasi Salek?

  But they wouldn't, they weren't up to the fuck shit that the British tabloids were up to, such as bringing Tommy Gallagher, their dad, who they had not spoken to in years, paying him apparently to show up at their hotel.

• 1:14:00Speaker 00

  Oh, that's right.

• 1:14:02Yasi Salek?

  Noel was kind of like, I don't care. But Liam was really upset and Noel had to like go over and be like, don't react. Don't talk to him. Like, let it go. Just leave. He was like trying to get tickets. He was like, I want to get on the list. He called. He called the next day, called Liam. They tapped the call and Liam was like, well, you won't be getting any tickets. And if you come near us in our hotel, I'll break your fucking legs. And you know what the tabloid did? They made that into a hotline that you paid 39p for and you could hear the recording. So fucking gross.

• 1:14:38Speaker 00

  It's pretty gross. 39p.

• 1:14:40Yasi Salek?

  Ugly. So ugly. The journalist's name was Jane Atkinson, so just, shame port up on her head.

• 1:14:48Speaker 00

  Shout out Jane.

• 1:14:49Yasi Salek?

  Shout out Jane. But also, it's just like, this is, the fame is starting be a detriment. You know, like I think up until... This point, it had been, this is fun, this is cool. And now it's like, mm.

• 1:15:06Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 1:15:07Yasi Salek?

  All right. They play Main Road. This is the Manchester City Football Club's home. So meaningful. Two nights, 78,000 people, sells out in 20 minutes. Imperial phase, babe.

• 1:15:20Speaker 00

  This is the part where the scale is very hard to wrap your head around. Like these, you just, the numbers you're gonna be throwing out for the next 10, 15 minutes are going to be difficult to translate into real life.

• 1:15:36Yasi Salek?

  I mean, for a couple of reasons, right? We'll get to Nebworth, but like, I remember when I first saw the Oasis Supersonic documentary, which is so phenomenal. Yeah, I went to the fucking movie theater, popcorn, Sherman Oaks.

• 1:15:50Speaker 00

  Really? All right, in the theater.

• 1:15:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:54Speaker 00

  I bet. No, you can't do that without subtitles. That's tough.

• 1:15:57Yasi Salek?

  But I think I cried at the Nebworth part because I was so sad of a lost time where that many people were having one unified experience and there's no phones.

• 1:16:09Speaker 00

  The monoculture.

• 1:16:10Yasi Salek?

  Stunning, right?

• 1:16:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:12Yasi Salek?

  Yes, this like beautiful. But also the other interesting thing is like, back to the U2 of it all, they're playing these massive stadiums and they have no stadium, anything about how they do it. They don't have crazy visuals. They don't have pyrotechnics, you know, like, they don't do that, which is kind of unheard of. Like, you don't just go see a band in a stadium and they don't have some fucking wild shit going on. But Oasis just didn't do it. There was, they played the same way that they would play some club in fucking Manchester as the football stadium.

• 1:16:44Speaker 00

  Okay, so this suggests a broader question that I thought immediately when the reunion was announced, right? And when the excitement started.

• 1:16:51Yasi Salek?

  Are they gonna have pyrotechnics? Catwalk.

• 1:16:56Speaker 00

  Oh, they'll definitely have a Catholic. Are Oasis good live?

• 1:17:00Yasi Salek?

  I don't know how to answer that because I only saw them play once and it was post Imperial phase. I really enjoyed it because I had not gone to see them play and the songs are so iconic.

• 1:17:11Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:17:12Yasi Salek?

  I think they were during their heyday, very good live. I, I'm gonna go ahead and throw my cap in that ring. I'm gonna say that. I wasn't there, so I can't say, but like from reading the reviews and, and seeing some of the footage, I think they, when they were on, there was like a visceral, electric, energetic thing that was like,

• 1:17:37Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:17:37Yasi Salek?

  you had to be there kind of situation.

• 1:17:39Speaker 00

  The Liam took over.

• 1:17:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. What do you think, Rob?

• 1:17:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I never saw them at all, but just based on Nebworth, you know, on the separate documentary and the supersonic documentary, the no phones thing is really doing it for me. Also, you know, even if it's just the crowd, even if it's the energy that is being created, because they don't perform in the way that an arena rock band performs.

• 1:18:07Yasi Salek?

  They don't even move.

• 1:18:10Speaker 00

  They don't even move, right? It's like shoegaze. It's like a weird combination of shoegaze and like arena rock. And so it, it falls on the crowd to create the energy of like a seismic cultural defining moment has happened, but the crowd does it. You know, like feeding off Liam and back. Like I, I do think that the holistic environment of an Oasis show is fantastic, you know, and it has, it's not that it has nothing to do with them, the way they're performing, the way they sound, but it's not just about them. There's something environmental that happens there that makes them great, you know, maybe despite themselves.

• 1:18:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I agree. Like, for example, Melody Maker was at this Main Road Show and they said they could never be any better than they are now. Like, it was such an incredible

• 1:19:06Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:19:06Yasi Salek?

  experience. And again, I'm sure like you can't be with eighty seven thousand or whatever I just said. I don't know what the word I seventy eight thousand people singing Wonderwall and not be like, this is the best thing that's ever happened. Nebworth is just the next month, right? Tenth and eleventh, hundred and twenty five thousand people per night. Sold out

• 1:19:24Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:19:25Yasi Salek?

  in minutes.

• 1:19:26Speaker 00

  I was just thinking about the physical distance between the person in the last row at Nebworth or whatever, like who, who is farthest away from the stage who is still technically at this concert? And what is their experience?

• 1:19:43Yasi Salek?

  Right?

• 1:19:44Speaker 00

  Right, right. Yeah.

• 1:19:45Yasi Salek?

  Nebworth was apparently a little fire festy, I heard, like, there was like not enough like food and bathrooms and stuff.

• 1:19:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:53Yasi Salek?

  I read a line in one of the, of the enemy or something that was like Cro-Magnon touts, a tout is a, tout is both a, like a snitch and also a, what are they called? Scalper.

• 1:20:04Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:20:04Yasi Salek?

  Cro-Magnon touts were willing to get you into the gig of the decade for three hundred pounds. That was the scalper price. Now you're like, oh, the, the face value price is four hundred fucking dollars and good luck to you if you're not gonna pay twelve hundred. It was twenty two fifty, by the way, was the price of the ticket. Two and a half million people applied for tickets, apparently. I got a couple of different numbers. It was either four or five percent of the entire population of Britain.

• 1:20:33Speaker 00

  How do you even do that logistically, like, pre-internet?

• 1:20:36Yasi Salek?

  I know, right? Like, you had to go in person and buy it at the fucking HMV or whatever. I mean, they would have been able to pay twenty sold out nights of a hundred and twenty five thousand people if they had sold every ticket of the people that had applied.

• 1:20:49Speaker 00

  Yes. That math does work out.

• 1:20:53Yasi Salek?

  Liam Gallagher was like, I can't believe that we only did two nights. Who's fucking great idea was that? We should still be playing there right now. So this was like 2016.

• 1:21:03Speaker 00

  It should be like Stomp. Yeah, totally.

• 1:21:06Yasi Salek?

  Do you feel this was the pinnacle of their imperial phase?

• 1:21:16Speaker 00

  I can't remember the details, but doesn't someone in the band at the end of the supersonic documentary say that or say words to the effect of, we probably should have stopped?

• 1:21:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Noel says, looking back on it now, it did feel like the end of something as opposed to the beginning of something. I had a sense of that even at Nebles, you know what I mean? That it was never going to happen again. Like, we couldn't get bigger than that. And he says, you know, we should have, we should have quit then and just disappeared.

• 1:21:46Speaker 00

  That's it. Yeah. Just fly off to Cocaine Island, you know, and never be heard from again.

• 1:21:52Yasi Salek?

  It's also really crazy because like, this is about two years and change. Okay? From Noel and Liam being on the dole, two, two, two year, less than two and a half years ago, they're going down the dole office and collecting their dole check. Two and a half years later, they're the biggest fucking band in the UK, playing to a quarter million people.

• 1:22:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:16Yasi Salek?

  Fucking nuts. The support acts were the Charlatans, Coolish Acre, Manning Street Creatures, the Bootleg Beatles, they're back. The Chemical Brothers.

• 1:22:24Speaker 00

  Ooh.

• 1:22:25Yasi Salek?

  Ocean Color Scene and the Prodigy. I know. Can't believe Ocean Color's seen out. The Charlatans, I just want to mention that was actually really insane that they played because their keyboard player had died in a car accident just three weeks before this gig and it was super sad. But they played, they ended up like getting it together and playing anyways. And Martin Duffy of Primal Scream played keys with them. And John Squire came on stage with them for the encore of Champagne Supernova.

• 1:22:53Speaker 00

  Just hanging around.

• 1:22:55Yasi Salek?

  Here's a little fun fact for my fashion heads. You know how Liam, the first night, obviously he's in that like really iconic white parka situation, really looks like thought through. This is amazing. The second night, he's wearing a giant like farmer sheep farm sweater. You know what I'm talking about? Like a big like kind of cream colored knit sweater. And he said, it's because he, he literally forgot they were playing two nights. Like he did not pack two outfits and he didn't want to wear the white jacket again. So he just had that sweater and he wore it.

• 1:23:24Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:23:25Yasi Salek?

  Also, fun fact, the guest list alone had 7,000 people on it.

• 1:23:32Speaker 00

  I do not want to be holding that clipboard, honestly.

• 1:23:35Yasi Salek?

  Alan McGee said, so it was a huge tent, right? You can see it in the doctor's room, it's a huge VIP tent. Alan McGee said the VIP tent had more people in it, like, his, most of his bands couldn't play to a crowd that big.

• 1:23:46Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:23:47Yasi Salek?

  As the VIP tent of this.

• 1:23:49Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:23:50Yasi Salek?

  Noel said later, like, two years later, about what Nebworth meant to him, and he was like, it means that for a six-week period, building up to that gig, we were the biggest band in the world. We were bigger than, dare I say it, fucking God. For that period, it was as if Oasis became the atmosphere that everything else moved in. And he's not wrong. I don't know about bigger than God. I mean, God's not, God's not vying for stadium shows, so.

• 1:24:15Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:24:15Yasi Salek?

  Can't really do a comparison there.

• 1:24:17Speaker 00

  God played Nebworth for seven days. Yeah.

• 1:24:21Yasi Salek?

  God's still playing Nebworth, babe. God, God's been playing Nebworth.

• 1:24:24Speaker 00

  That's true.

• 1:24:25Yasi Salek?

  And, yeah, should they have broken up? I don't know. Should they have taken a break? Absolutely. They did not take a break.

• 1:24:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:33Speaker 04

  But, you know, it was my idea to keep going because I keep on fishing for it, do you know what I mean? And I'm, I'm an addict. Well, that's what shit kickers do. They ride it till the wheels come off.

• 1:24:43Yasi Salek?

  What they did was go ahead and head off to record their MTV Unplugged at the Royal Festival Hall. You've seen this unplugged, right?

• 1:24:53Speaker 00

  Of course. Required viewing for a certain type of person.

• 1:24:57Yasi Salek?

  Men of a certain age and yassis of a certain age.

• 1:25:00Speaker 00

  Precisely.

• 1:25:01Yasi Salek?

  So, they're there, very last minute, 11th hour, and Liam's like, mm, I can't do this. My voice is gone. Oasis had been rehearsing with, like, all these backing musicians for two weeks after Nebworth to do this. Liam did not come to many of the rehearsals, allegedly. So Noel said, the day of the performance, he hadn't turned up, and there were rumors that he'd been out drinking for a couple of days. And nobody knew where he was. About an hour before we were due to go on, he turned up absolutely shitfaced. And he's like, yeah, no, I can do it. And Noel was like, mm, no. Apparently, he went backstage with him, and he was like, oh, you can do it, really? Sing, live forever. And Noel was like, he did a bar, and we gave up.

• 1:25:45Yasi Salek?

  So Noel's like, okay, I've been, I guess I'll fucking sing all of them. The entire thing is on YouTube, like as it was filmed, not as it was like edited and put up on MTV. There's like a real like, you can all like, he's, he's both so confident, but you can also sense like a bit of like, oh fuckness. And he opens the set by saying Liam ain't gonna be with us tonight because he has a sore throat. You're stuck with the ugly four.

• 1:26:12Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:26:13Yasi Salek?

  Nobody laughed.

• 1:26:14Speaker 00

  They rehearsed for two weeks. Like they, the respect they're according to the unplugged franchise is remarkable, right? Because like-

• 1:26:24Yasi Salek?

  Well Noel, they've always been a rehearsing band. That was their whole thing. Noel's whole thing was taking this stuff seriously. And I think they had a bunch of extraneous musicians. So they had, it wasn't just the five of them, right?

• 1:26:35Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:26:36Yasi Salek?

  Maybe they thought if they rehearsed for two weeks, they'd get enough rehearsals out of Liam. I don't know.

• 1:26:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:26:40Yasi Salek?

  Don't worry, Liam was still there in the balcony heckling Noel the whole time.

• 1:26:45Speaker 00

  That he was.

• 1:26:46Yasi Salek?

  So a week later, it's time to leave for tour in America and guess who does not come on the flight to go to tour in America? Liam Gallagher. He told the Washington Post, he had to go house hunting.

• 1:27:00Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:27:01Yasi Salek?

  We gotta be out by the weekend. I'm not going around touring the US where I've got, when I've got nowhere to live. I can't go and look at houses while I'm in America trying to perform for silly Yanks. Liam Gallagher was not a big fan of the American, um, he's talking about him and his girlfriend, Patsy Kensit. This caused the tabloids to go crazy. And while they, they are mental and horrible, they did have really good taglines all of the New York Post. And one was Patsy's got him by his wonder balls.

• 1:27:27Speaker 00

  There it is. Yeah, you do unfortunately gotta hand it to them.

• 1:27:31Yasi Salek?

  He only missed one show, but still it was kind of like a petulant thing. And Noel did the vocals for the one or two shows I think he missed. And he pops back in and comes, joins them August 30th. Right in time for September's MTV VMAs. Now you remember Rob, because this is, this is our time where we were raised by MTV. The VMAs were a huge deal in 1995. 280 million people watched the VMAs.

• 1:27:58Speaker 00

  That's another cartoon number to me.

• 1:28:01Yasi Salek?

  Cartoon number, exactly.

• 1:28:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:28:03Yasi Salek?

  Did you watch this in real time, the Oasis performance on the VMAs in 1995?

• 1:28:08Speaker 00

  I do not have a concrete memory of the Oasis performance. What I remember is like sabotage. I'm trying to think of what are my concrete VMA moments? And it's like Pearl Jam with Neil Young, Nirvana, Lithium, the bass toss, etc. Red Hot Chili Pepper. I'm sure that I watched this. I was pretty, I was still in high school. I was still pretty devout about MTV and about the VMAs, but I cannot summon a concrete memory of Oasis at the VMAs. Now, can you?

• 1:28:38Yasi Salek?

  No, I can't either, but I will obviously watched it now. And Liam is in rare form. He is not in a good mood. He starts off by saying, you're all here to have a great time, but you're having a shite time. Okay. He changes some lyrics like Champagne Supernova, Up Your Bum is a choice one.

• 1:28:58Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 1:28:59Yasi Salek?

  And then he makes some gorgeous little blowjob gestures towards Noel during Noel's guitar solo, and then spits beer all over the stage and storms off at the end.

• 1:29:08Speaker 00

  Rock and roll, dude.

• 1:29:10Yasi Salek?

  Rock and roll. Then by September 11th of this month, Noel is now the one who leaves the tour in the middle. Noel said, everybody was complaining and I just said, why don't we go home? There's nothing stopping anyone from getting on a plane and going home. Our kid suddenly gets an attack of the morals and says, we can't go home. It ain't right. And I said, you can shut up. You never came in the first place, you cunt. I said, I'll show you how easy it is to go home. I went to my room, phoned for a taxi and went to the airport and came home. He actually took the Concorde. He flew, they were in like Charlotte. And then he flew to New York and got on the Concorde. Pretty great.

• 1:29:48Speaker 00

  Oasis in North Carolina is just a very funny construction. I can't quite make, it's like they're on Mars.

• 1:29:56Yasi Salek?

  They were not as beloved in America at this point, right? They're not selling out crazy shows, maybe in New York and LA.

• 1:30:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:04Yasi Salek?

  This does stir up a crazy tabloid storm in the UK and. By the time I think Liam gets back to the airport, there's like paparazzi everywhere. They had all those tabloids speculating that Oasis had broken up. And then they make an announcement sometime in September that they're not going to split. Their management company said Oasis have arrived back in England. Noel and Liam are spending time together and getting over jet lag. Unfortunately, the band will not be touring in the foreseeable future. But in every other aspect, Oasis will continue to exist and function as a band.

• 1:30:36Speaker 00

  It's a good sign, very reassuring.

• 1:30:39Yasi Salek?

  That same month, at the end, New Labour, Tony Blair's little situation, has a thing called the Youth Experience Rally. Hello fellow kids.

• 1:30:48Speaker 00

  Sounds awesome. Sounds dope.

• 1:30:50Yasi Salek?

  Sponsored by Creation Records, Alan McGee got in on it. The band Eighteen Wheeler played. Alan McGee showed up and gave Tony Blair a specially inscribed Oasis Platinum Album. He had asked Noel to come play at this thing, but Noel was like, no, I'm tired. Please just leave me alone. And the platinum record did cause some headlines like, what's the story? Don't vote Tory.

• 1:31:13Speaker 00

  Ooh, it's good.

• 1:31:16Yasi Salek?

  A little blip in the story. The Chemical Brothers song featuring Noel Gallagher comes out September 30th. Amazing song. It's called Setting Sun. We love it. Do you love it? I love it.

• 1:31:25Speaker 00

  I love that song very much.

• 1:31:34Yasi Salek?

  It's time to go record the next album.

• 1:31:38Yasi Salek?

  I know. You guys, I'm really sorry. We've, we're, we're, the plane, the plane is descending. Please put your seatbelts on, put your tray back, you know, tray tables up because the imperial phase is about to be over. Noel Gallagher, to his credit, apparently did try to sort of like, I read this in Q Magazine that he changed his rule about not sharing his publishing with the band. He said, I renegotiated my deal and got an advance. And over breakfast, I gave them an envelope each. They all thought it was like their notice. What's this then? I said, envelopes, fucking open them. Their faces went like that, big smile. They were fucking flabbergasted. So he gave them envelopes of cash from his publishing.

• 1:32:20Yasi Salek?

  We're going to talk about the recording of the album, but a few things that happened before the first single comes out. Do you remember this Vanity Fair cover with Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit and the Union Jack bed, Cool Britannia?

• 1:32:32Speaker 00

  I do not, no.

• 1:32:34Yasi Salek?

  It was kind of a big deal because obviously Vanity Fair is a major American publication. And to this point, like the idea of Britpop or Cool Britannia wasn't really like on major American publications. I'm sure it's mentioned on Rolling Stones and whatever, but this was like culturally a big deal.

• 1:32:52Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:32:52Yasi Salek?

  In the Live Forever documentary, it's pretty great. First of all, the Live Forever documentary is so fucking good. If you guys want to, here's a tip for you, an insider tip. If you're interested in like the real real about a band, you need to go find the things that are no longer available publicly because there's a reason for that.

• 1:33:10Speaker 00

  Like Spice World, for example. Yeah.

• 1:33:12Yasi Salek?

  Yes. Out of print books from like 90, you know, like and Live Forever is, you can find it on YouTube, but it's not streaming anywhere. It came out right after Britpop died. So like, it's very fresh. Noel Gallagher is seated in a throne, which is hilarious because obviously he's rich.

• 1:33:29Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:33:30Yasi Salek?

  They asked him about this and he was like, they asked me and Liam to do it. I said, absolutely the fuck not. I think Liam looks fucking stupid. He's wearing a dumb little baby hat. The article is interesting. They just talk about all these other people within Cool Britannia, not just music, like Alexander McQueen, Nick Hornby, blah, blah, blah. In April, Liam gets married to Patsy Kensit. In May, Tony Blair and Labour win. Yay, for now. And also, Radiohead's OK Computer comes out. I think this is important. Do you agree?

• 1:34:03Speaker 00

  I think it's very important. Yes. Yes.

• 1:34:05Yasi Salek?

  Up until now, Radiohead is not in the conversation as much when we talk about Britpop or British rock music, because I think from what I can understand, they were having much more success in America. And while they were obviously talked about in the UK, they weren't Oasis or Blur, you know, they were sort of something else.

• 1:34:27Speaker 00

  Right. Like The Benz was huge.

• 1:34:29Yasi Salek?

  Creep was huge here.

• 1:34:30Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:34:31Yasi Salek?

  They were kind of like a Bush up until this point. We're Bush, as far as I can tell, did not exist in the UK, but we're like very famous here. There's a thing we'll talk about later, an Oasis documentary that Never comes sees the light of day because Oasis bans it, but we have some choice quotes from it. And Noel said, Radiohead are all right. They could do with some speeding up of their songs, but I love the music and the sound of their records. Yeah, if Oasis and Radiohead are the world's two most important bands, that'll do me.

• 1:34:59Speaker 00

  Huh. That's magnanimous. Yeah, okay. It's not what I thought you were gonna say.

• 1:35:04Yasi Salek?

  In June of this year, they opened for U2, Oasis at the Oakland Coliseum. Huge.

• 1:35:10Speaker 00

  Ooh, that is a big deal.

• 1:35:13Yasi Salek?

  And right after that, Noel marries Meg Matthews in Las Vegas. And then the first single off of the highly anticipated next album comes out. It's called Do You Know What I Mean? July 7th, 1997.

• 1:35:28Yasi Salek?

  We don't experience things as singles, but I, this is, this is more to point to like the slow change of Oasis. So this song does hit number one. Wonderwall did not hit number one. This song gets number one. It's almost eight minutes long.

• 1:35:41Speaker 00

  I was going to say, single is pushing it. We're in EP territory, definitionally.

• 1:35:47Yasi Salek?

  But they're still benefiting from the afterglow of being the biggest band in the world. Like they haven't really lost their imperial place yet. At least not in the eyes and wallets of, you know, the people of the UK. Do you like this song? I like this song, actually.

• 1:36:04Speaker 00

  Do I like this song? I find this song amusing and admirable.

• 1:36:10Yasi Salek?

  Did a lot of heavy lifting.

• 1:36:12Speaker 00

  I have cocaine written down here in all caps, three times.

• 1:36:16Yasi Salek?

  Sure. Yeah, that's, they had it written down way more times.

• 1:36:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm aware. I roll my eyes at Fool on the Hill and I feel fine every time. Right? Like just the laziness of the Beatles. Right? Like just the laziness of that would be more grating.

• 1:36:43Yasi Salek?

  What about the line before it being "The blood on the tracks and they must be mine"?

• 1:36:47Speaker 00

  That's right, that's right.

• 1:36:48Yasi Salek?

  So it's coming on the heels of another album reference, one line before it.

• 1:36:51Speaker 00

  Chill out, guys. Um, it's not my favorite song on the record, but I do think, as an introduction to what you're about to experience, I think it is the single that is most emblematic of the album it is serving as a single for.

• 1:37:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think that's right.

• 1:37:08Speaker 00

  Here you go. How would you like an hour and a half of this?

• 1:37:13Yasi Salek?

  Of eight-minute-long songs. Cocaine is a hell of a drug.

• 1:37:21Speaker 00

  Or so I have read, yeah.

• 1:37:23Yasi Salek?

  They made another insane choice, which is to stick "Stay Young" as a B-side on here. Not only to stick "Stay Young" as a B-side, which is arguably a good Oasis song, maybe even a great Oasis song, but also leave it off the album in favor of Chex Nott's "Magic Pie."

• 1:37:39Speaker 00

  Ooh.

• 1:37:40Yasi Salek?

  Weird choice.

• 1:37:42Speaker 00

  That is a pretty weird choice.

• 1:37:51Yasi Salek?

  One event between that single and "Be Here Now" coming out the day the music died. And by the music, I mean Britpop. The fatal wound is here that bled out a bit slowly over the next few months, but the fatal wound is July 10th, 1997. Noel Gallagher, Meg, and Alan McGee go to 10 Downing Street to celebrate Tony Blair. Noel Gallagher goes to 10 Downing Street in a fuck-ass blazer with a dumb haircut and just, everyone's like, what the fucking hell?

• 1:38:33Yasi Salek?

  I mean, it's great, the woman from Sleeper in the "Live Forever" documentary has it better than me, where she's like, "Our whole thing was that Oasis was beholden to no one, and we loved that about them." And now you see Noel in his little outfit going to like, you know, the establishment. Meanwhile, Meg Matthews has like a midriff-bearing outfit, which I'm like, honey, babe, we're going to the White House, like, cover it up, like, put on something a little more respectful.

• 1:38:58Speaker 00

  We have company.

• 1:38:59Yasi Salek?

  I mean, I get, I get it. Their whole thing was like... You wouldn't go if you were invited just to see what's going on in there? And I'm like, yeah, but it's like, everything you do is a political statement, right? When you're that famous, or at least a statement of your values and morals or, you know? It's like the same reason why many people in the UK, when offered an OBE, Order of the British, what is it, Empire?

• 1:39:25Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:39:26Yasi Salek?

  Will say no, because they don't believe in the, you know? They don't believe in the monarchy and imperialism. Not Damon Albarn, he said, yes, please, he is an OBE. Liam Gallagher was not invited to this, just that, I just know.

• 1:39:39Speaker 00

  Excellent move on the part of 10 Downing Street there.

• 1:39:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, he says and live forever that he would not have gone anyways because he thinks it's stupid. And I think I believe him.

• 1:39:49Speaker 00

  I do too.

• 1:39:50Yasi Salek?

  Damon Albarn was invited and he, he declined. He said, uh, he was wise enough to be like, mm, I don't want to be seen there. Noel Gallagher said, they asked him much later, did you feel like it was a mistake going to meet Tony Blair at Downing Street? And he said, I didn't, it's just that everyone gave me a hard time about it. People seem to have this very sinister image of it. But I went there because my wife said, come on, let's go have a, let's go for a laugh. And I thought, fuck it, why not? I wasn't there representing guitar music. I wasn't there representing the indie community or some twat in a bedsit. I wasn't even representing the band. I was there because the prime minister invited me to his house for a beer. You've got to go, haven't you? I don't know if I agree, but I know what he's saying.

• 1:40:28Speaker 00

  Likewise.

• 1:40:29Yasi Salek?

  So besides, you know, fuck ass Blazer going to 10 Downing Street, Blur's self titled had already come out in February of this year. Woo hoo. So they've completely left Britpop behind, right? Chimney sweep music, no more. They've changed. The Spice Girls had released wannabe the year before in 96, but the film that you mentioned comes out in 97. The Spice Girls are putting a fucking nail in the coffin of Britpop. And then also 10 days after Be Here Now is released, Princess Di dies. And I think that's really like the end, the end of the innocence, you know, the day the music died, if you will. It's over.

• 1:41:07Speaker 00

  That's a very grim and very funny and very morbid like death of a rock and roll movement.

• 1:41:13Yasi Salek?

  Well, cause it was wrapped up in British excellence, Cool Britannia, right? It wasn't just, when we zoom out, like it was a lot, Trainspotting, which we haven't mentioned, comes out in 97.

• 1:41:25Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:41:26Yasi Salek?

  The novels of Irvine Welsh and Nick Hornby, the new British artists, right? Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, like they're really fucking feeling themselves for like a while. Although later it's very funny where someone was like, yeah, cocaine is a hell of a drug, basically. Like being like, yeah, that's what happens when you do a lot of cocaine. You think you're the best at everything in the entire world. And I was like, no, but they also kind of were, right? It was this like real heyday of culture coming out of Britain. And like, I wanted to ask you, like, I mean, rock music dies just five minutes later anyways. But like, was that the end of British rock dominance in general?

• 1:42:02Speaker 00

  I think how you feel about Radiohead, what you think Radiohead were trying to do or trying to be. I think it's cause you know, OK Computer was the most important record to me, you know, for the next 10, 15, 20, 25 years.

• 1:42:17Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 1:42:17Speaker 00

  Right? But that is an entirely different feel than either Oasis or Blur or anybody else. The book you've sort of referenced a few times, it's the last party in England and it's just Britpop in America, right? The John Harris book, I think, like he.

• 1:42:35Yasi Salek?

  Which I stupidly and accidentally bought too. I was like, oh, I need this other one too.

• 1:42:40Speaker 00

  You need, you need both, you need both copies of that. But like, he puts the death of Britpop at be here now, just the excess, the embarrassments. Along with 10 Downing Street, like I, I understand why that's the death of this specific movement. But I do think, let's not get into whether OK Computer is a better record than like Morning Glory or anything else. But I, some kind of guitar rock survives this, but Radiohead's entire.

• 1:43:09Speaker 00

  We don't want to be guitar rockers, you know, like they they sort of Pearl Jam it, right? Like they bring it back to the idea of like, we don't want to be what we're perceived as being like, don't look at us. What dies here is the hubris. What dies here is the being the biggest band in the world and saying repeatedly that you are the biggest band in the world.

• 1:43:32Yasi Salek?

  Right. Also, can we just take this moment to talk about how Karma Police was actually directly inspired by Britpop, more specifically about how Justine Freshman and I think Damon Albarn were mean to Thom Yorke at the Brit Awards. Did you know this? That's, that's where Karma Police arrests this girl. Her Hitler hairdo is making me feel ill. That's just, that's Justine Freshman.

• 1:44:10Speaker 00

  That does.

• 1:44:11Yasi Salek?

  I think a suede was involved too.

• 1:44:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. Okay. I was not aware. This is what you get when you mess with us, I guess.

• 1:44:20Yasi Salek?

  This is what you get.

• 1:44:27Speaker 01

  With USAA, members can get up to 10% in savings by bundling auto and home insurance in one place. Quit adding up insurance providers. Start adding up savings. Visit usaa.com/bundleautoproducty to see how much bundling could save you.

• 1:44:41Speaker 02

  Restrictions apply.

• 1:44:43Yasi Salek?

  All right. Be here now, babe. Let's talk about it.

• 1:44:46Speaker 00

  If you could press a button that just deleted for all time, the first 60 seconds and the last 60 seconds of every song on this record, I think you wouldn't even notice when you played it, right? Cause like the first 60 seconds are like, and the last 60 seconds are like, like it's, it's hilarious how self-consciously bloated this record is. It's really quite endearing after a while, after you pass like the two hour mark. It's like, wow. I was listening to All Around the World and then it ended and then it started again, one track later. Like that's terrible and amazing at the same time.

• 1:45:34Yasi Salek?

  Rob is saying is that the songs are too long. The songs are-

• 1:45:39Speaker 00

  That is, thank you, thank you, thank you.

• 1:45:41Yasi Salek?

  The songs are too long. There's a lot of cocaine being done. There are a few things have intersected to make this happen, right? According to Owen Morris, the only reason anyone was there was the money. Noel had decided Liam was a shit singer. Liam had decided he hated Noel's songs. So on we met, massive amounts of drugs, big fights, bad vibes. Noel actually said something really interesting, right? Like, I've charted Noel's views of this album as time has gone on.

• 1:46:09Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:46:10Yasi Salek?

  Okay, here's the end of 1998, right? We're pretty close to it. The journalist says, is Be Here Now as good as the first two albums? I think so, yeah. Do you sense that people are disappointed by Be Here Now? I'm sensing now that people might be. I had my manager come in earlier with a big, long face because the album's been out two months and it's only sold 2 million. Fucking hell, what a bitch, eh? We might as well pack it in, I just said. Go and tell that to Echo Belly. He said, we still sold 2 million albums, go tell fucking Echo Belly, which is very funny. And he said, but the songs are too long. And he says, so fucking what? Okay, now it's 2003, in the Live Forever doc, and he says, it's the sound of five men in the studio on coke, not giving a fuck. Okay, fast forward to 2014.

• 1:46:53Yasi Salek?

  He talked to your former colleague Chuck Klosterman at your former workplace, Grantland. Shout out, William Simmons, if you want to get us Rolls Royce who are here. He told Chuck Klosterman, at the time, I was taking a lot of fucking drugs, so I didn't give a fuck. When the record was finished, I took it back to my house and listened to it when there wasn't a party happening and I wasn't out of my mind on cocaine. And my reaction was, this is fucking long. I didn't realize how long it was. It's a long fucking record. When we had recorded What's the Story, Morning Glory, nobody from the label bothered us and we had hacked the golden egg. So the label was like, don't bother those guys, they're geniuses. Just let them do what they want. There was nobody around to say, these songs are too long. It was a good wake-up call, to be honest.

• 1:47:36Yasi Salek?

  I really wonder what would have happened if Be Here Now had sold like Morning Glory? What would we have done the next time? Just imagine if that album had sold 30 million copies. I probably would have grown a mustache and started wearing a fucking cape. So my point is, in the harsh light of day, he didn't realize the songs were so long. And then B, it's nobody was there to say no.

• 1:47:56Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:47:57Yasi Salek?

  They were too big for anyone to say no. And they were like, yeah, getting high on their own supply, literally and figuratively. It did not sell well, though, which is why he didn't put on a cape and grow up. I mean, okay, let me, let me rephrase that.

• 1:48:12Speaker 00

  He'd look great in a mustache, yeah.

• 1:48:14Yasi Salek?

  This album is very interesting, once again, in how it's perceived now and actually how it was experienced in the moment. Because it was not, in the moment, at all considered a failure. Okay, first of all, it was a huge commercial success. It was the fastest selling album in British chart history, okay, until Adele releases 25, which was like 18 years later, okay? So it's massive. It was the biggest selling album of the year in the UK. They sold almost one and a half million. It went six times platinum in the UK and even went platinum in the United States. The album debuted at number two at the Billboard 200, but the recording of this was notoriously fraught. This is the last album they make with Owen Morris because of this.

• 1:48:56Yasi Salek?

  Here's what Owen said, whether or not it's deliberate to get his troops into shape, Noel will be in a foul mood for the first week or so of recording. So everyone else is like, uh, let's get working or else he's gonna ball a Gus. He is the chief. That's what the band calls him, except Liam, who spells it C-U-N-T.

• 1:49:16Speaker 00

  It's good. Good line.

• 1:49:18Yasi Salek?

  One problem is that Noel Gallagher wants to put 4,000 guitars on everything, and I think.

• 1:49:26Speaker 00

  That is an accurate number.

• 1:49:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, one of the main things about Owen Morris, which is why he like saved the day early on, definitely maybe, was that he went ahead and removed some of that, right? Like, I mean, he did make a wall of sound, but I think he also said early on that like, I was taking off the million guitar overdubs that were like done. So that's not really happening here. Everyone's on too much drugs. People are not happy. Bonehead's mother had just died. So there's like a pall of. Death and aging and mortality. I'll say it. Be Here Now is unfairly maligned, I think, like, especially given what's to come in the future. Be Here Now is like a decent album and I think

• 1:50:09Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:50:10Yasi Salek?

  It's recorded in a weird way that I don't like. There's something about the production quality of it that's not warm. Like, there's songs on here that I've marked out that don't hit, even though they should.

• 1:50:23Speaker 00

  Huh, okay.

• 1:50:25Yasi Salek?

  Like Stand By Me. Stand By Me is a great song, but something is missing, no? Do you not feel those, it's like eighty percent of the way there, but there's something about it that's like not hitting as I think it could have given Oasis's magic.

• 1:50:46Speaker 00

  Is it that something is missing or that there is too much there? Because this is, as you say, notoriously the Too Much There record, like, uh, next to My Big Mouth, I just put between two thousand and five thousand guitars, right? Like, is it addition by subtraction? Or is there a warmth?

• 1:51:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:05Speaker 00

  I mean, it's, I agree with you completely that it's, it, it doesn't hit the same. And I, I, I don't know if that's an addition or a subtraction or a division.

• 1:51:14Yasi Salek?

  I just want to say it's rich for me and you to be saying this, of all people.

• 1:51:19Speaker 00

  It is.

• 1:51:20Yasi Salek?

  I can just picture Nolan Liam Gallagher being like, oh, really? You cunt with your fucking seven hour long podcast and you with your nine thousand word intros?

• 1:51:29Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. There is definite Be Here Now energy to everything that we do. It's, it's a fact.

• 1:51:36Yasi Salek?

  The shortest song on the album is, is pretty good. Four minutes and twenty two seconds. I hope I think I know.

• 1:51:48Speaker 00

  I dig it. It, it is. It's almost punk rock by comparison. Yeah, it, it sounds, you know, it's like a ween song.

• 1:51:54Yasi Salek?

  He, he says that. It reminds him of the Buzzcocks.

• 1:51:58Speaker 00

  There we go. Sure, sure.

• 1:52:00Yasi Salek?

  I love, um, The Girl in the Dirty Shirt. That's good.

• 1:52:03Speaker 00

  That's a good one. I love Get Your Shit Together, Girl. Like, that's a good, that's a good line.

• 1:52:14Yasi Salek?

  Noel said, you guessed it, Meg is the girl in the dirty shirt. We were doing a gig in Brighton just before Meg and me were going out and she was at the hotel ironing a dirty shirt because she hadn't brought enough clothes with her. I know it sounds a bit soft. Liam will read this and say, you fucking wanker because he thinks all the songs are about him. He even thinks Wonderwall is about him. So he'll be telling me it's a geezer in a dirty shirt, except I couldn't say that because it would look bad.

• 1:52:36Speaker 00

  The geezer in the dirty parka, or the dirty sweater, the Nebworth sweater, yeah.

• 1:52:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Don't worry, your friend Johnny Depp makes an uncredited appearance on this album, too. He plays slide guitar on the song Fade In Out.

• 1:52:50Speaker 00

  I was very concerned.

• 1:52:57Yasi Salek?

  Noel said he likes this song because it's the first blues song he's ever done and Liam does the best singing I've ever heard from him. I pushed him to the limit on that. I said, pretend you're a black man from Memphis.

• 1:53:08Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 1:53:09Yasi Salek?

  He's not got very good rhythm and we made him tap his foot through. He couldn't sing for a week after.

• 1:53:16Yasi Salek?

  A lot to unpack there. There was an interesting story. Owen Morris later kind of spilled the tea all over the place. Again, there's good songs on here. Don't Go Away is a good song.

• 1:53:26Speaker 00

  I love Don't Go Away.

• 1:53:28Yasi Salek?

  It's an amazing song.

• 1:53:35Yasi Salek?

  Noel wrote or demoed most of these songs in Mystique, a place that you and I will never go because we're not in the right tax bracket.

• 1:53:43Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:53:43Yasi Salek?

  Where Johnny Depp and Kate Moss were staying at Mick Jagger's house and so Noel Gallagher and Meg Matthews also stayed at Mick Jagger's house. And Owen Morris later was like, the demos were really good and I'm really kicking myself in the ass for not intervening, like not basically making them more true to the demos and sort of letting everything like jump the fucking shark.

• 1:54:07Speaker 00

  I'm trying to decide if I want a not ridiculous version of this record, or if the ridiculousness is the whole point. Like, I will say, I went into this assuming that it's the first two records and then everything else. But I feel very strongly that it's, it's, it's a trilogy. It's the first three and it's the worst, you know, it's the least iconic of the three, but it is a necessary component, even if it's the come down. You know, it is of a piece with the first two. This is still the imperial era, even if it's the crash of the imperial era. And I just wonder in these cases, I'm trying to think of another example of like just an overblown,

• 1:54:52Speaker 00

  ridiculous record where the idea is, it's, I don't like, let it be naked. I guess like just the idea that if you stripped these songs down, they would be really good. But I don't know if that's necessarily true. Like, does, do you know what I mean? Work if it's not eight minutes long with like helicopter shit in it, right? Like, I, I just, I don't think.

• 1:55:14Yasi Salek?

  I believe it's also Morse code.

• 1:55:16Speaker 00

  Exactly. Yes, the very important, the Morse code. The Morse code just says cocaine. I don't think this record works if it's not, it's perfectly imperfect. It's like too much and just enough. It's like you, you think that you want this to be, you know, 40 minutes long and digestible, but like it's just, it's not the same. Whatever charm this record has, it does not have that charm if it is not just ridiculous.

• 1:55:46Yasi Salek?

  Maybe I'm a diehard, but I, I would have loved to hear the Owen Mortis edit. You know, like the not filling every channel.

• 1:55:54Speaker 00

  I'm surprised they haven't put it out.

• 1:55:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I mean, I think they kind of stand behind this. I don't know. I guess I told you Noel over time has changed his opinion about.

• 1:56:02Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:56:03Yasi Salek?

  Uh, this record. It is really interesting that a lot of the songs are about like mortality, but also like, don't leave me behind, don't forget about me, you know, like.

• 1:56:12Speaker 00

  Stand by me.

• 1:56:14Yasi Salek?

  Like in that trilogy, it's like dreaming of being a rock star, being a rock star, and then not wanting to lose maybe being a rock star.

• 1:56:23Speaker 00

  That's it. That's it.

• 1:56:25Yasi Salek?

  I just want to say, much like the perception of it as this like massive flop now, it was not, right? It hit number one on the UK albums, number two on the US Billboard. Um, the reviews were super positive, like way more positive than Morning Glory. Like, it was almost like the overcorrection thing, right? Like, they were like, we don't want to get it wrong again. Uncut magazine. How does Noel Gallagher summon forth such deep sadness? With his material wealth and domestic bliss. He's a populist, writing for us, anticipating our sorrow. Articulating our rage. The sincerity of the venture is moot. What counts is the effect.

• 1:57:08Yasi Salek?

  It's actually really funny because they did it in 2016. There was an article talking about exactly this, like, why was everyone so fucking excited about this album that now everyone says is bad? And Paul Lester, that same guy, was like, I was caught up in the excitement of it all. I'm so sorry to everyone for that review, but the enormity of it was captivating. We were reviewing a moment in history and staking our part in it. You fell awed into submission. I thought that was really interesting.

• 1:57:32Speaker 00

  I think that's true. That's, that's very honest. Summon forth is a, is a funny tell. That's when you know, that's when the rock critic is really getting down to business, when the band summons forth.

• 1:57:45Yasi Salek?

  It's your point of them being still in their imperial phase, though. Like, these reviews show that, right? Charles Char Murray, I mean, again, just could not be more glowing. You know, they're doing something to the effect in the same way that Bruce Springsteen circa Born to Run, they're like, really just glowing. This is the Oasis world domination album. This time around, the Yanks will get it.

• 1:58:09Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:58:10Yasi Salek?

  Reader, the Yanks did not get it. This is, this performed very poorly. I mean, it did hit number two, but it only sold like 150,000 copies. So people were like, we don't care about this.

• 1:58:19Speaker 00

  Really? Wow. That is bad.

• 1:58:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:58:24Yasi Salek?

  Vox gave it a nine out of 10. Here's looking at you, our kid. Amazing, amazing, uh, headline.

• 1:58:30Speaker 00

  That took a long time for somebody to think up.

• 1:58:33Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 1:58:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:58:35Yasi Salek?

  Even Pitchfork.

• 1:58:38Speaker 00

  Wow, right, right.

• 1:58:40Yasi Salek?

  This is 2000, but retroactively, Ryan Triver gave it a 7.9.

• 1:58:45Speaker 00

  Okay. Just right outside of best new music, yeah.

• 1:58:49Yasi Salek?

  Right. He said, regardless of whether or not it's cool to like them, they're certainly not safe to like as some of my other pleasures like Yolanda and Nate Drake. I thought it was really interesting because it shows you where they fell to by the year 2000. That Pitchfork, the cool blog, was like, this is not a cool band. This is not a band that's cool to like.

• 1:59:12Speaker 00

  Guilty pleasure.

• 1:59:13Yasi Salek?

  Just by 2000. It's been two minutes. We were just at Networth. Everyone loved us. To your point, like, this is still, this is the tail end of the imperial phase, but like, once the album comes and goes, it's over. And the writer Dorian Linsky wrote of the album, "If it couldn't be Britpop zenith, then it must be the Nandir. It can't just be a collection of songs, some good, some bad, most too long, all insanely overproduced, but an emblem of the hubris before the fall, like a dictator's statue pulled to the ground by a vengeful mob."

• 1:59:46Speaker 00

  Dorian's so good. That's really good. I like Dorian.

• 1:59:50Yasi Salek?

  It was incredible. So, yeah, you know, it's

• 1:59:53Speaker 00

  There you have it.

• 1:59:54Yasi Salek?

  The mid 90s are over. There you have it. And with OK Computer and The Verve's Urban Hymns.

• 2:00:03Speaker 00

  Ah, there you go.

• 2:00:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think that's another good album to sort of put up next to OK Computer as like, this is the next shit, you know?

• 2:00:11Speaker 00

  Yes, absolutely, absolutely. I love Urban Hymns, and I do think there's a lot of Oasis DNA in Urban Hymns, right? It's sort of a continuation. You know, if there was a logical direction Oasis could have gone to extend their imperial phase, I think Urban Hymns is that roadmap, right? Like, starting with Bittersweet Symphony, like, just sort of strikes me as like the massive explicitly classic rock-leaning, super sentimental gesture. There's some Wonderwall energy.

• 2:00:54Speaker 00

  I see OK Computer, which, you know, again, defined my personality for the next decade or so, like, OK Computer seems more intense on destroying, you know, the entire ethos of Oasis, right? So I think they both did damage, you know, to the idea of Oasis is the biggest band in the world, but like, The Verve kind of became what Oasis was and Radiohead like, sort of destroyed what Oasis was.

• 2:01:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's, that's way better put than I could have done it. I guess I mean more like, without sort of evolving, there was maybe not going to be as big of a place for them. And I think maybe that's, that was sort of the downfall a little bit, was that the evolution wasn't as keeping up with the quickly changing whims and tastes of the rock music community.

• 2:01:54Speaker 00

  We always reach this point in a Band Splayed episode, right? Where it just, it turns, you know, and it just so happens to almost always coincide with like, the 90s ending and the 2000s beginning, right? Like, there's just a divide.

• 2:02:07Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:02:08Speaker 00

  You know, and sometimes there's a very stark-

• 2:02:09Yasi Salek?

  Unless you're Radiohead.

• 2:02:10Speaker 00

  Unless you're Radiohead, right? It's, it is hard.

• 2:02:13Yasi Salek?

  And then you're like, here's Kid A, and everyone's like, oh, okay.

• 2:02:17Speaker 00

  But it's, I, I don't think it's really plausible to even build an alternate universe where Oasis has a Kid A equivalent.

• 2:02:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that was not what they were, they're dealing in.

• 2:02:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like, we don't, to expect them to come up with some bold new direction, you know, that changes the face of rock music as a whole, like, that just never seemed to be the Oasis project, you know? So maybe a little bit, a little bit of obsolescence is like, built into the entire idea of this band in the first place.

• 2:02:52Yasi Salek?

  Like a MacBook.

• 2:02:54Speaker 00

  There we go, yeah. It's just the fan won't turn off, and it burns your legs, and then it's like, fuck this shit.

• 2:03:04Yasi Salek?

  In that same year of Be Here Now coming out, Liam turns 25. Just to put us right back into like where, where things are in the timeline. Like Liam Gallagher is only 25 years old.

• 2:03:16Speaker 00

  That's nuts. That's very, that's a very strange thing to even consider.

• 2:03:21Yasi Salek?

  And Noel obviously is, I guess, 30, you know, right? He's five years older and he gifts Liam for his 25th birthday, the necklace that John Lennon had worn when he visited the Maharishi.

• 2:03:35Speaker 00

  Oh, that's nice. I thought you were gonna say the Titanic necklace that she throws.

• 2:03:39Yasi Salek?

  Like the, yeah, the big, the heart, yeah. Liam co-writes with John Squire. John Squire has a new band called The Seahorses and he co-writes a song called Love Me Or Leave Me that comes out also. He's, so he's branching out. He's doing a songwriting.

• 2:04:01Yasi Salek?

  Here's a fun little aside. On October 24th of 1997, Liam, he's on Radio 1 and he decides to talk a bunch of shit about George Harrison and also Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on Radio 1. Here's what he said. "I will beat the fucking living daylight shit out of them." That goes for George, Jagger, Richards and that other cunt that gives me shit. If any of them old farts have got a problem with me, then leave your Zimmer frames at home and I'll hold you up with a good right hook. They're jealous and senile and not getting enough fucking meat pies. They wanna fight, I'll beat them up.

• 2:04:43Speaker 00

  What are Zimmer frames? Is that, are those glasses?

• 2:04:47Yasi Salek?

  Let's look that up.

• 2:04:48Speaker 00

  I'm just going to assume that's a devastating insult.

• 2:04:51Yasi Salek?

  No, a Zimmer fam is a walk. Walker.

• 2:04:56Speaker 00

  See, see.

• 2:04:58Yasi Salek?

  It's even funnier. It's even funnier than it's like a it's a walker. Also, just because I would be remiss if I left it on the table. Earlier that same day, he happened to be with a GQ journalist who later wrote a profile about this. Here's what he said in front of the GQ journalist. All these old farts slagging us off. They'll be dead and buried by the time we start getting senile and shitting our pants. And we can remember all their shit tunes. I've got my mindset on you when we was fab. The quicker they fucking go, the better for everyone. Anyway, John and Ringo were the Beatles. Isn't it a pity? It will be when I meet George Harrison. I'm gonna stand on his head and play golf. I'm gonna do me Roy Castle impression on his head. So who wants to fight? Any old fart who's allowed out of the rest home wants to fight with me? Yeah. All right. After I've

• 2:05:43Yasi Salek?

  had my steak and kidney pie, I'll be ready. Do you want it? Any of you senile bastards want to ruck? I'll meet you in the pub. Six o'clock. Keith, Mick, and any other old bag who decides to get out of bed in the morning to slag us off. Dirty old nipple. Sweaty old mushroom.

• 2:05:58Speaker 00

  What are these people saying that is that is raising his ire? So.

• 2:06:03Yasi Salek?

  Here's what happened. Earlier that week, both Noel and Liam had privately viewed a 52-minute-long TV documentary about Oasis that featured George Harrison and Keith and Mick. And you know what? They didn't say that nice of things about them.

• 2:06:23Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 2:06:24Yasi Salek?

  George Harrison, the one who writes the songs, Noel, he's okay, but they don't have that much depth. The other bloke's just a pain. I don't think they need him. The one who writes the songs, he can sing them just as well. Maybe it's because he's his brother that he has to keep him in the band.

• 2:06:39Speaker 00

  That is pretty rude, honestly.

• 2:06:41Yasi Salek?

  Keith Richards said Oasis is basically copy Beatles, Stones, 60s sort of things. But I don't think they're anywhere near either of us. I don't listen to them. I just hear them on the radio. I mean, I wouldn't go out and buy that crap. I wish them luck. I have nothing against them, but it's all a blur to me.

• 2:06:55Speaker 00

  Nice use of blur there. Yeah.

• 2:06:57Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if he did that on purpose, but.

• 2:06:59Speaker 00

  I'm gonna side with Noel on this, actually. Yeah.

• 2:07:02Yasi Salek?

  That documentary never came out.

• 2:07:08Speaker 00

  Yes. Yes, indeed.

• 2:07:11Yasi Salek?

  There's actually a great bit about Noel defending Liam because George Harrison's the one that shit on Liam particularly. He, he told the GQ writer, he was like, George Harrison, right? I'll tell you about him. I met his son Danny in New York last week, waiting to get on Concorde. He was already pissed. On the flight back, we had about 25 Bloody Marys and he arrived at Heathrow rolling. Guess who's waiting to meet him when the doors open? George Harrison, who's been slagging my brother off. I've got my arm around his son and he's smoking four fags. He's as pissed as a fucking ass. He goes, hey dad, he's alright, you know? And I say, hello, George, here's your son. You have just been Gallagher'd. Go and puke up in your Ashford home while my stomach gently wretches.

• 2:07:51Speaker 00

  That is beautiful.

• 2:07:53Yasi Salek?

  You've been Gallagher'd.

• 2:07:56Speaker 00

  Here's your son. You've been Gallagher'd while your stomach gently. They are still in their imperial phase and they remain in their imperial phase as quotes.

• 2:08:05Yasi Salek?

  As insult comics, honey. They'll never be dethroned from that.

• 2:08:11Speaker 00

  Stupendous.

• 2:08:12Yasi Salek?

  That made me laugh so hard. It was just, just perfection. I guess Nick Kent made this documentary and the reason I have all the quotes from it is because he wrote a piece about why it didn't get, why the management killed it and he went ahead and ran the dialogue quotes in the piece, which I thought was very funny.

• 2:08:33Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:08:33Yasi Salek?

  Tom York is in it though, saying very nice things about Oasis. So.

• 2:08:38Speaker 00

  Well, that's nice.

• 2:08:39Yasi Salek?

  In November of that same year, The Times, you know, in London announces the death of Britpop. It's an article says, rejoice, rejoice, Britpop is dead.

• 2:08:49Speaker 00

  Based on the cruddiness of Be Here Now or what?

• 2:08:53Yasi Salek?

  The Spice Girls, um, the tabloids, Black Grape, Oasis. Yes, they're hardly down in the water, having sold 3 million copies of Be Here Now. The thrill has gone. Basically, she says it was the cocaine talking, which I thought was very funny. I do want to tap your particular expertise now that you're calling the 2000s when we're getting into calling the 2000s because I think there's a lot to be said there. Okay, so anyways, Oasis goes on tour for Be Here Now. They're touring for like several months all over the world. That tour marks the end of Noel Gallagher's long and beautiful intimate relationship with cocaine. He gets home and he's like, okay, that's enough cocaine for me. No more cocaine. Thank you. He was having panic attacks. It wasn't, it wasn't treating him well anymore.

• 2:09:38Yasi Salek?

  Meanwhile, during the same tour, I believe, in March of 1998, Liam Gallagher, after an argument on a flight from Hong Kong to Perth that apparently involved a scone, I could get no further information about the scone, Gallagher was banned for life from Cathay Pacific Airlines.

• 2:09:58Speaker 00

  Well.

• 2:10:00Yasi Salek?

  And he responded that he would rather walk from Hong Kong to Perth. I need so much more. I like, I want to pay money to a private investigator to unearth the details of this because what do you mean apparently involved a scone?

• 2:10:14Speaker 00

  What are the realistic options here? One, he threw a scone at somebody. Two, somebody threw a scone at him. Three, he just requested a scone and was denied a scone for some reason. Four, he got a scone, but it was terrible and he took offense.

• 2:10:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it didn't reach his standards. Yeah.

• 2:10:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. And five is like the wild card. You start that Patreon, you know, or Kickstarter or whatever. I'll toss some money.

• 2:10:39Yasi Salek?

  We gotta get down.

• 2:10:40Speaker 00

  To get to the bottom of the scone incident.

• 2:10:42Yasi Salek?

  To be banned for life from the airline?

• 2:10:46Speaker 00

  That seems like a very extreme. The, the real unsung heroes of this story are the, the flight attendants, right? Who have to give these people 25 Bloody Marys per flight. And yeah, just.

• 2:10:58Yasi Salek?

  Sure. Yeah.

• 2:10:59Speaker 00

  Deal with Danny Harrison.

• 2:11:00Yasi Salek?

  Being screamed at. So at this point, Noel and Liam are not really hanging out.

• 2:11:06Yasi Salek?

  Noel said later to the Daily Telegraph, I always wanted Liam to grow up and be like me, to be all nice and normal and not so much of a head case. And he always wanted me to be like him. He's going, you're a boring old man. And I'm like, you're a psycho nutcase. So yeah, they're not hanging out. They're on different speeds. In 99, Q Magazine asks Noel, what's your day to day intercourse with Liam? Noel says, we don't have any. We try, but the more time we spend. Together, the more the relationship deteriorates. As soon as we get off the road, we can't get far enough apart from each other. Having said that, the other day, we spent all day in a pub together. We were still up from the night before and we were pissed as assholes. I rang my wife in the pub and said, are you coming out for a beer or what? And she said, who are you with? I said, I'm with our kid. And she's like, I'm having me nails done. And she told me why yesterday. She said, because when you and your brother have been up for two days and you're down the pub and you're getting on,

• 2:11:51Yasi Salek?

  then you know that some monumental fuck up is about to occur. And I'm not going to be within 20 miles of that place.

• 2:11:57Speaker 00

  Can't argue with that.

• 2:11:59Yasi Salek?

  It's just like this relationship. I have so many feelings about it. Cause the next month in GQ, they ask Liam about Noel. And he goes, I rate him. I don't hate him. How could I? He doesn't hate me either. He'd have nothing else to write about, would he? And he lets me sing his songs, the best songs. I love him. He gave me a ticket to ride.

• 2:12:21Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 2:12:22Yasi Salek?

  He gave me a ticket to ride.

• 2:12:23Speaker 00

  That is very sweet. He'd been working Beatles references into your nice compliments. Yeah.

• 2:12:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Also, I want to issue an apology. I've, we've said this whole time that between the two of them, they only read one book and I thought it was Noel. It's actually Liam. Liam read, Liam said, I've got loads of books. I buy books all the time. I just haven't got the time to read them or I haven't got the patience. The best book I ever read was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when I was 10.

• 2:12:52Speaker 00

  Oh, there we go.

• 2:12:53Yasi Salek?

  It's a great book.

• 2:12:54Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:12:54Yasi Salek?

  It's a great book.

• 2:12:55Speaker 00

  It is a great book. Didn't really take the religious allegory to heart necessarily, but it is a great book.

• 2:13:00Yasi Salek?

  Well, he's a spiritual man, babe. He's a spiritual man. He's processing it in his own way. Now I'm gonna tax your memory. Post Be Here Now albums. Okay, so we're going in the studio. Owen Morris, I pair is fired. I don't know why they didn't get on. Be here now, didn't do well. I have no idea why. He's gone. They bring in Mark Stent. Mark Stent, to that point, had really done mixing mostly for like Beth Orton, S Club Seven, Sneaker Pimps, Massive Attack, U2. And also I think he had, he's credited as a producer of Madonna's music. Great album.

• 2:13:33Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 2:13:34Yasi Salek?

  So they're in the stew and then Bonehead leaves the band. NME announced that he was fired, but he put out a statement saying that after a lot of consideration, I've decided to call it a day with Oasis. Had a fantastic eight years and one of the best bands ever to come out of Britain. And now I feel I've come to the stage where I'd like to concentrate on other things in life, outside the demands of being in a successful rock and roll band. Then two weeks later, Gwigs leaves the band, saying he wants to spend more time with his family. Something doesn't smell right, but I'm gonna, it's just very coincidental. It's very coincidental.

• 2:14:06Speaker 00

  This being the post cocaine series of events is interesting, right?

• 2:14:12Yasi Salek?

  There's some speculation that Noel kind of implemented a Machiavellian, no drinking, no drugs in the studio policy.

• 2:14:21Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Okay.

• 2:14:23Yasi Salek?

  Mostly so that Liam could sing properly. Maybe that affected it. There's no proof. Everyone, people deny this.

• 2:14:29Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 2:14:30Yasi Salek?

  Liam's statement was maybe the funniest in The Guardian. He said, basically that it doesn't matter because no one is bigger than the band. Unless one of us was 15 feet tall, then he would be a lot bigger.

• 2:14:43Speaker 00

  There we go. Now is the time for a slightly broader humor. Yeah.

• 2:14:50Yasi Salek?

  He was 15 feet tall. They're gone. They bring in Gem Archer from the band Heavy Stereo and Guitar and Andy Bell from Ride, which had totally imploded at this point on bass. And the Creation Survivor. Creation, speaking of, also folds in November. It's over for Creation.

• 2:15:09Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:15:10Yasi Salek?

  They couldn't hold on. It was too good for too long. Both Liam and Noel have become fatheras at this point. And then we put out Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, singular shoulder, February 28th, 2000, produced by Mark Spikestent and Noel Gallagher. What's your vibe on this album?

• 2:15:31Speaker 00

  You know, these next four records, like, I'm not gonna try and talk you into any of them being great, or any of them being superior to any of the previous, you know, the three Imperial Phase records. If you want to say that one of these is better than Be Here Now, just to be a jerk, like, fine. Like, that's your business. But like, it seems so arbitrary and superficial, but just the dividing line of the 2000s, to even be February of 2000, it sounds like they're in an entirely different universe. And just from this point forward, it's just very hard for me to listen to this record and put it in the context of what else is happening in music, even in February 2000.

• 2:16:09Speaker 00

  When I put this record on, the first reaction I had is that I didn't realize that the first song, which is called Fucking in the Bushes, was, it's the song from Snatch. It's the song from the Guy Ritchie movie Snatch. I think Brad Pitt is boxing. It's like a montage scene. There might be dog fighting or racing occurring. The details are hazy. But I put this on and I was like, this was Oasis? Like, I had completely forgotten. Like, that guitar riff, had been in my head forever and I had no idea it was Oasis.

• 2:16:48Speaker 00

  Only thing I would say about this album, like, they're not gonna change. Like, the whole point of Oasis is they're not gonna change, but there's just a little bit of a fat boy, Slim drum loops, electronic propeller heads. Yeah, there's something going on here.

• 2:17:05Yasi Salek?

  Well, they brought Mark Spike's stand for, it wasn't obviously for nothing, right? Like, that was largely his background when we talked about, like, sneaker pimps and all that. Do you think there was at least, like, an earnest, if slight, effort to, like, evolve with the times of, like you said, drum loops and samples? Because it does have, this album does have that stuff. There's Mellotron and synth and backwards guitars and stuff.

• 2:17:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think, I think you're on the right track. I get a lot of the Beta Band out of this. Like, just when you, when you get a drum, like, Go Let It Out, which I sort of remember the chorus, like, when you listen to the whole song, you know, there's like acoustic guitar, there's like a drum loop, you know, the bass is a little funkier, like, that, it was very Beta Band coded to me.

• 2:17:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so I do think there's a little bit of that happening here.

• 2:18:07Speaker 00

  The song Gas Panic is pretty interesting to me. It's like, one of the few Oasis songs about how maybe drugs are bad. That seems to be the vibe.

• 2:18:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, this was inspired by Noel's Panic Attacks, yeah.

• 2:18:29Speaker 00

  Saying this is trip hop or this is their Portishead record, like the gradations here are always very subtle, you know, but there's, there's just enough of a sense.

• 2:18:39Yasi Salek?

  It's a stretch.

• 2:18:39Speaker 00

  There's a sense on this record that they have a sense of what's going on in the outside world and that's not necessarily going to be true as we progress or it's going to be less true. But this does seem like a record that is at least made by people who are listening to other records coming out around the same time. And even that, that's not necessarily true of even Imperial Phase, Oasis, like the whole value proposition of this band is they exist outside of time, right? And watching them from now on sort of navigate this line of like reacting to what's going on around them and having clearly no idea what's going on around them. Like that's what makes these records interesting to me and like maybe this one especially.

• 2:19:20Yasi Salek?

  I wanted to read you a quote. They asked Liam, there's an NME reader questionnaire and someone wrote in, are Oasis entering their psychedelic period? And Liam said, maybe. What's psychedelic?

• 2:19:36Speaker 00

  Perfect. Perfect.

• 2:19:39Yasi Salek?

  He really doesn't know though. Alan McGee's like, we've done it probably. It's the psychedelic shit. And Liam goes, what is fucking psychedelic?

• 2:19:47Yasi Salek?

  Doesn't even know what you're talking about.

• 2:19:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:19:49Yasi Salek?

  Noel thinks they should never have made this album.

• 2:19:52Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 2:19:53Yasi Salek?

  He says that, I'd come to an end. At the time, I had no reason or desire to make music. I had no drive. We'd sold all these fucking records and there just seemed to be no point. Liam, to his credit, was the one who was like, we're gonna make a record. We're going in the studio next month and you better have some fucking songs written. We should have gone to wherever it is the Rolling Stones disappeared to, wherever the fuck that is. Rent a boat and sail around the Bahamas or whatever. But I went ahead and did it, even though I had no inspiration and couldn't find inspiration anywhere.

• 2:20:20Speaker 00

  I don't necessarily get that sense. I think he did a decent job of faking it.

• 2:20:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, if this is what you can write when you're like completely over it and tapped out and don't care, it's pretty good.

• 2:20:32Speaker 00

  You know, like putting a song on this record called Where Did It All Go Wrong is sort of self-explanatory, but like it's a good song. It's a good like grouchy, Tom Petty.

• 2:20:44Speaker 00

  But Noel, you know, Noel's vocals are like really pretty at the same time. Like, you know, it's a rich text and it's like, it's self-explanatory commentary, but it's, I still really dig it.

• 2:21:05Speaker 00

  "Do you keep the receipts for the friends that you buy?" is a pretty good Noel line. That's, that's like Noel installed energy into song lyrics, which is rarer than you would think.

• 2:21:30Yasi Salek?

  Isn't this the first Liam song?

• 2:21:33Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:21:34Yasi Salek?

  To be on Oasis?

• 2:21:35Speaker 00

  Little James.

• 2:21:36Yasi Salek?

  Little James, right.

• 2:21:37Speaker 00

  I don't know if this song is particularly well-loved by the hardcore Oasis community. This is very sentimental.

• 2:21:46Yasi Salek?

  It's sweet.

• 2:21:55Yasi Salek?

  Noel said, I like the song. I think it's quite touching. He also said it was very annoying to get Liam to write it because he kept playing the same chords over and over. They'd be like, just fucking write the goddamn song. The title is a misquote of an expression by Sir Isaac Newton.

• 2:22:10Speaker 00

  It certainly is.

• 2:22:11Yasi Salek?

  The expression by Sir Isaac Newton was this, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Now Noel saw this quote on the edge of a two-pound coin while in a pub and he liked it so much. He thought it'd be a great name for the new album. So he wrote it on the side of a cigarette packet while drunk. And upon waking in the morning, he realized he had written, "Standing on the shoulder of giants." And I guess he just went with it. He was like, that's a good title, "Shoulder of Giants."

• 2:22:40Speaker 00

  That's legit. I'm convinced.

• 2:22:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. "Fucking in the bushes kept them out of Walmart," just so you know.

• 2:22:46Speaker 00

  Sure it did.

• 2:22:47Yasi Salek?

  They were like, we don't care. We're not changing the title. Sorry, sorry about it. This album still hit number one in the UK and spent 29 weeks on the album chart. It's the fewest for any Oasis studio album, but it's still, still at number one. They're still a big band.

• 2:23:03Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:23:04Yasi Salek?

  I think it has some good songs on it. There's ones that I forgot that I was familiar with, like, uh,

• 2:23:09Speaker 00

  Right. There's a lot of that.

• 2:23:11Yasi Salek?

  A pretty, yeah, you're like, oh yeah, I know this song. Like, I've heard this song.

• 2:23:15Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:23:15Yasi Salek?

  Sunday Morning Calls. It's a nice song.

• 2:23:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:23:19Yasi Salek?

  It's good.

• 2:23:30Yasi Salek?

  Where did it all go wrong in Sunday Morning Call are both about apparently the same person?

• 2:23:35Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 2:23:35Yasi Salek?

  But he refused to say who it was about.

• 2:23:38Speaker 00

  George Harrison.

• 2:23:39Yasi Salek?

  It's about George Harrison.

• 2:23:40Speaker 00

  He's a walker.

• 2:23:41Yasi Salek?

  Fuck you bitch. Your fucking nipple. Um, The Guardian starts the review for Has Been's apparent.

• 2:23:53Yasi Salek?

  It was the Michael Hutchins of it all coming to bite them in the ass.

• 2:23:56Speaker 00

  Oh, right, right. Of course. Sure. That's, that's kinda deserved, honestly. Okay.

• 2:24:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I'm not gonna go into reading them, but the reviews are not good.

• 2:24:05Speaker 00

  No.

• 2:24:06Yasi Salek?

  Of this album. They're not very good. In May touring this album, Noel and Liam have a massive fight and Noel quits the tour. So the things are going well. They reunite. They play Wembley. That performance inspires Chris Roberts from Uncut Magazine to declare rock and roll to be dead. Rock found dead in a ditch. So if you were wondering when guitar rock music died, it was that Wembley performance. Then in 2002, April, something monumental happens, just for my personal life, which is Oasis plays Coachella and I am present. And that is the one and only time that I see Oasis. Yeah.

• 2:24:46Speaker 00

  Okay. Tell me, were you backstage?

• 2:24:49Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 2:24:49Speaker 00

  Were you on the stage?

• 2:24:50Yasi Salek?

  In 2002, I had not yet.

• 2:24:51Speaker 00

  Were you in the band? Okay.

• 2:24:53Yasi Salek?

  2002, I had not yet ascended to the, to the height. I have, I was 20 years old.

• 2:25:01Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:25:01Yasi Salek?

  I remember most from this Coachella somehow getting into VIP and meeting Ben from Felicity. Scott Speedman and taking a disposable camera photo with him. That was major. Taking a ton of ecstasy and seeing Groove Armada in the dance tent.

• 2:25:21Speaker 00

  This is a lot of information.

• 2:25:24Yasi Salek?

  Was super.

• 2:25:29Yasi Salek?

  I didn't pay for the tickets, but I believe they were $80 for two days. You could just sneak in and just climb the fence.

• 2:25:36Speaker 00

  Were you excited about Oasis or did Oasis just happen to be there and it's like, oh, cool?

• 2:25:41Yasi Salek?

  No, I was excited. I still had like a real tender place in my heart for those first two albums. I wasn't exactly keeping up with standing on the shoulder of giants, but I'm sure the statue of limitations is up. But I also remember driving home to our like whatever Motel Six or Red Robin Inn or whatever, Red Baron Inn. And everyone in the car like one by one being like, man, I'm still rolling. And then me driving being like, me too.

• 2:26:07Speaker 00

  You were the least rolling. Yeah.

• 2:26:14Yasi Salek?

  Okay. So in July of 2002, they put out another album, Heathen Chemistry on their own label, Big Brother. What, what is there to say about Heathen Chemistry?

• 2:26:26Speaker 00

  I like this one less overall. I don't think this is a straight deterioration. You know, it's not like every album gets a little worse necessarily. I will say, stop crying your heart out and Little by Little are both, I think, really excellent overblown power ballads. Like Little by Little especially.

• 2:26:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:48Speaker 00

  For some reason, like that, that chorus just really sticks out for me. It's Noel.

• 2:26:59Yasi Salek?

  Noel sing it because Liam couldn't. Liam was supposed to sing it, but he failed at it. He just like, he couldn't hit the notes.

• 2:27:07Speaker 00

  You gotta reach for a few of those notes. Maybe this is my least favorite of all of them, of the four, of the final four.

• 2:27:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:16Speaker 00

  I remembered the single title Hindu Times, but like, not really the song.

• 2:27:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:22Speaker 00

  At all. There's a hidden track on this album and it like, it's one of those things where like, there's a song that's like 20 minutes long. It's like, guys, it's fucking 2002. Like you gotta, you gotta knock that off.

• 2:27:34Yasi Salek?

  I love that. Just, just living for the hidden track in 2002. When we're downloading all of this off Napster anyways.

• 2:27:40Speaker 00

  You're right. I was like, oh, we're gonna put something on track 69. It's gonna be hilarious. And it's like, all right, guys. Here's your, here's your walker. Here's your, uh, something frame. I forget what it's called.

• 2:27:51Yasi Salek?

  Zimmer frame. Yeah.

• 2:27:53Speaker 00

  Zimmer frame. Thank you.

• 2:27:54Yasi Salek?

  I just wanna go on record of saying, none of the post first two or three Oasis albums are bad. I don't think any of them are bad.

• 2:28:02Speaker 00

  I agree.

• 2:28:03Yasi Salek?

  They're really not. It's just the comparison to the greatness of the first two that sort of like puts, casts a shadow over them. But they're good albums, like all of them. Born on a Different Cloud is a great song. Like, there's good songs on here.

• 2:28:23Yasi Salek?

  Starting with Be Here Now, it's, maybe it's to my ear, or maybe it's the new technology, but the production, just like, something about it just doesn't hit for me. It just gets like crunchier and more like compressed as we go along.

• 2:28:36Speaker 00

  I think that's true. We need like a graph that's like cocaine consumption versus like sonics, you know, what we have lost.

• 2:28:46Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:28:46Speaker 00

  You know, is what we thought we wanted to lose, which is the absurd minutes upon minutes of bullshit approach. Like, do you want this band to be lean and mean? You know, like, I don't know that you do. And also like, this is 2002, so now you do have a rock movement, you know? Trying to put this record in the same, like, on the same planet as like the Strokes and Interpol or whatever, like, now that there is like a new cool thing happening, at least according to the media, like, this seems especially out of place in a way that Giants even kind of didn't. Like, there's, there's something to compare this to in terms of a new vanguard,

• 2:29:30Speaker 00

  and that's gonna make this look a little stuffier by comparison.

• 2:29:34Yasi Salek?

  No, totally. I mean, I just think, like, ultimately, like, this is a band that sounds better when they're hungry and when they're not hungry anymore. It's just a different story. Noel being sort of desperate to, like, prove himself and to, like, climb for the stars is really what made Magic happen. And then when that goes away, to his own admission, even with the last album.

• 2:29:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:29:55Yasi Salek?

  You have to respect Oasis for sticking to their guns.

• 2:29:58Speaker 00

  I think that's right. And I, that's not the same as liking the records or putting them on for pleasure. You know, like, I, which I can't say I'm necessarily gonna do with any of these, but they are really interesting. You know, they connect enough with old Oasis to make sense, but they just do not cohere with the 2000s, you know, with the decade they're in. And like, that's kind of cool.

• 2:30:20Yasi Salek?

  It just does feel a little bit like they're going through the motions, you know?

• 2:30:23Speaker 00

  Well, of course. That's the other thing. It makes sense to me that Noel's like, I'm just, I'm writing songs because I have to write songs because we have to make an album. Like, you run into this all the time. Right. Once you do it because you have to, it's gonna sound completely different regardless of who you are, but maybe these dudes especially.

• 2:30:41Yasi Salek?

  Well, like I said, the reviews were not amazing. Pitchfork ran a bizarre, like, old Pitchfork-style review where the whole thing is in a Q and A between two people. They gave it a 1.2, which is not good. I give this review a 1.2 also because, like, really, I have to read a Q and A for, like, 17 paragraphs. The whole premise of the Q and A is about how it's, none of it's original, which is fine. Entertainment Weekly gives it a B minus. This, I just want to point out, this album did atrociously bad in America, like.

• 2:31:16Speaker 00

  Oh, interesting.

• 2:31:17Yasi Salek?

  In the UK, it hit number one. It hit 23 on the US billboard, but again, that's not hard to do in 2002 because we're like well into MP3 era. So in the UK, it sold 1.2 million copies. In the US, it sold 154,000.

• 2:31:33Speaker 00

  That's really bad. Even peak Napster.

• 2:31:36Yasi Salek?

  That's Wikipedia. I can't know for sure, but that's like a crazy difference.

• 2:31:41Speaker 00

  That is.

• 2:31:42Yasi Salek?

  Well, in 2004, we kick Alan White out. I don't really know why, to be honest.

• 2:31:48Speaker 00

  Why not? You know, at this point.

• 2:31:51Yasi Salek?

  Why not? They put in Zach Starkey, who is Ringo Starr's son and also the drummer of The Who at this point, apparently. He's not an official member. He just plays drums touring. They had Lang Glastonbury again in 2004, and it is largely perceived as a disaster. And Emmy calls those words a disaster, lackluster and uneventful, prompting a mixed reception from fans. I think Starkey was pretty new, like we said, and it's been six months. And in 2005, looking at the bestselling albums of 2005 makes me feel actually insane.

• 2:32:25Speaker 00

  Gorillaz running parallel is interesting, right? Like, that's, you know, this is the lost the battle, win the war argument.

• 2:32:33Yasi Salek?

  Demon Days is the, one of the bestselling albums in both the US and the UK in 2005.

• 2:32:38Speaker 00

  That's nuts. The Black Party record is 2000, like Silent Alarm, like, as you say, like, that's, that's a great, that's a fantastic record, you know, and that sort of keeps, keeps us in the game.

• 2:32:52Yasi Salek?

  Black Party will play an interesting and hilarious role in this story, but we'll get to it.

• 2:32:57Speaker 00

  All right. I'm excited for that.

• 2:33:00Yasi Salek?

  Okay, they have a large scale world tour, starting in May of 2005. It does pretty well, honestly. They play more live shows than they've had at any time since the Definitely Maybe Tour. They hit 26 countries. They play for over 3.2 million people. The LA and New York shows, which are at Madison Square Garden, the Hollywood Bowl sell out. So they're doing good in, you know, the major markets. Then they put out Don't Believe the Truth, May 30th, 2005, on Big Brother Records. We haven't even speculated on how funny it is that they called their label Big Brother.

• 2:33:30Speaker 00

  It's good stuff.

• 2:33:31Yasi Salek?

  This is produced by Dave Sardi. It was supposed to be produced by Death in Vegas, but they didn't have enough time. When they started doing it, they didn't have enough time. This and the last album is where they started to have significant writing contributions from members other than chief songwriter Noel Gallagher. And I just, I don't wanna like, I don't wanna make any claims, but it does feel like maybe he was right about that part.

• 2:33:56Speaker 00

  No, I think that's, unfortunately, this had to be a dictatorship, you know? Like, democracy is not for everybody.

• 2:34:03Yasi Salek?

  Democracy is not for everyone. I don't have a lot to say about this album, except that the last interview that Lee Mavers from The Laws, one of Noel Gallagher's heroes and inspirations, ever did was in 2014 for this book. And there's a good chunk where he talks about Noel, he calls him Noel Character, ripping off The Laws. And he says that this song, Importance of Being Idol, is a clean ripoff of his song, Clean Prophet.

• 2:34:33Speaker 00

  Huh.

• 2:34:33Yasi Salek?

  And then he goes on to talk about other Oasis songs that rip off Law's songs.

• 2:34:53Speaker 00

  Is Zach Starkey drumming on this record as well?

• 2:34:57Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 2:34:58Speaker 00

  Okay, cuz I got, I get a lot of, I just wrote, I did not know that, and I wrote down, like, a lot of, I'm getting a lot of Ringo. Out of the symbols.

• 2:35:06Yasi Salek?

  Oh, look at that.

• 2:35:07Speaker 00

  There we go.

• 2:35:08Yasi Salek?

  You picked up the DNA.

• 2:35:10Speaker 00

  Hell, yeah.

• 2:35:11Yasi Salek?

  Damn, this is why you're a fantastic music journalist.

• 2:35:14Speaker 00

  I didn't get the law shit, though. I mean, I have no doubt that they ripped off the laws constantly, you know, but like my knowledge of law songs that are not there she goes.

• 2:35:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I'm sure he would absolutely admit to it. It's just that Liam Avers had a totally different opinion about imitation than Noel did. He did not believe it. He thought it was dishonest.

• 2:35:33Speaker 00

  Okay, the song Keep the Dream Alive, which is like just sort of a ballady thing, you know, Liam sounds especially sad to me.

• 2:35:42Yasi Salek?

  Andy Bell wrote that one.

• 2:35:44Speaker 00

  Uh huh. All right. That that makes a lot of sense, actually. Like, this was my dream, but now my dream has flown. You know, I will keep the dream alive, you know, like, like, not to be super hacky, but like, I get a kind of a meta feeling off this.

• 2:35:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:00Speaker 00

  It's interesting. Like, I don't think any of these records, they think they're on top of the world. Like, this is a weird, there's a difference between trying to do something and knowing that you can't do it anymore, but you keep just doing it anyway to do it. You know, there's something I like humility is not the way to describe this band ever, but there is just something odd and almost touching about like, they understand what their lane is and that their lane is shrinking like by the seconds, you know, and they're kind of at peace with it and kind of never at peace definitionally. But there's just, there's something, something odd about them knowing their place, you know, as we go here

• 2:36:42Speaker 00

  and as we keep, you know, just playing out the string or whatever.

• 2:36:46Yasi Salek?

  I think it's also important to like, like, shift the center of focus from America for a second because in the UK, they're still extremely famous, you know, like, you can, you can argue by 2005 in America, like, people know who the Gallagher brothers are, but they're not like the most famous people in the country. But in the UK, these are still some of the most famous people in the country, you know, like, they can go outside. Like, there's still to this day, some of the most famous people in the country. So like, I think like, they're not an America-focused band as far as they're concerned either. They've never really cared about that. So it is interesting, whereas like, they're, they're definitely not in their imperial phase in the UK with their music or their art, but they as people are still sort of like

• 2:37:29Yasi Salek?

  these celebrated figures, which is interesting. 2006, The Arctic Monkeys enter the chat, first album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not. That became, I think, the fastest-selling album, it uprooted some of the other ones. So, and they're bad boys, or whatever, they're not actually, but they're perceived as such. They're, they're cool. They're doing the rock and roll thing that people loved Oasis for.

• 2:37:54Speaker 00

  Like Coldplay, Travis, you know, there's like stuff happening in the early 2000s, but it's, it's sort of very explicitly like the Oasis hugeness without the Oasis rancor. And I think you need both, you know, to really do it the way Oasis did it.

• 2:38:13Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Well, Zach Starkey left the band, 2008, May, after Dig Out Your Soul, he didn't have a good time. We're about to put out Dig Out Your Soul, but before it comes out, he leaves the band. He's replaced by former drummer of The Laws, Chris Sherrick.

• 2:38:30Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:38:31Yasi Salek?

  He also was not an official member of the band. Then they put out Dig Out Your Soul. This is the last known Oasis album. There's some rumors that they're working on another one, right?

• 2:38:39Speaker 00

  Are there? I was gonna ask, like, did billions of people buy tickets to the upcoming Oasis tour? Because they thought they were gonna hear songs off the last four albums? Or if they thought that they definitely were not going to hear songs off the, like, how many songs from the 2000s will Oasis play in a two-hour, you know, mega festival set? Like, the over/under is like, three? I don't know.

• 2:39:09Yasi Salek?

  I think they know what they're doing. I think they know what people are coming here for.

• 2:39:14Speaker 00

  Song titles on Dig Out Your Soul include Bag It Up, Waiting for the Rapture, I'm Out of Time, Ain't Got Nothing, and Falling Down. It's like, you, like, you, you guys don't have to keep doing this. Like, no one is making you.

• 2:39:31Yasi Salek?

  Nobody's forcing you.

• 2:39:32Speaker 00

  Do this. You can leave. It's fine. Thank you for your service.

• 2:39:38Yasi Salek?

  And they did, they did leave.

• 2:39:42Speaker 00

  But again, it's not bad. Like I the turning like I really dig that song, the bass.

• 2:39:57Speaker 00

  I dig an Oasis song with like a prominent bassline, you know, which is not their norm.

• 2:40:02Yasi Salek?

  And Andy Bell is incredible.

• 2:40:04Speaker 00

  Yes, he is. Like he's, you know, it's interesting. All these guys who are clearly just filling in roles, you know, that are not prominent by definition, but like instrumentalists making themselves known in any way in this era is kind of cool. Like just a little hints of other people peeking out here and there is a cool little subplot to these records as the Gallagher brothers themselves just slowly implode.

• 2:40:28Yasi Salek?

  I kind of rate the last four Oasis albums all around the same level of pretty good.

• 2:40:35Speaker 00

  I'm with you there too. You know, I could rank them one to four, but I don't feel strongly about the best or the worst among them. You know, it's a logical sort of continuum, but it's again, it's just, it's a completely different band or the same band in a completely different universe, which just sounds like a different band. And either way, it's, it's, it's, it's fine. But I don't need to hear any of these songs alive in 2025.

• 2:41:02Yasi Salek?

  This album got mixed reviews. Some pretty good. The enemy gave it eight out of 10. Spin gave it four and a half stars. But then Pitchfork gave it a 4.9. Rolling Stone gave it two and a half stars. So just a little mixed.

• 2:41:19Speaker 00

  It's like twice as good as the

• 2:41:22Yasi Salek?

  Exactly, as the last one.

• 2:41:23Speaker 00

  They're really, if they would have kept going, they'd have had a 10, you know, by now.

• 2:41:28Yasi Salek?

  I don't remember exactly, but I don't think in 2008 Pitchfork was too concerned with the comings and goings of Oasis, but.

• 2:41:36Yasi Salek?

  What was Pitbull like really fucking vibing with in 2008? What do you think?

• 2:41:40Speaker 00

  I think the Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors.

• 2:41:44Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 2:41:44Speaker 00

  I think that might be a year away. Maybe that's 2009, but like I, you know, like TV on the radio.

• 2:41:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:52Speaker 00

  Just things of that nature, you know? Brooklyn is the new London or so I've been told.

• 2:41:58Yasi Salek?

  All right, well, here's where things start to go south. The year after Dig Out Your Soul, they're still touring. Oasis had a gig at V Festival in Chelmsford on the 23rd of August, 2009. Liam canceled because he said he had laryngitis. Noel stated later in 2011 that actually the gig was canceled due to Liam having a hangover. Liam subsequently sued Noel demanding an apology. The truth is I had laryngitis, which Noel was made fully aware of that morning diagnosed by a doctor. Noel did issue an apology and the lawsuit was dropped. Then it was, it was time to play rock and sin in France. However, midway through Block Party's set at the festival.

• 2:42:43Yasi Salek?

  Their front man announces that Oasis would actually not be performing. Now, this is sort of poetic because actually, I don't know if you knew this, but Block Party had a feud with Liam Gallagher prior to this. Liam started the feud in 2005, yes, when he said, fair play to them. Talking about Block Party, they're having a go, doing what they're doing and all that. And people seemed to be into them. People asked me questions like, are they the new fucking Oasis, new fucking Blur or the new fucking thing? I couldn't give a fuck. I don't like them.

• 2:43:13Speaker 00

  That was going all right until the very end there. That was just, it was a harsh ending.

• 2:43:18Yasi Salek?

  He made another comment where he said, they're like a band from the university challenge.

• 2:43:22Speaker 00

  I can imagine, yeah.

• 2:43:24Yasi Salek?

  Kelly Okereke sniped back in 2007. I think Oasis are the most overrated and pernicious band of all time. They had a totally negative and dangerous impact upon the state of British music. He said they made stupidity hip. They claimed to be inspired by the Beatles, but, and this so saddens me, they have failed to grasp. The Beatles were about constant change and evolution. Oasis are repetitive Luddites.

• 2:43:48Speaker 00

  Can't really argue with any of that, you know?

• 2:43:51Yasi Salek?

  Don't worry, he said, he said more. He said, "The idea that your ambitions shouldn't extend beyond getting pissed and watching football really irks me. It's this idea that to be authentically working class, you need to be untainted by the airy-fairy ephemera of education. And it seems to be pretty unique to this country." So that was not good. So I have to imagine that for Kelly to come on stage and be like, "Oasis is cancelled," must have felt real good. Here's what happened. I guess they were there, they're backstage. Liam threw a plum at his brother, which splattered against the dressing room wall shortly before they were due to go onstage.

• 2:44:27Speaker 00

  Plums are the new scones. Yes.

• 2:44:30Yasi Salek?

  Noel said, "Part of me wishes it did end like that. Plum throws plum."

• 2:44:34Speaker 00

  That's good.

• 2:44:35Yasi Salek?

  But actually, then Liam left the room and came back wielding a guitar and tried to hit Noel in the face with it. And Noel said it was a very unnecessary violent act. And then Noel quit on the spot. And that's it. That was, that was Oasis' over that day. That's it all. It all kind of came to a head over a plum and a guitar hit and...

• 2:44:56Speaker 00

  Have you ever in your life heard of a plum, like plums being available backstage at a rock show of any kind?

• 2:45:05Yasi Salek?

  Well, here's the thing, we're in Europe, babe. They really have a different, they have a different over there. Yeah.

• 2:45:10Speaker 00

  They love their plums.

• 2:45:11Yasi Salek?

  You're gonna have charcuterie, you're gonna have fucking beautiful cheeses. Yeah, this is not fucking the backstage in Cleveland, Ohio where it's like the true today platter from the Safeway. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, it's a little more elevated over there.

• 2:45:26Speaker 00

  Okay. That's, you don't have to overdo it, but I hear you. Okay.

• 2:45:31Yasi Salek?

  Noel issued an official statement just like a day or two later, and he said, "It's with some sadness and great relief, I tell you that I quit Oasis tonight. People will write and say what they like, but I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer. Apologies to all the people who bought tickets for the shows in Paris, Constance, and Milan." And it was with a whimper, not a bang. That Oasis ended.

• 2:45:56Speaker 00

  I was gonna say, like, do we think that this fight was really like 10 times worse than your average fight? Or was it just some arbitrary fight that they decided, let's just make this, you know, the end of the world?

• 2:46:12Yasi Salek?

  It sounds like it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

• 2:46:15Speaker 00

  Right, exactly.

• 2:46:16Yasi Salek?

  For Noel, on Noel's part. I think Noel was just like, I don't deserve this. I don't care about this anymore. I don't want to do this anymore. I can't stand your fucking face. You threw a plum at me. You're so annoying. I don't even like the albums we made. And Liam snatches up Jem and Andy and forms his own band quite soon after called BDI.

• 2:46:37Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 2:46:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, we won't get into the discography of BDI, but, you know, he kept doing it. Noel formed the High Flying Birds, also featured Jem Archer and Andy Bell at different points, and Chris Sherrick and other people. Liam also did some solo music, I believe.

• 2:46:57Speaker 00

  He did. As you were.

• 2:46:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, as you were.

• 2:47:01Speaker 00

  There was a Twitter era where he would end all his tweets with as you were, and it was like really cool. Like, it really worked well. He's like, fuck you guys, as you were. Like, it's great.

• 2:47:11Yasi Salek?

  He's one on the Twitter battlefield, for sure. He's one of the most prolific and best tweeters of all time, or Xers, X.com.

• 2:47:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:47:20Yasi Salek?

  As it's now known as. We don't have time to unpack the 20-ish, whatever, 15-ish years.

• 2:47:27Speaker 00

  Neither the time nor the enthusiasm, yes.

• 2:47:30Yasi Salek?

  Nor the enthusiasm or energy to go back and forth between the various insults that have been hurled back and forth via the internet.

• 2:47:38Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 2:47:39Yasi Salek?

  At the Brothers. Potato was a pretty good one.

• 2:47:42Speaker 00

  Potato was a good one. There was the one.

• 2:47:44Yasi Salek?

  Liam calling Noel potato.

• 2:47:46Speaker 00

  Very early in COVID.

• 2:47:49Speaker 00

  I believe Liam had gained some weight and so Noel said he's not isolating from the sweet trolley now is he and the phrase the phrase isolating from the sweet trolley I just delights me to no end that is more poetic than anything that has appeared in any Oasis song post Dolce and Gabbana are you going to see Oasis reunited Yasi yes or no?

• 2:48:17Yasi Salek?

  If God wills it babe I really do want to what about you?

• 2:48:21Speaker 00

  Uh, I'm in the same boat. I would like to not pay $400 on StubHub or whatever, whatever that would actually require me.

• 2:48:30Yasi Salek?

  An incredibly low.

• 2:48:32Speaker 00

  That's what I, that was my fear. So I guess we change the answer to no, uh, unless I, you know, jump a fence in Toronto. It's also not getting anywhere near me unless maybe Chicago, but it's, you know, they're not, I don't believe they're getting into Columbus anytime soon and who can blame them?

• 2:48:50Yasi Salek?

  Well, for those that live under a rock, we didn't mention, but earlier this year rumors began to float around that Oasis were finally reuniting after all the sweet trolley and a potato of it all. And I think people have speculated that it's because Noel Gallagher went through a pretty high profile divorce, but I don't think so. Noel Gallagher is really fucking rich. Like the amount of money that Noel Gallagher had to give his ex-wife in comparison with how much money Noel Gallagher has is not enough for him to be like, well, I have to go on tour because he doesn't care. I think it's, if I had to guess, I, I think it was, it's like a legacy.

• 2:49:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, that sounds right to me.

• 2:49:32Yasi Salek?

  Which is wise.

• 2:49:33Speaker 00

  You know, like the question of why now, I guess COVID sort of screws up the idea of now versus five years from now, right? Like if this, if they had plans and they scuttled them, like I, on the one hand, I don't know why 2025 versus, you know.

• 2:49:48Yasi Salek?

  Well, they have, they had the anniversary this year, right?

• 2:49:52Speaker 00

  Right. Okay. That, that's the answer. Okay.

• 2:49:55Yasi Salek?

  And they're, they're still young enough that they'll look cool. They're not fat. Liam got away, he, he did eventually isolate from the sweet trolley.

• 2:50:04Speaker 00

  Jet is in the sweet trolley.

• 2:50:05Yasi Salek?

  He goes running. He goes running, even though he, he said rock stars shouldn't run. And if you saw Bono running with an Evian water bottle, he'd look like a fanny. He changed his tune. He does go running. And yeah, I would like to see them. I hope they don't listen to this podcast and have us banned from each and every one of the stadiums, but it's going to be fab. It's going to be mega. It's going to be top. I can't wait.

• 2:50:26Speaker 00

  Let's go. Let's figure this out.

• 2:50:28Yasi Salek?

  Do we have some sort of extremely wealthy British fan that wants to fly me and Rob? We'll go with you. We'll hang out with you for days. You can ask us every day about what our favorite rock music songs are. You can, you can, we'll allow it. You can ask me to do every band.

• 2:50:47Speaker 00

  Personal mailbag experience. Yeah.

• 2:50:49Yasi Salek?

  Yes, exactly. Bang our line. Well, Rob Harvilla, against all odds.

• 2:50:55Speaker 00

  I didn't think we were going to get through this one. I'm going to level with you.

• 2:50:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, this one was a hard plane to land, but we did it.

• 2:51:02Speaker 00

  I mean, they couldn't land it. So I, I think we did a better job of landing the plane than Oasis did.

• 2:51:08Yasi Salek?

  Thank you as always, Rob, for spending your one wild and precious life, 10% of it podcasting with me about the back half of Oasis catalog.

• 2:51:17Speaker 00

  Anytime, anytime.

• 2:51:21Yasi Salek?

  If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bandplane. Our guest today was once again, Rob Harvilla. This episode was produced by Liz Sanchez and edited by Adrian Bridges with help of Justin Sales. Executive producers for Bandplane are Gina Dalvak and me, Yasi Salek. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer Clayton, and graciously recorded by Carlos de la Garza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer, Meredith, producer Dylan, AKA Dylan Tupper Rupert, and Michael Hardman, Casey Sivenson, Robert Adler, Leah Edwards, David McDonough, Dana Meyerson, Jessica Hopper, and television program Slow Horses. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bandplane on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 2:52:12Yasi Salek?

  Oh no, is the dog chewing the bone too loud? Am I causing all sorts of problems? Can you hear it?

• 2:52:18Speaker 00

  I can. I don't know that it's... I don't know if it's a recording ruining type situation. I think this would actually count as color.