Oasis members Tony McCarroll, Paul 'Bonehead' Arthurs, Noel Gallagher, Liam Gallagher, Paul 'Guigsy' McGuigan. Photo / Getty Images
A Rolls-Royce in a swimming pool, cocaine-fuelled sessions and a terrible album to show for it — this is the tale of a rock 'n' roll car crash.
On a hot day in central London a select group of music industry insiders gathered in a bar. Despite the warm weather, the windows remained closed — it was safer. The occasion was a preview of the most eagerly awaited album of the year, Be Here Now by Oasis. Paranoia was rife about piracy and some in the Oasis camp thought a passerby may record the whole thing from outside.
This was 25 years ago. Britpop was at its height. Oasis (brash, northern), Blur (brash, arty, southern), Suede (arty, southern) and Pulp (arty, northern) changed the country and its culture. Initially seen as a British reaction to the dominance of US grunge in the early 1990s, the movement of new guitar music dovetailed with the new politics of New Labour, all the way to the time Noel Gallagher took drugs at a Downing St reception hosted by Tony Blair.
But when it came out, on August 21, 1997, Be Here Now changed everything. The album is the last great rock 'n' roll story, one of extraordinary hubris and cash. It came at the end of a wild era in which Britpop's success led to artistic bloat and hit a wall. The comedown was seismic. And the end of Britpop was Be Here Now.
The album has not had a revisionist period, because, mostly, it is not good. Even Noel — who wrote the thing — jumped ship. "It was an album mixed on cocaine," he says. "I'd get to a point and go, 'F*** it — that'll do.' I was making records to justify spending thousands on drugs." But the story behind it is worth telling. Forget the Beatles documentary from last year. The one we need is about Be Here Now.
"The only reason anyone was there was the money," the producer Owen Morris recalls, summing up the era-defining mess. Morris had worked with the band since their debut in 1994 and knew that things had changed. "Noel decided Liam was a s*** singer. Liam decided he hated Noel's songs. Massive amounts of drugs. Big fights. Bad vibes. S*** recording."
Despite all that, Be Here Now became the fastest-selling album in the UK — a position it held until 2015 and Adele's 25. For an entire generation, the first time that they heard Be Here Now is as memorable as where you were when JFK was shot. For the Oasis release, I was 16, on my way to get my GCSE results. The ritual was the same for millions — go to Our Price, spend £14.99 on a CD, pick up your grades, try to buy some beer, listen to Be Here Now . . .
And realise your C in biology was nothing to be ashamed of, given that Oasis had released a song as banal as track three on Be Here Now, Magic Pie. We all make mistakes.
Listening to that song again, it is simply extraordinary that when you get to the three-minute mark, there are still four left. Which happens again and again. In a sane, sober world All Around the World — a song that is just chorus — would end after four minutes. It runs to nine. Only one track clocks in under four minutes and that is the reprise to All Around the World. If you want to hear exactly what a big budget in the 1990s sounded like, for men with a hedonistic streak, stick on the meandering Fade In-Out — a song that has Johnny Depp on slide guitar largely because Noel holidayed with the actor in Mustique.
This is not a criticism of long songs. Bohemian Rhapsody, Idiot Wind, Runaway — if a song has fresh ideas or a good vibe, keep going. Be Here Now, though, just seems to go on because nobody turned it off.
According to Noel, the bog-standard uptempo rock song My Big Mouth had 30 different guitar tracks on it and you can hear that more-is-more approach on every single song.
Having made a living for the staff of their label, Creation, and broken records at their enormous Knebworth gig, Oasis were surrounded by yes men. "Hmm, I don't know about this now," Noel thought, while mixing the album. But it was too late.
The cover image — with a Rolls-Royce in a swimming pool — sums up the farrago. The original plan for a front was for four images, one for each band member, with Liam cameoing in each. Noel was going to be in a tree playing a guitar. Drummer Alan White wanted to be in a pub, while Guigsy (Paul McGuigan), a bassist clearly living his best life, chose to be shot in St Lucia. The guitarist Bonehead, meanwhile, wanted to be next to a swimming pool with a Rolls-Royce, in a vague homage to The Who drummer Keith Moon.
When it was apparent that the logistics for four shoots were too much, even for the 1990s, Bonehead's idea was chosen, with Michael Spencer-Jones — who had shot their previous two covers — returning behind the camera.
"The shoot was chaotic," Jones tells me. The location, Stocks House, was the former home of the Playboy executive Victor Lownes, which had been turned into a golf resort and five-star hotel. "The public had access, which gave us issues. Golfers started wandering into shot and getting into arguments.
"Also, I'd never filled a pool before and thought if I left the hose running overnight, it would be full in the morning. When I woke, there were about two inches of water. So we called the fire brigade and they attached a hydrant. That filled it up quickly, but, as a consequence, there was no water in the hotel, so guests couldn't flush the toilet or make a cup of tea. There was mutiny."
When the band arrived at midday, they were plied with gin and tonic. Soon, they were feeling supersonic. "Originally it was going to be a night shoot," says Jones, whose aesthetic was inspired by the swimming pool scenes in Scandal, the 1989 film about the Profumo affair. "But by night-time, the band were bladdered. I had lighting people who got stoned and then a generator blew. The shots of Bonehead at night-time have him sat down because he could not physically stand."
Still, the album got ecstatic reviews. And not just from a buoyant Liam. "I don't have a bad word to say about Be Here Now," he has said. "The only person who's got a problem with it is Noel. He wrote it, so that's his problem."
The press, too, were in love. "A great rock record," The Daily Telegraph gushed. "This validates most, if not all, of the Gallaghers' boasts about their greatness," The Guardian panted. Q, meanwhile, decided: "You have to go back, as Noel so often does, to efforts like The Beatles' Revolver, for a set whose every constituent could be spun off into the singles chart."
By 1998 the mood had changed. Chris Evans was using a defibrillator on TFI Friday in a skit pretending to bring a CD of Be Here Now back to life. "It's dead," he said. The positive reviews, though, point to an industry that knew that what sustained it — Britpop — was heading for its grave and to admit the era's key album was a dud would kill it off early. The same happened two years later, when film critics lavished praise on the dreadful Star Wars prequels, lest they infuriate magazine-buying fans, and it is little coincidence that after Melody Maker gave Radiohead's Kid A 1.5 out of 5, the magazine folded three months later. The era cemented a symbiosis of press and the entertainment industry, whereby journalism became just another branch of marketing.
It is frustrating. Listen to demos for ballads such as Don't Go Away and Stand By Me, or the early takes of the pompous lead single D'you Know What I Mean and, yes, even Magic Pie, and Oasis magic is still on Be Here Now. Gorgeous melodies, soaring choruses, connection. A cover of Don't Go Away by folk singer Kate Rusby shows there is a beautiful song there, but, alas, for Oasis, those demos didn't make it through the recording studio or the drugs. The good times turned good tunes bad and, playing solo since the band split up in 2009, the brothers have largely ignored the album live.
Six months before Be Here Now, Blur released Blur — a dark, brilliant and significantly less jaunty album than its predecessors — while, in May, Radiohead released their technophobic masterpiece, OK Computer. In the same year, the NME poll of best albums was topped by Spiritualized's heartbreak psychedelia Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, all brain, no brawn. It's as far from Be Here Now as possible.
The mood had shifted and the excellence of alternatives meant fans were no longer happy to accept an album that could be, at least, half the length and noise. It would be three years before Oasis released a fourth album. The best song on that? Where Did It All Go Wrong?
Oasis
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants, the follow-up to Be Here Now boasted three listenable songs. Quality continued to drop, until the Gallaghers imploded in 2009 to pursue solo careers largely based on songs from 1995.
• Best post-1997 track: The Importance of Being Idle
Blur
Blur's 13 (1999) is an emotional epic and their best album. Think Tank (2003) was a mixed bag and 2015's The Magic Whip forgotten. Damon Albarn, though, is extraordinary — Gorillaz, operas, solo work.
• Best post-1997 track: Tender
Suede
The overlooked Head Music (1999) marks Brett Anderson's reaction to the movement they loathed. While their music since hit muted heights, live, Suede remain the era's great survivors. Songs from Dog Man Star (1994) are essential.
• Best post-1997 track: Everything Will Flow
Pulp
Little said "Party is over!" more than Pulp's This Is Hardcore in 1998 — a sleazy run through porn and mental demise, with exceptional tunes. They have had only one album since, but Jarvis Cocker has announced Pulp will return in 2023.
• Best post-1997 track: Bad Cover Version
Written by: Jonathan Dean
© The Times of London
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