I couldn't find the date for this, but it's not exactly new or old I like it because Liam comes off as, oh, I don't know, *nice* almost!
Q&A: OASIS' LIAM GALLAGHER AND PAUL "BONEHEAD" ARTHURS
Band Riding High on the Success of "Wonderwall"
Don't ask Oasis vocalist Liam Gallagher what a Wonderwall is, 'cause he "dunno," and he doesn't seem to concerned about it. "Sounds good, though, dunnit?" he muses. Success in the states sounds good too, and with the top-40 success of Wonderwall, it looks like the British quintet may finally be headed toward it.
While the rest of the world succumbed to Oasismania in 1994, the year the Manchester lads released their debut Definitely Maybe, it took the States a bit longer to warm up to the band's cocky Beatlesque stylings. But now that the band has overcome the public feuding of Liam and his songwriting brother Noel, the collapse of their ill-fated fall US tour, and the physical strain of trying to keep up a hectic hotel-trashing and drug-taking schedule, Oasis seems poised to be the first Brit band to truly explode on the U.S. charts since...Jesus Jones?
Here's what Liam and guitarist Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs recently had to say about the making of Oasis' image as well as the recording of their sophomore effort, "(What's the Story) Morning Glory."
ROLLING STONE ONLINE" How different was the recording process this time around?
LIAM GALLAGHER: We've just gotten better. The first time we went into a studio, we didn't know what it would be like. I didn't know what it would be like to stand in a vocal booth. This one was just a piece of piss [a charming English phrase roughly equivalent to "a piece of cake"], because we've just been playing for about two years non-stop, and we know what we've got to do. It's like, "Right, there's my vocal booth, there's my mic, press play and let's have it.'"
BONEHEAD: [The sound] has progressed a lot. You just can't compare it [to "Definitely Maybe"]. The songs have a lot more feeling, there's been a lot more thought put in them. Recording took about three weeks. That's just the way we work. We were doing a track a day, more or less-overdubs, vocals, the lot. We work quick. Actually, I'd only heard about three of the songs played acoustically before we recorded them. We'd never played them live in rehearsal or anything. They were all new to the band. Noel just sort of played each one the day we were recording it and said, "Right, we're doing this one next, this is how it goes," and away we'd go. We'd been playing the same songs for about a year, so it was good to hear fresh songs we hadn't done before.
RSO: What about your reputation for fighting with Noel, Liam? How much truth is there to that?
LG: Everyone knows that if you've got a brother, you're going to fight. I mean, if you've got a sister, you'll fight with her for taking too long in the toilet or whatever. But it's just the press [blowing it out of proportion]. Half of them don't even like music, they just fucking write about this stuff. It's boring, isn't it? It just shows how crap those papers are. We don't think about it. We're just into writing new songs and playing them.
RSO: How do you deal with the fact that you're huge in England, and now becoming successful in the U.S.?
LG: [Selling out the large London indoor venue] Earl's Court freaked me out a little bit. I knew it'd sell out, but I didn't think it'd sell out in 24 hours. But I'm totally comfortable with our success, because we deserve to be that big, and bigger.
B: We're happy with [our level] in the States right now. It's not going to happen overnight, and we don't expect it to. The only way you can make it work is if you keep going over there and keep touring to promote the record, which is what we're going to do. If it takes two years, three years, five years, whatever, we'll just keep going at it.
LG: I like [playing U.S.] clubs because it seems like we've gone from small places to big ones here really fast, and we've missed out on something. So it's good to go over to the U.S. and feel that vibe again.
-- MO RYAN
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