With Oasis' return imminent, the first instalment of our four-part history of the band traces their rise, from the Noel-free live debut to the era-defining release of 'Definitely Maybe'

By the time another Oasis comes along, you will have grown out of pop music. A scary thought, perhaps, but that's the way it is. By the time another band emerges who absolutely and shamelessly unify, dominate and define their time, you'll probably be suffering either from a beard or the menopause and all you'll be listening to is Radio 4 and the sad, sad ticking of your body clock winding down. Once in a lifetime? Maybe not, but you can only stay young and invincible for so long. You grew up in the Nineties: Oasis were your band.

There had been nothing like Oasis since their heroes, The Beatles. Forget The Who (concept poseurs with poodle-hair); forget The Sex Pistols (art-school creations, speaking at you, rather than with you); forget the Mondays end the Roses (sieves to hedonism, a one-way mirror gawping at a one-way world). But Oasis? Oasis were you and me. And him. And her. And that could've been one of their lyrics.

The day that Noel Gallagher phoned his mum Peggy back in Burnage, South Manchester, in 1991, he had no idea his kid brother Liam had recently joined a band. Last thing he knew, Liam's dabbling in music stretched no further than nicking a few of his Stone Roses records and the time they'd both gone to see the lnspiral Carpets two years earlier. Since then, Noel had taken off around the world as the Carpets' guitar tech, and Liam, it seems, had taken off as a singer with a band once called Rain but now rechristened Oasis, alongside guitarist Paul 'Bonehead' Arthurs, bassist Paul "Guigsy' McGuigan and drummer Tony McCarroll. After catching their debut gig at Manchester's Boardwalk club, Noel told them they had it in them to rule the world, but only as a five-piece. With Noel on guitar, Noel writing the songs and Noel firmly in charge. They agreed.

Which is almost where you and come in, but first there was Creation's Alan McGee. On May 31, 1993, McGee saw Oasis at Glasgow's King Tut's Wah Wah Hut, where they'd bragged their way into an early support slot. Two songs in and legend has it that McGee jumped onstage and offered them a deal there and then. As Liam would later tell The Maker: "He got butterflies in his stomach and just went."

It actually took Oasis until October to sign with Creation, by which time a demo tape-owning Johnny Marr had secured them the services of his manager and even given Noel one of his guitars. By the time the label issued a limited white-label of the U2-tastic 'Columbia", thousands of people had already caught the buzz from Melody Maker's debut live review, penned by Paul Mathur. Calling them the best new band in Britain, Paul wrote: 'You've heard it before but, believe me, you'll never have heard it quite like this. Oasis have got me. You're next and you'll love it.' A MakerBreaker feature followed, talking of 'mountains of moments that leave you wide-eyed and yelping'. Once we’d heard the laconic snarl of their debut single, "Supersonic", and seen the band giving it loads on 'The Word', we knew he was right. So did McGee, who poured a bathe of Jack Daniel's over his head and threatened to fire his other bands if they didn't come up with something as good.

"We pity anyone who doesn’t buy our records," sneered Liam when The Maker met with him in April '94, and this something with which Noel readily agreed. But, even then, the Gallagher brothers' differences were proving more fascinating than their similarities. "I weren't into music," admitted Liam. "I'd be like, 'Shut up with that bunch crap you're playing on the on the guitar! You can't play it!' I was into football and being a little scally an' that."

Not that Noel hadn't been scally himself, having done his fair share of robbing and sniffing as a kid (he'd actually served six months' probation for robbing a corner shop). But when most of his band were notoriously arrested on a ferry to Holland for boozy misbehaviour, Noel's indignation was acute. "We're musicians, right" he screamed in the magazine interview which was to become the legendary Fierce Panda single, 'Wibbling Rivalry'. "We're not football hooligans!"

"You're only gutted cos you was in bed, f***in' reading your f***in' books," goaded Liam.

"Fantastic!" giggled The Maker, proclaiming Oasis both 'In' and 'Out' in the same week, Still, by the time their second "Shakermaker", was released, we’d decided that Oasis were "extraordinarily concise proof that British pop rules any roost you care to mention", even if Noel was dabbling in dadrock for the first time, joining crusty old goat Neil Young onstage in London. As Liam's sad indictment had it: "He wants to play with old twats."

And then it happened. It was called "Live Forever", it slithered and swelled and soothed and sighed and screamed and it completely redesigned the Nineties. For me, the summer of '94 meant days spent in a girlfriend's bedroom, "Live Forever'" cranked to parent-deafening levels as we repeat-repeat-repeated ourselves into devout belief. You'll have your own memories (maybe their victorious Glastonbury appearance that year), but as it went Top 10, Oasis finally become the kind of overnight stars they always knew they'd be.

The Maker was there as Oasis filmed the video for "Live Forever" in Central Park in the shadow of the Dakota Building where John Lennon hod been murdered I4 years before. "Noel Gallagher loves musical history," we wrote, "and Liam knows exactly how to be a pop star." So while Noel was content to bask in that moment, Liam was the one who instigated an impromptu gig, inspiring near-manic in the locals - the only reaction he'd tolerate. "Listen, man," he spat at one American doubter. "Don't you ever tell me that what I do doesn't mean anything. I can do things you couldn't even dream about. I'll steal your soul and you won't even notice it. I've stolen it while you were standing here."

And when the recently departed Kurt Cobain was brought up as on example of a real star, things got even more heated. "He was a sad c*** who couldn't handle the fame, We're stronger than that." You can imagine how many letters poured into The Maker, but Oasis' gloriously arrogant superiority complex has always been one of their finest attributes (see above right). Besides, as we pointed out at the time: "Maybe, instead of focusing on the fights between the brothers Gallagher, people should staid concentrating on the r more positive energy flooding from the band's absolute belief in their own ability. For them, the fact that anyone wouldn't be blown away is well beyond the realms of conceivability."

Nevertheless, by the time the debut album, 'Definitely Maybe', was released in August, the controversy surrounding them spiralled out of control. No sooner had Noel suffered a brutal attack onstage at Newcastle's Riverside ("I love music," he told us after aborting the show, "but it's not worth dying for."), than Oasis were getting into all kinds of trouble with The Verve in Scandinavia. One hotel bar saw the dark side of their celebrated hedonism, and only a damages payment of £800 kept the band from a Swedish prison cell, later in the year, rumours that Liam had mistaken a Parisian hotel corridor for a urinal were shrugged off, though ft was slightly trickier to shrug off Evan Dando, who'd begun shamelessly tailing Oasis as their self-pointed number one fan (something Robbie Williams would later ape). With 'Definitely Maybe', though, Oasis' music really did overshadow their gossip column-friendly antics. As Noel told us in the week of its release: "This album puts paid to all the rumours, hearsay, gossip and sensationalism about drugs and f***ing shagging in hotel rooms. This is what will be, remembered in 20 years' time, not incidents on ferries or whatever." And maybe that's true. From the agenda-setting swagger of "Rock'n'Roll Star" to the stunningly epic "Slide Away", nothing had felt so unanimously now for years, despite retro allegations. "Don't expect samples, sequencers, dance beats or any other concessions to late-20th-century pop life," said The Maker's review. "But f*** that - that's what the Prodigy and Orbital are for." And so 1994 ended much as it had begun - with a mixture of scandal and achievement, the latter from the band's glorious Christmas single (and Top Three hit) "Whatever", the former from a near riot when Liam quit a gig at Glasgow Barrowlands (as well as from the threat of a plagiary lawsuit). Still, as The Maker wrote as the year drew to a close: 'Oasis can have 1994. They can f***in' have it.' And they f***in' well did.

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c 2000 Andrew Turner

aturner@interalpha.co.uk

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