The third instalment of our four-part history of Oasis charts 'the tabloid years', when they became more famous for their actions than their music.

It had to happen. After had Patsy, Noel had Damon and 250,000 people had discovered Knebworth, Oasis almost totally morphed from Britpop into tabloid mainstays. And it was this relentless media coverage that would characterise the third chapter in Oasis' history far more than any music they happened, incidentally, to churn out. But what did they expect when they started that era by...well, splitting up.

Or not. But, for a day and a night at least, that's what the world believed. On September 11, 1996, Noel Gallagher walked out on Oasis' 'Morning Glory'-capitalising US tour with several left to play. There'd already been a deal of controversy when Liam had turned back at Heathrow, electing to go 'house hunting', rather than board his plane - as omens go, that was rather like someone called Damien into the Tower Of London and shooting all the ravens. But Noel's walkout afterLiam had reappeared was something else, if only because the media had always assumed he was the sensible one.

The details of exactly what happened in Charlotte, North Carolina, remain fuzzy, but the story-breaking Sun claimed there was a five-hour summit meeting (or, as many preferred to see it a 'punch-up', which Liam was reported to have won).

Noel returned to London that night, the Oasis gossip on an almost daily basis. 0r perhaps it was an effort to play others the following day, but all five of them were to return to the biggest media circus since Vanessa Feltz had discovered she could juggle. Melody Maker called it the 'most relentless media pressure ever brought to bear upon any British group'. The tabloids, no doubt, called it manna from heaven.

It had happened before, when Noel abandoned Oasis' US tour in September '94, fleeing to LA with half an ounce of cocaine and a head full of despair. 'I just thought: F*** it. We're splitting up'," he would tell The Maker afterwards.

'I really didn't want to be in Oasis any more.' Once the dust had cleared time, he told us: 'If [that] tour had gone on much longer, there wouldn't have been a band left. But it was nothing to do with Liam.' A significant comment, that. Because, just as Noel had taken full responsibility for Oasis' music on his shoulders, Liam had started to take the full force of tabloid demonisation on his, playing up to their incessant need for Oasis gossip on an almost daily basis.

As Andy Coulson, the then showbiz editor of The Sun, told us: "I think they have a laugh about some of the stuff we do. But it's a problem that, alongside that, we will talk about their private lives. Unfortunately, that goes with the territory when you're Noel or Liam Gallagher." Unfortunately, it did. And, unfortunately, Noel didn't see it in quite such a shoulder-shrugging way.

"The thing is, they write something and twist is and it becomes lies. Say if I went out to a nightclub and got pretty drunk but left at six in the morning, it would be: 'Noel went to a nightclub, got violently drunk, had two fights and left with women at six the next afternoon. In a police van!' I wouldn't mind the lies, but they're usually all negative."

So perhaps it was an effort to play down their scandalous side when Oasis and Creation Records weighed in so heavily with New Labour's election campaign a mere fortnight after Noel's walkout in America, sponsoring a youth event at the party's autumn conference, Creation gave Tony Blair a 10-times-platinum disc, while Noel told the world that Blair's conference speech 'brought tears to my eyes'. And Tony? Well, Tony reciprocated by calling Noel up now and again for intimate - and oddly untapped - phone conversations.

Oh, and on August 30 the following year, he invited him to a party at Number 10, too. Obviously, Liam hadn't been invited, having spent the previous year (a) being accused of biting a woman's nose at an Ocean Colour Scene gig; (b) getting into fights with assorted tabloid hacks; (c) allegedly trashing London's Groucho Club; (d) getting a front-page-earning crew cut (shock! horror!); (e) secretly marrying Patsy Kensit at St John's Wood Register Office; (f) being accused of a road rage attack on a cyclist and, most notoriously; (g) being arrested and charged for possession of drugs on Oxford Street after a two-day bender from which London has still to recover. So, no, Liam wasn't invited.

And maybe Noel shouldn't have gone either, because, at the time, he wasn't exactly the most welcome figure at Middle England's buffet bar. Back in January, shortly after E17's Brian Harvey was hung out to dry for admitting to his history of Ecstasy abuse, Noel told Radio 5 live at an awards ceremony that taking drugs was 'like getting up and having a cup of tea in the morning'. Not the kind of thing a future visitor to Number 10 should be saying at all. And nor was his follow-up: "There's people in the Houses of Parliament who are bigger heroin addicts and cocaine addicts than anyone in this room right now."

The media outrage was enormous, with MPs, clergymen, Leah Betts' parents, 'drugs czar' Keith Halliwell and every subspecies of moral guardian under the sun (though The Guardian was rather supportive) racing to slam Noel in print and on TV. What they hadn't paid any attention to was Noel's surprisingly anti-drugs ethos. Way back in March '96, had told The Maker: 'Dope is definitely the scourge of my generation', and admitted that he'd wished he'd never taken drugs at all. 'It's not big and it's not clever,' he said. 'I mean, I'm all right, me. I've got a f*** of a lot of money to f*** about with if I get into something, I can afford to do it without it affecting me too much. But I haven't forgotten what it's like to be poor. Drugs may look like a f***in' way out, but all they do is make the problem worse."

Nevertheless, in the eyes of the world, Noel Gallagher had become almost as bad as his brother and, when he was pictured with Blair at Number 10, it was inevitable that the moral guardians would resurrect the scandal. For his part, the PM was open-minded. "I remember The Rolling Stones," he said "and Mick Jagger in particular being the devil incarnate of my generation when I was a teenager. So I'm hardly the one to start lecturing about rock stars." Noel's marriage to Meg Mathews may have made him more respectable in the PM's eyes. Then again, seeing as how it took place in Las Vegas with an Elvis impersonator, maybe not.

Of course, in the midst of all this scandal, there was some music too. Shortly after supporting U2 at two dates in California (Liam: 'It was like being inside a spaceship. Not that I ever have, of course"), Oasis released their big comeback single, "D'You Know What I Mean?" with drum samples courtesy of NWA and chorus courtesy of Anthems'R'Us. It went platinum in a matter of hours, breaking all known records, save for those held by Band Aid. The follow-up album, 'Be Here Now', broke a whole load more, becoming Britain ever-selling album and even being voted Album Of 1997 by the readers of US mag Rolling Stone.

Was it any good? People seem to think not these days, but, for my money, the likes of "I Hope, I Think I Know", "My Big Mouth" and the gorgeous "Don't Go Away" were absolute, Oasis classics. Noel, though, didn't seem quite so chuffed. 'We're stuck in this rut of being this five-piece rock'n'roll bond,' he told Steve Lamacq.

"It's just sort of not exciting any more. I'm not going to record another rock'n'roll album."

But the rock'n'roll tours were just fine, especially Oasis' grand return to these shores with Noel's new favourites, Travis. "They sound monu-f***ing-mental," we wrote and, what with Liam stirring up even more hoo-ha with his anti-old blokes rants at Earls Court in September '97 (he would later challenge George 'f***ing nipple' Harrlson et al to a punch-up on Primrose Hill), there was a nice bit of controversy on those tours, to boot. Especially when you add Liam's rage at punters bringing laser-pens to the shows ("if you do that again, I'll see you in the car park, kick yer head in, nick yer car, f*** yer girlfriend and nick yer credit card, you Cockney c**!") and the seat-ripping riot which erupted in Glasgow, when Oasis quit the show after a bottle was thrown at Bonehead.

So it was right and proper that this chapter of the Oasis story should have ended with yet more tabloid-arousing controversy: an air rage incident on a Cathay Pacific flight to Australia which resulted in Liam receiving a lifelong ban from their flights. Oh, and he was accused of breaking a tourist's nose. And this. And that. And everything...

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c 2000 Andrew Turner

aturner@interalpha.co.uk

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