Inside are colour pictures: portraits of each of the band members; a number of the band in rehearsal with keyboardist Mike Rowe

pictures by Jill Furmanovsky

For the last ten months Oasis have been defined by 24-hour tabloid hysteria, V-signs at award ceremonies, and the contents of Meg's shopping bags. What's the biggest band in the universe to do? Easy. Records the best album of their career, giggle at that bloke out of Placebo and prepare for re-entry into a vacuous pop world. Over the next 30 pages, in exclusive one-to-one interviews, Oasis talk to Select about the calm that lies at the centre of the storm, those drooled-over new songs, and why fame makes you put your TV in the garden...

THE BAND

"Good Aren't They?"

Or such is Liam's evaluation of Oasis as they rock out in their practice bunker. Select joins them as they "work like monkeys", eye up costly Beatles artefacts and settle down for their first ever five-way interview...

"There’s Bald Oasis," says Liam Gallagher, nudging up to the other four as they pose against a purple backdrop, "there’s Stoned Oasis, Rich Oasis, Cockney Oasis..."

"And what are you?" barks his brother, in the manner of one who can’t help but behave like a substitute parent. Liam pauses for about four seconds. "Misunderstood Oasis." The band fall about. And then Liam repeats it, hoping for the extra laugh - which he gets in spades.

It’s a long way from the basement of Manchester Boardwalk, this violet-hued rehearsal space. On the outside, admittedly, it looks and sounds like any of the functional brick boxes that make up London’s post-industrial perimeter: the lifts clatter and wheeze, nondescript haulage vehicles come and go, the intercom occasionally relays suspicious enquiries as to any visitor’s credentials. Inside, however, there is the kind of furniture one associates with the reception areas of advertising conglomerates and the low hum of deep-pile comfort. All that and a noise that is among the most familiar imaginable.

Oasis are playing ‘Roll With It’. The music is surprisingly coarse, devoid of the strings and horns that occasionally accompany it; a solitary, bespectacled keyboard player provides the only embellishment. So loud are the guitars that you can barely hear him. Today, Noel Gallagher is once again leading a garage band playing to an audience that barely scrapes into double figures.

Which, as anyone sane would surmise, is an extraordinary experience. Usually there would be several million people, cameras, lights and chip vans in the way. Today there is just the group, their close associates (Terry, Liam’s increasingly-famous minder, among them) and Select. The set list is as you’d like it: 'Don’t Look Back In Anger', 'Morning Glory', 'Some Might Say', 'Wonderwall', 'Champagne Supernova'...

...And two songs that, to those outside the inner circle, are brand new. One is the title track of 'Be Here Now', the album that will be released in August; a swampy, boogified song that suggests a more cerebral take on the old-schoolery that defined 'Cigarettes and Alcohol' (in the best possible way it sounds a little like ZZ Top). The other, more notably, is 'D’Yer Know What I Mean', the single that, after repeatedly tumbling from every radio in the UK, will be released on 9 July.

Today, it’s pared-down and basic, a snarling cousin of 'Wonderwall (the chords, as Noel readily admits, are similar; it’s the melody that places it somewhere else entirely). On the few CDs and DATs that are being held under 24-hour security in various corners of London, however, it’s very different: a dark, foreboding song glued together by a truly anthemic chorus - the sound, to get a mite pretentious, of a mind entering the mire of uncertainty only to alight with a strident, reborn confidence. It’s underpinned by beguiling new colours on the Oasis palette: drum loops and layers of strangely treated guitar, among other things. It’s also seven minutes long.

Its release has a touch of the cavalry about it. Watching The Chart Show, one cannot help but feel a slight sense of deja vu: the musical mainstream seems. Superficially at least, to have reverted to type with the airbrushed teen-clones as strong as ever, and to venture into a high street clothes shop is to surrender to the Orwellian dominance of formulaic soul-pop. Back in 1994, such was the air of arid pre-punk boredom, that one could only pray that something - anything - would hurtle around the next corner. This time, thankfully, as we grimly tolerate our Hansons and our Olives, we know who’s on their way. Can you wait to be re-acquainted with that sound? That voice? That sense that we’re in the presence of something properly era-defining?

This afternoon, 'D’Yer Know What I Mean' is sung - as is everything else - by Noel Gallagher. Liam, wishing to rest his voice on account of a sore throat, skips between the ‘stage’ (a mere platform, truth be told) and the rest of the room, at one point taking time to alert Select to the talents of his colleagues. "He’s good, Whitey", he says, just managing to be heard over the din. He mimes an across-the-kit drum fill. "Look at him. He’s good." Seconds later Whitey carries off the heart-stopping mini-solo that takes 'Don’t Look Back In Anger' into its final choruses. Liam looks very proud indeed.

On the table in front of him, aside from he usual debris of the creative process - Styrofoam cups, cigarette butts, cans of Red Stripe - is the catalogue for a forthcoming sale of rock memorabilia at Christie’s, disproportionately tilted in favour of The Beatles. An original copy of the infamous Butcher sleeve? Available for he equivalent of three months’ wages in South Korea. Four nondescript autographs, framed - just to bump up the value - next to the sleeve of 'Help'? A similar sum, if you don’t mind. Liam shrugs a particularly indifferent shrug and then allows himself a laugh at one of Paul McCartney’s more ill-advised haircuts.

Soon after the close of 'Champagne Supernova', he is joined by his brother, Paul McGuigan, Alan White and Paul Arthurs. The idea, never one tried before, is to interview all five at once. The setting rather recalls one of those '70s TV shows where they band would mime their 'number' and be summoned to press Trimphones to their ears and chat to their fans ("Gather round gang," the presenter would say. "The phones have been red hot all morning").

Inevitably, the ensuing conversation lies light years away from any kind of five-way split. Noel just about dominates, encouraged by the way that the faction occasionally known as ‘the other three’ instinctively look to him for any question’s definitive answer. Liam, however, clearly relishes the opportunity to challenge this supremacy: indeed, at times we appear to hover on the brink of yet another one of those arguments.

Bonehead makes the occasional contribution; Alan says very little; Guigs contentedly emits no sound whatsoever, save for joining in with the hysterical hoots that accompany Liam’s more knowingly ludicrous outbursts.

The mood, such as it is, is neatly forecasted by an initial exchange between he Gallaghers. "Sit on me knee," says Liam, as Noel perches on a flight case.

"You’re the puppet," comes the response. "You sit on my fucking knee."

How long is it since the five of you were on a stage together?

Liam: "Eight months."

Bonehead: "Five minutes."

Have you missed it?

Liam: "Oh, big time, yeah. I don’t think we should ever have any time off again. We should work like fucking monkeys. I’m bored shitless. Mad for it."

Noel: "I’m not bored. We’ve been doing the record, haven’t we, so..."

Liam: "No, no, no. He’s asking me that question. I’ve been bored sitting round the house watching Neighbours twice a day. I’m sick of it."

How long did the album take in total?

Noel: "Er... we started in November and finished three or four weeks ago. But it probably only took six weeks working on it."

Liam: "We were having time off, spending money and all that, having a bit of a laugh. Cos if you make the album, bang it out, then you’ve got to go and graft your cock off again, haven’t you? Everyone goes [cockney accent] ‘Go on! Get fackin’ back to it!’"

Noel: This is the man who just said he didn’t want any time off [laughs]."

Liam: "No, I needed that time off. I needed that time off to get me shit together. To basically watch Neighbours twice a day." Bonehead [sarcastically]: "Did you get it together then?

Liam: "I’ve got it right together."

That much seems true: indeed, such is the air or carefree bonhomie surrounding Oasis that the imperative to quiz them about what happened last August becomes less pressing: precise enquiries are better placed in the solo interviews that lie just around the corner. And yet, conversation eventually alights on one of their career’s more bizarre interludes.

They were supposed, for at least 24 hours, to have suffered a career-ending internal rupture. The daily papers, tired of spotlighting the ever-atrophying Major government and in the midst of the annual braid-holiday known as ‘The Silly Season’, whipped up the appropriate cyclone, managing to pull in even the BBC. And Oasis crawled home from the USA in two separate parts, looking like a band who were prepared, in their desperate need for a metaphorical comma, to entertain the prospect of a dreadful full stop.

It blew over within days and yet the episode inevitably scratched itself into their mythology. The images are now crushingly familiar: the red-and-silver kagoule, the ashen facial expression, the newsreaders biting their tongues as affairs of state assumed a lowly priority, the afternoon Mrs Gallagher emerged from her house to smile for the cameras in response to the fact that Oasis had apparently not packed it in after all. In he centre, mundanely enough, lurked five men who simply needed a break.

How did it feel coming off the road in August?

Noel: "Top."

Liam: "It was one of those dodgy skids."

Noel: "It was alright. We’d just been touring for too long. We’d been touring for three years. Sick of playing the same songs over and over again."

Liam: "Plus, we were running out of money, had to write a new album to get a few quid when we had all these fucking tax bills to pay. Ridiculous. I could do with a few more pairs of shoes."

So it would have happened anyway?

Noel: "It was only three gigs at the end of the day. We came back to England and it was like the Pope had been shot. Looking back on it, we should have stuck it out for the three gigs. But we couldn’t be arsed."

Liam [emphatically]: "No, I don’t think we should have. You come home when you come home, you know what I mean? When your mam’s howling, man, you’ve got to come home. We’re only young boys."

Bonehead: "I’m 32, you c***."

Noel: "I’m 30 tomorrow."

Liam: "I didn’t hear that, didn’t hear that, didn’t hear that. Whose birthday is it? You’re getting fuck all. I bought you a five grand picture, you didn’t even give me thanks for it."

Two weeks from today, Oasis will be returning - poetically enough - to the country that last provided them with concert stages, limousines and sound check schedules. They are booked to perform in San Francisco at the invitation of U2: both camps, in keeping with the diplomacy that rules rock music’s more lofty strata, have emphasised that the word ‘supporting’ is not appropriate, it’s more ‘playing with’.

Those who treasure the more melodramatic readings of Oasis’ history will doubtless see it as a staged opportunity for the group to return to the continent that all but destroyed them and re-establish their karma. The group, however, view this engagement as no more world-shaking than any other. Besides, the script soon returns to last year’s hoo-hah, as often happens when Liam or his brother detect the scent of unfinished conversational business.

Are you looking forward to going back to the States?

Liam [with evident sarcasm]: "I really, erm, like Americans. I think they’re groovy people."

Noel: "It’d be alright if it was nearer. I’m not looking forward to getting on a plane for however many hours it takes."

Liam: "But the thing is, what we’re trying to sat here Noel is, right, basically, it doesn’t matter where we’re playing, whether it’s America or Timbuktu. It’s great to be back on the road again. It’s great to be back with your brother again [Noel demonstrates grudging agreement]. I’m just mad for doing a gig: America, Yugoslavia, Sweden, Scunthorpe, wherever."

But there’s very little love lost between Oasis and America.

Noel: "All bands go there for about two weeks, do four gigs and then come home. We ended up going over there for two months, doing shitloads of gigs and that, and you just get bored, and you start getting pissed. All the rows that ever started, we’ve been drunk: ‘Look at your shoes, you dick’; ‘Who are you calling a dick?’; ‘Calling you a dick’; ‘Who’s a dick’... and before you know it, it’s [shouts as if hailing a cab] ‘Concorde!’ It’s all to do with lager, isn’t it? [Points at can] That’s evil shit, man!"

Liam: "Noely, can I butt in there one minute?"

Noel: "Course you can."

Liam: " What it was, as far as I’m concerned, on my behalf, we’d done Knebworth, yeah? Big gig. Really big gig. After Knebworth we should’ve gone on holiday for a couple of months. Chilled right out. It was a big high and all that tackle. Then a week later we were on a plane to fucking America, playing in front of 10,000 people. Which is not good for your ego."

Noel [irately]: "No one ever said that. If anyone’d have said that, they’d have got the sack. Whoever wrote that, that we pulled a gig in somewhere because it was only 12,000 is going to get a crack on the head if I ever fucking see them. Cos it wasn’t that: I’ll play to 12 people, let alone 12,000."

Liam: "We needed a break. We needed to sit in the garden with those polystyrene gnomes."

Noel: "Bit it was good. Out there with the Manics and that, and those big fat blokes The Screaming Trees."

Liam: "The Barking Branches! Crazy Conkers! I’ll rip his head off, that c***. Calling me a daft punk, saying I needed a good fucking crack: you and whose fucking army, you fucking ginger bearded bastard?"

Did you feel like the 10,000 people you were playing to were getting it?

Noel: "Americans don’t get it. There was a point where everything we did was [New York drawl] ‘incredible’. ‘God, the way you guys walked on stage was just incredible! The way you tuned that guitar in between ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ and ‘Live Forever’ was fucking incredible!’ It’s like, ‘Shut the fuck up, man! We’re not even that good live, for fuck’s sake, let alone incredible. We’re pissed up half the time.’ ‘Your dressing room’s incredible! Look at that rider - it’s incredible!’ Fucking wankers."

Liam: "I think they’re a great race and I liked ‘em. And I think they were getting it. They were getting fucking me, anyway."

The way American magazines write about Oasis is always astounding.

Liam: "Yeah, but they’re wankers. They want grungey fucking people, stabbing themselves in the head on stage. They get a bright bunch like us, with deodorant on, they don’t get it."

Noel: "There was one gig where I got fucking bladdered before and I was pissed up, rolling about on stage, on me knees doing that [satanic metal pose], with me tongue out, and they were going fucking mental. That’s how stupid they are. These lot are going ‘Get him back in the dressing room, he’s as pissed as an arse’. But they were mad for it. That’s when you’ve got to go, ‘What time’s the next flight, man?’"

Marcus Russell walks through the door. His status as fixer, negotiator, adviser and svengali is momentarily put on hold. This morning, fresh off a plane from California, he is the man who just got married. "Alright, twatty bollocks!" shouts Noel. "Show us your ring! Show us your ring!"

Marcus shrugs, flashing a singularly unadorned pair of hands and a grin that stretches to within millimetres of his ears.

"He’s not got one," says Noel, with a creeping air of crestfallen bewilderment.

"You’ve not got one?" says Liam.

"I don’t like it," says Marcus.

"Well neither do I," says Liam, ‘but I’ve still got to wear it."

Liam will later estimate the value of the jewellery on his fingers to be somewhere around £18,000.

Do you ever get nostalgic about those early tours, the five of you in a van?

Noel: "Well, I don’t wish we had the same fucking drummer, for a start. You can stick nostalgia up your rectum about that one. [Uproarious laughter.] And I’m not nostalgic about being skint, and being in a fucking van with him [Liam] while he’s pissed and him [Bonehead] driving and me steering. They were good days...The Water Rats and stuff like that was good."

Liam: "The best bit about them early days was when our kid got chinned. That geezer jumped on stage and lamped him in the eye."

Noel [ignoring him]: "There was no pressure on us then. We weren’t..."

Liam: "There’s no pressure on us now..."

Noel [quietly]: "For fuck’s sake."

Liam: "Are you feeling insecure or summat?"

Noel: "I’m answering his fucking question. If you’ll fucking let me."

Liam: "There’s no pressure on us now. Those gigs were great, man. Everything’s great. Life’s great. What’s your problem? Everything’s boss. [To Noel] What’s up with you?"

Is it like looking back at being at school?

Noel: "Yeah. Bonehead was the tour manager, [craftily] I was the treasurer. I had the float. We used to use it as a drug fund. Now you go on big buses and there’s like 50 million people on board. I miss the days of the Boardwalk when we had that little room and we all used to go deaf. But I suppose in ten years we’ll be reminiscing about now. Either that or we’ll be going to see him [Liam] in rehab. With his colostomy bag. Pissing in his trousers."

Why were those early tours so potty?

Noel: "Cos we were potty."

Like the second tour: when that hotel in Newport got trashed...[Bonehead chuckles repeatedly. Eventually they all start laughing]

Noel: "Someone’d give us 300 quid, put us in a ban with all the gear and say, ‘You’re playing at Bath Moles tonight, and it’s 300 miles away’. Marcus’d be going, ‘Right, I’ll see you tomorrow’, and we’d be like, ‘If you’re fucking lucky mate’. And we’d just be off. Off. Turn up at the gig late. Give it the monitor engineer: ‘Oi! Speccy! Fucking turn it up!’ And we’d just signed off. It was our first job. [To Alan] This was before you joined, Whitey. This was the donkey work."

Are you amazed, looking back, that no-one died?

Bonehead: "Yeah."

Liam: "I don’t think it was that bad. Personally, form my point of view, we’re not that crazy..."

Noel: "We were in them days. We were mad."

Liam: "I don’t know. It’s normal to me."

Bonehead: "We were off our tits, doing a runner from a hotel, he’s [Noel] like, ‘I’ll for this out - keep the engine running, man...’"

Noel: "He [Liam] might sit here and might make smart quips about it all afternoon, but he fucking knows what it was like. It was like The Magnificent Seven riding into town, and for an hour they were getting it. Whiteout were getting it."

Liam: "There were five of us."

Noel: "There were seven of us. There was Jason and Coyley as well, and we were having it. Fucking big, large one. Every night. I saw him in a room right, with a fire extinguisher in one hand and a chainsaw in the other. Before we went on stage. Then he had to go onstage with a chainsaw singing [choirboy falsetto] ‘You and I are gonna live forever...’ [Chainsaw noise] Rrrrrrreeeeeaargh!’"

Liam: "We were crazy. We should have died. But I don’t believe in death. Death is just a thing, whatever it is."

Did you feel sorry for Whiteout?

Noel: "Yeah, cos they were shit. They were good lads, but they were shit. And the drummer wore gloves."

Liam: "He was about that big [raises hand two feet above the floor]. He was like fucking ‘Mmmbop’... what are they called? Fucking Manson, Hanson, whatever they’re called. He was about 12. He had a dick like that though, the c*** [holds out arms in fisherman-style ‘It was this big’ pose causing hysterical laughter]."

Noel: "How do you know that?"

Liam: "I really don’t know."

Noel: "So that’s what you were doing in the toilet." Did that ever get scary, the idea that because of your reputation, the local thugs could run in and fancy a bit?

Noel: "Yeah. But it was exciting."

Liam: "They got it though, them Geordie bastards. They got it, as far as I’m concerned That fat prick jumped onstage, gave our kid a clout - which I applauded - but that fucking fat prick got it. Anyone who wants to jump on our stage has got it. And anyone who wants to jump on our stage will get it. Not from me, from Terry [man-mountain minder]. Them hooligans got it."

After ‘Live Forever’ everyone finally realised that it was a music thing...

Noel: "Totally. But even after that..."

Liam: " There’s still that anxiety in he crowd. You can never be too sure. As far as I’m concerned..."

Noel [wearily]: "This article should be called: ‘As far as I’m concerned’..."

But you’re hardly on that kind of knife edge any more. It’s not about to go off.

Liam: "No, the thing is, there’s still that knife-edge, still that [makes growling noise]. It’s not about violence: you can have a knife-edge when the crowd are right over there [points into middle distance], but they’re still giving you that knife-edge. And I’m giving that knife-edge, and we’re still giving that knife-edge. They might not be able to get over the barrier, but they’re still going [makes crowd noise]..And there’s some crazy fucking dudes man in the fucking crowd. Some crazy kooks. That knife edge is still there."

As, clearly, is the comedy - both intentional and unintentional - that has always tinged Oasis’ internal affairs. It’s streaked through the last ten minutes of our five-way encounter, most notably when the conversation takes a slightly off-beam twist, and the between-friends loonery that is Oasis Being Oasis decisively begins.

Which member of Oasis has the weirdest musical taste?

Noel [to Liam]: "You."

Liam [apropos of precious little]: "My favourite book is The Lion, The Witch And the Wardrobe. I like it. I like that thing of just going in a wardrobe."

Noel [to Bonehead]: "You like Nancy Sinatra and all that bullshit."

Bonehead: "That’s not weird though."

Noel: "It’s weird for you. Cos you’re bald. Fucking weird. I like a bit of Burt Bacharach, a bit of hip-hop. Don’t like jazz, though."

Liam: "Jazz is fucking shit. Jazz is fucking stupid."

Bonehead: "Whitey’s probably go the weirdest taste."

Liam: "I bet he’s a right wanker at home. I bet he puts some right shit on."

Noel: "He’s into German porno music."

Alan: "It’s true [he sings a sample bit]."

A sensible question. Will you be touring around this album? Noel: "I’m not prepared to say at the minute. We’ll definitely start touring. When it’s going to finish, nobody knows. What I’ll say to the kids is, get your fucking tickets in now. There might be only one gig and there might be 151. That’s all I’m saying."

Liam: " I like that answer. You’re good man."

Will there be another Knebworth?

Noel: "This is the thing with people saying we’re going to play Hyde Park. We’re not doing gigs as big as that anymore. I’m not anyway. They’re too big. You do it once and you can’t be doing that again."

Liam: "Why can’t you? It’s a great day out. Packed lunch, all that: it’s a great day. You’re trying to tell me you hated it? Knebworth was fucking rocking."

Noel: "Knebworth was top, but I wouldn’t do it again. There’s too much flying about in fucking helicopters with those gigs. I don’t like flying: it’s fucking petrifying."

Alan: "What’s the point of doing it again? You’ve done it once."

Bonehead: "Sitting in a mobile home with The Prodigy on. With me head in bits..."

Liam: "He’s going, ‘What the fuck’s going on here? I’m trying to get me head down before the gig! All I can hear is boom, boom, boom. Who the fucking hell put these on?’ Bonehead’s going, ‘If you’re fucking going to start a fire, fucking start it, and shut up!’"

Liam: "Proper grandad. It was top."

Noel has said he wants a sizeable amount of time off after this record.

Liam: "Fuck that. Work, work, fucking work. Cos that’s all we know. Or else I turn into the normal Liam Gallagher. It starts to piss me off, cos I start to be that geezer I used to be, and I don’t particularly care for him that much. I like to be the Liam Gallagher who’s like ‘Woo! Mad for it!’ I’m trying to get back to me roots, basically. Time off? Fuck that."

You’re meant to have a year out and go and live in Ireland, according to the rock star manual...

Liam: "I am doing."

For tax purposes?

Liam: "Yeah, that’s for wankers though. Greedy bastards."

Bonehead [mimicking]: "‘I am, yeah. But that’s for wankers’. Fucking hell!"

Liam: "No, I’m going to live in Ireland. But not for tax purposes. That’s for greedy c***s. I like the taxman. The taxman’s good. Fuck it. And anyway, England’s good. It’s full of people walking the streets like me."

Bald Oasis, Stoned Oasis, Rich Oasis and Cockney Oasis resume their places, and the sound fills the room: steely and water-tight, human and affecting in the way that only Noel Gallagher’s songs can be. "They’re good, aren’t they?" shouts Liam, pointing at the band. "Look at them. They’re good."

Go to Part 2

• Select Interview Articles - index

c 1998 Andrew Turner

aturner@interalpha.co.uk

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