I Believe That It Is The Music Of Our Time That Will Be Remembered Long After
I believe that it is the music of our time that will be remembered long
after
we are gone, and it is bands like Oasis that led the revolution which
took
place recently. Oasis, headed by brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher
was
the first band after The Beatles to lash out against what had become
the
normal way a band should be, and that is why they will be known for
years
to come as the band who changed rock music.
Noel Gallagher was
born on May 29, 1967 in Manchester, he was the
second son of Thomas and
Margaret Gallagher. Thomas, Tommy to the
boys at the pub, was a construction
worker. He and his wife, known to her
pals as Peggy, resided in the
working-class Manchester suburb called
Burnage with their first boy,
Paul.
"God was playing a joke when He made me," Noel Gallagher once
said.
"You know, 'Let's make this guy a writer and a guitar player, but
let's make
him write with his left hand but play with his right, and let's
have him born
in the middle of May and give him a Christmas name like Noel.
Little did
Noel know that when he grew up he was to become the frontman
of one of
the most influential rock bands in music history at a time when
music was
the most influential form of speech on the planet.
Little
Liam arrived in the Gallagher household five years later, on
September
21, 1972. He and Noel were forced to share a bedroom,
something that always
bothered Noel to no end, seeing how Paul, just a
year-and-a-half older than
him, had his own room. But Liam and Noel
made the best of it, and the bedroom
saw the beginnings of the somewhat
loving, often heated relationship between
the brothers. The boys kept a
running record of their childhood by scrawling
on their wall, later
described by Tommy as their "wonderwall", later to
become the title of
one of their biggest selling singles. Bits of songs,
poems, favourite bands,
football teams and the like were all immortalised on
their bedroom wall. In
addition to their love of football, the lads also
became engrossed with
rock'n'roll. Both Noel and Liam were big fans of tubby
'70s glamrocker
Alvin Stardust. "When he came on telly they'd mime along
and pretend to
be Alvin," their father remembers, "and I'd always catch them
singing into
hairbrushes and playing air guitar." Most important to Noel's
musical
growth was the North's all-time greatest band, the Beatles. Like
many
youngsters, the songsmith first fell in love with the Fab Four via their
Red
and Blue hits collections, and they formed the basis of his
musical
sensibility for years to come.
"I was about six when I started
hearing the Red Album " he recalled in an
interview "They're songs to grow up
with, really...The Red Album
documents the Beatles as the greatest pop band
ever and The Blue Album
documents them as the greatest rock band
ever."
Noel's school life was problematic at best. While he was plainly a
bright
young man, he battled with a minor case of dyslexia, which, topped
with
the poor quality of Manchester's schools, was a dangerous
combination.
"School didn't really hold anything for me," he explained
later. "I knew
from a very early age what I wanted to be, I wanted to be a
musician."
A chronic childhood kidney infection gave Noel his first taste
of standing
apart from the crowd. Because of his ailment, young Noel was
not
required to adhere to his primary school's dress code. "I was the only
kid
allowed to wear long trousers," he remembered. "The others had
these
little grey shorts and I had these dead cool black skin-tight trousers
with
little Doc Martens. Everybody hated me." "I was a bit of a rogue when
I
was young," Noel once said, "I used to wag school and be into...
glue
sniffing and stuff. Then me and this lad robbed our corner shop, which
is a
very stupid thing to do, cos everyone knows exactly who you are."
Noel
was put on probation and was grounded for six months. He had
absolutely
nothing to do so he just sat there playing one string on an
acoustic guitar.
"I thought I was really good for about a year, until
someone tuned it up.
Then I thought, 'I can't play the thing at all now.
I'm gonna have to start all
over again.’" When Noel was around 13, he ordered
his first real guitar
from the John England catalogue and from there on in,
all else, school,
girls, football, took second place in his life. He
practised constantly,
playing along to his favourite records over and over
again.
Despite the small problem of being a left-handed guitarist with
a
right-handed guitar, Noel was writing songs as soon as he learned his
third
chord. Having already developed a love affair with the Beatles,
the
teenaged Noel fell for the angry energy of punk rock. He attended his
first
concert in 1980, the Damned at the Manchester Apollo. While he
was
already musically aware, he was "too young to be a punk, really, I was
ten
in 1977 and at that age the last thing you're going to do is listen to
music. I
mean, you're too busy playing... football or cowboys and Indians
or
something like that."
In April 1986, Peggy took her sons and left
Tommy and from all accounts,
the split was highly acrimonious. She supported
herself and her three
growing boys by working at the nearby McVittie’s
factory, plucking
misshaped Jaffa Cakes off the production line. "She used to
come home
with bin-bags full of them," Noel said. With their Mum off working,
the
latchkey Gallagher boys were left on their own a great deal. Noel,
already
in his teens, took on a series of thankless teenage jobs, including a
position
as a sign writer for a real-estate agent and stints in a bed factory
and a
bakery. He took a job with a building firm who sub-contracted to
British
Gas. There the pivotal moment of Noel's young life occurred.
While laying
a huge steel gas pipe, the heavy cap dropped onto his right
foot, smashing
it to pieces. After the injury he was given a job in the
storehouse,
dispensing nuts and bolts and the like. He soon discovered that
the
position meant that he would be alone for days on end and he
began
bringing his guitar to work with him. It was there that Noel truly
tapped
into his songwriting ability, penning four of the songs that would
later
appear on Oasis' debut album.
"People were laughing, yeah," he
told MTV, "Going, 'What are you
doing?' 'I want to be a songwriter.' 'A
songwriter? Why can't you be a drug
dealer like the rest of us?'" But he knew
what he wanted in his life and it
wasn’t in Manchester.
In 1988, Noel
was invited to audition with a friend's new band, which they
were calling
Inspiral Carpets. "When they asked me to come and have a
go, I thought, 'This
is my destiny in life!'" Noel said later. "I sang 'Gimme
Shelter,'
shouting me head off like Shaun Ryder, and they turned me
down."
Nevertheless, Noel knew his guitars and the members of the band
figured that
he'd be a handy guy to have around. The lead singer of the
band thought he
didn't have their "groove", so he just said, 'You can be a
roadie if you
like.'" Noel finally had a job that he could really relate too,
and he took
to the roadie's life like a duck to water. He became so
proficient that he
would conduct soundchecks single-handedly while the
band partied back at the
hotel. More importantly, he had the chance to
figure out his own music by
practising his own tunes using decent
equipment.
But back in
Manchester, Liam was putting together a band of his own,
comprising Paul
"Guigsy" McGuigan, on bass, drummer Tony McCarroll,
and on guitar Paul
Arthurs, the oldest member, known to all as
"Bonehead." Calling
themselves Rain, the quartet rehearsed when they
could, though they clearly
lacked direction. Bonehead recalled "We had a
couple of guitars, a couple of
amps, Liam could sing, y'know what I
mean?... It was either get yourself
together in a band or get drunk every
night. Better than hanging about the
streets, y'know what I mean?" After a
few unexciting gigs as Rain, Liam
renamed his little band Oasis, after a
local youth centre. The newly-named
foursome were booked to play their
first gig at the Boardwalk on August 18,
1991. The crowd basically
consisted of Noel and a handful of his band, all
temporarily home from the
road. "Noel said it was the worst gig he had seen,"
Liam recalled.
They were just another band before I joined," Noel
explained. "It was
alright, it just wasn't rock'n'roll. But the bassist
looked good, the drummer
didn't look too bad, and our kid looked pretty cool.
At that time I was a
roadie, and I thought, 'It's looking me in the face.' So
I bowled into the
practice room one day and said, "Right, change that guitar,
take them
shoes off, cut your hair, I'm gonna be doing this from now on.' And
they
just looked at me and said, 'Oh, alright, then."
"We had
something there, obviously, and he could see that, there was
something in
it," Bonehead remembered, "but we couldn't write songs.
And he came in,
the condition was, he writes the songs, which we were all
happy to go with,
because the guy sat down and played us some of the
songs that he'd written
years ago, man, and you knew straightaway it was
a classic. You could feel
it." Then Noel said, 'You either let me write the
songs and we go for
superstardom or else you stay here in Manchester for
the rest of your sad
lives...'"
And so Oasis was born, one of the most controversial bands the
planet has
ever seen. Rude to the media, destructive to hotel rooms, rebels
in every
way. The heated brawls between brothers Liam and Noel were a
common
sight in the tabloid newspapers and they loved it. They knew they
were
good and they knew everyone else did. Noel once said "We're
not
arrogant, we just think we're the best band in the world" and whats
more,
it was true. They sparked off the forming of numerous groups and
their
style of music gave rise to the term "Britpop"
Their first album
"Definitely Maybe" was an instant success and while
Liam was the lead
singer and generally the frontman of the band, it was
Noel’s songwriting
talents which led them to stardom, with the songs he
wrote becoming like
anthems to the youth of Britain. It was their second
album "(What’s The
Story) Morning Glory?" which led them into the
charts of other European
countries and gave them the attention they
sought. Noel Gallagher’s Mum used
to tell them that God loved a tryer,
and Noel used to ask "why? Has he got a
car?" and she would tell him"a tryer, not a tyre." Well Noel was certainly one
of those and although
their third album "Be Here Now" was regarded by critics
as the band
going downhill, it opened the door for them to release their
finest pieces,
the B-Sides to their singles. These songs showed their true
talent and Noel
believed that they should be heard by all. Hence their fourth
album "The
Masterplan", a collection of B-Sides voted for via the
Internet by their
fans. "there was no Masterplan," explains Noel "except to
write good
songs. Oh yeah, and to be the biggest band in the world" A
modest
ambition if there was ever one.
Stephen Murphy, Spring 99.