Oasis

Guitarist Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs, bass player Paul ‘Guigsy’ McGuigan and drummer Tony McCarroll originally formed as 061 (after the telephone area code for their home city of Manchester), then changed their name to The Rain.

Lacking direction – and decent songs –  they sacked their original singer in favour of stroppy, loud-mouthed Liam Gallagher. Changing their name to Oasis, they asked Liam’s older brother, Noel, to join them.

A serious guitarist and budding tunesmith, Noel had been earning a living as a technical roadie for local indie pop heroes Inspiral Carpets.

He soon took control and hammered the band into shape by enforcing a strict rehearsal regime.

On 31 May 1993, Creation Records owner Alan McGee saw Oasis play at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow, Scotland (they were supporting Boyfriend, 18 Wheeler and Sister Lovers in case you were wondering) and was so impressed that he offered them a record deal on the spot.

They signed a six-album deal with Creation in October, with a £40,000 advance. By late 1994 their debut album Definitely Maybe had gone straight to the top of the UK charts.

The Gallaghers’ arrival was perfectly timed. A pair of mono-browed enforcers preaching the glories of The Beatles and The Sex Pistols, they crushed the opposition with their sledgehammer melodies, sung with brutalist zeal by 22-year-old-thug-Adonis Liam Gallagher.

Their first magazine cover for The Face heralded them thusly – “Never mind the bollocks, here’s the Sex Beatles” –  and Gallagher Junior was quick to describe his vocal style as a blend of Johns Lennon and Lydon.

Original drummer Tony McCarroll was replaced in 1995 by Alan White, and in August of that year, the duel between Oasis and Blur over whose single would enter the UK charts at #1 made the British national newspapers and TV news.

The rivalry between the two groups was often compared to that between The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, but in fact, those ’60s giants had a genial relationship and a gentleman’s agreement not to release singles at the same time.

Blur and Oasis, however, appeared to loathe each other with a genuine and deep passion (Noel Gallagher shocked the pop community when he expressed the wish that Blur’s singer and bassist would both “catch AIDS and die”).

Underlying the verbal vendetta between the two bands was a regional antagonism. Blur came from the South of England and were middle-class, albeit infatuated with London proletarian lifestyles. Oasis – from the North of England – were the genuine working-class article.

(What’s The Story) Morning Glory (1995) was deeply indebted to The Beatles. Liam Gallagher sounded like a more nasal John Lennon, with the joie de vivre curdled to a sour arrogance.

Sonically, Oasis were basically a grungier version of The La’s, an early ’90s Beatles-obsessed outfit from the North of England.

While a fervent admirer of La’s songwriter Lee Mavers, Noel Gallagher said that when he first saw that band perform, “I thought, ‘he’s ripping off my songs!'”.

In truth, both songwriters were so chronically influenced by Lennon & McCartney that they were basically filling in the gaps in The Beatles songbook – and inevitably sometimes the same gap.

Theorist Joe Carducci used the term “genre mining” to describe such a classic-rock approach.

A marginally less hook-laden reprise of the debut LP Definitely Maybe, Morning Glory suggested Oasis’ particular seam of sound was close to exhaustion, and the band would subsequently take a great deal of flak both for their boorish antics and for dragging indie rock back into an era of retrograde conservatism.

Even Noel Gallagher suggested in interviews that they were delivering diminishing returns with each new album.

But it’s hard to deny the killer qualities of their debut album, recently voted the ‘best album of all time’ in an NME.com poll.

Tracks like Cigarettes And Alcohol, dirty, restless and toxic, were about the everyday frustrations of a dead-end job and the need for kicks.

Wonderwall (1995) became the crossover Britpop anthem that broke Oasis into the mainstream, got voted Best Song of All Time by Virgin Radio in 2005, and entered rock legend – enduring on football terraces and in pub lock-ins across the nation.

The song earns at least $1 million a year and passed 1 billion Spotify streams in 2020. Ironically, Liam Gallagher was iffy on it at first. “I said, ‘I don’t like this – it’s a bit fonky,’” he told Rolling Stone. “I got Police vibes. It was a bit Sting. I like the heavier stuff.”

But he ultimately decided to give it a go, and the whole song was finished in about two days, with Noel playing all the guitars, even bass, and Liam knocking out his vocal in a few hours. “I was always desperate to get to the pub,” he said.

By August 1996 – when the band broke UK attendance records playing two nights at Knebworth to over 500,000 people – What’s The Story had gone platinum nine times over, defining a time and place more absolutely than any other UK album released since.

But at the start of their eighth US tour the following month, Liam failed to join the band in Chicago in order to house-hunt in London with his serial-rockstar-dating girlfriend, actress Patsy Kensit.

Explaining his no-show, he said he was indifferent to playing to “fucking yanks.

Oasis spent the end of 1996 and the first quarter of 1997 at Abbey Road Studios and Ridge Farm Studios in Surrey recording their third album. Quarrels between the Gallagher brothers plagued the recording sessions but Be Here Now was released in August 1997 and contained the UK #1 single D’You Know What I Mean?

In early 1999, the band began work on their fourth studio album. Things were not going well, and the shock departure of founding member Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs was announced in August.

Two weeks later, the departure of bassist Paul McGuigan was announced. Oasis chose to continue recording the album as a trio with Noel Gallagher re-recording most of Bonehead’s guitar and McGuigan’s bass parts.

After the completion of the recording sessions, the band began searching for replacement members. The first new member to be announced was new lead/rhythm guitarist Colin “Gem” Archer, formerly of Heavy Stereo. They also brought in Andy Bell, former guitarist/songwriter of Ride, as their new bassist.

Oasis’ fourth album, Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, was released in February 2000 and reached #1 on the British charts and peaked at #24 on the Billboard charts. Four singles were released from the album: Go Let It Out, Who Feels Love?, Sunday Morning Call and Where Did It All Go Wrong?

The album Heathen Chemistry was released in July 2002 and reached #1 in the UK and #23 in the US. The band began recording their sixth album, Don’t Believe the Truth, in late December 2003 with long-time drummer Alan White replaced by Zak Starkey (the son of Ringo Starr).

Starkey left the band in 2008 after recording Dig Out Your Soul, the band’s seventh studio album. He was replaced by former Icicle Works and The La’s drummer Chris Sharrock on their subsequent tour.

Noel Gallagher quit the band in 2009, with Liam and the remaining members continuing under the name Beady Eye, releasing two studio albums until their breakup in 2014.

Liam Gallagher
Vocals
Noel Gallagher
Guitar, vocals
Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs
Guitar
Paul “Guigsy” McGuigan
Bass
Tony McCarroll
Drums
Alan White
Drums
Colin “Gem” Archer
Guitar
Andy Bell
Bass
Zak Starkey
Drums
Chris Sharrock
Drums

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