THE SUPERSONIC OASIS MYTH
MINUTES of a MONDAY Article #16
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“Sony didn’t decide Oasis would still be going after 30 years, Creation didn’t decide, I didn’t decide and either did Liam. The people decided.” Noel Gallagher
The Legend of King Tut’s
It’s about 9.30 on a Sunday night in late August in 1994. In a studio in Donnybrook in Dublin, Dave Fanning, Ireland’s go-to music encyclopaedia, is talking to two guys from a band. They are a couple of months away from releasing their debut album.
Dave gets them talking about their Irish connections and the craic is good. About eighteen minutes in Dave asks one of the band members about the gig where they got discovered.
The story went a little something like this.
Five guys hired a van, packed it with people, charged them a fiver a head and drove from Manchester to Glasgow to play a gig. When the bouncers at the door told them there was no room on the line-up that night, the band pointed out their numerical advantage. They also made it very clear they weren’t driving all the way back home without playing some choons.
Clearly deciding they wanted to avoid picking up their teeth off the ground, the bouncers relented and the band got a twenty-minute slot.
That same night, a record label executive missed his train back to London. Having an hour to kill until the next one, he sauntered into the venue and heard the band playing. Once they finished their set he walked up to the guitarist and offered them a six-record deal, there and then.
Dave asked “Is this the kind of thing I’m going to be reading about in the history of rock ‘n’ roll?” To which the guitarist in question replied “Yeah, that’s totally true.”
The venue was King Tut’s, the record executive was Alan McGee of Creation Records and the band were a bunch of unknown scallywags from Manchester called Oasis.
And this perfect serendipity is now rock ‘n’ roll history.
Don’t Believe the Truth
Except there’s another, less Hollywood version of that story floating around.
On a non-eventful May Monday in 1993, Oasis asked fellow Manchester band Sister Lovers for a lift up to Glasgow. The all-girl outfit had a slot booked at King Tut’s, supporting a couple of Glasgow bands who were both signed to McGee’s Creation Records.
For Oasis, at that point, the trip was a total punt. They’d been knocking around the rehearsal rooms at the Boardwalk in Manchester and playing to a handful of people for almost three years at this stage. Complete unknowns.
That fateful Monday, McGee was in the middle of a bitter romantic breakup. His sister, Susan, coaxed him into coming down to King Tut’s, as she was meeting a pal was also recently single and ready to mingle.
McGee reluctantly relented and headed down to meet his sister and her mate for a wee drink.
On that night, Oasis didn’t threaten to trash the joint if they weren’t allowed on stage. They negotiated a quick four songs at no additional cost to the venue, save for a few beers. Win-win for everyone.
And McGee didn’t offer Oasis a signed deal there and then at King Tut’s, owing mainly to his intake of JD and coke and whatever else you’re havin’. He did invite the lads to the Creation office in London to talk turkey. They got the train down, got lamped on some cans and high on the prospect of rock stardom.
Noel Gallagher, the lead guitarist and song writer in chief, stayed sober enough to do the talking and keep his eye on the prize. He assured McGee he had more songs in his back pocket than you could shake a stick at (he did) and that he loved the music of all the artists McGee had on the office wall (he didn’t).
Rolling with it: Noel during his days as a roadie for Manchester band the Inspiral Carpets
There and Then
When Oasis were serving their time, roughly between 1991 and 1994, the music industry landscape was a different world. No Napster, no Spotify and the Internet was the plaything of a bunch of academics.
In the months leading to the release of their record-breaking debut album, Definitely Maybe, Oasis had gone from playing to six people and a barman in Yorkshire to selling out every venue they played in. So much so that prior to them going supersonic there would be more people outside their gigs trying to get in than those already in there waiting for the band to saunter on stage.
And the reason for that was simple: hype. Or good old-fashioned word of mouth. The King Tut’s story was one of many legends that had grown some serious legs around the band. At the Riverside, Newcastle, in early August, 1994, their gig had to be abandoned due to someone in the crowd taking a swing at Noel Gallagher. All hell broke loose and the band, not for the first time, walked off stage. BBC’s Jo Whiley was there to capture it all and broadcast it the following evening on a BBC Radio 1 Evening Session.
No mobile phones back then, so that Whiley account remains a precious piece of rock ‘n’ roll history. And the only account that has endured.
That incident alone served only to increase the hype around the band.
Even thirty years ago, there was a sense that you never knew quite what was going to happen next. And the kids loved them for it.
There was an unpredictable edge to Oasis and the legend grew. But first among those legends was the King Tut’s myth. And the principle architect of that one was one Noel Gallagher.
Say what you like about him, he knows how to write a tune. But he also instinctively knew the importance of mythmaking.
And no-one propelled the early myth of Oasis more than their singer-songwriter.
Fast forward 30 years and Oasis are still causing a stampede when word gets out that they are playing some gigs. Granted, King Tuts in Glasgow is a long way from Wembley stadium in more ways than one, but the clamour to see the Gallagher brothers in the flesh is as fervent as ever. The punters are still mad for it.
But why?
Britpop is long since dead (long live Britpop), the laddish mag culture of the 90’s is long gone and Oasis had been surpassed by the likes of Coldplay, Ed Sheeran and the Arctic Monkeys in terms of musical achievements and popularity.
For many, Oasis were always held up as the people’s band. Can you imagine five working class lads from Manchester, three that look like plumbers and two that look like they could do with a decent eyebrow pluck, turning up at a Britain’s Got Talent audition now?
Not only would Simon Cowell and his minions laugh them out the gate, they wouldn’t get past the first audition. Everything that came out of their gobs would have to be subtitled and bleeped out anyway. Not a hope pal.
And that’s the key to their allure. Liam and Noel are rock superstars. Yet ask any man in his thirties and forties in Britain and Ireland their top three lads they’d want to go for a pint with and Liam and Noel, if not both, would feature prominently.
I don’t know about you, but I can’t see Ed Sheeran being much craic on a night out. And since he went solo, the front rows at a Liam Gallagher gig have been full of kids. Oasis music has transcended generations.
They might have been declared millionaires thirty years ago, but we, the people, still see them as two scrappy little fuckers from Burnage.
And dial in their Irish heritage and how could you not be rooting for them?
Standing on the Shoulders of Punters
But then, there was dynamic pricing.
I’m no Adam Smith, but dynamic pricing seems like a lose-win scenario. And no cigars for guessing who loses.
But remember the good old days comrade?
The days when being in a queue for a ticket actually meant being in a queue. Like a physical line of people snaking around a corner, inch by agonising inch. I remember queueing for tickets to see Oasis play Pairc Ui Caoimh in 1996.
My buddies and I had it planned like a military operation. I remember the excitement of being one hundred people from the shop door of Zhivago on Shop Street in Galway. Then getting into the shop. Then, being thirty people from the counter. Oh the excitement.
Now, imagine finally making it to the counter, your hard-earned thirty quid in hand and the guy at the counter going: “Ah, sorry mucker, due to dynamic pricing the ticket is now £180 big ones. Cash or card?” And there’s a big clock ticking over you with seconds to make up your mind or you’re outta there kid and the next punter is in like flynn.
I’d feel like I was being hosed, wouldn’t you?
Well, that’s what happened to thousands and thousands of punters a few weeks back.
Welcome to the revolution, my friend. None of us thought we’d end up here when we were rippin’ tunes from Napster back in the day did we, eh?
Liam and Noel, naturally, threw their management under the tour bus a few days after the moral outrage.
And who could blame them? They can hardly ‘fess up to giving the thumbs up to the ‘oul dynamic pricing now can they? That would go contrary to the working class hero thing.
Speaking on the Listen Up Oasis podcast, Dermot O’ Leary offered this: “There’s that really special six months to eighteen months that you’ve got when you are breaking and you’re the same age as the guys listening to you, and you’re probably on about the same money and you’re going through the same experiences. And it can only last for six to eighteen months and then one of two things happen. Either you fade into obscurity, or you go big and then circumstances take over and you don’t have that commonality with people anymore, because you are turning left on the plane.”
By that yard stick, Liam and Noel have been turning left and standing inside the velvet rope for nigh on three decades now. It’s not too far a stretch to say they care as much about their fans as Man City’s owners do.
At an average hit of £400 big ones for a bog-standard ticket, the lads won’t have to be worrying about the price of turnips any time soon.
Nice Dynamic Price: A ticket to see Oasis in 1996 was £22 Irish pounds and a maximum booking fee of £2. Nice.
Champagne Super Nostalgia
And maybe we shouldn’t be too hard on them. When was the last time you bought a CD, a t-shirt or DVD of your favourite band? Yep, me neither.
Like them or loathe them when it comes to that old supply and demand, Liam and Noel have got the market cornered.
Dynamic pricing is here to stay. Tickets for the hottest acts in town are a bit like everything else we used to kind of take for granted: getting further and further out of reach.
I confess I didn’t queue for tickets, either online or offline. Oasis are my band. Noel penned the soundtrack to my youth and Liam sang it. I was lucky enough to see them in their pomp and a few times since.
Like, that Pairc Ui Coaimh gig was banging by the way. The Prodigy supported them. A few weeks later, one of the lads at school turned up head to toe in Oasis merch.
Now, you can call me a tight arse, but I wasn’t prepared to fork out £400 large ones to see them again. I love a bit of nostalgia as much as the next man, but it’s a bit like a school reunion. The craic is good, but the reality reminds you that maybe some things are actually best left where they were.
Well, that’s the yarn I’m telling myself anyway.
When I heard of their reunion, I was on a high for a few days. Messages over and back to buddies of mine who were similarly buzzing at the prospect of seeing them live again.
When I want a dose of nostalgia, I watch the intro to Oasis’s first gig at Maine Road in ’96. A band at the peak of their hard earned powers. Where Noel, messiah like, pays homage to the crowd, cranks up the swamp song with his union jack guitar and lifts the roof off the place, gets me going every time. If I’m slugglish of a morning I’ll stick that on and I’m good to go for the day. Hopeful and optimistic that if those lads can go from nowhere to supersonic, then what’s my latest excuse?
I guess that’s the transformative power of music. And the transformative power of the Oasis myth.
Then again, I’m full of shit. If I got the whiff of a spare e-ticket there’s every chance I’ll wilt. I’ve a woeful rubber arm on me so I do.
Noel Gallagher once said: “Sony didn’t decide Oasis would still be going after 30 years, Creation [the band’s label] didn’t decide, I didn’t decide and either did Liam. The people decided.”
Noel or Liam didn’t put a gun to anyone’s head on the Ticketmaster site. The punters came, they saw and they panic purchased.
So, he’s right, the people did decide.
Because we, the people, wanted that dynamic, dirty little duo back and back for good.
I guess some might say that some myths just live forever.