Oasis: From King Tut's To Global Domination

HANDCLAPS are easy, right? Two palms, slap 'em together, simple.

Apparently not.

"That's f***ing rubbish," declares Owen Morris. "Do it again."

Along with Noel Gallagher and half a dozen others, I'm gathered around a microphone in the aptly-named Loco Studios in South Wales putting the finishing touches - in the form of handclaps - to Some Might Say, the song that will become Oasis' first No1 single.

It's the wee small hours of the morning and the patent inability of anyone except Noel to grasp the basic concept of keeping time are driving even the usually upbeat producer to roars of frustration.

We try again. And again. And, oh yes, again.

By the time of the finished mix the hapless clatter of our contribution is buried discreetly in proceedings, but still there - just - an everlasting reminder of a while spent at the heart of a freshly forming hurricane, a band on their way to changing the face of British music.

Noel had first played me the demo of Some Might Say a couple of weeks earlier, at the house in Fulham, London, he was renting from ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr.

Even in its basic state it was obviously a great song and I jokingly asked him what he'd ripped off.

Without pausing, he immediately admitted, "Ooh, La, La by The Faces. Top tune!"

That night he also confided that he'd got a song called All Around The World that would "f***ing walk the Eurovision Song Contest", a competition he'd always had a quiet hankering to enter.

Years later it was to be released as an Oasis single instead, becoming an immediate highlight of their set. And Eurovision's loss.

"I've got hundreds of songs," Noel told me that weekend in Wales. "And they're all classics."

True to his word, what he'd written by then formed the basis of their first two albums. Plenty more, some of which were recorded in impromptu sessions, have yet to see the light of day. There's one heck of an archive filed away for the future.

All this was back in 1995, but even then it was obvious Oasis had no intention of being a flash in the pan.

"We're going to be huge," Noel told me, even mapping out the dates of chart-topping singles for the year ahead. To this day I've never met anyone with such extraordinary self- confidence - and just about all of his masterplan seems to have come true.

On Wednesday, Oasis play Edinburgh's Murrayfield Stadium in front of 55,000 fans, many with a passion for the band stretching back 15 years.

And they'll be celebrating the fact that Scotland has played an essential part in their journey from Mancunian chancers with an extensive knowledge of The Beatles' back catalogue to global superstars.

It was way back in May, 1993 when Oasis turned up at King Tut's in Glasgow, muscling their way into a support slot with 18 Wheeler.

In the audience that night was Alan McGee, head honcho of Creation Records, who immediately sensed that the combination of Fab Four and Sex Pistols might just be capable of changing everyone else's world as thrillingly as his.

Urging me to investigate, he directed me towards The Boardwalk in Manchester, a dingy venue under which Oasis had commandeered a rehearsal room, complete with Union Jack flag and a heap of amplifiers.

And so, with just a couple of other people, I was treated to the wonder of a full set including Rock'N'Roll Star, Supersonic and even their extended cover of The Beatles' I Am The Walrus.

Liam, dressed immaculately in white, fixed me with the stare he's used to captivate crowds a million times since, while Noel hunched in the background at the core of songs that managed to sound like both everything from rock history and nothing else on earth.

Sonically it may have been pretty raw, but the tunes were startling and the almost casual cockiness with which they delivered getting on for a dozen songs that would later be captured on record was breathtaking.

A demo of Oasis during that period was rejected by several local labels before McGee put his faith in them. Even now, it still sends tingles down the spine.

I was hooked in seconds. And unsurprisingly a few months later they signed a record contract with McGee. The adventure had begun.

"Right from the beginning I never had any doubt about the quality of our songs," says Noel. "You look at the bands around then and even their best stuff we wouldn't have put out as B-sides."

This total self-belief has marked out Noel throughout the years, even leading him to say: "With every song that I write, I compare it to the Beatles. The only thing is, they got there before me. If I'd been born at the same time as John Lennon, I'd have been up there."

Equally, he was down to earth about the reasons for his success, telling me: "You pick up your guitar, you rip a few people's tunes off, you swap them around a bit, get your brother in the band, punch his head in every now and then, and it sells.

"I'm a great songwriter, but I'm not the most talented musician."

That said, the vision was always there. "I wasn't put on this earth to amass money or personal wealth," he confided. "I was put on this earth to play guitar and write songs. We dragged English guitar music out of the gutter." The King Tut's gig was only the 15th they'd ever played, but it marked the beginning of an enduring relationship with fans north of the border. "Scottish audiences have always been great," Noel revealed. "Right from the beginning they were always up for it."

A hint of what was to come took place at their appearance at T In The Park in 1994 when they blew away most of the better-known acts with a performance that saw them taking shape as an outfit that could both boss the stage and also be a band that fans could identify with.

As Noel told me: "Phil Collins sold five times as many records as I did. Does that make him nearly as influential as I am? Nope."

In 1995 they played two nights at Irvine Beach in Ayrshire - a couple of shows that remain up there with the finest they've ever played.

A gig at Loch Lomond in 1996 even saw one of their old heroes John Squire from the Stone Roses join them for Champagne Supernova, a symbolic passing of the baton to a group who continue to fill stadiums all over the world.

Oasis' original guitarist, Bonehead, recently commented that he thinks Oasis ought to have packed it in after their biggest outdoor gig of all at Knebworth in 1996, remembering: "It was all just people. People as far as you could see."

Knebworth was certainly undeniably massive and you could sense that the band themselves were gobsmacked by its enormity.

As they went through rehearsals in a London studio for the two nights that were to get into the record books as the largest gigs ever undertaken in the UK, even Liam was questioning their worth.

"It's mad," he told me. "Where are we going to play next? The moon?"

The backstage area at Knebworth was larger than some festivals, with Oasis transported around on buggies and a VIP tent that found Kate Moss rubbing shoulders with Jarvis Cocker, Stuart Pearce and a host of other celebs flown in by helicopter.

That night, the best-ever Oasis tribute band, No Way Sis, slept on my hotel room floor and, for that weekend, they actually seemed closer in spirit to the band that they were impersonating.

Knebworth was so overblown that it could have finished Oasis and, indeed you sense that the potential for falling apart is never that far from the surface. So what keeps them going after all these years?

The Gallagher brothers' relationship is certainly as volatile as ever with Noel's latest jibe about Liam being that "he's like a man with just forks in a world of soup", yet the recent Dig Out Your Soul album has been critically acclaimed as their best in a decade.

And Noel's ability to write great songs seems to have been reinvigorated with him admitting to have penned half a dozen new songs in recent weeks and one splendid new number called If I Had A Gun already doing the rounds on the internet.

A world tour that's going to take another huge chunk out of their nights on the sofa means that some of the important things are easy to lose track of - but Noel has taken advantage of a rare few days off to "avoid Britain's Got Talent and catch up on what's going on in Coronation Street and the football".

Unsurprisingly Barcelona's victory over Manchester United in the Champions League final warmed the heart of a lifelong City fan.

Indeed, Barca's semi-final victory over Chelsea prompted him to proclaim: "Is there a greater sight in world football than a p****d-off Didier Drogba? Hmm . . . a snivelling John Terry, maybe?"

He's also enthusiastically embracing the internet, with a regularly updated blog called Tales From the Middle of Nowhere available on the band's MySpace site.

Before last week's hometown show in Manchester's Heaton Park he was eager to put to bed any rumours about conflict between Oasis - which also features bassist Andy Bell and guitarist Gem Archer - and support band The Enemy. It was a reminder that he's as unwilling as ever to stand for idle troublemaking.

"There's been an attempt to try and start some juvenile, pathetic feud between the bands in the run up to these gigs," he wrote.

"Can I assure everyone that there is not and never will be anything between the working classes and its heroes."

Still ready to kick up a wonderfully righteous commotion then.

In fact, the first night of the Manchester show saw rather more drama than anyone could have predicted, with a power cut leaving them to have to exit the stage TWICE before even getting going.

When they finally got under way Liam announced that "it's a free gig from now on" and promised everyone they could get their money back.

It was a typically impulsive gesture and one that sets them apart from most of their peers. Would Bono have done the same? Perhaps the generator failure was a message from above, with Liam announcing onstage that the last time he'd been in Heaton Park was to see the Pope's visit, dedicating a song to him, but noting that Oasis had "more tunes".

Barring another electrical act of God, handclaps are going to come mighty easy at Murrayfield.

And there'll be 67,000 of them, gloriously, enthusiastically, inimitably heartfelt.

No matter what the producer thinks . . .

Source: www.newsoftheworld.co.uk

Tickets are still available for a number shows on Oasis' largest-ever UK Stadium tour, click here for availability of tickets.