Absolutely Fab-ulous

By Robert Hilburn

May 26, 1996 12 AM PT

Robert Hilburn is The Times' pop music critic

SAN FRANCISCO — Noel Gallagher, the creative force behind the flamboyant British rock group Oasis, is surprisingly reflective as he sits backstage after an afternoon sound check at the sold-out Bill Graham Civic Auditorium.

Isn’t this the brash songwriter and guitarist who has been portrayed in the pop press as arrogant (for calling Oasis the best band in the world even before the group stepped onstage in this country) and even barbaric (for once saying he wished that members of a rival band would get AIDS)?

Wasn’t he branded irresponsible in England after acknowledging a history of sex, drugs and juvenile delinquency? And--most outrageous of all to some in an age of reluctant rock stars--doesn’t he admit to enjoying stardom?

Gallagher, who turns 29 this week, addresses all those issues thoughtfully in a 90-minute interview, including an expression of regret for saying he hoped the members of Blur would contract AIDS. However, he offers no apology for wanting to be a star.

“When people asked us about the band, I always said I thought we were good--and we were going to be huge,” he says, lighting the first of several cigarettes. “To me, that’s not arrogance but self-belief.

“But the press is used to having bands go, ‘Oh, we aren’t any better than anybody. Let’s put out singles on some unknown label and be cool.’ Well, I would rather be Paul McCartney and not be cool than be, say, the [expletive] Mudhoney and be cool.”

The reference to McCartney is no accident.

In its best music, Oasis offers the same seductive, melodic strains and inspirational edge that gave the Beatles their universal allure.

Thanks to the warmth of the group’s glorious ballad “Wonderwall,” Oasis’ second album on Epic Records--”What’s the Story (Morning Glory)?”--has sold more than 2.5 million copies in the United States (and another 5 million around the world).

Industry insiders are watching Oasis’ progress carefully. Not only could its popularity break down the U.S. resistance to British bands in recent years, but it could also signal a shift in the mainstream away from the anger and alienation of ‘90s American rock.

Rarely has a band’s name summarized its role in rock as well as Oasis. During an age when the paramount theme of quality rock bands is darkness and doubt, Oasis offers the “pleasant relief” of its dictionary definition.

“When I see kids at the shows singing ‘Wonderwall’ or ‘Live Forever,’ it makes me feel great, but not in a smug way,” Gallagher says. “I’m not saying they are clever songs, but they are honest--and that’s what I think people respond to in our music. It gives you the strength to overcome your problems.

“I loved Nirvana, but their success led to thousands of other bands with the same attitude--all saying how horrible life is--and I think people feel the need for another side to the music.

“I’ve had as bad times as anyone when I was growing up in Manchester, but I’d listen to [the Beatles’] ‘I Am the Walrus,’ and for that 3 1/2 minutes I was immersed in the lyrical imagery and I’d think anything was possible. It was only when the record was finished and there was silence that I’d go, ‘[Expletive], I’m still in Manchester.’ ”

One of the great ironies of ‘90s rock is that baby boomers bought millions of the recent Beatles anthologies, complaining every step of the way that no one writes songs like Lennon and McCartney anymore, while passing by two albums by Oasis that have many of the elements that they prize so much in the Beatles.

Oasis isn’t within light-years of the innovation of the Beatles, but Gallagher’s songs are blessed with a similar accessibility, melodiousness and emotional maturity.

While many reflect on tensions and doubts, there is an overriding tone of optimism and, in songs such as “Morning Glory,” a celebration of the power of music itself: “Another sunny afternoon / I’m walking to the sound of my favorite tune.”

Beatles fans will also note that “Wonderwall,” the massive hit about romantic commitment and need, takes its name from a George Harrison album title. “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” another Oasis single, even paraphrases the piano signature from John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

“Cast No Shadow” is an expression of emotional impotence and self-doubt that stands alongside the Beatles’ “Nowhere Man,” while “Champagne Supernova” offers the psychedelic wonder of mid-period Beatles.

In ways that parallel Lennon and McCartney in Liverpool, Noel Gallagher and his brother Liam, Oasis’ singer, grew up in dead-end Manchester as outsiders. They found their future in music.

Liam, 23, brings to the band a great rock voice--as well as the best cheekbones since Sting. But it’s Noel and the songs that give the band its heart.

Janet Billig, who as manager or publicist has worked with such acclaimed American rock acts as Nirvana, Hole and Smashing Pumpkins, calls the Oasis songs “amazing . . . filled with incredible hooks and spirit.”

Mark Kates, a star artists and repertoire executive at Geffen Records, where he works with Elastica, Hole, Sonic Youth and others, also sees Oasis as a major force.

“They are here for the long run,” he says. “They’ve got a songwriter who wants to be John Lennon and Paul McCartney and a singer who wants to be John Lennon, and I think that sort of confidence and ambition is great. They’ve got so many great songs. . . . Even the B-sides of their singles would be hits around the world.”

The fascinating thing about Oasis’ commercial rise is that many rock fans and critics view the band with suspicion, seeing the group’s provocative or outrageous comments as signs that the group is all talk.

Oasis’ rebellious image was summarized colorfully in a recent Rolling Stone magazine cover line: “They’re hard-drinking, groupie-shagging, drug-snorting louts. . . . And they’re huge.”

And it’s true that Noel and Liam can come up with headline-grabbing barbs as easily as hit records, thanks to a frankness and a gift for wry exaggeration that is said to be common in working-class youth from Manchester.

The pair also show no hesitancy in responding to whatever the tabloid-prone British pop press throws at it. That’s what led to the AIDS comment, Noel says.

“It was during an interview in Scotland and this [writer] kept going on and on about the Blur and Oasis feud,” he says during the backstage interview. “It came up every five minutes and I was getting more and more drunk, so after about an hour I just said, ‘I hope they get AIDS.’

“I was just trying to shock her so we could stop talking about it. But I knew I was wrong and I said right away, ‘Please don’t use that.’ I knew I had put my foot into it. I talked to someone from the group afterward and they bought me a drink. They know how things like that happen.”

The Gallagher brothers, however, have a serious side that is often missing from profiles of the band. Both can talk passionately and at length about music--at least Liam supposedly can. He hasn’t shown much of a serious side in England, and he decided against doing interviews on this brief U.S. swing.

During a photo session here, he chatted amiably about the recent breakup of one of his chief influences, Manchester’s Stone Roses, but he then went into the sanctuary of the dressing room to joke around with his bandmates. Maybe he simply feels uncomfortable when asked to reflect on the band’s music. After all, Oasis is, in almost every way, Noel’s band.

The music’s spirit of optimism and determination is also very much his story.

“We came from the bottom,” he says of his background in Manchester. “I have experienced unemployment and endless years of boredom and frustration--badly paid jobs where you have to work hard and you hate your boss.

“I didn’t want to be a rock star because of all the excesses we saw in rock stars in the ‘70s and ‘80s,” he says. “That was never my dream. I wanted to be a rock star so I could get people to listen to my songs and so I could have some security for my family and friends.”

It’s easy to trace the Beatles’ influence on Oasis. Noel Gallagher remembers listening to the Beatles’ “red” and “blue” greatest-hits albums as a child when he helped his mom clean house in Manchester. His father was also into music, supplementing his wages as a construction worker by working as a country music deejay at weddings and parties around town.

Things took a dark turn for the Gallagher family when the father left home when Noel was in his early teens. He and his older brother, Paul, had to help raise money by working at construction and other jobs through their teens. Toward the end of that period, he says, he committed some petty burglaries.

It was Noel’s memories of that period--published in an April Melody Maker interview focusing on his Manchester roots--that caused an uproar earlier this year in England. Adrian Rogers of the Conservative Family Institute called for the British public and the music industry to boycott Oasis because the group sets a bad example for young people.

“The angle of the story was our background, how we grew up, so I said I had been arrested for burglary,” Noel says. “I was just trying to explain something to this chap and, I suppose, kids on the street who might feel there is no way out for them and might think they have to resort to crime. I was trying to say, ‘I’ve been there and I’ve done that, but now I’m here. I’ve gotten out of that and you can too, if you really put your mind to it.’ ”

The Beatles may have made Gallagher love music, but it was seeing groups such as the Jam as well as Manchester’s own Smiths and Stone Roses that eventually inspired him to be in a band. But the closest he could get to the music business was a job as a roadie for the Inspiral Carpets, a Manchester band of the late ‘80s.

Gallagher toured with the Carpets for almost four years. He was writing songs but was unable to persuade anyone that a roadie could come up with anything of value.

While on the road in the summer of 1991, Gallagher was surprised to learn that Liam had started a group back home. He joined the following year, and before the band had played two dozen dates, Alan McGee, the much-admired head of the influential independent label Creation Records and the man who had discovered the Jesus and Mary Chain, saw the group at a club in Glasgow.

Typical of Oasis’ colorful history, there is a classic story about that show. When the band arrived, it was told by the club owner that there had been a booking mix-up and there was no room for it on the bill. Irate after driving all the way from Manchester, the group threatened to tear the club apart unless it was allowed onstage.

“I was at the bar and I heard these guys threatening to smash the club up if they didn’t get to play,” McGee recalls in a separate interview. “I went upstairs to see if there was going to be a fight and they were already onstage. There were only about a dozen people in the audience but I couldn’t believe the charisma of this young kid on stage [Liam] and the quality of the songs.”

The group’s manager, Marcus Russell, had a similar reaction when he first saw the band.

“They had the look, the songs and the determination,” he said. “Noel struck me as being incredibly ambitious. Then I met the whole band, and same thing. You could see it in their eyes. They were playing in tiny little pubs in the north of England but with the attitude they had something special to offer.”

Oasis released its first single, “Supersonic,” in April 1994 in England, but it was “Live Forever,” released in August, that started the pandemonium that resulted in the group’s debut album, “Definitely Maybe,” selling 150,000 copies in its first three days--the fastest-selling debut ever in England.

Once the band hit big in England and in much of the rest of the world, Oasis and Russell had to deal with the question of America, which had been cold to British bands for more than a decade. The plan was to underplay their British success by playing small clubs here. Besides the Gallaghers, the lineup at the time included Paul Arthurs on rhythm guitar, Paul McGuigan on bass and Tony McCarroll on drums. (The last has since been replaced by Alan White.)

By the time of Oasis’ Los Angeles debut at the Whisky in September 1994, the buzz was building. Even a Beatle--Ringo Starr--called for tickets.

But Gallagher looks back on that show for another reason. He was worried about the survival of the band.

From the start, there had been predictions that Oasis would self-destruct, be it from drugs or the occasional public squabbling of the brothers Gallagher, who are part of a grand British rock tradition of battling siblings--from Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks to William and Jim Reid of the Jesus and Mary Chain.

To Noel, however, the real threat was apathy--and it surfaced on that first U.S. tour. The group stayed up all night partying and was apparently too tired to show up for the Whisky sound check.

“So, here we were playing in front of a Beatle and I felt we were just going through the motions,” Gallagher recalls. “Afterward, I reminded the rest of the group how we talked in the beginning about being the biggest band in the world and how we used to rehearse four nights a week. But now there was an attitude in the band that someone was just going to walk up and give it to us--that we didn’t have to work at all. I was fed up. I finally said, ‘OK, I’ll go find another band.’ ”

Without telling the band, Gallagher got on a plane for Las Vegas and disappeared for two weeks, forcing the cancellation of some shows. He didn’t return, he says, until he was assured the group would work harder. “It was a turning point,” he says. “It made us all realize what was at stake.”

About the lingering talk of excessive drug and alcohol use in the group, he adds: “I don’t see it as a problem. It’s just something we do sometimes after the gigs. We would never go onstage high or drunk. It will never get in the way of the music. If it did, we would probably have to take a good, long look at ourselves.”

When Oasis takes the stage in San Francisco later in the evening, the young audience is wildly enthusiastic. The show’s emotional high point is when Noel takes over lead vocals for an acoustic segment that includes “Wonderwall.”

After the show, the dressing room area is so crowded that it looks as if the band is under siege. But Noel has slipped away to the quiet of the production office. He’s suffering from a sore throat (the band would cancel its Los Angeles show two nights later because of the illness--a new date still hasn’t been announced). Mostly, though, he feels uncomfortable under the fan assault.

Though he can reportedly party with the best of rockers, Noel spends most nights after shows in his hotel room, working on songs. While he often downplays his lyrics in interviews, in fact he spends considerable time on them.

“I suppose that is a safety valve for me,” he says of his habit of dismissing his lyrics. “I just say they’re rubbish, and that usually stops people asking about them.”

Like many of rock’s classic writers from the ‘60s and ‘70s, Gallagher has a way of combining elements of celebration and tension, optimism and doubt.

In songs such as “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star,” he seems capable of accomplishing anything, whereas in “Cast No Shadow” he is filled with insecurities.

“I am a Gemini and there are the two sides of me,” he says in the quiet of the office. “One side writes ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’ and it’s pretty chest-beating and uplifting . . . the feeling that you have so much to give. The other side writes ‘Cast No Shadow’ and is all about frustration, the feeling you don’t have anything to give.”

The upbeat side seems to be winning these days. Gallagher is feeling good. He’s already got most of the songs written for the next album, which will probably be released early next year. The band is taking some time off this summer, its first extended break since the beginning.

“I am more relaxed than ever,” he says. “A big part of it is what’s happening with the band, but there’s a lot more. I’m in love, and I’ve just bought a house, my first one. My little brother [Liam] is doing all right. My older brother just got a job at our record company. My mom is happy.”

It’s easy to sense Gallagher’s growing happiness in a song like “Wonderwall.”

He nods at the suggestion.

“Sure, it’s all there,” he says. “That’s where the music comes from, you know. I don’t write fiction--I write about what I feel.”

Hear Oasis

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