Welsh pub Liam Gallagher loved to drink at all night instead of recording Oasis' hit album

Wales Online

2 days ago

Welsh pub Liam Gallagher loved to drink at all night instead of recording Oasis' hit album
The rock and roll star and frontman of one of Britain's biggest ever bands is coming back to Wales this week - and it will be 30 years after he used to be seen regularly in one Monmouth boozer
(Image: Simon Ridgway/Sky UK Ltd )
There's a pub in a Welsh town where Liam Gallagher once drank the nights away in the 1990s while his brother Noel was at a remote studio three miles away putting the finishing touches to one of the most famous and successful British rock albums of all time. Back in the early summer of 1995, Oasis chose Rockfield Studios in the beautiful Wye Valley in south Wales as the perfect spot to record '(What's the Story) Morning Glory?', which was released later that same year to huge critical and commercial success.
This album would come to characterise Oasis and, in many respects, the entire Britpop culture, transforming both Gallagher brothers, guitarist Bonehead, bassist Guigsy, and their then-new drummer Alan White into international superstars. This followed closely on the heels of their debut album, 'Definitely Maybe', which had only been released the previous year.
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During the recording sessions at Rockfield, Gallagher confessed that he "spent more time in the pub than I did here". The pub he's referring to is the Royal Oak in Monmouth.
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"I'd do my singing and I'd come back and our kid (Noel Gallagher) would still be playing the same bloody riff over and over and over again," he added.
Reflecting on a 1995 encounter with Oasis followers, Gallagher shared his recollection of the interaction: "It was like 'come back to our gaffe, we're having a great time'. 'What about Noel, the miserable c***? He won't want us back there.' I went 'oh, he loves you, you pay for his big f****** house, he'd love to see you'. But it wasn't like that. We'd bring them back and he'd be like 'who the f*** are these d*** heads?' and I'm saying 'these are your fans'."
The Royal Oak, Monmouth
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Years later, during the filming of the Sky documentary 'Liam Gallagher: 48 Hours at Rockfield', Gallagher found himself in the Royal Oak once again, but his company had changed; this time he was joined by his sons Gene and Lennon rather than his rockstar peers and exuberant supporters. Musing about his approach to fatherhood while spending time with his sons at the pub, Liam remarked: "If they step out of line they'll get a telling off, for sure. And the thing is, even though I haven't got a leg to stand on, I've got a f****** knee to bounce off."
He also discussed what motivated him to pen his third solo album - titled C'mon You Know, released in 2022 - following the massive success of his first two. "This started because when lockdown happened we were all panicking and thinking we're all gonna die if we don't wash our hands nine hundred f****** times a f****** minute," he said.
"So you go to the pub, and you get on the piss, so I did that for six months, and then obviously you're getting bored of getting w******* and washing your f****** hands, so I got a little studio in the house, done the vocals and before we knew it we had an album done.
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"I'd say I've definitely got a bit more professional but you do when you get older," Gallagher concludes. "I didn't give a f***. I loved going out, I loved doing the tunes, partying, that's what I thought I had to do. My job is to just get in there, look cool, sing as good as I can and bring the rock and roll side to it. I've definitely chilled out a bit, for sure."
Taking to the stage in front of massive stadium crowds won't be an intimidating prospect for the Oasis frontman, who performed two sold-out shows at Knebworth in 2022 to a combined audience of 160,000, and has just completed an outdoor and arena tour to celebrate the 30th anniversary of 'Definitely Maybe'.
"I didn't think it would go as well as it's gone, this solo thing," he said. Yet, despite his remarkable solo achievements, nothing can match the magnitude of next summer's Oasis '25 tour, which will see both Gallagher brothers reunite on stage - a prospect that, until recently, seemed like an impossibility for fans.
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