‘Loop the f**king loop': New book reveals how Oasis imploded at the height of their fame

News.com.au

7 hours ago

They were the biggest band of their generation, on the edge of world domination … then it all went wrong. As the reunited Gallagher brothers prepare to tour Oasis once again, music industry veteran JOHN ROBB recounts the disaster that deprived Aussie fans of seeing their heroes, in this exclusive extract from his new book Live Forever – an eyewitness account full of interviews with the major players in one of rock's biggest dramas.
Yin and yang, hello goodbye, up and down, one step forwards and one step back … only Oasis could follow up a triumph like their enormous gig at Knebworth in August 1996, with a near disaster not even two weeks later.
The volatile nature of the band, of course, was one of their magnetic qualities for outsiders. They never faked anything and their hearts were certainly on their sleeves; it saw them often snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and then somehow thrive in the following chaos.
The biggest crime in pop culture is to be boring, and Oasis were never boring.
On 23 August they were due to film an MTV Unplugged appearance that would become more famous for the inherent chaos that was always bubbling up just beneath the surface. Launched in 1989, the MTV Unplugged sessions were a big deal at the time.
Featuring a filmed acoustic live session from a band, they had often been iconic, from Neil Young delivering a stunning take of his Harvest Moon classic to the most famous one of them all, Nirvana whose unplugged was eventually released as an album and is arguably their finest performance.
Filmed at the Royal Festival Hall, even the rehearsals for the Oasis show were fraught with problems, with singer Liam Gallagher complaining of having a bad throat and walking out, and guitarist brother Noel having to cover most of the vocals. When it came to filming time, Liam hadn't turned up. The rumour was that he had been out drinking for a few days. Almost inevitably, he had been hanging out with Owen Morris the night before, as the producer remembers:
'The night before Liam didn't do MTV, he had been in my hotel room getting wasted, and I got the f**king blame! It was the first time I had seen him for eight months so we went to the pub and drank too much Guinness. And then Liam decided he didn't want to f**king sing on that MTV thing. I didn't know he was gonna f**king go loop the f**king loop, right?'
Now that it was obvious the iconic singer was not going to do the session, MTV scrambled for a plan B. They had already taped a full rehearsal with the band and there was talk of using that footage mixed with a Noel-led performance, but the cost of editing meant they elected to go with the guitarist singing the whole session.
Cameras on, Noel announced, 'Liam ain't gonna be with us tonight cause he's got a sore throat. So you're stuck with the ugly four,' and carried it off perfectly, bringing his own more plaintive takes on his lyrics compared to his younger brother's captivating vocals with a now watching Liam sat in the upstairs seats heckling, which further cranked the tension as the 'ugly four' delivered the session. Whatever was going on, it made for riveting viewing and added to the helter-skelter dynamics of the band that defied boredom and conventional careerism with moments of madness like this.
With (What's the Story) Morning Glory? in the top 5 of the American charts, the tour should have been a triumph. The sheer scale of Knebworth and the huge success of the album and 'Wonderwall' had put them on a supernova footing. The discipline required to get to the top, forged in those endless hours of rehearsing in the Boardwalk seemed to be dissipating though.
The internecine tension between the two brothers, amped by the pressure and further cranked by the cocaine and the post-Knebworth malaise, were playing out in lots of different ways.
'The Knebworth thing was with us when we went on that plane to America,' says Noel. 'I guess subconsciously we must have felt we had done it with Morning Glory riding high in the American album charts and 'Wonderwall' in the top five.'
The MTV filming had been a warning sign and now the band had to play their first date on the American tour with no singer, who had decided, last minute, that he needed to go house hunting with his new partner, Patsy Kensit, after moving out of the flat he had been renting. This left Noel to front the band at the first gig in Chicago and sing the whole set and songs like 'Champagne Supernova' for the first time ever, after supports from the Screaming Trees and the Manic Street Preachers.
Even the Stones at their most decadent hadn't been this unruly.
After joining the tour for the second date at the large Glass Palace venue on the edge of Detroit, Liam had the now famous confrontation with the late Mark Lanegan, the then lead singer of the Screaming Trees.
The stand-off was sparked when he called Lanegan's band the 'Howling Branches' and it descended from there. On paper it may have seemed an odd bill but, like Nirvana, with whose totemic frontman Noel felt an alignment, Mark Lanegan was close to Kurt Cobain; and Oasis and they and Screaming Trees had things in common. Both had a melodic take on anthemic noise and an ability to weave introspection into the high-decibel void. Both singers were renegade Irish blood transposed into alien nations and reacting in their own ways.
It's a shame they bumped into each other at the wrong time in their lives and fell out so badly as there could have been much mutual respect with Mark Lanegan being a fan of Oasis, but it wasn't to be, and the festering ill will carried on until Mark's death in 2022.
The tension carried through the next few shows before arriving in New York where Oasis were appearing on the MTV awards on 4 September. On the show, the band performed a loose version of 'Champagne Supernova' with a clearly discontented singer adlibbing 'up your bum' into the song and spitting on the stage.
It's as electric in its tension and unpredictability as prime-time Doors.
The tour staggered on for a few dates with Noel grimly grinding the shows down before it all finally imploded on 10 September, two hours before stage time in Charlotte at the Bristow Nissan Pavilion, when the guitarist pulled the tour and flew home on Concorde. The rest of the American tour and follow-up legs in Australia and New Zealand were pulled.
Oasis had imploded. It was big news.
'Liam had an argument with (rhythm guitarist) Bonehead about a leather jacket and we were all on f**king drugs and I was saying, 'Calm down!' and we blew out four really big gigs,' explains Noel. 'At that point the band could have gone one way or another. There was mayhem when we got back to England, there was chaos at the airport. I couldn't believe the amount of press that was there. We had only cancelled a few f**king gigs.
'It was insane. We had to get driven from the airport to a secret hideaway and we were now in the tabloids all the time. After that, the drugs started to take over. We shouldn't have gone on that tour in the first place. What we should have done after Knebworth was just f**king disappeared.
'It was the classic thing, which we never, ever learned in Oasis, which was biting off more than you can chew, but when you're cocky little working class lads and someone says, 'There's another six-week tour of America, you might be tired …' I would say,
'Tired? What are you f**king talking about? We're f**king there, mate!' But when you get older you realise it's the adults surrounding the band that should have not let that happen.'
Noel knew the damage had been done. 'You can get away with unprofessionalism in the UK but the Americans could not understand how we could blow out gigs or be too pissed to meet that guy at the record shop who would rack the records.
'Marcus (Russell, the band's manager) was based in England and we never had an American manager and we were left to our own devices. We were on Epic records in the USA and it doesn't get any more corporate than that.
Their two biggest acts were Whitney Houston and Celine Dion and then there was us. They didn't get it for a long time, even with the album at number two in the charts. They think you are trying to trick them somehow because you're playing 'Rock 'n' Roll Star' and no one is moving except for the drummer.
'Musically we could have smashed it, but they are so attuned out there to people like Chris Martin and Bono who give a lot to a crowd, but Liam is into his stillism, which was great of course but they find that offensive out there. They are into showmanship and a stage show and they couldn't believe that 'you guys just stand there!' If you act like Mick Jagger they get it but they were so intimidated by the way we were on stage. They didn't know what to do if you were not performing like a ludicrous idiot. (Record company executive) Alan McGee always said we were too Mancunian for America and 'it's no surprise that none of you from that city have ever done anything there!'
'We were expected to go and repeat the staggering success of the UK – I'm sure McGee and Marcus were not thinking that but someone at Sony was. I had already been to America with the Inspirals and I knew that New York and LA were great but the rest of it can be like a Wednesday afternoon in Bury.
'Our reputation preceded us for being somewhat tetchy, 'Here, these are the guys that fight all the time.' Yet we didn't fight all the time although we do like an argument, particularly in the press, but it's often tongue in cheek, but because Americans have a different sense of humour they think it's all real!'
Band PR Johnny Hopkins saw the genuine band dynamics: 'There was so much love between the brothers at first, and the atmosphere around the band in those early years was just beautiful and hilarious. Maybe it changed after Wibbling Rivalry (an infamous recording of Noel and Liam arguing) which created an expectation.'
The cultural differences between the UK and USA baffled both sides. Noel explains: 'They said we were going through the motions because we were not as big in the USA, but I found that quite insulting. In England we call that nonchalance. I remember a girl from the label was driving us around to do press in Seattle and she asked me what Creation Records was like. She was horrified when I said they get us drugs and have their own drug dealers.'
Despite this pervading feeling of car crash, the band were actually the most successful UK band in the USA for years; and decades later, when they reformed in 2024, they sold out their biggest ever shows in minutes because, in the end, it's the songs that really matter.