Music

Oasis’ Definitely Maybe gave Manchester a new lease on life


The Gallaghers were iconic characters who caught the post-World Cup, ‘Loaded lad’, early Tony Blair celebratory mood of the mid-decade (Picture: Kevin Cummins/Getty Images)

‘It felt like the London music business had set the stage for Blur to be the centre of Britpop, and then we turned up and they never forgave us,’ Noel Gallagher joked to me in an interview for my book, The North Will Rise Again: Manchester Music City.

He delivered this with that mischievous glint in his eye, but there was a certain truth to the statement.

Definitely Maybe, Oasis’ debut album, celebrates its 25th anniversary today.

The album still crackles with excitement and claustrophobia, and is full of the swagger of northern working class escape.

Sonically, the band’s neat trick of combining the Beatles’, and especially Lennon’s, rasping intensity and melodic nous with the Sex Pistols’ wall of sound guitars is great, but the reason Oasis became so popular is because they were a people’s band.

The Gallaghers were iconic characters who caught the post-World Cup, ‘Loaded lad’, early Tony Blair celebratory mood of the mid-decade. The two warring brothers became bywords for good times.

The album itself may have become too popular too quickly for anyone to really analyse it, but its songs – with the communal melodies and euphoric guitar rushes – soundtracked a million nights out and remain deeply embedded in the city’s culture.

In the early 90s, Manchester was looked on as a busted flush.

It had enjoyed its glory days with the Stone Roses, the Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets and all things ‘Madchester’, but the days of London decamping to the northern city for its 24-hour party people, The Hacienda, flares, easy drugs and hedonism in the pouring rain were dead and buried.

On the local Manchester radio today there was much love for the band as Oasis’ hallowed tracks were played (Picture: Michel Linssen/Redferns)

This was replaced by hatchet jobs in the Sunday papers that concentrated on guns, dodgy drugs, violence and crime, and the end of the party. Of course, it was never quite like that, and as Madchester bled into Britpop, the music scene was changing again.

The city itself felt frozen in time, with a broken infrastructure masked by the dayglo of pop culture.

Looking out of my window in Hulme now at the huge new apartment blocks sprouting up all over the landscape it’s become impossible to imagine the old city that rarely changed its skyline, the old city where even the act of opening a futuristic club like The Hacienda seemed like a bold statement.

By 1992, the dream wasn’t quite over, but with the Stone Roses lost in the ether trying to record their second album, the wheels coming off the Mondays’ wonk genius hit machine and Factory records running out of money and bands, the northern powerhouse was running on empty.

In the damp bowels of the city centre club known as The Boardwalk, a warren of rehearsal rooms were refusing to throw in the towel.

Every time I was in there to rehearse with my band, The Membranes, there was a band next door who seemed to play the intro of the Beatles’ most tripped out classic, I Am The Walrus, over and over again.

When the album came out, the band were unstoppable – a genuine rags to riches rush that further amplified their glorious myth (Picture: Jazz Archiv Hamburgullstein bild via Getty Images)

One day I knocked on the door and entered a room that was a smog of smoke and music, with a huge pop culture Union Jack and loads of Man City graffiti all over the walls.

I instantly recognised Noel, who I had befriended at one of the never-ending series of gigs we all went to.

Then, he was a slightly shy young lad who was already deeply steeped in musical knowledge and was soon to be working for the Inspiral Carpets as their roadie, but in that very Manchester way where he was more like their ‘on the payroll cool mate’ – the one with the records, the right shoes and the perfect hair.

I would bump into him all over town – from the weekend raves in the squatted bedlam of then Hulme to deep at night at New Mount Street – the converted Victorian block where the city’s music scene movers and shakers had their offices at the time.

Before a rehearsal at The Boardwalk, I ran into him on Whitworth Street where he excitedly told me he had joined (taken over) his brother’s band and they had made a demo, which he shoved into my hand.

To this day, I have the cassette, which is now a pop culture artifact with Oasis felt-tipped on the case by Noel himself. He has jokingly asked for it back a couple of times since.

When the album came out, the band were unstoppable – a genuine rags to riches rush that further amplified their glorious myth.

The tidal wave of confidence they unleashed would drive Britpop and the concocted Blur versus Oasis stand-off onto the national news, and Oasis into the highest echelons of pop culture.

Meanwhile, they gave Manchester a new lease on life. It was Oasis’ energy and self-belief that woke the city up yet again.

On the local Manchester radio today there was much love for the band as those hallowed tracks were played.

There were endless homilies to ‘one of ours’, ‘normal lads’ and ‘soundtrack to escape’ that perfectly describe the true impact of this record.

They are the band that split up a decade ago, but still loom larger than those gleaming towers in the Manc landscape, because they created a moment in time when everything felt possible – whether it was a night on the town or changing the world.

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