The song Noel Gallagher knew made Oasis legendary: “The biggest single we ever had”
There was never a moment when Oasis didn’t seem 100% confident in becoming the biggest band in the world.
They knew it was only a matter of time before everyone got on board the Britpop hype train, but even for an indie band in the early 1990s, Noel Gallagher had memories of when everything really started to take off.
But when looking at the band’s beginnings, Noel remembered that they had to eat more than their fair share of humble pie now and again. They had that brash arrogance that many people either loved or hated back in the day, but it was always going to be a little bit difficult to play a song about how you’re a rock and roll star and get a standing ovation for only 20 people in a small club.
When they first signed to Creation Records, though, Noel was on the brink of getting his foot in the door. He had songs like ‘Up in the Sky’ at his disposal already, as well as ‘Bring It On Down’, but by the time he started working on tracks like ‘Live Forever’, his dreams of becoming a big enough band to rival The Beatles actually seemed plausible. However, if you think that the band only listened to their favourite records from the Fab Four, you weren’t paying attention hard enough.
Most of Definitely Maybe is a love letter to some of the greatest British acts of ages past. The clearest comparison to their cocksure attitude was probably John Lydon on tracks like ‘Bring It On Down’, but they had the same bluesy swagger about them on ‘Shakermaker’, and when they landed on ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’, you really had to squint your ears in order to not hear the massive influence from T Rex.
For all of the rock and roll swagger, though, Noel actually wanted to hold back on releasing ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ at the time. It was a brilliant track, and seeing them perform it in the video is the epitome of what rock and roll was all about, but Noel had a fear of getting too overhyped before the label decided to release the thing anyway.
The public had heard enough of the band for one album in his mind, but once it started blowing up, he knew that they were breaking into another level of stardom, saying, “I wasn’t into the idea at all. I was like ‘Fourth single? I don’t know about that.’ But, anyway, out it comes and we’re in Detroit and we got a phone call that not only had it got in the charts, [but] it was the biggest single we ever had. I remember putting the phone down and saying, ‘Now we’re fucking talking. This is about to get fucking stupid.”
But for such a simple blues riff, what makes the song work is how well it sounds played in front of the biggest crowd possible. There are always going to be songs the band has to play everywhere they go, but outside of the ‘Wonderwall’s and the ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’s, there’s a groove in this song that never fails to get the people bouncing, especially with a message that everyone who’s had a long day at work can attest to.
The groundwork had been laid out on the first handful of singles, but by the time that ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ got in the charts, Oasis started to feel like a completely different band. Before, they had been a promising indie band with two charismatic brothers at the centre of it all, but now it seemed like all of the hype that they had built up for themselves actually had some substance behind it.
