“He couldn’t sing for a week”: The Oasis song that pushed Liam Gallagher to the limit
Not every song is meant to be banged out in the studio in one or two takes. The live performance doesn’t always do a tune justice, which means layering as many tracks on top of each other until they form this massive soup of sound where every instrument plays off each other. Anyone can build their tracks out like that, but when it came to working on Oasis’ Be Here Now, Noel Gallagher said that he had to really push his brother Liam before he was satisfied with this deep cut.
Then again, the definition of the word ‘ridiculous’ seemed to be pushed to its limits whenever the group were working on their third outing. Since the most celebrated songs on their previous records were the epics where everything blasted away, surely an album that was nothing but that style of songs would go over like a charm, right? Well, yes and no.
Because while Be Here Now is seen now as one of the greatest fumbles in rock history, it’s easy to see those Manchester legends in there somewhere. Despite all of the blatant Beatles worship and walls upon walls of guitars, there are pieces of the tunes that wouldn’t have felt out of place on Definitely Maybe. If it weren’t compressed to shit, ‘My Big Mouth’ would have probably sounded as good as it did when the group played at Knebworth.
Some elements seemed all too predictable coming from them, but ‘Fade In-Out’ has a bit of a darker tone to it. As opposed to the massive optimism of their mainline material, this is where Noel first got a desire to be a bit heavier, complete with a meaty riff in drop-D tuning that sounds like something that Jimmy Page or Neil Young might have done a few decades earlier.
Compared to what the rest of their 1990s counterparts were doing, this may have been a case of them trying to pave the way for the next phase of their career. No matter how much Blur relied on irony or Pulp had their experiences with glam rock, no one would be putting together something this heavy.
That being said, Noel did admit that Liam had to really dig deep within his register to perform on the final track, saying, “I pushed him to the limit on that. I said, ‘Pretend you’re a black man from Memphis. He’s not got very good rhythm and we made him stamp his foot all through it. He couldn’t sing for a week after.”
Although there are pieces of the song that still sound great, it does stand out as one of the weaker tracks on the record. Aside from the novelty of having Johnny Depp chipping in on slide guitar, most of the tune feels a touch underwritten, which doesn’t really help its replay factor when it’s almost six minutes long.
Still, at this stage of their career, it was important that the band show that they had a little bit more diversity than the typical caricatures of what the 1960s had to offer. They were a band with a real identity, and considering how heavy their final album, Dig Out Your Soul, was, it took Noel almost a decade before returning to this gritty sound again.
