The Cover Uncovered: How Oasis took to London for ‘(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?’
By 1995 and with the release of their seminal sophomore album (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?, Oasis were no longer a Manchester band, they belonged to Britain.
It wasn’t by their design, however, but due to the wild popularity that their fresh injection of music had created. While their disposition was inherently Mancunian, and the lifestyles portrayed in the lyrics were uniquely linked to their local experiences, there was a universality to their music that rightly made them the country’s darlings. So naturally for (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?, London beckoned.
The album artwork pitted the band right in the eye of the cultural storm, in Soho, where the countless cocktail bars and late-night venues awaited their arrival as true icons of the era. But rather than distil the after-hours hedonism of a London soundtracked by Oasis onto the cover, it cut a relaxed figure, striding through the quiet solitude of the city centre, engaging a moment of reflection that was ultimately rare for the band at the time.
“The idea was that you had these two guys passing in the street,” photographer and graphic designer Brian Cannon remembered, “You didn’t have any idea who they were, where they were going, what they were saying to each other. And on the back sleeve, you see one of the guys disappearing, and he’s going: ‘What the f**k? What the f**k did he just say to me? What the f**k was that interaction all about?’”
“It was supposed to be Liam and Noel,” Cannon reveals, “But they cried off, I think because they were pissed from the night before”.
Despite all of the curiosity of each person involved, questioning the interaction they had just experienced, there is also a blissful ignorance of the whole thing. It distinctly captures the era of the mid 1990s, where technology was a luxury, not a plague, youthfulness was celebrated, and the creative troubadours of the Britpop era could confidently stride forward into the future.
So it makes it all the more romantic when you realise that Cannon didn’t doctor the image to achieve that. Like the band, what you see is what you get in that cover photo.
He explained, “It’s mad that we chose Berwick Street, because it’s a busy street, bang in the middle of Soho,” Cannon reflected, “Even at five o’clock on a Sunday morning, when that was taken, you still expect the street to be full of traffic. I was quite prepared to have to digitally remove vehicles if need be. But weirdly, that was how it appeared that morning; there was nothing in the street.”
It was the calm before the storm, if you will, a storm soundtracked by the October ‘95 record (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? and Oasis’ subsequent rise to fame, of which the like simply hasn’t been seen since. It swept the shores of the UK, flooding the people with hope, direction and excitement as they realised that for the first time in decades, there was nowhere to be but right there, listening to a band like Oasis.
