“Go away”: Noel Gallagher names his biggest regret with Oasis
It’s hard for any major rock star to reflect on their lives with regrets. There might be a few things that you wish you could do differently, but it’s hard to really argue with where someone ends up when they live in mansions and songs that have become anthems for legions of fans worldwide. Noel Gallagher is usually just proud to have his songs stand on their own in Oasis and his solo career, but he admitted that he probably should have the foresight to rest after the Britpop legends hit it big.
Looking back on their history, though, Oasis took their momentum and sent it through the roof right after Definitely Maybe. The entire road to them becoming one of the biggest rock acts in the world seemed to take place within the span of just a few months, and by the time that ‘Wonderwall’ got on the radio, everyone at least had an awareness of who the cocky guys in Beatles sunglasses were.
Although the public had good reasons to go absolutely bananas for What’s the Story Morning Glory, their Knebworth shows ended up being both a blessing and a curse for them. As much as they wanted to conquer the world, Noel still saw his band as just another indie outfit that happened to get big. So when you’re up on that high a pedestal, the main goal is not to lose the momentum.
Many people needed different things to help sustain that momentum, though, and Be Here Now is where the whole thing hit a sudden brick wall. The album still got aces across the board with fans and critics, but after going through another massive tour, Noel began to realise that his time in the sun may have ended without him wanting it to stop.
After everyone started to get way too crazed, Noel ended up taking a few years to recuperate, eventually coming to the forefront again with Standing on the Shoulder of Giants with half a band to show for it, with Bonehead and Guigsy now being replaced by Gem Archer and Andy Bell. Nothing had changed in terms of his songwriting, but it just felt all the more morose this time around.
In retrospect, Noel thought the best thing they could have done would have been to take some time off between What’s the Story Morning Glory and Be Here Now, telling SPIN, “I wish we’d let (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? settle and go away. It was still No. 5 in the Billboard 100 when we started making Be Here Now. I wish someone who’s paid to be bright and clever had told us to go away and do a bit of living. But we were fueled by youth and cocaine. When you’re the cash cow that lays the golden goose egg, people are always going to cheer you on, whatever.”
If anything, someone should have given them some advice about saving certain songs from becoming B-sides. Even though Noel was considered to be fairly strong-headed about how Oasis was supposed to be, throwing some of Be Here Now’s tepid cuts like ‘Magic Pie’ and building an entire album out of tunes like ‘The Masterplan’ and ‘Acquiesce’ would have been the almighty final chapter in a trilogy that never really stuck the landing as it should.
But that doesn’t mean that Be Here Now is absolutely dreadful from cover to cover. It does test the audience’s patience more than a few times, but even if Noel was riding on a mountain of cocaine during the making of the record, we should probably be grateful we got anything at all after the Manchester legends scaled the greatest heights possible after Knebworth.
