‘Hey Now!’: The song Noel Gallagher called a massive step forward for Oasis
Every budding young band dreams of escaping their grey-sky origins in England to become the biggest rock and roll band in the world, but few – if any – will ever achieve those heights. During the mid-1990s, however, a group of lads from Manchester emerged from their Boardwalk rehearsal space and ushered in an entirely new age of rock. Oasis didn’t waste any time in becoming one of the biggest bands in the world, and they certainly didn’t waste any opportunities to live the archetypal life of rock and roll stars.
Definitely Maybe, the band’s stunning 1994 debut album, acted as a kind of sonic manifesto for the band. With the Gallagher brothers at the helm, Oasis burst onto the scene with an infectiously abrasive and rebellious yet upbeat and optimistic sound. That debut is raw, authentic and universal, which is probably why it became such a groundbreaking success. Like every decent songwriter, however, Noel Gallagher was not content with repackaging the same songs over and over again; Oasis needed to develop and diversify their sound.
Luckily, the mid-1990s was a particularly rich period for Gallagher’s songwriting, and he managed to follow up on the band’s debut with the incredible (What’s The Story) Morning Glory. This was the album that introduced Oasis to global audiences, breaking into the mainstream of America and cementing them among the biggest groups on Earth. At the heart of that record are some of Gallagher’s finest songwriting efforts, so much so that certain tracks tend to fly under the radar.
One such song which is rarely afforded a mention when discussing (What’s The Story) Morning Glory is ‘Hey Now!’. A victim of its placement in the tracklisting, the song arrives immediately after the magnum opus song ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’, and gets overshadowed as a result. However, for those that are willing to listen, the song gives a stunning insight into the inner-workings of Oasis at that time.
“This is about being in a group,” Noel Gallagher revealed in a 1995 interview. The song tells the tale of sudden success and artistic freedom from humble origins. It forms a pivotal moment in the group’s history, moving from the initial success of their debut into something more mature and lasting. “It’s a massive step forward for us,” the songwriter said of the song.
Clearly, Gallagher was already aware that the song wouldn’t go down with Oasis’ greatest hits. “Some people aren’t going to like it because they’re just going to want more songs like ‘Cigarettes And Alcohol’ or ‘Supersonic’,” he shared, which turned out to be a pretty accurate hypothesis. Nevertheless, the strength of the songwriting was undeniable, and it is certainly deserving of a place on the album.
Gallagher spoke about the inspiration behind the song, namely the band sacking their original drummer, Tony McCarroll, who was replaced with Alan White for the second album. “The band has changed a lot; there’s a different vibe,” he said. “We released Tony because he wasn’t that good. We had some of the best drum tutors in the country, and they just said he wasn’t very good.”
According to Gallagher, however, the inherent spirit of the group lived on in spite of McCarroll’s departure. “There’s still me and our kid [Liam] and Bonehead and Guigsy and, of course, Marcus [Russell, Oasis’ manager]. But I believe in fate. It had to happen for us from the first sessions of Definitely Maybe.”
Fate has often been a recurring theme within Gallagher’s songwriting, but ‘Hey Now!’ is among the most overt examples. Not only is it an excellent song in its own right, it reflects the origin story of Oasis as a group, charting their monumental rise to prominence and how they came to define the sounds of 1990s Britpop.
