Noel Gallagher on the only sixth member of Oasis: “He was one of us”
Most of the greatest rock bands in the world feel like they’re more than just a group of musicians. From Led Zeppelin to Guns N’ Roses, some of the most revered acts in the history of the genre resemble a street gang that happened to have guitars at their disposal instead of the traditional switchblades, and there was no chance anyone would get in the way of them taking over the world. Although Oasis carried themselves the same way in the 1990s, Noel Gallagher thought that the only person worthy of being called the sixth member was Mark Coyle.
When discussing the various nonmusicians in the Oasis camp, though, there is much more than just the band’s soundman. Alan McGee probably holds a special place in the band’s development for signing them, and despite writing anthems for a generation, none of them would have been half as good as they were without Owen Morris behind the board creating that signature brick walling effect.
But Oasis always thrived as a live band, and Coyle knew the group inside and out before they had even started. Before Noel had even joined the group, he had become best mates with Coyle, earning their stripes together as roadies for Inspiral Carpets before Noel was asked to come down for a jam session with his little brother’s band.
Whereas Morris made the group come alive in the studio, he wouldn’t have had a firm basis to work from were it not for Coyle. Since he knew just the right sounds to get for their live mix, the Britpop legends sounded louder than almost everyone else whenever they performed, leading to Morris pushing everything almost into the red whenever he could.
That kind of volume does a lot to excite audiences, but it’s not the healthiest environment for someone who relies on their ears for most of their job. Despite loving his front-row seat for the greatest band in the world, Coyle had to step down from being the soundman after a while once he got word from his doctors that he would go deaf if he were to keep going.
Although the band was still bound to go even higher on Be Here Now, Noel admitted feeling a bit dejected seeing him leave, recalling in Supersonic, “If anybody was a sixth member of that band, it was Mark. The first batch of demos I ever did were at his house. ‘Married With Children’ was recorded in his bedroom. I wouldn’t have written ‘Slide Away’ or ‘Live Forever’ if it wasn’t for Mark. He was one of us.”
That didn’t mean that Coyle had to be completely out of the picture, either. He was down in the front when they played their massive shows at Knebworth, and even during the Be Here Now sessions, he would occasionally drop by to work on the amps when he wasn’t working with his own band, Tailgunner, which featured Noel on drums.
Still, it’s hard to look at Coyle’s departure as a turning point for Oasis. Since the massive cocaine-fuelled escapades of Be Here Now were around the corner, it felt like they had lost a bit of the innocence that they started with when they were just a humble garage band playing on the streets of Manchester.
