The Oasis song Noel Gallagher called a “proper youth anthem”
Every facet of Oasis‘s career wouldn’t have happened without Noel Gallagher steering the ship. Regardless of the animosity between Noel and his brother, Liam, his knack for writing timeless songs like ‘Live Forever’ and ‘Slide Away’ was matched only by the snarling attitude the band put into every one of their live performances, playing as if they were The Beatles reincarnated for the next generation of rock fans. Although the band reached a level of fame beyond their wildest dreams, Noel remained adamant for the band to be a voice of the people.
When Oasis first got started, Noel was still immersed in the indie rock scene, turning in time to working as a roadie for the band Inspiral Carpets. Once he was asked by his brother to come to a rehearsal and jam with the group, Noel knew that he could take the songs he was working on and turn them into a massive production.
Rather than follow the same example as acts like The Stone Roses, Noel took primary inspiration from his record collection, taking bits and pieces from rock and roll’s past and reformatting them for a new generation. When composing the song ‘Supersonic’, for example, Noel admitted to lifting the lick to George Harrison’s ‘My Sweet Lord’ as a post-chorus interlude before going into the next verse.
Writing one song after another, Noel wound up stealing another riff after a night of listening to T. Rex. Taking the basis of ‘Bang a Gong’, Noel turned the sound of blues-infused glam rock into the clarion call of Britpop with ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’, a glorious ode to the rock and roll lifestyle. Then again, that didn’t mean that Noel didn’t get some resistance when working on the song for the first time.
Arriving at rehearsal, rhythm guitarist Bonehead said they couldn’t use the riff because of how similar it was to the T. Rex classic. As Noel explains in Lock the Box, “I said, ‘I’ve got a tune called ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’. He said, ‘That’s a bit weird, you’ve got to change the title.’ Then I start playing, and he says, ‘Whoa, you can’t do that, that’s T. Rex’. I said, ‘I don’t give a shit who it is. I could give a fuck.’”
While the band would soldier on playing the song live, the riff would remain the same, with Noel calling upon the sounds of glam rock every night. When talking about the song later, Noel didn’t realise how much of an impact he would make with just one tune.
For the special edition of the band’s greatest hits album, Time Flies, Noel recalled the legacy of the song, saying, “It’s a proper youth anthem. It started getting big by word of mouth, and we started to gain a little following. That song, until the last days, that’s the song that people would go apeshit for. It mentions drugs in it and shagging birds, social comments, boozing and listening to tunes. I mean, what more do you want?”.
Outside of the band, Creation founder Alan McGee would also consider the song a favourite, thinking that the lyric “Is it worth the aggravation to find yourself a job when there’s nothing worth working for” among the best that Noel had ever written. While Oasis had a long road ahead of them as one of the biggest names in rock music, the naivete in this tune is its greatest strength.
