Noel Gallagher on how Andy Bell transformed Oasis: “He was fucking great”
As the 1990s neared its end, Oasis was met with the biggest set of changes and fluxes all at once since their inception. Having scored the decade’s pop charts and swaggered their way to the fore of the Britpop wave with their populist, working-class rock anthems, they had sailed to the top as the country’s most significant band.
Yet, Be Here Now‘s bloated misfire spelt the wane of their former fire. In a short time, longtime label Creation Records folded, and founding members Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs and Paul ‘Guigsy’ McGuigan decided to call it quits.
Yet, principal songwriter Noel Gallagher was never one to crumble in a crisis. Forming the Big Brother label and amassing a new collation of gadgets and instruments to step into a more psychedelic terrain from samplers to a Mellotron, 2000’s Standing on the Shoulder of Giants pursued a looser and more alternative approach to Gallagher’s direct lyrical touch, hinting at lysergic flourishes he’d revisit ten years later with his High Flying Birds.
Led by the surrealist-vintage ‘Go Let It Out’, Oasis sought to shake off the expectations that dogged the Be Here Now sessions and rekindle the simple magic of dreaming up new material guided by artistic intuition, no matter how eccentric.
Two vacancies were sorely in need of filling for the supporting tour due to commence in December 1999. Heavy Stereo’s Gem Archer was recruited for rhythm guitar, and curiously for bass, Gallagher opted for former labelmates Ride guitarist Andy Bell off the back of an immaculate rendition of a Who classic during auditions and quick mastery of Oasis’ live set.
“The next day he came in played all the songs and he was fucking great,” Gallagher told Mojo in 2000. “We were doing a version of ‘My Generation’, and Andy did that bass break note for note. It was brilliant. And all of a sudden, we acquired this new drummer, Alan’s turned into Keith Moon! As much as I loved Guigs, he was pretty naff on the bass, and that frustrated Alan because he had to sit on the beat all the time. Now there’s this whirling dervish in the corner banging everything that moves. It’s like being in a new band. I can’t wait for the next record ‘cos we can do that pretty much live. A year ago, there was only one songwriter in the band; now there are four.”
With the musicianship dialled up, plus singer and brother Liam Gallagher stepping up as a songwriter for the first time, the rejigged line-up injected new life into Oasis and forced their captain to up his game and pen numbers that could now be realised with the wider sonic possibilities Bell brought to the band.
Bell would stand as an essential figure in Oasis’ tumultuous story, playing in Liam’s Beady Eye project as well as gearing up to lend his bass to the upcoming Oasis reunion shows due to take place across (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?‘s 30th anniversary.
