The only American band to out-smoke Noel Gallagher: “Puke everywhere”
Nobody partied quite as hard as Oasis back in the 1990s, yet Noel Gallagher’s position as a rock and roll archetype was once cast in doubt thanks to a toilet cubicle, an American alt-rock outfit, and a “fucking huge spliff”.
From the rehearsal rooms of Manchester’s Boardwalk to the biggest band on the planet, Oasis experienced a rapid and unparalleled journey to the top during the mid-1990s, and the band took full advantage of that success.
Not wanting to waste any opportunity for rock and roll carnage, the band partied harder, stayed out later, and consumed far more drugs than virtually any other group in the blossoming Britpop scene.
Although the ensuing carnage, which seemed to follow Oasis across the globe, made them the ire of tabloid newspapers and authority figures, it also endeared them towards legions of fans. After all, the band were, at their core, ordinary blokes from Manchester, and they never pretended to be anything else. Still, maintaining such a high level of self-destruction on a consistent basis over a period of multiple years is bound to take its toll sooner or later, and the band’s extra-curricular activities certainly impacted their output on occasion.
Not only did their life of rock and roll excess cause a downturn in the relatability of their music – see Be Here Now and how far it falls from the universal power of (What’s The Story) Morning Glory – and derail a multitude of gigs – see their infamous meth-fueled Whisky-A-Go-Go show in 1994 – but it also meant that various people felt the need to prove that they could out-drink, out-fight, or out-smoke the Gallagher brothers on various occasions.
On one night in 1999, somebody finally succeeded in that aim when Noel Gallagher went to see The Black Crowes close out their world tour at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire. Although the gig was undoubtedly spectacular, with the Atlanta outfit arguably at their top of their game during that period, Gallagher’s memories of the night are sketchy at best.
In fact, there is only one thing that the Oasis songwriter can be totally sure of: “I made a right twat of myself.”
For Gallagher, the trouble began in the dressing room after the gig. As he recalled to Uncut the following year, somebody in the Black Crowes’ gang was passing around “this fucking huge spliff like a baseball bat”, which inevitably made its way into the hands of the Oasis guitarist before too long. Now, by that point in time, Gallagher has spoken at length about his drug habits, famously declaring that taking drugs is “like getting up and having a cup of tea in the morning” back in 1997. So, he was keen not to be upstaged by a group of Americans.
“So not to be seen to be a lightweight, I had a couple of drags on it,” Gallagher remembered, with a palpable sense of regret. The effects of the baseball-blunt were seemingly instant, with the songwriter sharing that he, ”Passed it him back, grabbed hold of the wall, then fucking abseiled down the wall into the toilet, going green, puke every fucking where.”
For Gallagher, the nightmare had only just started. “I locked myself in the toilet,” he continued. “And my mate was – it felt like about five minutes later – banging on the door, going, ‘Are you in there?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah,’ and he says, ‘Come on, we’ve got to go, man, the building’s empty, it’s two in the morning, they’ve got to lock up’.”
This was easier said than done, however, as Gallagher was still in such a state that he couldn’t unlock the cubicle door.
“I couldn’t find the door in the cubicle, so he’s got to climb over, open the door, and carry me down the stairs,” the songwriter recalled. “And as we get outside the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, we open the door and there’s a load of kids with cameras. And as the flashes went off, I just puked up every fucking where.”
Not exactly the moment you want to be immortalised forever by fans and paparazzi. “Of course, everyone thought it was marvellous rock’n’roll behaviour,” he concluded. “But it was fucking horrible.”
Seemingly, though, the Black Crowes were not put off by Gallagher’s display in Shepherd’s Bush, and the band embarked upon a co-headline tour of the United States with Oasis two years later, in 2001. While Oasis might have fancied themselves as infallible kings of the rock and roll lifestyle, Noel Gallagher was certainly humbled by that fateful night in 1999.
