The Making of ‘Supersonic’: a manic history of Oasis’ landmark debut single
Love them or loathe them, nobody can deny the colossal impact that Oasis had on the face of British rock and roll. From unknown wasters living in a forgotten corner of Manchester to Britpop titans selling out Knebworth, the meteoric rise of the Gallagher brothers was, on the face of it, incredibly quick. In actuality, though, Oasis had been largely ignored for the first few years of their existence, only arriving on people’s radars in 1994 with the release of their landmark debut single, ‘Supersonic’.
It’s no secret that Noel Gallagher was the more musically inclined of the two brothers, spending his adolescence writing lyrics with a guitar in hand. However, it was Liam who first started the band in 1991 while his brother was off touring the world as a roadie for Inspiral Carpets. When Noel returned to the rainy skies of Manchester, he quickly joined the ranks of Liam’s band, first changing the name from The Rain to Oasis. For the next few years, Oasis would only exist within the rehearsal rooms of the Manchester Boardwalk.
In contrast to the rock stardom they would eventually achieve, Oasis were largely ignored by the musical masses during the early part of the 1990s. The music scene of the time was primarily concerned with American grunge rock and acid house. There didn’t seem to be room for the retro indie sounds of guitar bands like Oasis. “No one even said we were shit,” Noel recalled in the documentary film Supersonic, “completely and utterly fucking ignored”.
The lineage of the band changed indefinitely after a fateful day in Glasgow. While playing a rare gig outside of Manchester, at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Creation Records boss Alan McGee was exposed to the sounds of Oasis, and he signed them up as soon as humanly possible. It seemed as though, after years of underground existence, everything had finally fallen into place for the Mancunian rock disciples, and their next stop was musical stardom. Well…not quite.
Although the band had finally scored a record label, they still had a distinct lack of material to release. The Gallaghers had been toying with a few tracks, but McGee wanted their debut single to be ‘Bring It On Down’. For whatever reason, though, the recording of the song was not coming together.
These Creation sessions were being produced by Tony Griffiths of Liverpool rockers The Real People, and in the 1996 book Oasis, by Lee Henshaw, he remembers telling Noel, “Look, you’re paying £300 a day here to record a pile of shite you’re not going to be happy with, why don’t you do something really worthwhile, write a song, make a song out of it.”
The result of this stern talking to was ‘Supersonic’. After years of being ignored, spending nights rehearsing in the Manchester Boardwalk, the band established their rock and roll manifesto in a matter of minutes. Noel wrote the lyrics to ‘Supersonic’ in one sitting in the backroom of the recording studio. The piece clearly established the Oasis sound that would go on to define the band. Their adolescent optimism and the working-class angst of the group were perfectly encapsulated within that four-and-a-half-minute song. Admittedly, the lyrics are pretty nonsensical, but that doesn’t mean that the track is any less impactful.
‘Supersonic’ would reach a modest 31 in the UK singles charts, but for a band on an independent label that had come from nothing, that might as well have been number one. Either way, ‘Supersonic’ had rocketed Oasis into the public consciousness, and they would not leave for some time. It would only take the band a few more months to break into the top ten with ‘Live Forever’, and thus followed 21 consecutive top tens throughout their discography.
Nowadays, years after the ultimate demise of the band, Oasis have infected virtually every aspect of the UK’s cultural fabric. Walk through the streets of Manchester, and you’ll hear a different busker singing Oasis tracks every few metres. Their impact has lasted longer than any of their Britpop counterparts, speaking to the timeless quality of Noel’s songwriting. It’s difficult to imagine a time in which people had never heard of Oasis, and that all started in April 1994 with the groundbreaking release of ‘Supersonic’.
