Joel Gion: The tambourine player and part-time dealer that could have saved Oasis
When news that Oasis was getting back together broke last year, it felt like something that lovers of rock ‘n’ roll had been pining for for decades now. Ever since the cracks in the band finally distanced themselves big enough for each member to fall through, lovers of the band have been asking how much time needs to pass before they close back in. It turns out the year they had to wait until 2025, as in just a few months, the band will be gearing up for their big comeback shows.
While people are excited about the reunion, it’s worth asking if something could have been done beforehand to stop them from splitting up in the first place. Well, it depends on who you ask. If you speak to the brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher, they would likely say nothing could have stopped that initially messy break-up. However, if you were to ask Brian Jonestown Massacre’s tambourine player Joel Gion, he would give you an alternate answer.
The story takes place in San Francisco in 1994. Oasis had just released their album Definitely, Maybe, and were set to perform at the iconic venue Bottom of the Hill. BJM performed at this venue frequently, and when Gion first heard that Oasis was playing there, predicting the band’s inevitable success, he ensured his band was one of the supports that night.
“I got our manager to get us a gig there to open for them and we played the gig with Oasis,” recalled Gion, “Definitely, Maybe had come out two weeks before, but they’re playing this theatre which is a 250 person club, when they could be playing to fucking 10,000.”
Gion had a pretty good system in place at this point to get into gigs and meet bands, even if he wasn’t supporting them. The term “drug dealer” seems like a stretch; he was, rather, someone who could access drugs should you want them. While working at a record store in San Francisco, he would make anyone who looked remotely cool aware of his resources, which got him into plenty of shows and in front of a range of important people.
As such, when he headed to Bottom of the Hill to support Oasis, he went armed with some of the best speed in California to offer to the band. “I’m out of my mind on the most righteous methamphetamine that’s ever been bequeathed by the science of man, and we pulled up to the club to do soundcheck,” said Gion, “And sure enough, there’s their big ass fuckin bus, we had never been on a big ass fucking bus, we didn’t know what that was about.”
Gion approached Oasis’s tour bus and asked them if they wanted some speed. Noel Gallagher, who answered the door, subsequently closed it in his face, telling the tambourine player that they only did coke.
“Fast forward an hour later, and the girl that I scored speed for ran into Liam coming out of the soundcheck. And she’s like ‘Hey do you wanna do any?’ and Liam’s ‘Mr mad fer it’ guy, so he does it, then he gives it to Bonehead, then he gives it to the whole fuckin band and the whole goddamn crew, and they’re playing the gig that night,” said Gion, “And all the jaws are just working like old fashioned train crankshafts, and they had never heard nor seen nor felt anything like that, but that is what I was doing every day. It was, as they called it, ‘Ninja Speed’.”
For the following few shows on that tour, the band continued asking for the same speed that had blown their heads off in California, which led to elongated periods of being high, some members never sleeping and inevitable arguments. Rumours have it that following their gig at Whiskey a Go Go in Los Angeles, Noel ran away, and a private investigator was needed who found him back in San Francisco, high and completely out of sorts.
While the band got back together once they found Noel, they said in the Supersonic documentary that after that night, things in the band were never quite the same; the initial cracks in their dynamic were starting to show. Gion believes to this day that he could have saved the Gallagher brothers, writing in his book, “I wish they’d given me a chance to give proper skiing instructions on these very high white hills of San Francisco…”
