The Oasis classic that was meant to be a B-side
Oasis were on some kind of killer hot streak around the mid-1990s. After slumming it through club gigs and landing a record contract with Creation Records, Noel Gallagher buckled down and began composing some of the best-loved songs that ever came out of the Britpop movement. Across the first two Oasis albums, Definitely Maybe and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory, Gallagher unleashed classic song after classic song in a run that now looks legendary.
Even the album cuts from those two albums are still referenced today. ‘Slide Away’, ‘Columbia’, ‘She’s Electric’, and ‘Hello’ are core components of the Oasis canon, unimpeachable and irreplaceable on their respective albums. Another beloved album cut is ‘Cast No Shadow’, the emotional ballad that sits at the heart of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory. The song famously had a real-life inspiration in the form of Richard Ashcroft, leader of The Verve and a close friend of Gallagher.
“It was inspired by Richard from The Verve, he wasn’t very happy for a while so I wrote it for him and about three weeks later he quit the band,” Gallagher recalled. “It’s about songwriters in general who are desperately trying to say something.”
“I played him the song, and he nearly started crying,” Gallagher told Select Magazine. “I was like, ‘Come on, hold yourself together, son! Easy now.’ In a way, it’s about all my friends who are in groups. We are bound with the weight of all the words we have to say. We’re always looking for more.”
Surprisingly, ‘Cast No Shadow’ was a rare case of Gallagher trying to come up with filler. “I don’t believe people can go into a studio and record B-sides. It’s either a good song or a bad song,” Gallagher told NME. “And I never intend to write a bad song! The only time I’ve really sat down to write a B-side I wrote ‘Cast No Shadow’, which was supposed to be a B-side but it ended up really good. There’s a bit at the end of ‘Cast No Shadow’ when someone says down the mic really quietly, ‘Tha’ll do for a B-side’. So we had to take that out when it came to put it on the album.”
True to his word, some of Gallaghers best songs eventually did end up on B-sides. ‘Talk Tonight’ and ‘Acquiesce’, two stone-cold Oasis classics, were both featured on the CD single of ‘Some Might Say’. ‘The Masterplan’ holds a similar distinction, having been the B-side to ‘Wonderwall’ and eventually being the title track to the compilation album The Masterplan. The wealth of material on that LP proves just how in the zone Gallagher was during this brief stretch.
Check out ‘Cast No Shadow’ down below.
