The Oasis song that reduced Bonehead to tears
Noel Gallagher has never claimed to be an expert in musical theory. Although the man has blown his own trumpet more than a few times when he was with Oasis, he always chalked up his songwriting as something that he was ordained to do, as if the songs were being channelled by the ghost of John Lennon. Though the success of Definitely Maybe might have been Noel’s best foot forward, a holdover for the next album had one of his bandmates shedding tears.
After finishing their debut album for the third time, Oasis were immediately sent on the road, building up steam around England and quickly turning into one of the biggest independent acts in the world. That left little room for writing songs, but Noel was always at work, always scribbling away on a piece of paper. Though he never recorded any demos of these tunes outside the band, Noel figured that he’d have the material ready by the time they reached the studio.
Once again working with producer Owen Morris, Oasis travelled to Rockfield Studios, famously used by Queen during the making of their album A Night At the Opera. As Noel recalls, he was playing the tunes for the album to the rest of the band on the way to the studio when he heard Bonehead start to crack up, telling Lock the Box, “I played ‘Hello’ and ‘Cast No Shadow’ and played ‘Champagne Supernova’ in its entirety on acoustic guitar, and Bonehead was crying. He was like, ‘You’ve not just written that’. I was like, ‘You’re a bit soft then’. Either that, or it’s shit”.
This wasn’t the first time that the rhythm guitarist had been shell-shocked by one of Noel’s tracks. When putting together tunes for their debut album, Bonehead admitted that he didn’t believe Noel when he played him ‘Live Forever’ for the first time, thinking that he was pulling that tune from some other group.
While the acoustic version may have been fine on its own, all bets were off when they went into the studio. Throughout the recording, the band laid down many different tracks to get the final version, including layers of guitar feedback, droning Mellotron sounds courtesy of Morris and wrapped together with Liam’s immortal vocal performance.
However, the icing on the cake came out of someone who wasn’t even in the band. When the band were finalising the mixes, The Jam’s Paul Weller took a liking to the song and asked if he could play on it, laying down the final guitar stabs in the solo before the song gradually grinds to a halt.
The song would become the show-stopping final tune on What’s The Story Morning Glory, blending the bombast of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ if it were filtered through the innocent fun of glam rock. Oasis would continue to keep ‘Champagne Supernova’ as a staple of their live setlist, usually saving it for the end of the gig and using it as their encore when they played their legendary shows at Knebworth. While it would only take a few years for Noel’s songwriting to go off the rails, this was the peak of his powers where he could string a melody together to create magic.
