The song Noel Gallagher said announced Oasis to the world: “The most important”
Every band tries their best to hit the ground running on their first album. It’s easy for many people to have the slowburn right out of the gate and gradually build themselves up, but everyone from The Beatles to Guns N’ Roses knew to how to knock their audiences on their ass from the minute they plugged in and counted off their first song. But whereas Definitely Maybe established Oasis as one of the most important bands in indie music, Noel Gallagher felt they needed a few years before they honed their craft.
Contrary to what many people believe, though, Noel might not be as ramshackle with his songwriting as he let on. There are many cases when he claimed to have written an entire song on a train ride, but if he had stockpiled all the songs that he needed for the first two albums, there was a good chance that he was testing the waters the minute that the band played at King Tut’s Wah-Wah Hut in front of Alan McGee.
Even if they had to go through hell to make sure their debut sounded great, nothing was going to compare to them making ‘Supersonic’ within a few hours. No other band would have had the guts to start from scratch when they went into the studio for the first time, but after one too many takes or trying and failing to get ‘Bring it On Down’ right, Noel pulled out one of his greatest riffs of all time.
But whereas ‘Supersonic’ may have been the makings of a fantastic band coming together, Noel always felt that ‘Live Forever’ was the first time the world got to see the proper version of the band, saying, “It’s not for me to say what my best song is but I will tell you what my most important song was. ‘Live Forever’ because it announced us to the world. Before that, we were a very British phenomenon, and then after that, it kind of exploded. I dare say that was the first song you heard by Oasis.”
And looking at how it stacks up against the rest of the record, ‘Live Forever’ sticks out like a sore thumb in all the right ways. ‘Slide Away’ was already the de facto ballad of the record towards the end, but for an album that was as straightahead rock and roll on songs like ‘Up in the Sky’ and ‘Rock and Roll Star’, this is the kind of tune that could have been played by anyone and still been a hit based on the strength of the melody alone.
Noel may have written the tune, but there’s no other person to sing it but his brother, Liam. Only ‘The Chief’ knows what the song is actually about, but given how much they suffered through trying to survive throughout their childhood, it’s nice to think of it as a love letter between the two brothers, knowing that they were going to be one of the biggest bands in the world while they were still playing in dingy clubs.
If you need a better look at that version of the song, though, look no further than the demo version that was made long before the band had the money for a proper studio. Everything is a little bit out of tune, but listening to the strength of Liam’s voice and Noel’s melody for the first time, hearing this song is like watching the first steps of a band that was slowly growing up to become a musical giant.
It would take a few more years for them to actually reach the big time, but even when they were delivering some of the more extravagant music possible on Be Here Now, ‘Live Forever’ always found its way back into the setlist for a reason. Because outside of being one of their greatest singles, it practically serves as the mission statement for what the band were always about.
