The Cover Uncovered: The true story behind Oasis’ ‘Definitely Maybe’ album cover
Oasis’ first studio album was the fastest-selling debut in UK history when it was released in the summer of 1994, its artwork inspired by The Beatles, and curiously, by a painting from 1434.
“[It] ended up being completely different from how they envisaged it. Noel had seen a shot of The Beatles in Japan where they’re all sitting around this coffee table,” the shoot’s photographer, Michael Spencer Jones, told The Guardian in 2019. That’s when the idea was born that the fresh, laid-back crew would first be sold to the world as normal blokes from Manchester, and the resulting familiarity in the cover became an emblem of the band’s synchronicity with their fans.
Noel’s idea was to use guitarist Bonehead’s house in West Didsbury, Manchester. Like The Beatles, he initially wanted to shoot the band around the dining room table, but Jones, who attributes the Definitely Maybe cover as his best work, was puzzled: “What are they going to be doing at the table? Playing cards? Having a seance? There was no way I could see it working.”
Internal power dynamics and sibling rivalry made the band notoriously difficult to work with, so Jones had to buckle down and negotiate: “I thought, ‘Well, if we have to do it in Bonehead’s house, let’s shoot in the lounge, towards the bay window’… It’s a tiny room. I had to whack in a wide-angle lens just to get everyone in.”
Brian Cannon designed the album artwork during the boys’ first few years, and while contemporary debut album covers were usually somewhat posed, Cannon said he wanted something more natural. The chill element was definitely inspired by the picture on the back of A Collection of Beatles Oldies, taken in Japan in the mid-60s. “They know there’s a camera person there, clearly,” Cannon told the BBC, “But it’s a proper fly-on-the-wall shot… I just thought it was a fantastic picture”.
But he also had a much older source of inspiration in mind: “Another one to look at is the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan Van Eyck”. The Flemish 15th-century Renaissance oil painting is brimming with visual metaphors, from forgotten shoes to a loitering dog. This is where the seemingly spontaneously put-together album shoot acquired more deliberate planning, while props from different bands and production members’ homes were brought to compose this bizarre lounge nativity.
The band were asked to bring objects that were personal to them, with souvenirs from groupies and the crew’s flats making a few appearances. As most of the boys were City fans, Rodney Marsh was quick to be placed centre-stage, near the fireplace, while Bonehead, the only United fan, insisted on George Best’s picture to be included, which can be seen at the window. The band is sat facing the TV, where Noel Gallagher’s favourite film is playing, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, “which I thought was hilarious,” said Cannon. He also added his personal touch to the art by writing the album’s name in his own handwriting, tying together the familiar intimacy of the whole cover.
Alternative ideas hadn’t really been discussed, or at least not seriously, where “Liam’s idea was a knife sticking out of a lump of butter,” Cannon said, adding, “I don’t know what he was going on about”.
The photo clicked for everyone, its laid-back flair a forever association to the band’s frugal origins, and as Cannon remembers fondly, “I’m super proud of it”. His partnership with the band had begun through a chance encounter in the lift a year before the shoot, where Noel Gallagher had met him in the latter’s office building, since he worked in a carpet store a few floors down. Cannon went on to cover every release until The Masterplan in 1998, until they decided to change their artistic direction once they hit the big leagues.
“It was all change,” he remembers with a touch of melancholia.
Although Jones managed to keep the band’s attention on the shoot long enough to get the perfect globe spin-poses struck combination, there always had to be trouble with the Gallagher boys. The photographer recalled his desperation as “halfway through the shoot, a Lambretta scooter arrived for Liam and he took off up the street with me shouting after him, ‘Come back!’”
