“It looked bonkers:” When Oasis cruised South Wales in a combine harvester in search of a joint
Believe it or not, but Oasis is just one band of many that have flocked to South East Wales’ rural Monmouthshire county for the last six decades.
Nestled in the Wye Valley near the village of Rockfield, the namesake Rockfield Studios made its mark in the music world as the first residential studio, boasting self-contained apartments and bedroom suites in addition to its two studio facilities. Over the years, the likes of Hawkwind, Black Sabbath, Iggy Pop, Rush, and Coldplay have all headed to the sleepy studio’s bucolic retreat, Queen famously recording the bulk of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ at the Rockfield site.
Such heritage drew in Oasis. By the time sessions began in earnest for 1994’s Definitely Maybe debut, Rockfield had undergone big changes, the developing technologies rendering production more accessible, casting doubt on the supremacy of such complex studio systems. In response, owner brothers Kingsley and Charles Ward decided to split the property into two in the late 1980s, with Kingsley staying put on the original site and reorganising as The Coach House and The Quadrangle, and Charles managing the new Monnow Valley Studio on the other side of the field.
While much of the sessions were abandoned, it was Monnow Valley Studio that Oasis spent several weeks recording their first album in January 1994, as well as including the interior on the cover of the ‘Supersonic’ single. Surrounded by genuine farmland, a winking combine harvester took guitarist Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthur’s fancy one night to investigate the band playing across the valley on the Rockfield side.
“He starts in one go and off we fucking go, crawling down the road with the big fucking lights on,” Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher recalled on BBC Radio 4 in 2020. “It looked bonkers.”
Crusing through the South Wales countryside, Gallagher and Bonehead reached their destination to pay a visit to another Manchester indie heavyweight holed up at Rockfield for their much-anticipated sophomore LP. “We drove it in, turned the lights off, and rolled out like something out of The Professionals,” Gallagher furthered. “We popped up, and we could hear some fucking bassline and some drums going on – we didn’t get caught.”
It turned out that The Stone Roses were only up the road, cutting their long-awaited Second Coming. Hopping out of the ‘borrowed’ harvester, Gallagher and Bonehead managed to avoid suspicious farmers and duck into the studio to hang out with the band, as well as indulge in whatever was on offer.
“They were playing some songs and stuff,” Gallagher remembered. “We might have had a spliff and that, and then we fucking fucked off.”
According to the Oasis frontman, The Stone Roses acted the other night likewise, hopping into a combine harvester, whether the same one, can’t be verified, and tried to rouse the band’s attention in the middle of the night.
The fact was, The Stone Roses saved Rockfield. The new major label Geffen threw money at the band, paying handsomely for a 13-month stay at the studio residence, which pulled Rockfield from the financial brink, Oasis returning to the little farmland to oversee the entire (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? sessions at the old Rockfield site. With such a tidy revenue coming Kingsley’s way, the odd missing harvester was surely worth turning a blind eye to.
