Melissa Lim: the woman who stopped Oasis from breaking up
It doesn’t take a musical scholar to know that the Gallagher brothers aren’t the best of friends. Most fans should be lucky that Oasis carried on for over a decade since both Noel and Liam were at each other’s throats half the time. Before they got to make half their classics, though, they were in danger of crashing out entirely.
On one of their first trips to the US, the band played a show at the Whiskey a Go Go in LA, an event which turned into a disaster from the word go. After half the band was up all night on crystal meth, Noel was furious and left the group, disappearing after the show without telling anyone where he was going.
While Noel said he had no idea what he was going to do, he found his way to San Francisco to reconnect with an old flame named Melissa Lim. After a bit of a lost week, Noel mentioned writing ‘It’s Good To Be Free’ during this journey, no doubt inspired by the freedom of not having to deal with his bandmates.
Once he told Lim that he wasn’t going back to Oasis, she was not having it, and told the musician that he needed to return to his band and finish what he had started. As Noel recalls: “I met up with this girl, and she said, ‘you’re fucking mad if you don’t go back. I mean, if it’s all blowing up over there [in the UK].’ And I thought ‘Yeah, man fuck it.'”
While Noel claimed not to even remember Lim’s name when he returned to the band, but Lim had a pretty clear picture of how bad a shape he was in. When Noel arrived, Lim said he was in a terrible condition and wanted to nurse him back to health, making sure he didn’t throw his life away by leaving the band.
During one of her only interviews, Lim was determined not to let Oasis break up right on the verge of a breakthrough: “San Francisco has a reputation of being a place where bands come to die, like The Band and the Sex Pistols. I wasn’t going to let it happen on my watch. I told him, ‘You can’t leave the band, you’re on the verge of something big!'”
Once Noel saw the bigger picture, he came back to the band a different person a few weeks later, with engineer Marc Coyle feeling the vibe in the room completely changed. After settling back in, it was clear that Noel was the real leader of the band, with Coyle remarking: “The next phase of the band started the minute that he walked into the hotel we were staying in. He was taking charge, and we were going to stand behind him. Because if you’re not with him, you’re going home.”
While Noel lost touch with Melissa after coming back to England, he did sneak his guardian angel into one of their best songs. Recorded as a B-side to ‘Wonderwall’, ‘Talk Tonight’ is about that lost week Noel spent in San Francisco, thanking Lim for keeping him sane and crediting her with saving his life by coming back to the band.
Lim also might have something to do with the name of the band’s classic sophomore album since her pet greeting for Noel used to be ‘What’s the story, morning glory?’.
Looking back on Oasis’ glory days in the Supersonic documentary, Coyle also mentioned seeing the more sensitive side of Noel in this song, saying, “You normally don’t see it. He doesn’t really show these emotions until you stick him behind the glass and let him sing. Those are my favourite moments. It’s almost like a little boy. A bit of light shines through. And then the door shuts again, and he’s calling you a twat.”
