It was a few days before my 14th birthday and i was out in town with a few of my friends who wanted to buy my birthday present. We were in Our Price (RIP), and were looking at the singles (they were 14, we had no money). I chose two singles, one on CD, the other on tape. One, to my eternal shame, was Michelle Gayle's 'Sweetness' ( i really don't know why), the other was Oasis 'Some might say'. This was a major turning point in my musical life. No, not Michelle Gayle, OASIS!
I attribute Oasis to the tectonic shift in my music taste. Despite growing up with The Beatles, The Who, Status Quo, Stevie Winwood, Eric Clapton and Elton John, among others constantly played in the house, i had been somehow taken over by the dark side. I owned Eternal albums, i had bought New Kids on the Block singles, somewhere something went spectacularly wrong.
I had had one of those epiphany moments when i first heard 'Some might say' on the radio, an isolated 5 minutes, which you can't explain as to why it made such an impact on you, or what that impact actually was, but you knew something had changed. An incredible cliche i know, but these things do happen. Some people find God, see Jesus in a piece of toast, I found Oasis, but perhaps more importantly, i had found Noel Gallagher.
Over the next 3 years i tried to collate and own anything I could Oasis, singles, albums, interview discs, magazine features, posters and anything else with Oasis on. More specifically i wanted to be Noel Gallagher.
I had already began to learn guitar before that fateful day in May 1995, but now i wanted to learn Oasis songs.
Of course it wasn't solely Oasis, because that wouldn't be a music epiphany, that would be an Oasis epiphany. I had never heard of Britpop or any of the bands involved, but suddenly everything appeared out of nowhere, Pulp, The Bluetones, Shed Seven, Dodgy, Supergrass, Sleeper, Echobelly, which moved with the times to Travis, Stereophonics and then on to Mansun and heavier bands like Terrorvision, Symposium, Foo Fighters, and even backwards to Nirvana and The Stone Roses. I could name many, many more. Its funny, it took me forever to get into Radiohead and Blur. The latter probably for obvious reasons because of my fandom to Oasis.
I spent hours, hanging up, redialling, hanging up, redialling for tickets to gigs, then getting to the venue at 8am to make sure we were near the front, not that we were alone in that. Oasis began the insanity that is buying gig tickets and the ridiculous speed they sell out at.
'Be Here Now' came out the day my GCSE results were to be collected. I turned up late because i went and bought it before, and listened to it twice.
The same level of obsession could be applied to one or two other bands to a degree, and to a lesser extent to a few more, but as a teenager it was hero worship, without the screaming and urination.
I blame Oasis for my music snobbery, but its something i class as a good thing, not negative.
It's not an exaggeration to say it altered the way my life was going, maybe for better or worse, or a mix of the two, hard to say what would have happened without it.
Now, he's back. The Greatest Songwriter of my generation is returning. 'Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds' is out in October and it feels like the anticipation is akin to the wait for 'Be Here Now', but, if the leaks on Youtube of soundchecks and demos are anything to go by, without the let down of the final product (not that we felt that at the time of BHN).
Maybe it's just me that is regressing to a schoolboy again and getting ridiculously excited about Noel's solo career. I hope I'm not. Anyone who has heard his Teenage Cancer Trust gigs at the Albert Hall, will know he can still hold a crowd in the palm of his hand, more over, he can do it on his own without Liam prowling next to him.
He's promised he will play Oasis songs, or rather HIS songs that were played in Oasis, when he tours in the Autumn, and with a back catalogue like, Live Forever, Slide Away, Wonderwall, Don't Look Back in Anger, Masterplan, Talk Tonight, Stop crying your heart out, Listen Up, Fade Away etc etc who wouldn't be excited about seeing all that live.
He quoted in his press conference it would be like Paul McCartney not playing Beatles songs, if you know what that is like to see and hear, and i do, the composer of so many timeless songs is up there with Macca, especially as he did it on his own.
Would it be too much to call him a genius. I don't think so. Is there anyone else like Noel? You had the Beatles in the 60's, Bowie in the 70's, The Smiths in the 80's, Oasis in the 90's and beyond. They should be said in the same breath as the greats, and that's down to one mans songs.
This 30 year old feels like a kid again, and that's down to one man too.
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