Glamorgan Gazette

Glory seekers

It is 25 years since Oasis brought out their iconic album (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?. MARION McMULLEN finds out how recording it led to a fight between the band’s brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher

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‘WE DON’T claim to have invented anything new. We just play rock and roll music,” insisted Noel Gallagher in 1995, “and rock and roll will never die.” (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? entered the UK album charts at number one, with 269,000 sales in the first week. when it was released 25 years ago, on October 2.

It went on to reach number one in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Sweden and Spain and made the top 10 in every major market around the world.

The release – packed with anthems such as Wonderwall, Don’t Look Back In Anger, Roll With It, Some Might Say and Champagne Supernova – was recorded in just 12 days at the fabled Rockfield Studios in Monmouth in Wales and became the best-selling album of the 90s.

It has gone on to become the UK’s fifth best-selling album of all time and has notched up more than 22 million global sales over the years.

Noel wrote the bulk of his new songs on acoustic guitar in a blaze of creativity and produced the album with Owen Morris. It was released just 14 months after the band’s debut album Definitely Maybe, at the height of Britpop madness.

Owen said: “Recording Oasis is easy. You stick some microphone­s in the room and they perform. People know when something is real and they can smell b******t a mile off. Oasis make real music, for people to enjoy.”

The band were booked into the studios for five weeks, but only two of them were spent working, as there was an enforced break in the middle when Noel and Liam fought over who was going to record the lead vocal on Don’t Look Back In Anger.

Liam said in 1995: “When our kid went ‘right, you’ve got a choice, Wonderwall or Don’t Look Back In

Anger’, it done me head in. I said, ‘I wanna sing both, you d**k.’ But I chose Wonderwall ‘cos it was right and it happened. But I don’t think I could have sung Don’t Look Back In Anger the way he sung it. I think it’s great.”

He added: “That line ‘So Sally can wait’ – that was me. I’m not gonna tell you what it’s about but we was in America and Noel was doing this song. And I walked up to him and said, ‘you know what you’re singing there? Sing ‘So Sally can wait’. And he goes, ‘All right’, and he sings it. He won’t admit it, ‘cos he’s like that.”

Noel has admitted though: “Liam came up with the word Sally. I was doing it at soundcheck. I was singing ‘So ... ‘Didn’t have that word. He said ‘Who’s Sally?’ I went ‘What do you mean?’ He said ‘So Sally can wait?’ And I went, ‘F***ing genius. You’re not having any money for that by the way.”

Sessions for the album were fast, with the band rarely spending more than 24 hours on a song.

The Modfather, Paul Weller, contribute­d backing vocals and a psychedeli­c lead guitar solo to sevenminut­e epic Champagne Supernova, and stayed on to play guitar and harmonica on the instrument­al jam known as The Swamp Song.

Noel said of Champagne Supernova: “That’s probably as psychedeli­c as I’ll ever get. It means different things when I’m in different moods. When I’m in a bad mood, being caught beneath a landslide is like being suffocated. The song is a bit of an epic.

“It’s about when you’re young and you see people in groups and you think about what they did for you and they did nothing. As a kid, you always believed the Sex Pistols were going to conquer the world and kill everybody in the process. Bands like The Clash just petered out. Punk rock was supposed to be the revolution but what did it do? F**k all.

“The Manchester thing was going to be the greatest movement on earth but it was f**k all. When we started we decided we weren’t going to do anything for anybody, we just thought we’d leave a bunch of great songs.”

The Gallagher brothers became poster boys for a new vision of Cool Britannia, leading their Manchester band triumphant­ly through the biggest open-air concerts the nation had ever seen, culminatin­g in two nights at Knebworth in August, 1996, in front of a quarter of a million people.

The gigs sold out in record time, with more than two and a half million applying for tickets.

Liam said: “When I’m on stage, I just feel like gettin’ on with the job. Tunnel vision, straight down the line. I got a serious job, y’know what I mean?”

Noel said in 2010: “We were just making it up as we were going along because no one had ever been this big before so we didn’t know what was going on. Everyone was having a ball.”

Big Brother Recording is celebratin­g the 25th anniversar­y with limited edition releases. Vinyl, available from the official Oasis online store, includes a replica of Noel’s handwritte­n lyrics for Wonderwall. Go to oasismusic.lnk. to/MG25PR to order and visit oasisinet. com for more details.

THIS year has been an introducti­on for many to gardening. Times have been hard and during periods like this we begin to appreciate simple things and understand why it’s important we look after the planet.

With an astonishin­g lack of leadership on climate change coming from America it’s up to us small folk to do our part. So, combining this need to look after ourselves as well as caring for our planet, many of us are appreciati­ng the work of pollinator­s. One great way to attract these important creatures is to turn a piece of your garden, even just a couple of square feet, into a wildflower meadow.

From late spring right through to now they can be beautiful to look at. There are many different types of meadows and virtually all of them do a lot of good. September is a good time of year to undertake this project – some perennial seeds need a cold spell over winter to activate them and hardy annuals sown now will have a head start on spring-sown annuals.

So what do you need to do? Prepare your soil first and remove anything you don’t want, for example, vigorous weeds like bindweed which will choke everything else. If you’re converting a lawn, you can either remove the top layer of turf but if that’s too big a job, your aim is to make the grass less vigorous to give your wildflower­s a chance. So no more feeding it and sow yellow rattle this autumn. This is a semiparasi­tic plant which will weaken the domination of your grass. If you’re converting a border, it may be too fertile from all that good gardening work you have been doing over the years, mulching and feeding. If this is the case you could plant some annual seeds that enjoy richer soil, such as corncockle­s and cornflower­s.

Wildflower seed suppliers have lots of different mixes and these will include grasses, perennials and annual native flowers. Your choice will depend on soil type and situation as well.

Next rake and shake – rake the soil to a fine tilth and then shake or scatter seed evenly across the plot. Where seed is very fine, you can mix with silver sand which makes it easier to distribute more evenly. Gently firm in by walking over the soil as you go and water in if no rain is forecast. Then leave nature to take its course. If you do see any obvious weeds that you don’t want emerging, pull these out. Another option is to plant plugs of wildflower­s in the spring and these can be inserted into your lawn or borders. These are available to buy in springtime, or alternativ­ely you could plant up trays of wildflower­s now and leave in the cold frame for the winter. Good options include ragged-robin, oxeye daisy, scabious, cowslip and red campion.

Meadows will take time to establish and become more diverse over the years with good management.

You don’t just leave them to their own devices – they need to be cut down at the end of the season with a scythe or strimmer but leave it as late as possible. This allows seed to ripen and land on the ground to germinate.

Leave the clippings to dry out for maximum seed ripening and then put them on the compost heap – don’t leave clippings in situ as these will act as a fertiliser as they rot.

So whether you are new to gardening or reinventin­g your plot in the light of environmen­tal concerns, consider the possibilit­ies a meadow could bring to your plot. Good luck!

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 ??  ?? Liam and Noel Gallagher Photograph­s courtesy: Stefan De Batselier
Liam and Noel Gallagher Photograph­s courtesy: Stefan De Batselier
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 ?? Photograph­s courtesy: Jill Furmanovsk­y ?? Above: Liam and Noel Gallagher during the video shoot for Wonderwall in 1995 and, left, Oasis pictured at Glastonbur­y in
June 1995
Photograph­s courtesy: Jill Furmanovsk­y Above: Liam and Noel Gallagher during the video shoot for Wonderwall in 1995 and, left, Oasis pictured at Glastonbur­y in June 1995
 ??  ?? The cover for Oasis (What’s The Story) Morning Glory 25th anniversar­y album pack
The cover for Oasis (What’s The Story) Morning Glory 25th anniversar­y album pack
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 ??  ?? Cheery daisies are a favourite of butterflie­s
Cheery daisies are a favourite of butterflie­s
 ??  ?? A bee on a cornflower
A bee on a cornflower
 ??  ?? Corncockle
Corncockle
 ??  ?? Scabious
Scabious

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