Getting High (21 page)

He developed a real taste for quality music and it was with like-minded pupils that he hung out at school. They were dressed in the Casual style; Perry Boys they were called in Manchester, with their designer label tops and wedge haircuts.

When Bonehead left school at sixteen, he did so with just one 0-level to his name. That was in English. The rest of the subjects he took were marked ‘U', denoting unclassifiable. When his mum saw the results she asked, ‘Paul, what are all these Us?' And her son replied, ‘Unbeatable, Mum. It stands for unbeatable.'

‘Ah, you're a clever lad,' she replied. ‘I always said it.'

Not long after, Bonehead signed on to a Youth Training Scheme and was placed on a building construction course which, much to his surprise, he found himself really enjoying. He had finally found something worth working for. He stayed at the college for two enjoyable years, and this time he passed all his exams.

His first job was as a plasterer for a building firm in Stockport. He enjoyed the work, but the boss was a mean man and the rigid times he had to keep, clock on at eight, lunch at one, finish at six, didn't appeal to Bonehead's temperament.

To divert himself, he and his brother Martin formed a band with two other friends. They called themselves Pleasure In Pain. Bonehead played the synthesizer.

‘We were sad as fuck,' he says now. The band stayed together for about a year. Their first gig was the Trap pub in Glossop (‘I was proper shitting it,' he recalls), and they also appeared at an all-day festival in Manchester which featured only Manchester bands.

‘There were about forty groups playing,' Bonehead recalls, ‘so we all got about ten minutes each. It was mad.'

Pleasure In Pain faded away, although Bonehead now possessed an amp, an electric guitar, a bass and a drum machine.

One day at work his friend Jeff, who worked as a joiner, came to him with an idea. Fuck this job, he said, let's save up all our money for the next six months and then piss off to Europe.

‘I was nineteen, I'd seen fuck all and I told him that's a splendid idea.'

They bought themselves mountain bikes, practised on them daily and stored away their cash. During these six months Bonehead also briefly met Guigsy who lived in the same area.

On a day he recalls with great delight, Bonehead walked into work and told his boss he was jacking it all in.

‘You can't do that,' the boss snorted.

‘Why not?'

‘Well what are you going to do?' he asked.

‘Travel round Europe,' Bonehead replied.

‘Travel round fucking Europe?'

‘That's right. Well done.'

‘But what happens when you get back? What are you going to do for work?'

‘Give a shit, dickhead,' Bonehead replied.

The day of his departure was bright and sunny. Bonehead picked up his bags, said farewell to his parents and set off for Europe. Just as he was approaching the railway bridge in Albert Road, Levenshulme, he saw a young guy, wearing shades and sporting a Mick Jagger haircut. Bonehead recognised him from round his way so he pulled up.

‘You all right, mate? What you up to?'

‘I'm just on me way home,' Noel Gallagher replied. ‘The Inspirals played last night and I got right off me box. What you up to with all them bags?'

‘Going to Europe. Going to travel round until me money runs out.'

‘Europe? You're going to cycle round Europe? You're fucking mad.'

‘I know. Top, isn't it? See ya when I get back.'

Bonehead and Jeff caught the ferry to Ostend and, over the next six months visited Vienna, Venice, Rimini and Paris, before corning home. Then it was back to the real world.

Not long after signing on, Bonehead's brother-in-law visited and mentioned that he was getting rid of a van of his, an old Mazda 1800 pick-up. It was a bit rundown, but Bonehead could have it if he liked; it would at least allow him to start up his own plastering business.

Bonehead went to look at the vehicle. To say it was rundown was to compliment it. You could only enter the vehicle if you knew the special way of using the handle. It was also necessary to start the engine with a screwdriver. Apart from that, it was fine.

Bonehead took ownership of the van and turned self-employed. He was now hanging out a lot with Guigsy, and the following Wednesday night he told him about his new job. This was the night they always met up on to go to the pub, drink themselves stupid, throw up in someone's garden and then stagger home.

Guigsy decorated Bonehead's van in garish psychedelic patterns and, along with other friends such as Tony French and Chris Hutton, they all piled into it in the summer of 1990, and took off to see The Stone Roses play in Spike Island.

The following week a picture of the van was printed in a local Manchester paper as part of their special on the event. The photographer was Michael Spencer Jones.

By now, Bonehead had started teaching Guigsy the bass, and the boys eventually formed a band called Rain, with Chris Hutton on vocals and, later on, Tony McCarroll on drums.

For Rain's first gig they put all their instruments through Bonehead's amp and used a drum machine to back them.

Not long after that they sacked Hutton, and then Liam Gallagher swaggered into their lives. He visited them at the house Bonehead now shared with his girlfriend and future wife, Kate.

Bonehead had met Kate at the Severe wine bar in Fallowfield. ‘It was this mad cellar,' he remembers, ‘with a top jukebox, and it was full of students and a few madheads.'

The night he and Kate met, Bonehead went back to her flat and they have been together ever since. They started living together at Kate's place and later on, having sold that flat, they took a place in West Didsbury which Bonehead then spent a year renovating. It was here that Oasis would be photographed for their debut album cover. By Michael Spencer Jones.

In the first Oasis line-up, Liam would write the words and Bonehead the music. They first rehearsed at a hotel that had not yet opened for business. It was called The Raffles. Guigsy had got friendly one night with a girl who worked at the hotel and she had invited him back. With loads of space at their disposal, not to mention the hotel's amenities, the band rehearsed here until the hotel opened.

Paul Gallagher then found them rehearsal space at the Plymouth Grove Club but barely two weeks later they were ejected because of their constant spliff smoking. They then moved to the Greenhouse in Stockport which for twenty-five pounds a day allowed them access to a backline.

They came up with four songs: ‘Reminisce', ‘Life In Vain', ‘Take Me', and ‘She Always Came Up Smiling', which Bonehead automatically assumed was about the act of fellatio.

The band used Bonehead's van to transport their equipment. After Liam changed the band's name to Oasis and Noel subsequently joined, they started rehearsing at a studio called the Red House before moving to the Boardwalk.

Bonehead's van was a valuable possession for the band. It meant they could transport equipment and use it for their own personal gain.

Many was the time when rehearsing was finished for the night that Guigsy would ask for a lift down to Moss Side, to score some weed. Bonehead hated going down to Moss Side. So did the others. It was Manchester's notorious drug-dealing area and anything could happen.

On Bonfire night, for example, a lot of old scores are settled by the gun. The noise of fireworks exploding in the sky provided the perfect cover.

‘Ah fuck off, Guigs,' Bonehead would say when the bassist said he had to score some weed. But he would always take him. These two provided the perfect counterbalance to Noel and Liam's increasingly tempestuous relationship.

Within the band, Bonehead was looked upon as a madhead, a man they would all nominate ‘as the funniest man in Manchester'. Whether it was smashing up hotel rooms or diving into pools naked and drunk beyond belief, Bonehead was the band's humour.

As the band progressed, so their commitment deepened. To miss rehearsals was a major issue. One Saturday, a good friend of Bonehead's invited him and Kate to his wedding. Bonehead couldn't go. The wedding took place on a rehearsal day, he explained. His friends couldn't believe it, but Bonehead held firm. The band first, other things second.

‘The way it worked at rehearsals,' Bonehead states, ‘was that Noel would always come in with something new and then we would jam on it. But you didn't miss rehearsals for anything.'

On the day before Bonehead and Kate moved to their home in West Didsbury, the rhythm guitarist called up the Gallagher household and told Liam, ‘I can't make rehearsals. Got to move house tomorrow and I've got to pack everything up.'

Liam just slammed the phone down.

Bonehead put the phone down and was just about to redial the number when the phone rang. This time Noel was on the line.

‘Right you dickhead,' he ordered, ‘get your amps and guitar and get your arse down to the Boardwalk, or you're out.'

Then for the second time in two minutes, a Gallagher slammed the phone down on him. Bonehead was amazed.

‘I thought, I'm not having this, got to sort this one right out.' Bonehead jumped into his van and drove to the Boardwalk. He pulled up just as Noel was arriving.

Within two minutes of trying to explain to Noel why he couldn't rehearse, the two of them were shouting, arguing and threatening each other with severe violence. Then Liam and Guigsy arrived.

‘Look,' Bonehead shouted at Liam, ‘I've got to move house. I can't do anything about it. I'll be here tomorrow.'

‘See you tomorrow night then,' Liam casually remarked, and the three of them then disappeared into the Boardwalk, leaving a speechless Bonehead out on the street. It's the only major ruck he has ever had with Noel.

‘You have to understand that we totally believed in the band,' he states, ‘and the only way it was going to work was by grafting at it. You weren't going to rehearse two hours a week every Sunday afternoon and do something. In a band you either do it full-on or you treat it as a hobby. We decided to do it full-on.'

She came in through the bathroom window. Or at least that's what she and her friend look like doing as they wait outside Patsy Kensit's London home.

They have sat there now for hours on the wall opposite the actress's house and have not moved an inch. They simply stare.

It's Sunday 14 July 1996, and the object of their obsession, Liam Gallagher, sits in the kitchen staring back at them.

‘They're off their tits,' he mutters to himself. Never in a million years would he have indulged in such behaviour, not even for his all-time hero, the man he sincerely believes lives inside him, John Lennon.

Since moving in with Patsy, Liam has got used to people waiting outside the house. The majority of them are photographers who know that one good picture of Liam and Patsy is front-page news. Oasis sells papers, so they go to every extreme. The other day Liam came out of the house to find a photographer hiding under a car.

‘You daft cunt, what the fuck are you doing?' Liam said to him, shaking his head in benevolent disbelief. It was almost as if a champion boxer was taking some kind of pity on his beaten opponent.

Liam, much to his chagrin, can do nothing about it. He can't sue the photographers for taking pictures, nor can he stop the reporters writing their stories. So he plays up to them.

‘They think I'm this,' he says, ‘so that's what I give them. They don't understand it, so fuck them.'

For the media, it's a classic story; the beautiful well-heeled actress taming the man they have imaginatively dubbed ‘the wild man of rock'. In reality, what bugs him the most is that everyone forgets that he is first and foremost a singer, one of the best in the land. He is also totally dedicated to his band and his craft.

‘When it comes to Oasis, Liam is a musical purist,' Marcus Russell, band manager, says of him. Creation boss Alan McGee's comment is just as succinct, ‘Liam Gallagher is one of the great soul singers of our time.'

Tonight, Liam is dressed in sandals, light green trousers and a pale striped T-shirt. On the shelf behind him is a picture of him that Patsy took on their recent holiday in Antigua. It shows Liam gazing out to sea. On the kitchen table to his right is an estate agent's catalogue describing in pictures and words the house he plans to buy. It is totally isolated, a huge building set amidst beautiful English countryside.

For many people, it is hard to imagine the man living in such sedate palatial surroundings. They are used to seeing him in clubs, dishevelled, eyes rolling. They know him for throwing punches or outrageous comments at the media. But over the last three months, Liam passionately insists, he has undergone huge personal changes. The reason he says is his relationship with Patsy.

‘I'm growing older,' he states firmly, ‘I'm surrounded by kids, a beautiful woman that I love, I'm getting money and I want to do my stuff. See, I've changed so much since we've been off.

‘I'm not a monkey any more. I'm not into being in a scene where I don't respect anyone. I want to sharpen myself up. I don't want a heart attack. I don't want to get off my tits all the time.

‘I want to get a nice gaff and come home to a beautiful woman, and that is Patsy. I want to be with her forever. She's got a kid [James, from her marriage to the Simple Minds vocalist Jim Kerr] and I love the kid and I love her. That's it.'

For many people who have known Liam down the years, those words are unrecognisable, because, frankly, from a very early age, Liam Gallagher has been kicking up an almighty fuss.

He was born on 21 September 1972 in St. Mary's hospital, Manchester. Surprisingly, his father Thomas doted on him. Unlike Noel or Paul, Liam can only remember his dad hitting him once.

‘He liked me,' Liam states, ‘because I was the youngest. But I didn't like him. He shouldn't have got married and had kids if he wasn't ready for it.'