Getting High (24 page)

A year later, his luck changed. Using a sizeable amount of an unexpected tax rebate, he found a room above a pub in London's West End called the Living Room and booked a band named The Nightingales. The following week it was The TV Personalities.

Much to his amazement, people started to show up in large numbers.

‘By this point, music had turned round and people wanted to go and see bands,' McGee points out. ‘Suddenly, I was getting like 200 people and I started earning £700 'cos I was doing the club about three times a week. In the first few weeks I got completely plastered every night because I thought it would all stop. But it didn't.

 ‘I realised it was there for keeps. I thought, fucking hell, I can make a living going out and spotting bands for the club. So I chucked my job in at British Rail.'

As the club grew, it was inevitable that McGee's feverish mind would one day hit upon the following thought; if he could spot bands that people in his club genuinely liked, then the next step, surely, was to record them. Start a label.

That's what he would do. A label. It would release records that mirrored his two main musical loves: psychedelia and punk. In honour of one of his favourite groups, he would later name it Creation Records.

Alan McGee bends down with a $50 note in his nose and places it above the gleaming white particles of cocaine. He sniffs hard and the powder shoots up his nose and into his eyeballs. He sits down on his bed in this plush Los Angeles hotel room and takes a sip of Jack Daniels and coke. Then he absent-mindedly rubs his stomach.

It fascinates and repulses him how misshapen his stomach has become through boozing. He remembers how skinny he once was. Especially in the late 1980s when the Ecstasy pills were unbelievable and you didn't need alcohol because, according to rumour, it killed your high. Those days were gone now and McGee had turned to alcohol as one of his main ways of getting high. He now weighed fourteen stone.

Alan feels the coke starting to take effect. An urgent need springs to his brain. Music. He must have music. He looks over at the tapes he has brought with him.

He selects the one that has written on it ‘Rocks, Primal Scream demo', and he inserts it into the machine. A thumping Sly Stone drumbeat comes stomping out of the speakers, followed by some raucous Stonesy guitar licks.

Then Bobby Gillespie starts singing. ‘Dealers keep dealing / Whores keep a whoring...'

Proper. He loves this song. It's an anthem for the times. Decadent, rocky. This is the first single of 1994 from Primal Scream. It comes from their third album
Give Out But Don't Give Up
, the crucial follow-up to their critically acclaimed
Screamadelica
album.

That LP made the band. It scaled the charts, found wide critical acclaim and even gained the band an extra £20,000 when it won the 1992 Mercury prize for Best Album Of The Year.

McGee laughs out loud. Now he is remembering how the day after the band's win, no one could find the cheque.

‘I thought you had it, Bobby.' ‘Nah, man. I didnae.' ‘Well, where the fuck is it?' ‘Dinnae ask me man, I was fucking oout of it.'

The song finishes. McGee rubs his stomach again and forces his mind to focus. He has been willing himself to stay one step ahead in America because to be honest, he is currently walking something of a tightrope. In September of 1992, Sony, the huge multi-national, bought 49% shares in his label. It was an inevitable deal.

Running an independent label in a market which is dominated by the multi-nationals is a huge financial and personal risk. You can sign the best band in the world ever, but if you don't have good distribution and marketing resources at your disposal, your records don't get in the shops. You're stuck with them. Piles of the fuckers.

The personal strain is tremendous. One minute you're dealing with bands screaming for more money, the next minute you're desperately trying to collect on money owed you. It also doesn't help when you're, as Alan McGee is, firmly attracted to musicians who you happily view as ‘dysfunctional'.

‘I thought all musicians were like that. You're fucked up, you must be really special. Then I found it's not exactly true,' McGee ruefully relates.

When McGee started Creation, the first single he released was by The Legend. It was called ‘73 In 83'. Then came Innes's band, Revolving Paint Dream, followed by groups such as Biff Bang Pow!, Jasmine Minks and The Pastels. McGee found many allies in the music press, but the music was of varying quality. His first major success would come with his discovery of a group dominated by two warring brothers, The Jesus And Mary Chain.

They had played McGee's club in July 1984. Straight after the gig, McGee went backstage and said to the brothers who had formed the group, ‘I'll manage you.'

The brothers were Jim and William Reid, and their relationship was, to say the least, tempestuous. ‘They were either gonna kill each other or smash the club up,' McGee recalls. ‘They were a complete mess but they looked amazing. Plus, they played “Vegetable Man” by Syd Barrett and I love Syd Barrett.'

In November of that year McGee put out ‘Upside Down' by the band. This single sold 50,000 copies in a month. McGee quit the club to concentrate on his label.

Creation was soon established as a hip, favoured label by the music press. They were independent, signed non-mainstream groups and were seen to keep the punk ethic alive, a notion that remains vitally important to music writers even to this day. Later signing would include My Bloody Valentine, House of Love, Ride and Primal Scream.

Yet it seemed to escape everyone's attention that many of the groups McGee had spotted, he then signed on to major American labels; it was the only way he could keep his label afloat.

‘How Creation survived the first ten years,' McGee reveals, ‘is because basically I'm a barrow boy. Up until I did the deal with Sony, I used to take my tapes to America and they would be of groups such as Slowdive, Swervedriver, Teenage Fanclub, and I used to go round the record companies and say, “Give me £250,000 for the Fanclub or give me £120,000 for Slowdive.” And that's how I used to pay the bills, by being a market-trader.

‘But then it got to 1992,' he continues, ‘and I owed something like £1.2 million. I'd even sold the name Creation to Charles Koppelam who runs EMI Records. I sold him the name for $500,000 and I didn't have anything else I could fucking sell. So I had to sell 49% of my company to Sony.

‘They signed the label for two reasons. Number one, because I had a history of finding bands. Number two, because they thought Primal Scream were going to become superstars.'

In March 1994 Primal Scream released their third album,
Give Out But Don't Give Up
, and thanks to Sony's huge distribution network the album, despite receiving poor reviews, outsold
Screamadelica
by some 400,000 copies, selling in total 600,000 copies. But it wasn't enough. The album had cost £425,000 to make.

‘So basically at that point we were right in the shit with Sony,' McGee explains. It would take something truly special to rescue both McGee and his label. How ironic then that Creation's initial success which had started with two brothers who wanted to smack the fuck out of each other, would now be saved, by two brothers who often acted like they wanted to smack the fuck out of each other.

One of them, Noel Gallagher, is now sitting in his chair laughing at McGee who is sliding further and further down the sofa. All McGee can think to himself, as Noel reaches for another drink, is how the fuck does he keep going and how the fuck does he keep coming up with these amazing songs? And when can I get some sleep?

Noel Gallagher stands with about twenty other people in the Boardwalk, Manchester, watching his brother on-stage for the first time in his life. Because they cannot yet afford a microphone stand, Liam holds the mike in his hand.

Bonehead, Guigsy and McCarroll look nervous, but Liam doesn't. He is, of course, fronting, even now asserting that ‘he was mad for doing it'.

As is so often the case with any important event, time rushes by. One minute they're nervously plugging in, hands slightly shaking, and the next they're playing the last song.

In the Oasis mythology, Noel now comes backstage, tells the band that they're shit, offers to join and write all the songs and they start rehearsing the next day.

Not so.

He did heavily criticise them, and Liam would have then challenged Noel, pointing out that if they were shit what about him? Why not join and make us better?

Undoubtedly the offer would have appealed to Noel. He was now twenty-four and had never been in a band, despite having furiously written songs these past few years. And, Oasis was the perfect band for him to join. It contained his brother and people he knew, apart from Mccarroll.

Him aside, they all spoke the same language, came from the same class. They all liked football, scooters, clothes and cars. They were all obsessed with music. Perfect then, but Noel had a problem.

He couldn't ditch his job with the Inspirals. He earned good wages. No way did he want to go back on the dole. So Noel prevaricated. What he did was to invite the boys round to his flat in India House to play them a few of his songs.

The band gathered round at Noel's and, guitar in hand, he played them a few of his songs. One was called ‘Live Forever'. The others had titles such as ‘Colour My Life', ‘See The Sun', ‘Better Let You Know', ‘Must Be The Music', ‘Snakebite', ‘Life In Vain' [the title adapted from The Stones song ‘Love In Vain'] and ‘I Will Show You'.

The only song of theirs that Noel would even consider playing live was ‘Take Me'. He liked the lyrics.

Listening to Noel's songs, Guigsy, Bonehead and Liam felt a growing sense of real excitement. It was obvious that they were now in the presence of someone who was obviously very talented. He not only had an ear for melody but his arrangements had class as well. They determined to get Noel in as soon as possible.

‘I remember ringing Liam constantly,' Bonehead recalls, ‘asking if his kid had made his mind up yet.' Indeed, one Sunday afternoon, as Noel watched the football, Liam turned up on his doorstep, demanding an answer.

Typically, Noel took the cool approach. A month after the Boardwalk show, Noel Gallagher finally committed himself to Oasis, but only under some strict provisos. The first was that they would give their everything to the band. No one would be allowed to miss rehearsals. Everybody had to make a 100% effort. Failure to do so would mean dismissal.

They would have to watch their drug and alcohol intake too.

‘The rule,' Guigsy explains, ‘was that you could do what you want but only if you can handle it. Like I don't drink before I go on-stage because I can't handle it, but I can smoke loads of spliff. Whereas Liam can drink a hundred beers before he goes on and he can do it.'

Noel would carry on with the Inspirals and while he was away the others would have to keep on working. Any money they had would be put towards the cause.

They all eagerly agreed. By laying down these conditions, Noel Gallagher confirmed himself as the band's leader. As time moved on, only his brother would ever challenge his right to that title.

Noel also pulled in his friend Mark Coyle to engineer their sound and help set up the equipment.

At first, the band were unsure of Coyley. He seemed quiet and contained. But they soon learnt that once he had had a few drinks, he livened up considerably. Plus, he was totally on their wavelength.

Noel and Guigsy would gang up on him and kick off a football debate on the merits of City or United. Mark would argue his case and then Bonehead would come in on Coyley's side. He too supported United. But he was never as committed as Mark.

‘Well, you can shut up as well,' Coyley would say to his United ally. ‘What the fuck do you know about it?'

Bonehead could only say, ‘Yeah, you're right.'

Noel's first concert, Oasis's second, took place at the Boardwalk on 15 January 1992. They played a set lasting no longer than half an hour. They didn't move an inch on stage and then they abruptly left. Some kids in the crowd heckled them.

The next morning at five-thirty, Noel made it to Manchester airport, having been up all night and then flew to Japan with the Inspirals and Coyley.

‘It was our two-week round the world tour,' the Inspirals' Graham Lambert explains with a laugh.

The remaining members of Oasis eagerly carried on rehearsing. But it was only when Noel was in town that they would feel the excitement of it all.

Meanwhile, Noel and Coyley were having a real good time. The Inspirals played Japan, and then moved on to Argentina and Uruguay, where they played at the River Plate's famous football stadium.

In Estonia, they played a festival. Two stages had been erected and the crowd would move from one to the other. Directly before the Inspirals played, Bob Geldof performed. He ran overtime.

So, over on his stage, Noel got on the mike and started saying things like,' All right Bob, you've done your bit. Come on, off you come. I mean you don't need the money after all that Live Aid business, do you?'

Afterwards, Geldof came to their dressing-room. All the Manchester boys ignored him. As he left, Geldof slipped over, and the band and crew fell about laughing.

Graham Lambert recalls that in this period Noel was totally besotted by U2's
Achtung Baby
album and that he finally learnt how to play that guitar standard, beloved of pickers everywhere, ‘Stairway To Heaven' by Led Zeppelin.

The next Oasis gig was at Dartford Polytechnic on 19 April, which Noel had secured thanks to the connections he was making through working with the Inspirals.

To travel there the band hired out a van and Guigsy took his car. The band arrived, followed by about five of their mates. They went to the local pub where someone lit up a spliff. The band were chucked out and made their way to the college.