Oasis 6: Familiar To Millions

Most post-baby boom bands would consider getting to play Wembley Stadium to be a highlight of their success. For all their posing, Oasis is no different. Therefore, having revitalized the brand with two new members on guitar and bass, plus a guy on keyboards, their “triumphant” (according to the liner notes) appearance at Wembley in the summer of 2000 dictated that a live album be released as a souvenir.

Familiar To Millions doesn’t have any real surprises in the songs everyone already knows, except that Liam sounds more bored than ever. He and Noel make sure to take time during and between songs to berate whoever they want into the microphone with countless variations on “fook”. Much more interesting are the not-so-obvious song choices, such as the B-sides “Acquiesce” and “Step Out” (which sounds similar enough to Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight” to give that song’s writers royalties). Noel tackles Neil Young’s “Hey Hey, My My”, though nobody told him not to play the whole D chord, as well as “Helter Skelter”, tacked on as a bonus from a show an ocean away from Wembley. (A highlights CD omits five songs, including all the covers, not counting the tag of “Whole Lotta Love” at the end of “Cigarettes & Alcohol”.)

As a live album, Familiar To Millions serves as an able hits collection, geared towards those familiar millions. Yet there’s something about the entire crowd singing the chorus to “Don’t Look Back In Anger” with happy throats.

Oasis Familiar To Millions (2000)—3

Oasis 5: Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants

The bad grammar somehow fitting, Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants presents a still-defiant Oasis, somewhat bruised following their fall from infallibility but still determined to rock. Having lost two members, the band relied more on loops and samples to create their music. That’s not so much of a stretch, considering Noel Gallagher sang on a hit single by the Chemical Brothers. It’s still derivative of an earlier decade, but at least the trip-hop influence doesn’t hurt one’s ears like Be Here Now did.

Right out of the gate, “Fuckin’ In The Bushes” shows off the new sound, though it isn’t much more than a collage. Based around a “Funky Drummer”-type sample, complete with vinyl crackles, the new sound is also presented ably on “Go Let It Out”, which was the first single, though the Mellotron is out of place. The second single, “Who Feels Love?”, is way too long and a little too psychedelic, with backwards guitars and sitars, and a melody that sounds too much like earlier, better Oasis tracks. Plus, the hippy-dippy sentiment doesn’t sound convincing coming out of Liam’s mouth or Noel’s hand. “Put Yer Money Where Yer Mouth Is” manages to combine an AC/DC stomp with “Roadhouse Blues”—stupid, but still fun, until the 30-second farting synth at the end. Surprisingly good is “Little James”, Liam Gallagher’s first recorded composition and written for his son. Even more impressive is the production, incorporating “Don’t Look Back In Anger” piano, though the “Hey Jude” ending goes (again) a little long.

“Gas Panic!” returns us to India before floating on another psychedelic bed, and by now we wish they’d pick up the tempo a hair (one of the downsides of quitting coke, to be sure). Still, Noel sings two further slow songs in a row: “Where Did It All Go Wrong?” is another feather in his vocal cap, while “Sunday Morning Call” is a more elaborate production. Together they provide respite from Liam’s rasp. “I Can See A Liar” is a wonderful glam stomp, with a few hints of the Cult in the riff, for a terrific shot of energy. And that’s good, because “Roll It Over” just drags until the end.

For all the imperfections and indulgences, Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants is still not as indulgent as Be Here Now, and manages to hold interest. Being relatively tight, it’s a welcome return to form quality-wise on par with the first two Oasis albums. But we must add one final gripe: if you’re going to book legendary vocalists P.P. Arnold and Linda Lewis, give them something to do besides sing “ah” buried in the mix.

Oasis Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants (2000)—3

Oasis 4: The Masterplan

Like all good British bands, Oasis had amassed a pile of B-sides for all the singles they’d released over the span of three albums. Most of these have been included on expanded 21st-century versions of those albums, but back when the band was still fresh, 14 of them were put together on The Masterplan.

Besides keeping these songs available, the set nicely reinforces Noel Gallagher as a performer in his own right. The orchestral pomp of the title track just wouldn’t fit with Liam’s sneer anyway. Noel’s acoustic busk of “Morning Glory” bookends “Acquiesce”, and he also sings the choruses in between Liam’s verses. “Talk Tonight” is a wonderfully sensitive plea for sanity, while “Going Nowhere” suffers from the Bacharach overload of the time. Speaking of which, “Half The World Away” bears a strong resemblance to “This Guy’s In Love With You”, but only in the main theme and a few of the chords. While we’re at it, “Listen Up” resembles “Supersonic” from the first album, but has some intricate (for Noel) modulations over the chorus that make it the better song; perhaps such touches kept it a B-side. “Headshrinker” is blown open with a great Stonesy riff, making a nice diversion from the usually worn influences.

Still, some of the songs were better as B-sides. “The Swamp Song”, excerpted as interludes on the Morning Glory album, is interesting to hear once in total, while the accordion diversion at the end of “(It’s Good) To Be Free” is just silly. And although their loud, live plow through “I Am The Walrus” wouldn’t have sat well on an album, it’s great to have here.

As only two of the tracks come from singles released to promote Be Here Now, The Masterplan might have made for a better third album than the overblown mess that did come out. Instead it became a nice reminder what made the band so good in the first place, and might even have helped keep them relevant into the next century.

Oasis The Masterplan (1998)—3½

Oasis 3: Be Here Now

All of a sudden, and mostly because Blur hadn’t swatted them out of the way at home or in the US, Oasis was the biggest band in the world. Those accolades fueled the hubris necessitating the news flash that they weren’t the Beatles. Hell, they weren’t even the Jam, even after cozying up to and getting endorsements from the similarly coiffed mod icons, and ticking off the surviving Fabs in the process. They remained, however, five of the luckiest guys in the world led by the whims of a cokehead with a marginal talent for recycling old riffs and lyrics.

Whereas (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? was, and remains, a highly catchy collection of pop songs, the much-anticipated Be Here Now still tries patience. Most of the songs are over six minutes long, and thanks to the uniform mixing—all distorted guitars and crash cymbals with feedback hum, extended endings and too much tambourine—it takes more listens than most can stand before individual songs stand out under Liam Gallagher’s whine. Only their third album, and it’s already a sad game to discern which of their own songs they’d begun to rewrite.

Yet, it’s a long time to get to even that point. “D’You Know What I Mean?” has the attitude but none of the substance of the debut, and after seven minutes it finally gives way to “My Big Mouth”—an apt title for the Gallagher brothers, to be sure, and a lame rewrite of the previous album’s title track. Noel comes to the fore on “Magic Pie”, something of a timely recapture of the Revolver era and a good distillation of the better moments of the album, but again, who in the hell besides these guys in those days thought seven-minute tracks were a good idea, with or without crash cymbals and feedback? Even Noel yells “shut up!” right before one of the final extended free-form fades.

That’s three tracks, and the listener has already sacrificed 20 valuable minutes of existence. We’ve yet to hear anything as catchy—or, ironically, as anthemic, given the length—of anything from the first two albums. That almost comes with “Stand By Me”, a lazy title and a pale remake of “Live Forever” and “Married With Children” from the first album, but goes far too long to make its point. “I Hope, I Think, I Know” is welcome given its four-minute brevity, but it’s still buried beneath a barrage of sound, and the same approach sinks “The Girl In The Dirty Shirt”, which insists on ending with a pointless electric piano vamp.

These songs are all in the same tempo, with that damn tambourine driving it along, so by the time “Fade In-Out” kicks in, nobody cares, even after it finally changes chords. Here also is when they decide to placate those with short attention spans by tossing up “Don’t Go Away”, a mope worthy of anything else in the decade, and the album’s high point. Had the album started there, the title track would have been a welcome groove, but by now it’s just more indulgence, with a stupid slide whistle to boot. By the time we’re almost at the end of this very long album, we get the Beatlesque plea in “All Around The World”, complete with Liam’s unique pronunciation of “shine”. That goes on for nine minutes, and it would be a good place to end the album, but we still have to be told that “It’s Gettin’ Better (Man!!)”, over a groove that doesn’t sound any different from the previous hour. Just to make sure, they tack on another two minutes of “All Around The World” to let everyone know just how artistic they were.

Back then, when we really, really wanted to like this album, we said, “It will be interesting to see where these guys are in five years, assuming they’re still around.” And despite all it’s problems, we still want to like Be Here Now. But boy, did they fall off the tram. The band’s attempts to come off confident only end up wary, as if they knew everybody else had figured them out. Why else would they have a tambourine cover everything up for 71 minutes?

Two decades on people are still defending this album, and they shouldn’t. Naturally, it had to be reissued with bonus discs, which did at least unearth some decent (if still too long) Noel-sung B-sides in “The Fame”, “Flashbax” and “Going Nowhere”. Acoustic takes of songs like “Stand By Me” show their obvious sources, inescapable appeal, Noel’s limited strumming ability, and the blend the brothers could create when they weren’t slapping each other around. We even get an acoustic busk of “Setting Sun”, the acid-house Chemical Brothers track that had Noel singing lead. But there’s also an entire disc of Noel’s one-man band demos of the songs that became the album, all of which portend the horror to come, and certainly the length. Had they been released back then, they might have aged better than the album itself.

Oasis Be Here Now (1997)—2½
2016 Deluxe Edition: same as 1997, plus 28 extra tracks

Oasis 2: (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?

The British always have a way of pumping up musical hype, mostly so they can tear it down again. (Anybody remember the Bros? Didn’t think so.) So when two bands with mod haircuts and retro vibes showed up, the weeklies over there tried to make Blur vs. Oasis as relevant as the Beatles vs. the Stones.

The big difference is that the Beatles and the Stones got along, whereby the boys in Blur learned quickly to ignore the japes from Oasis. Here in the States, it didn’t make much of a ripple, when both bands were making decent records. Somehow (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? established Oasis as the clear winners of whatever battle they had with Blur, on only their second album. In fact, it took their fourth single (if you count the three that came out in the UK before the album did) to make an impression, and that’s why most people can still recognize “Wonderwall” from the first few notes.

Some have questioned how a Beatle purist like ourselves could like this album, which is understandable. For one thing, when it came out, the Gallagher boys had barely started to be as pretentiously loutish as they would shortly become. Also, it was a great set of power pop songs crafted so well it took several listens to realized whence they’d been pinched. Example: while we noticed the cop of “With A Little Help From My Friends” at the end of “She’s Electric”, it was two years before we realized that the bridge rips off the bridge to “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, and we had to read about that. The origin of the word “Wonderwall” is obvious to any diehard George Harrison fan, but that didn’t stop Liam from publicly disparaging the quiet one, who knew that no reaction only proved how stupid the kid was, particularly since Noel came up with all the songs.

And there are still a lot of songs to enjoy on this, such as “Roll With It”, “Cast No Shadow”, “Hey Now”, “Some Might Say” (there’s that T.Rex riff again), and even all 7½ minutes of “Champagne Supernova”. A favorite is still “Don’t Look Back In Anger”, which starts out like “Imagine” and features Noel instead of Liam on lead vocals. (Soon afterwards Noel took the mike for an MTV appearance while Liam sulked in the balcony, and showed that he was just as capable of carrying the band on his own. Yet it would be years before he made the leap.)

“Morning Glory” is the only real clunker here, since it doubles the feedback and fuzz with helicopter effects and is just noisy. Overall, the recipe works, and the latest anniversary edition offers up 28 further tracks, including the complete “Swamp Song” tapped for those interludes, the vinyl-only “Bonehead’s Bank Holiday”, all the B-sides that made collecting their singles worth the cash, and a mess of live versions and demos. Call it a guilty pleasure, but we still like it.

Oasis (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? (1995)—4
2014 Deluxe Edition: same as 1995, plus 28 extra tracks

Oasis 1: Definitely Maybe

Once a band has passed into notoriety, it can be tough to go back to their beginnings with an open mind. But a glance through the booklet of Definitely Maybe, the first CD by Oasis, all of their personality is right there: the mod haircuts and styles, Liam Gallagher in a pugilistic pose or staring something down, Noel Gallagher playing guitar and/or mouth-breathing, both Gallaghers looking down their noses, and the other guys sitting around.

The so-called Britpop war hadn’t become a thing yet, so it’s possible to just enjoy the album as a solid collection of songs written by Noel Gallagher. If the legend is true, he heard Liam’s band rehearsing, told them their songs were awful, and promptly took over their repertoire. To his credit, or maybe proof he wasn’t a complete egomaniac, he knew Liam was the cute one, with a nasal whine comparable to Johnny Rotten’s in attitude (turning words like “sunshine” into four syllables), and let him remain the frontman while he stayed on the sidelines playing leads along the other guitarist and bass player, all three staring at their left hands on their fretboards.

The man could write catchy songs, with lyrics more designed to fit than mean anything—after all, the Bee Gees pulled that off for decades—to the point where the ones he stole weren’t immediately apparent. Only after you’ve given up what “Shakermaker” is supposed to be about do you realize that it’s the melody from “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing”. More obvious is the T.Rex “Get It On” riff in “Cigarettes & Alcohol”, but Marc Bolan stole that from Chuck Berry anyway.

But depth isn’t everything when the tunes are right there. “Cigarettes & Alcohol” is terrific, and Rod Stewart even covered it a few years later in that brief period when he remembered he used to rock. The message in “Rock ‘N’ Roll Star” and “Live Forever” is pretty straightforward, so the arrangements make them even more memorable. “Live Forever” gets its boost from the falsetto tag on the choruses as well as the subtle piano buried in the mix (played either by Noel or their rhythm guitarist, consistently credited as “Bonehead”). There’s a truly dotty piano on the break for “Digsy’s Diner”, a song now called “Digsy’s Dinner”. “Up In The Sky” beats the same four-note riff into your head for four minutes, and kudos to whoever decided to add an acoustic guitar to those choruses.

The album was only a few years removed from the Stone Roses, EMF and other perpetuators of the Manchester beat, so “Columbia” and “Supersonic” placed back to back don’t have anyone missing original drummer Tony McCarroll much. “Bring It On Down” shows him off a little better, but by now the overall murk of reverb and tambourine can cause a headache. “Slide Away” recycles a lot of the motifs we’ve heard already for too long, so the acoustic busk of “Married With Children” provides some hope for their future.

Most of Definitely Maybe ended up as singles or B-sides before or after the album came out, so it’s clear they were going for quality. All of those singles had live versions, demos, and other tracks from the sessions, which can now be found among the pile of extras collected on 2014’s deluxe three-CD reissue. Some of those feature Noel instead of Liam, giving something of an alternate history. Plus, there’s “Whatever”, a stopgap single before their next album, that both predicts “Don’t Look Back In Anger” and rips off “How Sweet To Be An Idiot” by Neil Innes. (Ten years later, the 30th anniversary of the album was celebrated with another remaster but none of the extras from the first expansion. Instead a second disc consisted of earlier sessions—all alternate takes of album tracks, plus a demo for “Sad Song”—released here for the first time.)

Oasis Definitely Maybe (1994)—3½
2014 Deluxe Edition: same as 1994, plus 33 extra tracks
2024 Deluxe 30th Anniversary Edition: same as 1994, plus 16 extra tracks