Oasis 'Stand By Me'

Chart Peak: 2
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'Stand By Me' was a No. 2 smash for Oasis in late September '97... Every one of their 6 singles since 'Some Might Say' in 1995 has made either No. 1 or No. 2 in the UK chart.

In fact, they stretched that to eight before 'Who Feels Love' broke it by only getting to 4. Though it's oddly unmentioned in the sleeve note there, they'd also just scored the fastest-selling album in UK history with Be Here Now. Such was their fame at this time that ITN actually reported on the release of their previous single as if it was a news story, and speculated as to whether it would become the biggest-selling single ever (spoiler: it wasn't). Little can they have known then that the actual all-time biggest seller was just a few weeks away, and would indeed be responsible for keeping this follow-up from topping the chart.

Quite like Stand By Me: it's better than shit, but not good enough for lasting airplay so it remains nostalgia-friendly.
— Neil is indecisive (@JPK_discography) December 4, 2014

That tweet is from JPK Discography, who I hope won't mind me mentioning that he is my brother. He's been listening to all the music he has in alphabetical order (he's got as far as P) and I think he's summarised 'Stand By Me' quite well there. It's probably the most played of the three UK singles from the album nowadays (despite being the only one not to top the chart) but understandably most of the retrospective fuss about Oasis still concentrates on the first two albums. At the time I was already "over" Oasis and viewed a lot of the hype around the album and single with amusement, though I do remember getting to go into HMV in the evening because they were doing an exclusive in-store playback the night we happened to be at the cinema in the local shopping centre; I can't remember whether that was the same night we saw a fight in McDonalds but I have a memory of pointedly buying something else. We did get a poster for our mum though.

In some ways, 'Stand By Me' is almost the archetype of an Oasis song, with its stately pace (it could only be considered fast by comparison with the previous three tracks) its obvious retro borrowings (Noel Gallagher admits that the chorus was inspired by 'All The Young Dudes', albeit that the chords are different for once) and the seemingly thoughtless lyric. And like almost everything they ever recorded, especially on this album, it's very long at almost six minutes; apparently a slightly shorter radio edit was released in France.  And yet there's also something oddly irrefutable about it, the way that it just keeps on going at its stately pace and doesn't care what you think. The string arrangements, buried in the mix, are rather pretty too. Although Gallagher grasped the Beatles comparisons with both hands, this is a reminder that the classic Oasis sound is at least as much influenced by pre-punk 70s rock as anything from the 60s. The song's grown on me enough that I was slightly tempted to buy the copy of the CD single that I saw in a charity shop the other day for 50p.

Also appearing on: Now 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 52, 53, 54, 61, 62
Available on: Be Here Now

Oasis 'Whatever'

Chart Peak: 3
YouTube

Oasis - Paul, Paul, Tony and brothers Liam and Noel - come from Manchester and are reckoned by many to be the best new rock band on the planet. 'Whatever', a Top 3 smash, followed 'Live Forever' and 'Cigarettes & Alcohol' into the charts in December '94.

One of the B-sides on 'Wake Up Boo!' from earlier in this album is a weird spoken-word piece called 'The History Of Creation Parts 17 and 35' in which somebody claims that Oasis have everything a great rock band needs "except a bald lead singer". Certainly that was a widely-held view at the time and here in Spring 1995 their second Now appearance may have been about the last time in a long while when it was considered necessary to identify the band members by name in this way. I'm sure there were plenty of dance or hip-hop fans who would not know the names of the non-Gallagher band members even at the peak of their fame, but then they wouldn't care either.

It's safe to say that Oasis had a pretty good year in 1994, with a chart-topping and genuinely big-selling debut album spawning four hit singles, each charting higher than the previous one. So for the coup de grace they had to aim at the big prize - a Christmas Number One. Possibly learning from the mistake of Take That, who infamously topped the chart the week before Christmas 1993, they held back releasing this non-album single until the very last week possible in the hope that it would burst straight in at the top of the chart. But could they claim the big Number One spot? Well, if you've been reading this far you'll know that they couldn't, with East 17 getting the honours and Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' the runner-up. Still, helped by its lack of festive sentiment, 'Whatever' stuck around the chart, joining in with the regular sets of Oasis re-entries in the mid-1990s. It ultimately became their most-charted (though not biggest-selling) single of the pre-download era, helped by the exclusivity of the A-side and the popularity of CD bonus track 'Half The World Away'. Ironically, though, it was their last single to become available as a digital download, even the last of the four tracks from the single to show up in the format, only arriving as part of the Time Flies best-of after the band had split.

The obvious reason for the delayed release that the track isn't on an album, but there again some of the singles were available digitally for their B-sides too. Possibly there was some connection with the fact that Noel Gallagher was successfully sued for plagiarism of 'How Sweet To Be An Idiot' by Neil Innes. Fans of irony will note that Innes was also the songwriter for classic Beatles parody act The Rutles, and was also a friend of George Harrison, who found himself on the receiving end of a plagiarism suit himself once. Still, whoever's song this is it's a pretty good one, though it already seems to find Gallagher already lacking in lyrical inspiration and it's an early case of the self-conscious EPIC sound that eventually ruined the band, as if they were determined to release a six-and-a-half-minute single whether the song was really good enough or not. In fact, the version here is a very slight edit - it fades out the last few seconds of self-applause after the song ends. It's a difficult track to dislike even though it shows the early seeds of what would make the band insufferable; at least they had a few more good singles in them before that.

Of course the post wouldn't be complete without a little Noel Gallagher DVD commentary.

Also appearing on: Now 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 38, 52, 53, 54, 61, 62
Available on: Time Flies... 1994-2009

Oasis 'Live Forever'

Chart Peak: 10

YouTube

'Live Forever' was Oasis' first UK Top 209 single back in late Summer 1994... It has sold consistently ever since and actually re-entered the Top 75 on 25th February 1996 - indeed, every one of their nine singles was in the chart for this week at Numbers 1, 30, 64, 70, 71, 74, 75, 77 and 79 respectively... big or what!!

To be a bit more precise, 'Don't Look Back In Anger' was, as previously noted, at the top of the chart that week and the other Top 75 positions were as follows:
30. Wonderwall
64. Whatever
70. Cigarettes and Alcohol
71. Supersonic
74. Shakermaker
75. Live Forever
This logically puts 'Roll With It' and 'Some Might Say' in the lowest positions, presumably because those were relatively recent hits which latecomers to the band would have bought at the time. It's probably not insignificant that this was the week after the Brit Awards, where Oasis had picked up three statuettes, but even in more normal times Oasis were notable for their unusually strong catalogue singles sales by 1990s standards, not least because they were unusual in not deleting the singles once they'd dropped out of the chart, instead actively assisting them by keeping the CD versions on the shelves in "3 for £10" offers. It was through such a deal, possibly even at roughly this time, that I acquired my own copy of 'Live Forever', alongside 'Whatever' and 'Cigarettes & Alcohol'. Yes, kids, there was once a time when paying £3:33 each for CD singles was considered a bargain. I did at least have the excuse that I didn't own a copy of the Definitely Maybe album until about ten years later, although I had of course heard it (and been a little underwhelmed, to be honest, although it would be hard not to be such was the euphoria around the album then). There were undoubtedly stand-out tracks though, and 'Live Forever' was one of them, intentionally scheduled as the single immediately before the album when it would make maximum impact.

It is, perhaps the definitive Oasis song, the starting point for their mid-paced, musically simple anthems - debut single 'Supersonic' is not dissimilar but this one was written first. For good or ill it's a style that they returned to time and again over the years, but here it's found in its purest form with the unresolved chord sequence suiting the eternity implied by the lyric and perhaps a neat fit with the slightly hypothetical sentiment. Obviously nobody can live forever, but this is a song partly about ambition (a common theme to their first album, unsurprisingly) and partly about friendship, the lyric "we see things they'll never see" a reference to the shared reference points and in-jokes that people who've known each other for a long time will always develop. The seamless verse-chorus transition and the repeated lyrics almost seem like one of those in-jokes themselves, though of course the song comes over as a different sort of joke in hindsight, after all the infighting among the band over the next fifteen years before they finally split. It's especially ironic that the video shows them burying original drummer Tony McCarroll, who was of course fired in 1995; this gives Oasis the rare distinction of appearing twice on the same Now! album with different lineups, an honour they share with Kajagoogoo. The US video takes a different interpretation of the title, with images of deceased heroes like Marc Bolan, John Lennon (whose childhood home is also pictured on the single sleeve), Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and Bobby Moore, who may not have been recognised by all the intended audience.

Worth noting, as well, that this is one of the best-produced of all Oasis tracks, particularly in comparison with the rather hesitant original demo version. One thing I always liked about this track was the use of piano - it's not very prominent in the mix but it's an important part of the arrangement and live versions without it never entirely seem to work. It's not often I get to praise Oasis for being subtle, so I'm going to take the chance when I can.

Also appearing on: Now 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 38, 52, 53, 54, 61, 62
Available on: Anthems Indie

Oasis 'Don't Look Back In Anger'

Chart Peak: 1 [1 week]

YouTube

On 25th February 1996, 'Don't Look Back In Anger' rocketed into the UK chart at No.1... It sold a staggering one quarter of a million copies in just one week- meanwhile the classic 'Wonderwall' just keeps on selling and was still in the Top 30 after an amazing 17 weeks on release - wow!

Young people, you'll have to trust me that in the mid-1990s it was staggering for a song to spend 17 weeks in the Top 30. The turnover's a bit slower now. Nowadays it would also be effectively impossible for the fourth single from an album to enter the chart on such a high weekly sale, as people would have been downloading it throughout the months since the album came out. In 1996 you could still that though, and Oasis did it without any help from me on this occasion (as I recall I was all set to buy it on the original release date but it was postponed and by the time it did come out I'd spent the money elsewhere, and I never got around to it).

Slightly surprising that they go to such lengths to big up 'Wonderwall', the track that's not on this album (regular readers will know that it finally showed up on Now 34, out of chronological sequence). Still, such were the achievements of the band at the time: I always think of 1996 as the year when their fame peaked, despite the paucity of new material they released: it was the year that saw their huge Knebworth gigs, the year the Morning Glory album wouldn't stop selling and the year that ended with their tribute act No Way Sis in the Top 30; their acknowledged tribute band, I should say, since it was also the point when record companies became increasingly desperate to sign up similar-sounding or even -looking acts. It's the time when annoying young men in town centres started wearing parkas in imitation of Liam Gallagher. There were obviously many reasons for the band's ascendancy to mainstream celebrity and their shifting the centre of gravity of Britpop: the need for pop stars tabloids could write about every day as Take That split was clearly one big factor, but it also helped that the two singles they released around the turn of the year, this and the aforementioned 'Wonderwall', were big consensus hits. They were songs that with their big choruses and lack of distorted guitars could appeal to the older generations but because they came from a band that had already made 'Cigarettes & Alcohol' and 'Roll With It' they were treated as rock anthems too. Thus it was that whilst Morning Glory didn't quite get to be the biggest selling album of 1995 or 1996, it was the runner-up both years and the biggest selling album of the decade as a whole and until last week the second-biggest-selling studio album of all time. My mum probably would have bought it if I hadn't beaten her to it and passed my copy on to her when I got married - it's on her iPod now, as we were listening to it in the car on the way home from her house just the other day. Perhaps I should make allowances for the fact that it played just after a Beatles album - albeit Rubber Soul, which ends with the worst Beatles song ever - but it really didn't seem to have dated all that well, sounding remarkably thin.

If I'm honest though, the biggest problem with this track is just overexposure during the 18 months when it was their most recent single: I have a clear memory of standing in a university building in October 1996, hearing this played over the PA and suddenly thinking "I'm not enjoying this". That was not, as you might guess, the last time I heard it and I think it's now the track I own most copies of but don't want to listen to: as well as Now 33 and the album I have it on Shine 5, The Brits 97 and doubtless others I can't remember. Time has rather dulled the appreciation I had of it at the time and made it less of a refreshing change to hear Noel Gallagher as a lead singer, whilst drawing more attention to its flaws. It's not so much the opening reference to 'Imagine' that I mind because that's so lampshaded it's kind of daring you to take umbrage at it. In fact, I must admit that a lot of what's wrong with it is as much about the fact that it foreshadows what would go wrong with Oasis after this, the self-conscious massiveness, slow pace and death-by-overdub that would eventually drown their next album Be Here Now (which broke down the consensus, if not the fame) and which is perhaps most obvious at the very end of the track when it doggedly refuses to finish: Noel sings the title line three times, then sings "I heard you say". Then there's a bit of guitar. Then he sings "At least not today," which is a bit of a poor lyric and ruins the effect. And he's still not finished, there's a big extended chord to follow it. It all feels like Gallagher's attempt to sound monumental, egged on by the sort of fans who sought to find meaning in his obviously thrown-together lyric. On the positive side, at least Alan White's drumming and percussion gave the production a bit of oomph and save it from being the complete sludge-fest it would otherwise have been. He later married (and subsequently divorced) one of the models from the video.

Also appearing on: Now 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 38, 52, 53, 54, 61, 62
Available on: (What's The Story) Morning Glory

The Smokin' Mojo Filters 'Come Together'

Chart Peak: 19

YouTube

Since the last two tracks we had here were Paul Weller and a Beatles cover, it seems only fitting to wrap up the first disc with a Beatles cover fronted by Paul Weller. Indeed this is a return to the War Child project which makes this seem almost like a summary of the forgoing side of the album (ignoring the Sacred Spirit track, anyway). And credit where it's due to Noel Gallagher, who pulled a double shift on the Help album, recording an exclusive Oasis track and then working on this in the same day.

The full line-up as given in the single sleeve was:
Paul Weller lead vocal & guitar
Paul McCartney guitar/piano backing vocals
Noel Gallagher guitar
Steve White drums
Carleen Anderson backing vocals
Steve Craddock {sic} guitar

- oddly, no bass player is mentioned, but then Ocean Colour Scene member Damon Minchella is briefly seen in the video and as he was also part of Weller's band at the time, it must surely have been him. Presumably, had McCartney played the bass he'd have reprised the same part he did on the original.

As I said in yesterday's post, it isn't really adviseable to try and cover a Beatles song in exactly the style of the original, and this group seem to have taken that to heart; unfortunately they seem to have been more focussed on not duplicating the existing version than on any fresh interpretation. Of course since one of them actually was a Beatle and the others were huge fans, that's not exactly surprising: also one imagines they wouldn't have had a lot of time together to work this out. Weller's gruff vocal is very different from John Lennon's creepily measured delivery on the Beatles record, and despite the large number of players, the backing track has a rough-and-ready sort of energy which is closer to Lennon's live performance of the song than the original (bag) production.

As a tie-in of all those talented people it's arguably a little underwhelming, but at the same time it remains a solid performance of a classic song and it does the job OK as a charity record; unlike some collective covers, at least you can tell they all like the song. Whether because of the more upbeat style, or the fame of the people involved, or just because it was marketed as a single rather than the confusing multi-artist EP format, this became the more popular of the two singles from this album, reaching the Top 20 just before Christmas (and in fact after Now 32 was released, which might have held down sales even more). In fact it's the only time this song has officially been a hit in its own right, since the Beatles and Michael Jackson both released it as part of a double A-side. Weller himself released another version (very similar to this apart from the absence of McCartney's keyboard and backing vocal parts) as one side of a limited-edition charity single in 2005.

As is my usual practice with charity records, I supply a link to make a donation and I've also linked below to War Child's download store, which is where I usually buy my downloads anyway. As I predicted in the Radiohead post, I have indeed bought another copy of the Help album myself.

And so ends what might be my favourite ever first disc of a Now album. Let's see next week whether Disc 2 can keep up the standard.

Available on: Help (also available direct).

Oasis 'Roll With It'

Chart Peak: 2

YouTube

'Roll With It' was Oasis's 3rd big UK hit single of 1995... It was a No. 2 smash in August as the follow-up to the chart-topping 'Some Might Say'

A lot's been said about this record but I think I might be able to add one entirely original observation: the riff at the start sounds a bit like 'I Heard That Lonesome Whistle Blow' by Hank Williams. Well, I thought so anyway... Hey, have you heard the one about the Oasis soup? You get a roll with it!!!

Oh alright, please yourselves. There are two things that stand out about the sleevenote there. One is that they're stretching a point somewhat by claiming this as the band's third hit in 1995 ('Whatever' entered and peaked in December 1994, although it continued to sell well into 1995 and beyond). The other is that it entirely ignores the most famous part of this single's history, the famous/notorious/legendary chart battle with 'Country House'; mind you, I do notice they've taken the precaution of putting that Cast track in between the two of them so further hostilities didn't break out. I didn't really mention that aspect much in the post about the Blur song, partly because I'd found so much else to say about that one, and partly because I didn't want to fall into discussing this track before I'd got to it. I was also slightly reluctant to overplay the matter in any case because, after all, there was so much hype at the time and much as some of us enjoyed getting sucked into it at the time, it wasn't really that important musically. Certainly, I don't recall that much serious dispute down here between rival fans: most people I knew liked both bands even though they'd probably have a favourite between them (and of course the overwhelming majority of the world's population had no opinion at all on the matter). I know I didn't buy 'Roll With It' at the time, but I can't remember exactly how pre-meditation a decision that was: in any case, I did pick up a copy in the Woolworths bargain bin a while later and I went straight from school to buy (What's The Story) Morning Glory? the day it came out.

If there was a reason why I didn't rush to buy the single, it might have been because it was more expensive, or it might just have been because I didn't like it very much. I agreed, reluctantly, with the consensus that neither act went into the fray with their best material, but whilst I liked 'Country House' quite a bit then and am still fond of it now, I considered this the worst Oasis single ever, and if that's no longer the case it says more about how much worse they got than about any hidden strengths here. This was the point where all the Quo-asis jokes started, but the sad fact is that now I'm a grown-up I don't even think this is as good as Status Quo. Yes, the song itself is harmless if simplistic, but it suffers from unimaginative arrangement and performance which make it sound like the work of a tired and jaded band going through the motions, rather than the lead single from one of the most anticipated albums of the decade. I can't blame the American record company for deciding to release 'Morning Glory' as the single over there instead.

The uninspired promo video for this track seems to sum it up somehow, and an uncharitable person might suggest that it implies a certain arrogance, as if everyone involved was so confident they didn't really put enough effort in. Perhaps that's harsh, but knowing what we do about the band, perhaps not. A more charitable explanation might be that this was their first recording with Alan White on drums and it took him a while to get settled in, which isn't implausible: there are certainly better Oasis tracks from this era. But this one isn't even as good as the Cast record. Yeah, I said that in public.

I think the CD single is in my mum's attic now (hence no photo), but when I bought it I preferred the acoustic B-side 'It's Better People'.

Also appearing on: Now 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 38, 52, 53, 54, 61, 62
Available on: Time Flies 1994-2009

Oasis 'Wonderwall'

Chart Peak: 2

YouTube

An even older record than 'Jesus To A Child' (though it outlasted it in the chart), this was originally released as a single in November 1995 and had therefore already been missed from two volumes in the Now series. Indeed, the next Oasis single, 'Don't Look Back In Anger' is on Now 33.

Of course, we can probably attribute this to record company politics. But just as Box Music must have felt they were coming late to this track, I feel it's a bit late for me to start reviewing 'Wonderwall' now. What can I possibly add to the reams of commentary about this track? When I listened to it attentively for the first time in ages, the thing that really caught my ear was how well-produced a record it is. That tends to be a bit of a faint-praise description, but it really struck me how good the acoustic guitars sound at the start of the track. And I've always liked the way the busy percussion helps to keep the energy of the recording up: it's a great flaw of most cover versions that I've heard that they tend to drift into the flat and maudlin. Perhaps this is the closest I'll get to an insight here, regarding my own conflicting feelings about the record, and about Oasis as a whole. I don't think it's the greatest song ever written, and I don't think it's as good as I did in 1995. But maybe I don't like it any less, and not only because I know how much worse the band can get. It doesn't arouse particularly nostalgic feelings in my either, perhaps because it's never really gone away. It just seems to exert a special power of its own, and not only on me: it recently sold its millionth copy, more than 11 years after release, and is at time of writing just outside the iTunes Top 200.

The pedant in me wants to point out that the single version here omits the brief acoustic reprise of 'Supersonic' at the end of the album version. One final observation from the video: stand-in bassist Scott McLeod clearly wasn't hired for his darts-playing ability. We used to have a good old laugh at that.

Also appearing on: Now 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 38, 52, 53, 54, 61, 62
Available on: Stop the Clocks