This summer, two highly respected journalists, ex-Q editor Ted Kessler and NME veteran Hamish MacBain, will publish A Sound So Very Loud: The Inside Story Of Every Song Oasis Recorded. With the duo having personal relationships with the band stretching all the way back to their days playing in tiny venues in 1994, the book is set to offer a unique overview of the creation of Oasis’ entire discography for the first time ever. To give us a taste of what to expect, here, Kessler and MacBain give Music Week an exclusive deep dive on five lesser-spotted Oasis gems…
Photo: Getty
TAKE ME AWAY (1994)
As statements of intent go, few first singles are as perfect as Supersonic. But right from the word go, Oasis were also offering up entirely different shades of what they were all about: witness this beautiful, melancholic, acoustic guitar-only B-side sung by a voice that could not be any more different to the one that had sneered so menacingly through their debut.
Noel Gallagher’s first ever recorded vocal is maybe his most technically impressive ever, too: starting in a baritone and rising so high by the end that his voice is on the point of cracking. More importantly, though, Take Me Away immediately showcased another side to his songwriting. As good as he was at producing the up-to-11 rock’n’roll songs about feeling supersonic and living forever, he could also do downbeat and introspective.
You don’t write songs as accomplished and as well structured and as just indisputably great as Take Me Away – or for that matter Supersonic – without first putting in the hours perfecting your craft. And the truth is that, long before the likes of Half The World Away and Talk Tonight were sung back to him by thousands of people, Noel Gallagher had been writing these sort of one-man-and-his-guitar tunes for years.
Much of this huge stockpile of material would not have fitted in with the euphoric, celebratory vibe that Oasis presented when people first started coming along to see them play. But soon enough, it would become a significant part of what they had to offer the world.
ROUND ARE WAY (1995)
When it came time to compile an album of Oasis B-sides, pretty much everything from all the Definitely Maybe and (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? singles was included. The main exceptions were the couple of songs that had only been demos (I Will Believe, Alive) and some of the Noel solo-acoustic songs, in the spirit of keeping The Masterplan upbeat. Also overlooked, for some reason, was this brass-and harmonica-laden stomp that had appeared on the other side of Wonderwall.
Round Are Way was certainly not omitted due to its quality. It had been played live at Earls Court, Maine Road, Knebworth: all of the biggest, most significant Oasis shows. Like so much of The Masterplan, it would have made a great single. It’s one of the poppiest, most out-and-out fun songs they ever recorded.
Introduced with Blues Brothers-style trumpets, it stomps along like a second helping of Digsy’s Dinner, but with a bigger, more soaring chorus. The drums were fed through the same phasing the Small Faces used on Itchycoo Park: a playful classic to which it bore more than a passing resemblance.
It may not have made The Masterplan, but it found a second life nonetheless: appearing in a 2020 Christmas advert for the Co-Op, busked by two very young brothers from the north of England, about six years apart in age, one of whom sings and plays guitar and the other of whom just sings. Who do you think Co-Op were hoping we would assume these two might be?
STAY YOUNG (1997)
In 1997, the influence of BBC Radio 1 in the UK was such that it was pretty much impossible to have a hit without it. Making it onto the A-list meant that a song would be guaranteed at least 25 plays to about 15 million listeners: a quarter of the country. Most artists would tailor singles for the best chance of being selected. But Oasis did not have to adhere to these rules at this stage.
The public’s appetite for their new material was such that they could supply D’You Know What I Mean?, an eight-minute song whose vocals did not arrive until over a minute in, and the stations would have to play it. What the band didn’t bank on was that they would clock that, tucked away on its B-side, was a song that could not have been any more radio-friendly. So in the spring of 1997, Stay Young blasted out of car stereos as often as D’You Know What I Mean?.
Within a week of its release, Noel Gallagher was making no secret of his feelings about the song. “As soon as we’d finished it,” he said to Ted Kessler, “I just kept seeing the word ‘Britpop’ everywhere. It’s a bit too jolly, y’know? Nice sentiments, though: ‘Stay young and invincible…’”
Stripped of the context of the era, though, with guitars once more a rarity on commercial radio, Stay Young sounds fantastic: the most accidentally huge radio hit Oasis ever had.
LET’S ALL MAKE BELIEVE (2000)
No song in the Noel Gallagher songbook says, ‘The party is over, everyone out’ quite as clearly as Let’s All Make Believe. It’s about closing the bar in his Supernova Heights home, explicit in the need to clear your front room of hangers-on at 4am – while revoking all future passes, too.
The end of the millennium was a time of turmoil in Noel Gallagher’s life, but the biggest mystery about Let’s All Make Believe is not contained within its lyrics (‘Let’s all make believe/That we’re still friends and we like each other’ being about as far away from Live Forever as you could imagine).
It’s why this sombre torch song was relegated to a B-side. It’s an aberration as great as The Masterplan being the support act to Wonderwall, but unlike that song this wasn’t in competition for an album place against such quite high-calibre material. Let’s All Make Believe is equal to anything on the much maligned Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants [it wasn’t included on the original tracklisting but was a bonus track on the Japanese edition].
This point was reinforced seven years later, when the February 2007 edition of Q magazine – then the biggest-selling music magazine in Britain – devoted an issue to its list of The 500 Greatest Lost Tracks: The Best Songs You’ve Never Heard. There at number one in the poll of Q staff and writers was Let’s All Make Believe. Above Dylan, The Beatles… and all the other mighty Oasis B-sides.
SOLDIER ON (2008)
Liam Gallagher’s attitude to songwriting – imagine it, get it out, move onto the next one – meant that from about 2002 onwards there was a huge vault of demos that no one could keep track of… least of all him.
“The thing about Liam is,” Noel said to Hamish, “you’ve not even heard the half of it. If he could even be bothered to finish some of the songs he started… Honestly, they’re amazing. I’ve got demos of his with about 40 tunes on them.”
Soldier On would be lost, buried on a CDR somewhere were it not for some other nosey musicians-slash-Oasis fans: namely The Coral. While recording at Wheeler End studios [in Buckinghamshire], they came across a hard drive titled ‘New Oasis stuff’. So of course, they next checked that nobody was looking, and did what anyone would do in that situation, and it was fortunate that they did.
“I was doing the Electric Proms with them,” said Noel, “and [Coral Singer] James Skelly, a bit sheepish, asks me, ‘Are you gonna do that tune Soldier On?’ Now, I don’t remember it. So I ransack this hard drive, can’t find it. We get to Abbey Road and we’re chatting away, and Andy Bell goes, ‘Soldier On? Brilliant! I’ve got a CD of it in my bag.’ Turns out he recorded it with Liam, but Liam still doesn’t remember it. ‘Well,’ Andy says to Liam, ‘you were pretty fucking pissed.’”
Soon enough, it would become the final song on the final Oasis album.
A Sound So Very Loud: The Inside Story Of Every Song Oasis Recorded by Ted Kessler & Hamish MacBain is published by Pan Macmillan on July 3 (£25, hardback – ebook and audiobook also available)
