S Poddar
Hell has finally frozen over. The famously feuding Gallagher brothers, Liam and Noel, have buried their long cold war hatchet and announced a reunion tour to take place next year. In celebration of this monumental event, it would be apropos to revisit the album where this all began: Definitely Maybe.
Thirty years ago, Oasis burst onto the music scene with an album that indeed would redefine British rock. As the opening chords of Definitely Maybe play, for one fractured second, it almost seems as if the Eagles record is about to play. A languid, country-inflected riff wafts in, paying deference from a distance to the Californian dream-an unlikely sonical prelude. But only ten seconds in, the drums strike with purposeful force, and then the guitar embarks on a roar to life like a drag race to glory. A voice rises from the gritty streets of Manchester, starving for the stars. “I live my life in the city, there’s no easy way out,” Liam Gallagher proclaims as “Rock ‘N’ Roll Star” embarks upon take-off, carrying with it an unbridled ambition that was soon to become Oasis’s trademark.
Noel Gallagher once reflected on this ambition in the 2004 documentary Oasis: Definitely Maybe. He said, “The first line of that song is what my plan was. I can’t wait to get out of this s***hole when I’ve made some f***ing money.” His plan worked quicker than anyone could have imagined. Even before the album was actually out, Oasis was already well on its way to fame through word-of-mouth with the early singles such as “Supersonic” and “Shakermaker” and then the Top 10 hit “Live Forever”.
While it was their second album, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, that would launch them to global superstardom with its staggering 23 million sales, it was Definitely Maybe that originally set the stage. Sales of 100,000 alone were recorded in its first week, reaching 15 million worldwide to make it the fastest-selling debut in British history. This record firmly consolidated Oasis as the band that would later come to define and dominate the era of Britpop.
In 1994, Alan McGee, co-owner of Creation Records—the label that signed Oasis—had decidedly more modest expectations for Definitely Maybe. Creation was having financial troubles, £2 million in debt, and McGee’s hopes were simply to release the album quickly, maybe sell half a million copies, and keep the label afloat. As McGee related in the documentary, “It was more like we could nick them in before the next Stone Roses album and maybe sell half a million copies and we’ll all have had a result.” What he didn’t know was that it was a desperate gamble that would turn into a cultural phenomenon, a cornerstone of British rock, and a financial lifeline for Creation Records.
Where many of its peer Britpop albums, such as Blur’s Parklife and Pulp’s Different Class, are arguably quality records, few have aged with the timelessness that Definitely Maybe has. Songs like “Columbia,” “Supersonic,” and “Cigarettes & Alcohol” held up well past the era in which they were created, existing as ageless rock anthems. Liam Gallagher’s most recent arena tour was his best solo effort yet. Even the tour’s stop at Reading & Leeds festivals eclipsed his 2022 solo show at Knebworth-a testament to the long-lasting impact of the album.
Definitely Maybe is an album with a backstory that’s almost as mythical as the album itself, involving tales of “ghosts” pilfering drugs, trips on acid, magic guitars, and blatant cocaine name-drops getting past Radio One’s censors. Some of the lyrics, as in the case of “Shakermaker,” were famously made up at the last minute-Noel Gallagher wrote the final verse on the way to the studio, inspired by the humdrum visions of corner shops and traffic lights. Despite this very ad hoc approach, however, the album was far from an overnight success. Noel had spent several years making the odd, disparate attempts to develop his songwriting, working as a roadie for Inspiral Carpets and on his days off from the gas board.
Unlike the art school-inspired conceptualizing and cultural references that characterized much of the emerging Britpop scene, Noel Gallagher’s songs were refreshingly direct and unpretentious. Drawing on the music of his youth-The Beatles, The Who, David Bowie-he imbued each song with hedonistic, emotional intensity. “I wasn’t trying to impress anybody with my lyrical prowess,” Noel once said. “I was writing about things that were true to me-shagging, drinking, and taking drugs.
Oasis is pure rock ‘n’ roll serendipity. Liam, the cocky little brother, had joined a local Manchester group called The Rain, founded by guitarist Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs, bassist Paul “Guigsy” McGuigan and drummer Tony McCarroll back in 1991. When Noel got wind of this, he simply turned up at their rehearsal, demanded to be their guitarist and only songwriter, and turned their “racket with four tunes,” as Arthurs called it, into a powerhouse of primal rock. “I remember Noel coming in with ‘Shakermaker,'” Arthurs recalled. “I was just like, f***ing hell.”
Thus started the movement of a band that was to become not only a hallmark of British music but also a tradition that, even to this day-30 years on-continues to reverberate. With the Gallagher brothers readying themselves to come together again, there’s no better time than now to revisit Definitely Maybe, an album that captured the raw energy, hope, and ethos that was Oasis in its most unadulterated form.
